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I glanced down. She was wearing high heels. My own eyebrows went up. Got to respect the moxie of a tall woman who chooses to wear three-inch heels. “Sorenson’s a worm,” I mentioned, in case she hadn’t noticed.
“I’ll agree with you there.” She spoke the way she moved—slow and easy, as if she’d never hurried in her life and didn’t intend to start. “He fired me last night. That’s why I left the resort so late and ended up finding you. Which is a roundabout sort of gratitude, but there you go. Roundabout is probably the only kind of appreciation Vic’s likely to get.”
“I didn’t know Vic kept a paramedic on staff.”
“I was working as a waitress, not a paramedic.” Her voice didn’t change but her eyes did—as if she’d closed a door, gently but firmly, on that subject. “Vic and I disagreed about the fringe benefits of the job. He thought he was one of them. I didn’t.”
The thought of Vic putting his hands on this woman made me furious. “I’ll talk to him,” I promised grimly.
Duncan gave me a level look. “Don’t do anything I’d have to arrest you for.”
“You should consider filing suit against him,” Gwen said seriously. “Sexual harassment is wrong, and firing you for failing to agree to his demands—well, it sounds like you’d have a good case.”
“Oh, he didn’t fire me because I wouldn’t go to bed with him. I think it was the cannelloni,” Seely said thoughtfully. “It didn’t go with his suit. Or maybe it was the chicken-fried steak. There was all that cream gravy, you see. He was not happy about the gravy.”
A laugh took me by surprise. It hurt, so I stopped. “Dumped a tray on him, did you?”
Her mouth stayed solemn, but her eyes laughed along with me. Extraordinary eyes. Not the color—they were blue, pretty enough, but nothing unusual. Maybe it was their shape, sort of elongated, with a flirty tilt at the corners. Or the way they seemed to offer confidences, as if she and I were old friends who didn’t need to put everything into words.
“I found Miss Jones at the bus station,” Duncan said. “She was buying a ticket to Denver.”
A frown snapped down. “You’re leaving town?”
“Why not? I lost my job.”
“But you have a car. What were you doing at the bus station?”
She pulled a face. “The stupid thing decided to die on me. The mechanic says it’s either some gasket or the whole motor, and he can’t say which without taking everything apart, which will cost a fortune. You’d think he could tell the difference, wouldn’t you?”
“Head gasket, sounds like,” I said, my brain clicking away on an idea. “Or the heads themselves. You must have lost compression.”
“You do speak the lingo,” she said admiringly.
Duncan asked her who she’d taken the car to, then assured her that Ron was a good mechanic. Gwen was looking fidgety.
“But your things!” she burst out. “I can understand leaving your car if it wasn’t worth repairing, but surely you couldn’t take everything with you on the bus. Even if you didn’t have furniture, there’s clothes, dishes, bedding…oh.” An embarrassed flush sped over her cheeks. “It isn’t any of my business, is it?”
Seely turned that lazy smile Gwen’s way. “Probably not, but we can’t help being curious about people, can we? I don’t have much stuff, being more of a wanderer than a nester. No dishes or bedding. A few keepsakes and some clothes, yes, but not that many. Susan seemed happy to accept what I didn’t want to take with me.”
“Susan?” I said, only half my brain on what she was saying.
“Another waitress at the resort. I’d been rooming with her, but I don’t think she minded my sudden departure. She’s had her eye on Vic for a while. Well.” She shrugged, a graceful movement that did lovely things to her breasts. “No accounting for tastes, is there?”
Things were falling into place. “You decided to leave more or less on impulse, then?”
“I do a lot of things on impulse.”
“Then there’s nothing waiting for you in Denver? No reason you need to be there right away?”
She used her eyebrows to ask where I was going with all this.
“My brother and sister-in-law think I’m going to need some help after I leave the hospital tomorrow.”
Gwen interrupted. “Not tomorrow, Ben.”
“They can’t do anything more for me here. Besides, hospitals are unhealthy. People get staph infections in hospitals. Now, Gwen and Duncan might be right about me needing a little help—”
Duncan snorted.
“So I was thinking maybe you’d be interested. You need a job, right? And a place to stay while your car gets fixed.”
“I…” For the first time, her composure was shaken. “Weren’t you listening? I wasn’t planning to fix my car.”
I brushed that aside. “Look, if you’re worried about staying with a man you don’t know, I’m not in any shape to give you a hard time.” Gwen muttered something about my being able to give people a hard time on my deathbed. I ignored that. “Not that I would hassle you, anyway, but you couldn’t know that.”
