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“Your shirt had blood on it and your jeans were ripped.” She picked up a brown paper shopping bag off the chair and brought it to him. “I brought some clothes from my store that ought to fit you. But you really should wait until Doc gets back before you try anything too physical.”
He glanced in the bag at the new jeans and blue flannel shirt. “Thanks. I’ll take my chances.”
“I threw in some boxers, too.”
He looked at her, saw a hint of a smile on those gorgeous lips of hers, wondered if she’d guessed he wore boxers, or had found out firsthand. Someone had obviously undressed him, and she had been the one to bring him in…
He decided he didn’t want to know. What he wanted to know, was when he could get the hell out of here.
“Miss Douglas—” He started to stand, determined to get dressed with or without an audience, but the second his feet hit the gray speckled tile floor, his legs buckled. She moved quickly, had her arms around his waist before he went down.
“Holly.” She sucked in a breath, held him steady. “It’s kind of a rule of mine that all the men I pull from burning planes and buy underwear for call me by my first name.”
Her arms felt nice around him. Very nice. Firm, but warm and soft. But her arms weren’t the only thing that felt nice. Her breasts were also pressed against his chest. And like her arms, they were also firm, but warm and soft. His bruised ribs didn’t seem to mind the pressure one little bit. The faint scent of strawberries and something else…mint, he realized, drifted from her damp hair and though he knew it wasn’t wise, he simply let himself enjoy the moment. Holly.
Holly knew that she should let go of the man. He seemed to be standing on his own just fine now and didn’t need her assistance any longer. But she really couldn’t be certain, could she? And besides, if he did fall, she’d have one hell of a time getting him up off the floor by herself. He was a good six-foot-three, at least seven or eight inches taller than she was. Built solid as a Western red cedar. So she held on, just another moment or two, she told herself, until she was sure he was all right.
He still had the scent of the storm on him, she noticed, and his skin radiated heat with the intensity of a wood furnace. It had been a long time since she’d had her arms around a man—a nearly naked man at that—and against her wishes, her body reacted to the touch of male against female with a mind of its own.
“It seems that I owe you a thank you—again,” he said quietly.
“You’re welcome.” She heard the breathless quality in her voice, felt her cheeks warm at her foolishness. She was just feeling responsible for the man, that was all, she told herself. He’d nearly died, for heaven’s sake. Emotions were running a little high.
And still she didn’t move.
He didn’t move, either.
She heard the thud of his heart under her ear, felt the rock-hard muscle of his chest against her cheek. His large hands were splayed over her back, and suddenly Holly wasn’t certain who was holding who up. “You all right now?”
“Fine.” His breath skimmed the top of her head. “Just fine.”
“Well, okay, then I suppose we should—”
The office door opened at that moment and Dr. Eaton—“Doc” to the people of Twin Pines—walked into the room. He was the only doctor in town, a youthful version of St. Nick without the beard: sparkling blue eyes under round wired spectacles, rosy cheeks, thick white hair he wore pulled back into a ponytail. The man even had a jolly laugh. When he glanced up from the file in his hands and took in the sight of Holly embracing his most recent patient, he raised one bushy eyebrow.
“Well,” Doc said as he moved into the room, “looks like someone’s feeling better.”
Not certain if the doctor was referring to her or his patient, Holly shoved away from Guy. He gave a grunt of pain at the sudden movement, then gripped the edge of the table to steady himself.
“He insists on getting up and dressed,” she explained quickly. A little too quickly. She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “Maybe he’ll listen to you, Doc.”
“If you couldn’t convince him, I can’t imagine he’d listen to an old geezer like me.” Doc smiled at Guy. “How’s that head of yours feeling?”
“Like my bungee cord snapped.” Guy scooted back up on the table.
Dr. Eaton chuckled. “You’re a lucky man, Mr. Blackwolf. Very few men survive a plane crash with little more than a few stitches in their head and a couple of bruised ribs.” He pulled a slender, silver flashlight out of his white coat pocket and turned it on. “’Course, tomorrow you’re also going to be ten different shades of black and blue. Look at the light here, please, and follow with your eyes only.”
While Dr. Eaton examined Guy, Holly stood back, hands still shoved into her back pockets. She told herself to keep her eyes on the table in the corner where Doc kept clear glass containers of cotton balls and swabs and latex gloves. But her gaze kept drifting to a pair of bare legs that dangled over the edge of the table.
