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He had to admit he was impressed. None of the women he’d ever met would have even attempted to do anything like that. They would likely have left him out in the rain until he was capable of moving on his own power. Or drowned.
“Resourceful.”
“I like to think so.” And, being resourceful, her mind was never still. It now attacked the problem of the all-but-naked man in her living room. “You know, I think there might be a pair of my dad’s old coveralls in the attic.” As she talked, Kayla started to make her way toward the stairs, and then stopped.A skeptical expression entered her bright-green eyes as they swept over the man on the sofa.
Alain saw the look and couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking. Why was there a doubtful frown on her face? “What?”
“Well…” Kayla hesitated, searching for a delicate way to phrase this, even though her father had been gone for some five years now. “My dad was a pretty big man.”
Alain still didn’t see what the problem was. “I’m six-two.”
She smiled, and despite the situation, he found himself being drawn in as surely as if someone had thrown a rope over him and begun to pull him closer.
“No, not big—” Kayla held her hand up to indicate height “—big.” This time, she moved her hand in front of her, about chest level, to denote a man whose build had been once compared to that of an overgrown grizzly bear.
“I’ll take my chances,” Alain assured her. “It’s either that or wear something of yours, and I don’t think either one of us wants to go that route.”
It suddenly occurred to him that he was having a conversation with a woman whose name he didn’t know and who didn’t know his. While that was not an entirely unusual situation for him, an introduction was definitely due.
“By the way, I’m Alain Dulac.”
Her smile, he thought, seemed to light up the room far better than the candles did.
“Kayla,” she told him. “Kayla McKenna.” She saw him wince as he tried to sit up to shake her hand. Rather than a handshake, she gently pressed her palms against his shoulders and pushed him back down on the sofa. “I think you should stay there for a while. You gashed your head and cracked a couple of ribs. I sewed your forehead and taped you up,” she added. “Nothing else appears to be damaged. I ran my portable scanner over you.”
Other than running into someone from Star Trek, there was only one conclusion to be drawn. “I take it you’re a doctor?”
Kayla shook her head. “Vet,” she corrected.
“Oh.” Gingerly, Alain touched the bandage around his head again, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to expect. “Does that mean I’m suddenly going to start barking, or have an overwhelming urge to drink out of the toilet anytime soon?”
She laughed, and he caught himself thinking that it was a very sexy sound.
“Only if you want to. The basics of medicine, whether for an animal or a human being, are surprisingly similar,” she assured him. “They don’t even automatically shoot horses anymore when they break their legs these days.” He began to stir, then stopped when she looked at him a tad sternly. “Why don’t you rest while I go see if I can find my dad’s clothes in the attic?”
Without his realizing it, the pack of dogs in the room had closed in on him. They appeared to be eyeing him suspiciously. At least, that was the way it seemed to him. There were seven in all, seven German shepherds of varying heights and coloration: two white, one black and the rest black-and-tan. And none of them, except for the little guy with the cast, looked to be overly friendly.
Alain raised his eyes toward Kayla. “Are you sure it’s safe to leave me with these dogs?”
She smiled and nodded. “You won’t hurt them. I trust you.”
“No offense, but I wasn’t thinking of me hurting them. I was worried about them deciding they haven’t had enough to eat tonight.” He was only half kidding. “Survival of the fittest and all that.”
“Don’t worry.” She patted his shoulder, and realized it was the same gesture she used with the dogs to reassure them. “They haven’t mistaken you for an invading alpha male.” She looked around at them and realized, to an outsider, they might seem a bit intimidating. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll take some of them with me.”
That was a start, he allowed. “How about all of them?”
“You don’t like dogs.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. She felt a bit disappointed in the man, although she wasn’t entirely certain why.
“I like dogs fine,” he countered. “But I prefer to be standing in their company, not lying down like the last item on their menu.”
She supposed, given his present condition, she could understand his frame of mind. “Okay, they’ll come with me. I’ll just leave you Winchester.” She nodded toward the smallest dog.
The shepherd looked friendly enough. But Alain was curious as to her reasoning. “Why? Because he broke his leg?”
“He didn’t break his leg,” she corrected. “Someone shot him. But I thought the two of you might form some sort of bond, because Winchester was the one who found you.” She left the room with the menagerie following her, closer than a shadow.
It came to him about a minute after Kayla walked out of the room with her four-legged entourage that she was wrong. Winchester hadn’t found him; the dog had been responsible for his sudden and unexpected merging with the oak tree.
But it was too late to point that out.
Chapter Three
The door to the attic creaked as she opened it. For a moment, Kayla just stood in the doorway, looking at the shadows her lantern created within the room.
Ariel bumped her head against her thigh, as if to nudge her in.
Taking a deep breath, Kayla raised the lantern higher to illuminate the space, and walked in.
She hadn’t been up here in a very long time. Not because the gathering place for spiders, crickets and all manner of other bugs held any special terror for her. She had no problem with any of God’s creatures, no matter how creepy-crawly the rest of the world might find them. No, what kept her from coming up here was the bittersweet pain of memories.
