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Fugitive Hearts
Ingrid Weaver
The man who staggered through the night to collapse at Dana Whittington's secluded cottage was mysterious - and more than a little dangerous. And yet, as she tenderly cared for him, she felt an aching passion growing within her - a passion that was not shaken even by the shattering news that he was a fugitive from justice…. She could not, would not, believe that Remy Leverette was a murderer.There was too much good shining through in this man, who swore he had fled prison only to protect his beloved daughter. And whatever the danger, Dana could not betray him - or a love she knew would never set her free….
“Don’t you ever get lonely, Dana?” Remy murmured, curling a lock of her hair around his index finger and bringing it to his lips.
She didn’t like where the conversation was heading. How much honesty did she want to allow herself? Yes, she got lonely. Damn right she got lonely. Why else would she be lying here beside a convicted killer, wishing she could believe this whole crazy charade they were playing?
“Dana?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
“I think the nights are the worst,” he said. “Don’t you wish you had someone beside you then, to talk to?” He stroked her cheek with the ends of her hair. “Or just to hold in the dark?”
She moistened her lips. “Sometimes.”
He leaned closer.
Was he going to kiss her? What would she do if he did? How could she stand it if he didn’t…?
Dear Reader,
There’s so much great reading in store for you this month that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with bestselling author and reader favorite Fiona Brand. She’s back with another of her irresistible Alpha heroes in Marrying McCabe. There’s something about those Aussie men that a reader just can’t resist—and heroine Roma Lombard is in the same boat when she meets Ben McCabe. He’s got trouble—and passion—written all over him.
Our FIRSTBORN SONS continuity continues with Born To Protect, by Virginia Kantra. Follow ex-Navy SEAL Jack Dalton to Montana, where his princess (and I mean that literally) awaits. A new book by Ingrid Weaver is always a treat, so save some reading time for Fugitive Hearts, a perfect mix of suspense and romance. Round out the month with new novels by Linda Castillo, who offers A Hero To Hold (and trust me, you’ll definitely want to hold this guy!); Barbara Ankrum, who proves the truth of her title, This Perfect Stranger; and Vickie Taylor, with The Renegade Steals a Lady (and also, I promise, your heart).
And if that weren’t enough excitement for one month, don’t forget to enter our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest. Details are in every book.
Enjoy!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Fugitive Hearts
Ingrid Weaver
To Katie O’Toole,
Realtor Extraordinaire,
Forty-seven acres of thanks!
INGRID WEAVER
admits to being a compulsive reader who loves a book that can make her cry. A former teacher, now a homemaker and mother, she delights in creating stories that reflect the wonder and adventure of falling in love. When she isn’t writing or reading, she enjoys old Star Trek reruns, going on sweater-knitting binges, taking long walks with her husband and waking up early to canoe after camera-shy loons.
Ingrid is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best Romantic Suspense Novel for her book, On the Way to a Wedding…
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Chapter 1
At first Dana didn’t realize the lump on her doorstep was human.
She assumed the snow that had been piling up on the roof of the caretaker’s cabin all day must have slid off, a mini avalanche triggered by the wind. Or else the storm had swirled the snow into a freak drift. If the wood box beside the fireplace hadn’t been getting empty, she would have waited until the morning to dig herself out, but she didn’t want to risk having Morty catch another chill at his age. So instead of going back inside when she saw her way was blocked by the lump, Dana plunged ahead.
The snow wasn’t the powdery mass she had expected. Her left boot came down on something firm and rounded. And the snowdrift groaned.
Dana shrieked and jumped backward, windmilling her arms to keep her balance. Her elbow smacked into the door frame. Her flashlight flew from her grasp and hit the underside of the eaves. With a tinkle of breaking glass, the beam winked out.
“Oh, my God!” She fell to her knees and reached in front of her. “Who’s there? Are you hurt?”
Nothing. No more groans, no sound at all apart from the hiss of the wind and the pounding of her own pulse in her ears. In the dim glow from the window there was no trace of movement.
Dana inched forward, thrusting her arms into the tracks she had made. Immediately her hand connected with the form she had stepped on. She pulled her hand back and removed her mitten with her teeth, then extended her fingers. She touched fabric and pressed harder, running her fingertips along what it took her only a split second to realize was…an arm.
She put her mitten back on and started to dig, scooping the snow away as quickly as she could. “Hang on,” she said. “Hang on, I’ll help you.”
It seemed to take forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute later that Dana uncovered a figure that was definitely human. And, judging by the size, undoubtedly male. Wrapped in an overcoat, curled into a fetal position, the stranger remained silent and ominously motionless, except for the shivering that shook his large frame.
Stories her grandfather had told her in her childhood, tales of unwary trappers who had frozen to death mere yards from shelter in storms like this, popped unbidden into her head. Half Moon Bay Resort was only three hours north of Toronto, but it was like a different world up here—just last year there had been those snowmobilers who had gotten lost in a blizzard and hadn’t been found until the spring thaw….