How could a woman ignore such blatant masculinity? She’d seen her share of male legs before; she was hardly a blushing teenager. But Blackwolf’s legs were extraordinary. Long and powerful, thighs and calves defined by well-honed muscles, a lightning bolt-shaped scar that ran upward from his right knee and disappeared under the gown he wore. And while the doctor tested the pilot’s reflexes, Holly found herself wondering just how far up his thigh the scar continued and what sort of injury had caused it.
And as her gaze swept down again, she also wondered—just for a moment—what that light sprinkling of coarse, dark hair might feel like against her own smooth legs. She chided herself at such a thought, but for heaven’s sake, what harm did a little wondering ever do? He had nice feet, too, she noted. Large, with straight, smooth toes and clipped nails.
“Holly?”
“What?” The single word came out as a guilty squeak. Her heart jumped, and she jerked her gaze up at the sound of her name. Both Blackwolf and Doc were staring at her. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”
“I asked if you’d mind calling Russ over at the lodge. Mr. Blackwolf will need a room where he can rest a few days before he heads back to Seattle and both rooms here at clinic are already occupied.”
“Oh, sure.”
She closed the door behind her on her way to the outer office, but not before she caught a glimpse of Blackwolf shrugging out of his gown so the doctor could check his ribs. At the brief sight of the pilot’s broad, muscled chest—complete with the same coarse, dark hair as she’d seen on his legs—Holly’s pulse skipped.
No question about it, Holly thought as she picked up the phone and punched buttons. Guy Blackwolf was one fine specimen of a man.
She spoke to Russ at the lodge, Ned at the Hardware Store, Clay at the sheriff’s office, then Quincy at the auto repair shop and Mitch Walker, who owned a small construction company just outside of Twin Pines.
No luck.
With a sigh, Holly stared at the closed examination room door.”
Like it or not, saving Guy Blackwolf had made him her responsibility.
Two
How in the world was a five-foot-eight, one-hundred-twenty-pound woman supposed to get an injured, six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound, solid-muscled man up twenty steps of stairs?
Slowly, Holly decided as she parked her car behind her store. Through the light mist of rain enveloping her windshield, she frowned at the steep redwood planks leading to her apartment.
“Here we are.” She shut off her car’s engine and looked at her passenger. He had a bandage over the stitches on his temple, and his right eye looked as if it had waltzed into an angry logger’s fist. He looked wounded, ruggedly handsome and just a touch dangerous. “Think you can make it up those stairs?”
He glanced at the steps. “Piece of cake.”
“Right.” She slid out of the driver’s seat, thankful that the earlier downpour had settled into a heavy drizzle. She came around the car, frowned when she saw he’d already opened the door and stepped out before she could reach him. She sucked in a breath when his knees started to buckle, watched as he grasped the edge of the door to steady himself.
“Maybe I should go get some help,” she said warily.
He shook his head. “Just give me a second. I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine at all, she thought, though she had to admit he looked extremely fine in the clothes she’d brought him. The jeans were snug around his lean hips, the blue flannel shirt cut across his broad shoulders as if it had been tailor-made for him. She’d brought him boots, as well, but they’d been too small, so he’d had to wear the same ones he’d had on when she’d pulled him out of the plane and into the lake.
And now, with no place else for him to go, she was bringing him home.
Resigned to her fate, she slipped an arm around his waist, felt the heat of his body against hers. “You ready?”
He nodded, draped an arm around her shoulders. “You really don’t have to do this, you know. There’s got to be a bed or sofa somewhere in this town I can crash on for a couple of days.”
“Like I told you back at Doc’s office, the lodge is full of tourists in for the fishing season and the storm stranded a group of backpackers from Anchorage.” She paused at the foot of the stairs, shifted her weight. “At the moment, there isn’t an empty bed in town. Here we go. Let’s take it slow and easy, one step at a time.”
They made it halfway up the steps when she felt him sway slightly. She’d never be able to hold him if he went down. They’d both end up in a pile at the bottom of the stairs. She almost wished she had accepted Doc’s offer to help.
“Don’t you dare quit on me when the going gets tough.” She tightened her hold and shoved him toward the next step. “There’s a warm bed and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s at the top of these stairs. Now move it.”