She shook her head. “That’s not it.”
“What’s the problem, then?” I used my left elbow to prop myself up.
Everything went gray. The next thing I knew, Seely was depositing me efficiently back on my pillows. I’m not sure how she got there before Duncan, who isn’t exactly slow off the mark, but she did.
“There’s a line between stubborn and stupid,” she said, looking down at me. “Something tells me you cross it now and then.”
Duncan grinned. Gwen giggled. I scowled. “I moved too fast, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Seely said. “I can see you’ll undo everyone’s work, given half a chance. All right. I’ll take the job.”
Hot damn. “Good. That’s good.”
“On two conditions. First, you stay in the hospital until the doctor releases you. Second, you’ll do as I tell you while you’re under my care.”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“He agrees,” Duncan said firmly. “Don’t you, Ben?”
Seely’s lips twitched, but she looked at me steadily, waiting. With a sigh, I nodded. “Within reason.”
Gwen spoke. “I hate to put a stick in the spokes, but you really should tell her about Doofus.”
Seely did that question-thing with her eyebrows. “Zach’s dog,” I explained. “My son. He lives with me. Doofus, I mean.” Relief had hit, followed by a wave of exhaustion. It was hard to get words lined up right. “Zach’s in kindergarten. He comes over after school some days.”
“My point is that Doofus is a puppy, not a dog,” Gwen said. “You should be aware you’re not just taking on one large, slightly snarly man. The man is at least housetrained. Doofus isn’t.”
“Thanks a lot, Gwen.”
Seely’s lips tipped up. “I think I can handle a puppy, as long as Ben can handle being bossed around.”
“Within reason,” I repeated. When she nodded, I breathed a sigh of relief. “All right, then. We’ve got a deal.”
Duncan was amused, Gwen was relieved, and Seely…I couldn’t tell. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth smiling, but her eyes seemed distracted, like she was taking a serious look inward.
And me? I was satisfied…for now. “Don’t you want to know how much the job will pay?”
“Money’s not a big issue for me.”
“Uh—you aren’t rich or something, are you?”
Gwen made a choked sound that she turned into clearing her throat. Seely laughed and tucked her hair back from her face. “I’ve been accused of a number of oddities, but rich isn’t one of them.”
The movement drew my attention to the long dangles of multicolored glass hanging from her ears. They reminded me…I glanced at her wrist.
Yes. That was the bracelet I remembered. “Pretty bracelet.”
Her eyebrows lifted gently. “Thanks. The stones represent the chakras. I’m guessing by the look on your face that you know what chakras are?”
“I read.” Bunch of New Age nonsense, but I wouldn’t say that to the woman who’d saved my life.
Everyone wanted me to rest then. I was willing to let them have their way as soon as I’d passed on some instructions for Manny, who was going to have to run things at McClain Construction for awhile. They were right—I was tired.
And I’d gotten what I wanted.
I’d stay here one more night, then I was going home. Not to an empty house, either. Seely would be there. I didn’t think Dr. Miller would give me grief over leaving the hospital once he knew I’d have trained medical help around. And I wouldn’t have to come up with any more reasons not to stay with Duncan while I was recovering.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my brother. Unfortunately, I also love his wife.
Three
Outside, the birds were making a fuss about morning. It was a familiar sound, even this late in the year. There were always a few who wintered over. But usually I didn’t listen to their chatter from a hospital bed in the den.
I sat on the edge of that bed and glared at my knee.
I had no idea how it had gotten hurt, no memory of it bothering me during my crawl up the mountain, but it was swollen to twice its size. Soft-tissue damage, according to the doctor. The swelling should go down in a few days. I was to stay off it as much as possible.
The downstairs bathroom was two rooms and half a hallway away.
All the bedrooms in the house were on the second floor, which is why they’d parked me in the den when I came home yesterday. The den was an addition, tacked on at the very back of the house. The bathroom was opposite the laundry room.
I’d put up with using a plastic basin to brush my teeth, but I was damned if I was going to pee in the stupid urinal they’d sent me home with.
Besides, I wanted more coffee. And something to do. There was a TV in here, but I wasn’t much for television. I like to read, but not all day. The table by my bed held sickroom paraphernalia—water, a glass, pain pills, the stuff Gwen had brought me in the hospital. My laptop, though I’d practically had to sign an oath in blood that I wouldn’t use it to work yet. A little bell I was supposed to ring if I needed anything.