The attic was filled with furniture, boxes of clothing, knickknacks and assorted personal treasures belonging to people long gone. Yet she couldn’t make herself throw them out or even donate them to charity. To do so, to sweep the place clean and get rid of all the clutter, felt to her like nothing short of a violation of trust. But as much as she couldn’t bring herself to part with her parents’ and grandparents’ possessions, coming up here, remembering people who were no longer part of her everyday life, was still extremely difficult.
Kayla treasured the paths they had walked through her life, and at the same time hated being reminded that they were gone. That the people who had made her childhood and teen years so rich were no longer there to share in her life now.
Maybe if they had been around, she wouldn’t have had that low period in San Francisco….
As if sensing her feelings, the six dogs that had come racing up here now stood quietly in the shadows, waiting for her to do whatever it was she had to do.
Kayla took another long, deep breath, trying not to notice how the dust tickled her nose.
An ancient, dust-laden, black Singer sewing machine that had belonged to her great-grandmother stood like a grande dame in the corner, regally presiding over all the other possessions that had found their way up here. Her grandfather’s fishing rod and lures stood in a corner, near her father’s golf clubs, still brand-new beneath the covers her mother had knit for them.
Next to the clubs was a body-building machine that had belonged not to her father but her mother. Kayla’s mom had been so proud of maintaining her all-but-perfect body. She’d used the machine faithfully, never missing a day. Kayla pressed her lips together to keep back the tears that suddenly filled her eyes. The cancer hadn’t cared what her mother looked like on the outside, it had ravaged her within, leaving Kayla motherless by the time she was sixteen.
By twenty-two, she’d become a veritable orphan.
Now the dogs were her family.
You’re getting maudlin. Snap out of it, Kayla upbraided herself.
Taking another deep breath, she blew it out slowly and then approached a large, battered steamer trunk in the corner opposite the sewing machine. The trunk had its own history. Her grandfather had come from Ireland with all his worldly possessions in that trunk.When he landed in New York, he’d discovered that someone had jimmied it open and taken everything inside. Seamus McKenna had kept the trunk, vowing to one day fill it with the finest silks and satins.
These days, her parents’ things resided inside the battered container, mingling just the way they had when they’d had been alive. The contents were worth far more to Kayla than the silks and satins her grandfather had dreamed of.
The attic fairly shouted of memories. Kayla could have sworn she could see her parents standing just beyond the lantern’s light.
She felt her heart ache.
“I miss you guys,” she said quietly, blinking several times as she felt moisture gathering along her lashes.
All of them, especially her father, had been her inspiration. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t wanted to be just like him, hadn’t planned on going into medicine because he had. He was the kindest, gentlest man ever created….
But her passionate love for animals took her in a slightly different direction, and instead of a doctor, she’d become a veterinarian. She never once regretted her decision. Being a vet, along with the volunteer work she was presently doing for the German Shepherd Rescue Organization, had given her a sense of purpose she badly needed.
And there was another, added bonus. She didn’t feel alone anymore, not with all these four-footed companions eager to display their gratitude to her at the drop of a dog treat.
Crossing to the trunk, Kayla started to open it, then stopped and glanced back at the dogs.
German shepherds, despite their tough public image as police dogs, had very delicate skins and often had a multitude of allergies. The ones she had taken into her home and was presently caring for certainly did. Three of them were on daily allergy medication.
“Maybe I should have left you downstairs,” she said, thinking out loud. Well, it was too late now. “Okay, stay.”
She said the last word as a command. She knew that training animals was a constant, ongoing thing, and she never missed an opportunity to reinforce any headway made. The dogs instantly turned into breathing statues. Kayla smiled to herself as she flipped the lock on the trunk and lifted the lid.
A very faint hint of the perfume her mother always wore floated up to her.
Or maybe that was just her imagination, creating the scent.
Kayla didn’t care. It was real to her, and that was all that mattered. A vivid image of her mother laughing flashed through her mind’s eye. Her mom had remained healthy-looking until almost the very end.
Leaving the lantern beside the trunk, Kayla carefully went through the clothes and memorabilia inside. Some of her father’s old medical school text-books lined the bottom of the trunk—he’d never liked throwing anything away. Finally, she found the overalls. They were tucked into a corner near the pile of books.
Daniel McKenna had never favored suits or ties. He tended to like wearing comfortable clothes beneath his white lab coat. Ironically, the week before he’d suddenly died, he’d told her that when he was gone, she should give away his clothes to the local charity—just as he’d always given away his time and services so generously in his off-hours.
But Kayla couldn’t force herself to give away every article of clothing. For sentimental reasons, she had kept one of his outfits—his old coveralls.
Taking them out now, she held up the faded denim and shook her head. The man on her sofa was going to be lost in them. But it would do in a pinch. And, after all, it was only temporary. Just until his own clothes were dry again.