“Oh, God,” she muttered. “Don’t die, mister. You can’t die.”
Scrambling to her feet, she reached behind her to open the door. The wind shoved it inward, smacking it against the wall in a vicious gust. Snow streamed giddily over the threshold as Dana turned back to grasp the stranger under the arms.
Her boots slipped on the ice that coated the doorstep, sending her back to her knees. Her hands rapidly grew too numb to maintain a grip on the limp form. In desperation, she hooked her arm around the stranger’s neck and dragged the dead weight backward like a swimmer, crawling and sliding until his body cleared the threshold. Unable to do more, she shoved his long, denim-clad legs to the side so that she could swing the door closed.
In the sudden stillness after the storm was shut out, Dana’s rasping breaths seemed unnaturally loud. The fire on the hearth crackled, the clock on the mantel ticked and the snow hissed distantly against the windows. Everything was just as she’d left it mere minutes ago. Cozy and quiet, exactly as she wanted it.
Except for the body on her floor.
No, not a dead body kind of body. He had groaned, and he was still shivering enough to knock puffs of snow onto the floor around him, so he couldn’t be dead.
Yet.
Dana toed off her boots and ran for the phone. Snatching up the receiver, she dialed 911. Surely the emergency services would still be working, despite the storm. And even if the ambulance couldn’t get here immediately, at least she could talk to a doctor and find out what to do….
It took her a moment to realize the call wasn’t going through. Nothing was. The line was dead.
“Oh, no.” She jiggled the button. She dialed again. She checked to make sure the phone was plugged into the jack. Still nothing. The storm must have knocked out the phone lines.
Now what? They were miles from the highway. The resort pickup truck was four-wheel drive and might have had a chance with the snow, but it was standard transmission, and she didn’t know how to handle a stick shift. And until the snowplow cleared the roads, there was no way she could risk driving her car anywhere. Not that she’d be capable of loading someone this man’s size into her subcompact by herself even if the roads were clear.
Panic that she hadn’t had the time to feel before now knotted her stomach as she went back to the stranger’s side. At least she had assumed this was a stranger. No one she knew had been planning to make the trip up here—her family knew better than to disturb her when she was on a deadline. That’s why she had come here in the first place, wasn’t it? For peace and quiet and a complete lack of distractions.
Distractions? she thought wildly, feeling a bubble of hysteria tickle her throat. Hoo, boy, when it came to distractions, this one was a doozy.
Taking a deep breath to regain her control, Dana tore off her coat, then peered at the man’s face. Snow clung in a wet shroud to his hair and had solidified into beads of ice on his eyebrows. His hawk-sharp nose, his prominent cheekbones, his square jaw all looked as if they could have been carved from a glacier. Beneath the frost-tipped edges of his mustache, his lips were blue.
Dana’s stomach did a quick lurch. She was right. He was a stranger. She had never seen this man’s face before. If she had, she definitely would have remembered.
“Mister?” she said. She gently shook his shoulder. “Hey, mister, can you hear me?”
No reply. But she hadn’t really expected one. If her clumsy efforts to get him into the cabin hadn’t roused him, it was doubtful her voice would.
She glanced at the coat he wore. It was long and navy-blue, made of wool that was fashionable but not very practical in weather like this, even with the collar turned up to shield his neck. His leather gloves wouldn’t provide much protection from the cold, either. Nor would his jeans or his sneakers.
Why would anyone set off through a snowstorm with no hat or boots? What kind of man wore jeans and sneakers with an expensive overcoat and kidskin gloves?
And what on earth did it matter? Whoever he was, whatever he was, he had to get warmed up. Now. She didn’t need a doctor or a paramedic to tell her that much.
Dana dropped to her knees at his side and tugged off his gloves, grimacing at the coldness of his hands. She spared a few seconds to breathe on them, chafing each one in turn between her palms before she turned to his other clothes.
Getting his damp coat off was a challenge. He was a tall man, and despite the complete laxness of his limbs, he was rock solid and outweighed her by at least eighty pounds. By the time she managed to extract his arms from his sleeves, she realized she would have no hope of getting him to the couch or the bed. Leaving him lying on his coat, she grasped his ankles and dragged him closer to the fireplace.
When she saw the dying blaze on the hearth she remembered why she had ventured outside in the first place.
“Oh, great,” she muttered. She threw on the last of the wood, then sprinted to her bedroom and returned with an armful of blankets.
Was his shivering getting worse? Yes, it was, she realized. Taking off his coat was a good start, but she still needed to get him out of his wet clothes, or whatever body heat he still retained would drain away. She dumped the blankets on the floor and pulled off his shoes and socks, then looked at his jeans. The denim was thick, but it was as encrusted with snow as his overcoat. There was no way around it, the jeans would have to come off.