I grimaced at that bell. Last night I’d barely managed one game of solitaire on my laptop. Seely had come in to refill my water and see how I was doing. I’d fallen asleep so fast I wasn’t sure I’d answered her.
I’d done nothing but sleep yesterday. I was sick of it.
On the floor next to the bed, Doofus was growling. He’d sunk his sharp little baby teeth into a dangling corner of my blanket and was killing it. In the kitchen, the radio was playing softly. I could hear quiet, moving-around noises, too…water running at the sink. The refrigerator door opening and closing.
That would be Seely, clearing up after breakfast. She’d brought me eggs and toast in bed.
Damned if I know why people consider breakfast in bed a treat. Even with a bed you can crank to a sitting position, it’s a pain. Besides, I’d had enough of beds. I wanted to shave. I wanted a shower and real clothes, not wrinkled pajamas. I needed to talk to Manny, and my loving family had persuaded Seely not to leave the phone by my bed.
First things first. I stood slowly, having learned that I got dizzy if I tried to move too fast. It was nice, I decided, to hear a woman puttering around in the kitchen. I wondered how much of a squawk Seely would make when I joined her there. A grin tugged at my mouth.
Funny. I was in a pretty good mood, considering I’d smashed my truck and put some major dents in several body parts. But it was good to be home…good to have survived to come home.
I started across the room. Contrary to my family’s fondly held opinion, I know my limits. I’d lost a lot of blood, which meant I was going to be weak, sometimes dizzy. Combine that with a knee not inclined to take much weight, a shoulder that kept me from using crutches and a body that was stiff and sore everywhere but my left big toe, and falling was a real possibility. Especially with that fool puppy running circles around my feet.
I took it slow and careful. I wanted to make a point. I also wanted coffee and conversation, maybe some answers. I limped into the dining room, frowning.
In any contest between memory and logic, logic ought to win. Women don’t glow. I knew that. I’d been in bad shape when Seely found me, my perceptions skewed by a system on the verge of shutting down. I couldn’t trust my memory.
Yet that one memory bead remained so clear…the curves of her face as she smiled at me, the tilt of her eyes, the way her breath had puffed out, ghostly in the cold air. And the gentle luminescence of her skin, like moonlight on snow. Not at all like a flashlight. Just as clearly I remember the warmth, a heat that had sunk itself into me instead of sitting around on the surface.
I had questions, and I couldn’t let them go.
I managed to avoid tripping over Doofus as I left the bathroom, but had to pause in the doorway to the kitchen, one hand on the jamb to steady myself. The sling supported my shoulder, so it wasn’t hurting too much. Unlike my knee.
Seely was wiping down the counter, humming along with the radio. She wore jeans and a blue sweater today, and her denim-clad hips were swaying to the music in a cute little be-bop that yanked my attention away from my sore knee.
Then I noticed what was playing on the radio: Kenny Chesney singing “How forever feels.” The song Gwen and I had danced to five years ago, on the night we’d ended up in bed together.
The night before I left her.
All the fizz drained out of the day. I took a deep breath and limped on into the room. Doofus yelped happily, announcing our arrival.
Seely spun around, her eyes wide. “How do you do that?”
“What?” Doofus had found his water dish and was thrilled by the discovery, lapping away as if he’d been in the desert for days. I’d have to put him out soon. Or ask Seely to, dammit. I didn’t like depending on others for every little thing.
“Sneak up on me when you can barely walk,” she said.
“No shoes.” I decided to rest a bit before making for the oak table in the center of the room. “I came out for a cup of coffee.”
“I would have brought you coffee. That’s what that little bell by your bed is for.”
“I didn’t want to drink it in bed. Besides, I thought it would help if you could see that I’m able to move around some now.”
“Help what?”
“I don’t want to sleep all day today.”
One of her eyebrows lifted. The woman had the most talkative eyebrows I’d ever seen. “Okay. You thought I needed to be notified of this?”
Yesterday I’d dozed off every time she checked on me. That had to be coincidence…didn’t it? “We have a deal. I do what you say, within reason. I wanted to show you that it wouldn’t be reasonable to keep me in bed all day.”
Her mouth kicked up on one side. “Well, since you’re already here, you may as well sit down and have that coffee. No, wait—I’d rather you didn’t go splat on the floor. Let me get on your good side first.”
I didn’t have much choice. She reached me before I’d taken more than a couple of halting steps and slid an arm around my waist. The warm strength of her body felt good. “How can you move so fast without seeming to hurry?”