She had to admit, Kayla thought as she folded the large garment, that if she had her druthers, she would vote to have Alain Dulac remain just the way he was right now. There was no denying that beneath that blanket, he was one magnificent specimen of manhood.
Her mother would have approved of the sculpted definition in his arms, and the washboard abs. Most likely, Kayla thought with a smile, her mom would have wound up comparing workout routines with him, and giving Alain advice on how to get twice the results out of his efforts.
Not that there was really any room for improvement, she mused, her mouth curving.
Closing the lid of the trunk, Kayla stooped down and picked up the lantern again.
She hadn’t seen a wedding ring on the man’s hand, but that didn’t really mean anything. A lot of married men didn’t wear rings—and those that did could easily take them off. Although, now that she thought of it, there hadn’t been a tan line on Alain’s finger to indicate he played those kinds of games.
Still, she couldn’t help absently wondering if there was someone waiting for Alain Dulac back home, wherever home was.
The next moment she laughed at herself. What was she thinking? Of course there was someone waiting for him. Men who looked like Alain Dulac always had someone waiting for them. They didn’t go around creating bodies like that just because they had nothing better to do. That kind of body was bait, pure and simple. Had he reeled in his catch?
Probably more than his share.
Makes no difference one way or another, she insisted silently, leaving the attic.
She waited until her entourage had gathered around her out in the hall, then closed the door.
“Okay, gang,” she announced cheerfully, “We got what we came for. Let’s go.”
Winchester had remained at his side, staring at him, the entire time Kayla was gone. He’d tried to pet the dog, but the very movement had sent pains shooting up and down his side.
Alain strained now, trying to hear if the woman he was indebted to was coming back. Boards squeaked overhead. She was leaving the attic, he guessed, relieved.
“Your mistress is coming,” he told the dog. “You can go stare at her now.”
Alain heard the sound of thirteen pairs of feet hitting the stairs, hers muffled by the clatter of the dogs’.
Damn, he wanted to sit up to greet her like a normal person, but even shifting slightly on the sofa brought the anvil devils back, swinging their hammers in double-time. Not only that, but there was an excruciating pain shooting up from his ribs.
He’d never been one to make a fuss, and he’d always thought he had a high pain threshold. When he fell out of a tree and broke his arm at the age of eight, he’d been so stoic Philippe had been certain he’d gone into shock. But this was bad. Really bad.He couldn’t take in a deep breath, only shallow, small ones—which somehow fed the claustrophobia he felt. He kept trying to inhale a deep breath to hold the sensation at bay, but each failure only drew it closer.
“Why can’t I take a deep breath?” he wanted to know the second Kayla walked into the living room. He was vaguely aware how the light from the lantern preceded her like a heavenly beam, illuminating her every movement. Directly behind her, her animals came pouring in.
“Because you cracked two ribs and I’ve taped you up tighter than a CIA secret,” she answered matter-of-factly. Patient feedback—and complaints—were two things she didn’t get as a vet. Being a veterinarian did have its perks, she thought. “It’s only temporary.”
Placing the lantern on the coffee table, she held up the coveralls.
It took him a second to realize that she wasn’t unfurling a bolt of material, but an article of clothing. The man who had sired this petite woman had been huge. It was obvious that she must have taken after her mother.
“Wow, you really weren’t kidding about your father being big, were you?” The coveralls looked as if they could accommodate two of him. “How much did your dad weigh?”
“Too much,” she answered shortly. “Given his profession, he should have known better.”
Trying to ignore the throbbing shaft of pain that kept skewering him, he tried to focus on the conversation. “What was his profession?”
“My father was a doctor. A general practitioner,” she explained.
“Could have been worse,” Alain allowed. When she looked at him quizzically, he said, “Your father could have been a nutritionist or a diet doctor.” Forcing a resigned smile to his lips, he reached out for the coveralls she was holding, then suddenly dropped his hand as he sucked in what little breath he had to spare.
Concerned, Kayla set the coveralls on the coffee table. “Maybe you should just lie back. You can always get dressed later. God knows you’re not going anywhere tonight.”
As if to underline her assessment, the wind chose that moment to pick up again, rattling the windows like a prisoner trying to break out—or, in this case, in.
Kayla lightly placed her hand on Alain’s forehead and then frowned.
He didn’t like her reaction, Alain thought. “What’s wrong?”
She drew her hand back, looking at him thoughtfully. “You feel warm.”
He didn’t like the way she said that, either. He really didn’t have time for this. His schedule was full and he should have been on his way home. “Isn’t that a good sign? Doesn’t cold usually mean dead?”
“Stiff means dead,” she corrected, with just a hint of amusement reaching her lips. “Wait here, I’m going to get you something to make you feel better.”
“Wait here,” he echoed when she’d gone. Winchester looked at him with what appeared to Alain’s slightly fevered brain to be sympathy. “As if I had a choice.”
The shepherd barked in response, apparently agreeing that, at the moment, he didn’t.