To her credit, Dana didn’t hesitate. Much. This was no time to worry about proprieties. Under the circumstances she had no choice. Kneeling at his side, she unfastened the stud at the waistband of his jeans. When she grasped the tab of the zipper, she paused to glance at his face.
“Mister?” she said loudly. “Can you hear me?”
The snow and ice crystals that frosted his hair and mustache were beginning to thaw, revealing their color to be as dark as the charred logs in the fireplace. Water drops trickled over the ridge of his jaw, down his neck and into the collar of the blue chambray shirt he wore. Apart from his shivering, he still didn’t move.
“Sorry,” she continued, lowering the zipper. “But I have to do this. For your own good.” She slipped her fingers under his waistband and tried to tug the jeans down. Her knuckles rubbed over his hipbones, and she was startled by the warmth she felt…both the warmth of his skin and the warmth of the ridiculous blush that sprang to her cheeks.
But she wouldn’t permit herself to be embarrassed, not even when the jeans slid neatly past the top of his plain white briefs and bunched just inches from the junction of his legs, refusing to slide any lower. Dana studiously ignored the large, masculine bulge that had stopped the descent of the denim. She struggled unsuccessfully to ease the garment down for another awkward, blush-inducing minute.
“This isn’t working,” she muttered. “Maybe it isn’t really necessary.” But she knew it was. The melting snow was already seeping through the denim in dark patches of dampness.
Finally she got to her feet and straddled his legs, gaining enough leverage to yank his jeans the rest of the way off. She tossed them aside and went to work on his shirt. She didn’t want to think about the silky black hair that feathered his chest and trailed down his flat abdomen, or the muscles that ridged his arms. She couldn’t regard him as a man, not at a time like this.
But he was too large and heavy to be anything else. It took all her strength to roll him off his shirt and coat and onto the thick quilt she positioned beside him. By the time she had tucked the last blanket carefully around his shoulders, she was out of breath. “There,” she said. “That’s the best I can do. I just hope it’s enough to keep you going until I can get help.”
She eyed the telephone, then went over to give it another try. Still no dial tone, not that she had really expected the line to get repaired so soon. She probably should have taken her sister’s advice and purchased a cell phone as a backup for her stay here. At least the resort’s electricity had a backup generator, so she wouldn’t have to worry about being without power.
But she hadn’t been expecting a situation like this to occur. How could anyone? When she had talked her cousin into letting her stay at Half Moon Bay, finding a frozen stranger on her doorstep hadn’t been among the possibilities they had discussed. The resort was closed for the winter. The only problems she was likely to face in her role as caretaker were leaky pipes or too much snow on the roof.
“Mrrrow?”
At the indignant sound, Dana turned toward the kitchen.
Morty padded through the doorway, evidently fresh from his nap in the laundry basket. He yawned, extending his front legs in a bowing stretch, then arched forward and delicately shook out his back paws. His ears swiveled as he regarded the heap of blankets on the floor.
“No, you can’t use them,” Dana said.
Ignoring her warning, Morty picked his way past the puddles of melting snow and went to investigate. He sniffed lightly at the stranger’s face, jumping backward to avoid a droplet of ice water that was dislodged by the man’s shivering.
“Good point,” Dana said. She retrieved a towel from the bathroom and squatted down to pat the man’s face dry. The snow and ice that had clung to his hair had all melted now. His hair wasn’t black as she had first thought but a deep, rich brown. It was long enough for the ends to brush his shoulders and curl against the sides of his neck. His mustache was thick and extended past the edges of his mouth, giving him the appearance of an old-fashioned desperado.
Dana paused. Desperado? Where had that thought come from? Sure, he was big and well muscled, and his hair was a touch too long, and his mustache looked like something out of an old Western, but he was unconscious and helpless on her floor. He was as far from dangerous as anyone could get.
On the other hand, she was three miles from her nearest neighbor, cut off from the outside world by a blizzard, completely alone with a very large, strange man. Maybe she should have thought about that before she dragged him inside the cabin…
No, that was ridiculous, she told herself, dabbing at his wet hair. What did she think, that ax murderers made a habit of wandering around in snowstorms and this one just happened to choose her doorstep to collapse on? He was probably some poor soul who had gone off the road in the snow. Appearances weren’t always a reliable gauge of character.
Take Morty. When she had found him huddled in that alley behind her apartment building, he’d looked like a ragged toy that someone had knocked the stuffing out of. All he had needed was a bath, food and some affection and he’d turned out to be a wonderful companion.
Of course, she wasn’t comparing this situation to taking in a stray cat. And she wasn’t looking for a companion. Besides, this man was probably in need of a lot more than just a bath, food and affection.
Dana wished she knew more about first aid. So far all she had done for him, getting him out of the cold and warming him up, was simply common sense. What if she was missing something important, something vital? It could be hours before she could get him medical help. What if his unconsciousness was due to more than the cold?