“Words to heat a man’s blood, darlin’,” he muttered, but the tight set of his strong jaw and the death grip he had on her shoulders told Holly that doing the wild thing was the last thing he had on his mind.
They were both soaked by the time they reached the top of the steps. Holly yanked the door open and they stumbled into her living room, dripping water on her brown tiled entry. She maneuvered Guy to the small sofa in the center of the room and dumped him there. They were both breathing heavy.
“I’m all wet.” He started to rise, but she pushed gently on his shoulders and eased him back.
“It’s leather,” she said. “A little water won’t hurt it. You just stay right there.”
Her apartment was small, a cozy one-bedroom with hardwood floors, knotty pine walls and a floor-to-ceiling river stone fireplace. She’d loved it the moment she’d laid eyes on it, even though the dirt and dust had been a foot thick and the current residents, a family of gray squirrels, had protested angrily at her intrusion. She’d scrubbed the place spotless, learned how to replace broken water pipes and cracked tile, seal a leaky roof, repair cabinet drawers. Over the next several months she’d slowly made it her own: an old pie safe from a local flea market she’d stenciled leaves on, a tiny oak kitchen table and two ladder-back chairs she’d stripped and restained, a pine wooden crate that had once shipped cans of salmon was now an end table for her sofa.
She was as far as she could be from the tiny, dust-dry Texas trailer park where her mother had raised her. And still, she thought, it wasn’t far enough. But she felt more at home here in Twin Pines than she had anywhere else. For the first time in her life, she was happy.
She loved everything about the small, back country town. No one had to prove themselves to anyone here. No one judged or criticized or set impossible standards.
Not that the town was immune to gossip, of course. Gossip was the number one pastime in Twin Pines, and several of the residents had turned it into an art form. When the auxiliary ladies met on Wednesday afternoons at Holly’s general store, the gathering was more of a theater performance than a meeting, each lady attempting to outdo the next with a current little tidbit of hearsay. Stories were embellished and acted out with dramatic enthusiasm, and though the truth might be stretched, the tales were never malicious or hurtful. And Holly knew that in spite of all the talk, there wasn’t a resident in Twin Pines who wouldn’t be there for their neighbor if they were needed.
Three years ago she wouldn’t have believed that such a place existed. Or that she could ever be a part of it. But it did exist and she was a part of it, she thought with a smile. Twin Pines was her life now. The town, the people, her store. The kids at Twin Pines’ Elementary she read stories to every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. She wouldn’t trade or give up one little part of any of that. Not for anything or anyone.
She hurried to her hall cupboard and grabbed a handful of towels, then came back into the living room and tossed one at him as she bent down and reached for his boots. “We’ve got to get your clothes off and get you in bed.”
“So I did die.” Smiling, he laid his head back and closed his eyes. “And this is heaven. Ouch!”
His eyes flew open again when she yanked his wet boot off. “Or maybe not,” he said, frowning. She smiled sweetly and turned her attention to his other foot.
“Dry your hair, Blackwolf.” She pulled on his second boot, but it clung stubbornly. She pulled harder and finally it came free with a sucking pop. “And take off that shirt.”
“I’m kinda shy. Maybe if you took yours off first, I’d feel more comfortable.”
Holly arched a brow at him as she glanced up. The glint in his pale gray eyes was mischievous, but his face was pasty-white, his voice heavy with exhaustion.
“Blackwolf…” she warned.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he muttered and reached for the towel she’d tossed at him.
She was torn between laughing at him or scowling. She doubted he had enough strength to make it to the bed, let alone pursue any lustful fantasies. And it was just about time for the pain medication Doc had given him to kick in, as well. If she didn’t get him to bed soon, he’d be out cold on her sofa.
She watched his feeble attempts to unbutton his shirt, then finally brushed his hands aside. “Let me.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re bossy?” he complained, but settled back on the sofa while her fingers quickly moved down the front of his shirt.
“All the time.” Gently she tugged his shirt from the waistband of his jeans and slid the garment off, resisted the urge to press her fingers to the angry red welt that slashed across his broad chest. She held out a hand to him. “Up you go.”
He took her hand, but instead of rising, he tugged her down next to him. The amusement was gone from his eyes now. “You’ve already gone above and beyond, Holly,” he said quietly. “I’ll just crash here on your couch until the morning.”
“The last time you crashed, Mr. Blackwolf, I had to drag you out of a smoking plane.” His hand was large, his palm callused and rough. The strength that radiated from him surprised her, as did the heat spreading up her arm into her body. She ignored that heat and concentrated instead on the task at hand, which was getting him to bed.
“You have a mild concussion and bruised ribs.” She leveled a stern, schoolteacher’s gaze at him. “By tomorrow you’re going to have aches and pains in places you didn’t know you could have aches and pains. You need a bed to sleep in, with a real mattress and lots of quiet. If you sleep out here, you’ll be in my way. I’m up early for work, and I don’t want to have to worry about waking you up.”
Still holding his hand, she stood. “Now are you going to get in my bed or do I have to get rough?”
“To think I used to fantasize a girl would say that to me,” he said wistfully.
On a grimace he rose and once again she slipped an arm around his waist and guided him to the bedroom. He leaned against her, all hard muscle and warm skin, and in spite of herself, she felt her pulse rush at the contact.
“Sit here.” She pulled the white down comforter covering her bed out of the way and helped him sit on the edge of the mattress.
He glanced from the pink floral pillows on her bed to the square mauve throw rug on the hardwood floor. A white wicker chair in the corner held an assortment of antique porcelain dolls and one overstuffed, battered-looking bear. “Nice teddy.”
Shaking her head, she moved to the window. At this time of year it never really got dark and blinds were necessary to separate day from night. “The bathroom’s at the end of the hall. I’ll put out a razor and toothbrush for you to use when you’re ready. Towels are in the hall cupboard and—”
When she turned back to look at him, she forgot what she was going to say. Even in the semidarkness, the sight of him sitting on the edge of her bed, his chest and feet bare, his dark hair damp and rumpled, was so personal, so…intimate, she quite literally lost her breath.
“And what?”
“And…as soon as you’re feeling strong enough to shower, you can help yourself to shampoo and soap,” she finished, though she didn’t think that was what she’d started to say. She moved to her dresser and busied herself in the top drawer, pulled out clothes she’d need later and in the morning.
“By the way,” he said as he slipped under the covers. “Do I have to worry about some guy named Moose or Bear walking in here and misunderstanding why some strange man is sleeping in your bed?”
“If you’re asking if I have a jealous boyfriend—” she rooted through her underwear drawer “—the answer is no.”
The fact was, she’d never even had a man in her bedroom before, unless she counted Lester, the seventy-year-old carpenter who’d replaced the window opposite the bed with a gothic leaded glass window she’d found from a demolished Orthodox Russian church in Sitka. And Keegan Bodine. He’d delivered and set up the cherrywood headboard she’d bought from Auntie M’s Antiques and Ammunition on Third and Main. Keegan was an outback guide in Twin Pines, thirty-two, single, good-looking. But he was just a friend. A good friend but nothing more.
Alaska was full of men like Keegan. Rugged, healthy, robust men looking for a woman. One day Holly assumed she’d find the right one and settle down, but for now, she preferred to keep her relationships simple and she wasn’t looking for love. Not the one-night kind or the permanent kind. At this moment, she loved her life just as it was: busy and full and no complications.
“What about you?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. Once again, the sight of his long body stretched out in her bed made her breath catch. She quickly looked away.
“I definitely don’t have a boyfriend,” he said with a yawn. “Or any other entanglements, either.”
She heard the heavy sound of his breathing and quietly crept toward the door. Entanglements. A strange, but appropriate word, she thought, and paused by the doorway to watch the steady rise and fall of his chest. Let herself wonder for just a moment what those honed muscles would feel like under her fingers, what that body would feel like—
“Hey, Holly?”
She jumped at the husky, sleep-heavy sound of his voice. Guilt warmed her cheeks.
“He warned me you were difficult.” His words were slurred, barely intelligible. “He didn’t warn me you were so damn sexy.”
He rolled away from her then and this time she was certain he was out.
He warned me you were difficult?
Who had warned him? Doc? Or maybe Quincy had said that to Guy when he’d called over to the garage and asked about his plane. But that didn’t really make sense, either, she thought, shaking her head. Maybe it was just the drugs and exhaustion talking and his comment was nothing more than gibberish.
That was probably it, she decided as she quietly closed the bedroom door behind her. Difficult, my foot. She frowned. She wasn’t difficult. At least, not unreasonably.
She paused, stared at the closed bedroom door.
