Barbara Hannay - The Man Behind The Mask

He looked at her fresh face, tried to imagine dangling earrings and heavy makeup and the gypsy scarf, and found his imagination didn’t quite go that far. But fresh faced or not, she’d duped Deedee. He was already disillusioned by life, so why be disturbed by the gathering of a little more evidence?

Still, for the moment she looked faintly frightened, and he felt a need to alleviate that.

“I brought a cat out,” he said. “I heard a ruckus out here, saw a light and came to investigate.”

She considered his explanation, but looked doubtful. He suspected he didn’t look much like the kind of guy who would be attached to his cat.

“I heard you were a healer.” He tried to strip judgment from his tone, but he must have looked even less like the kind of guy who would put any kind of faith in a healer than one who would be attached to a cat, because her doubtful expression intensified.

“Who did you hear that from?” she asked uneasily. Her eyes skittered toward the fence, as if she was going to try and make an escape.

“Deedee Ashton.”

The name did not seem to register, but then she might be struggling to remember her own name at the moment.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.

She put a hand to the goose egg above her eye.

“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “The horses might have knocked me over.”

He scanned the corral. Three horses were squeezed against the back fence, restless and white-eyed. He didn’t know much about horses, but these ones seemed in no way docile.

He told himself firmly that it was none of his business what kind of chances she took. He didn’t know her. He certainly didn’t care about her. Still, there was a certain kind of woman that could make a man feel he should be protective. That was the kind you really had to guard against, especially if you had already failed in the department of protecting the smaller and weaker and more vulnerable.

Brendan ordered himself not to comment. But, of course, his mouth disobeyed his mind.

“Given you’re about the size of a peanut, doesn’t it seem a touch foolhardy to decide to come mingle with your wild mustangs in the middle of the night?”

She glared at him. Her look clearly said don’t tell me what to do , which was fair.

“Unless, of course, you hoped your energy was going to tame them?”

Those amazing eyes narrowed. “What do you know about my energy?”

“Not as much as I plan to.”

“Why does that sound like a threat?” she asked.

He shrugged.

She tossed her head at that, but he saw a veil drop smoothly over the flash of fire in those green eyes, as if he had hurt her by being a doubter. You’d think, in her business, she would have developed a thicker skin.

But he would have to deal with all that later. She had begun to shiver from being wet, but when she tried to move, a small groan escaped her lips.

He knew he shouldn’t move her. But she was clearly freezing. Now was not the time to confront her about any claims she had made to Deedee. He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around her.

She looked as if she planned to protest his act of chivalry, but when he tucked his coat around her, he could clearly see the warmth seduced her. She snuggled inside it instead. She looked innocent, about as threatening as a wounded sparrow.

Stripping away any censure he felt about her claims of extraordinary power, he said, “Can you move your hands? How about your feet? Can you turn your head from side to side for me?”

“What are you? A doctor?” Despite the protest, she tested each of her body parts as he named it.

He touched the ugly-looking bump rising above her right eye. She winced.

“You’re not lucky enough to have conjured up a doctor. You’ll have to work on your conjuring a little. I’m an architect. Luckily, I have a little construction site first aid experience.”

As he had hoped, at the mention of his profession—oh, those professional men were so trustworthy—her wariness of him faded, though annoyance at his conjuring remark had turned her green eyes to slits that reminded him of Charlie.

He picked the flashlight out of the mud and shone it in her eyes, looking for pupil reaction.

“Tell me about your cat,” she said, swatting at the light.

“So you can send him energy?”

“Why are you here, if you’re so cynical?”

He felt a shiver along his spine, similar to what he had felt when he passed under the ark sign. What if he hadn’t come along when he had? Would she have lain in the mud until she had hypothermia? Would the horses have trampled her?

But he was certainly not going to let her see that for a moment he was in the sway of an idea that some power he did not understand might have drawn him here at the exact moment she needed him.

Ridiculous. If such a power existed, where had it been the night Becky had needed it?

He actually saw Nora flinch, and realized he had grimaced. It no doubt gave him the pirate look that Deedee had seen earlier.

Keeping his tone level, Brendan said, “I’m here as the result of a comedy of errors. I thought I was on my way to a legitimate practitioner of animal medicine.”

“With your cat.”

He nodded.

“You don’t really look like a cat kind of guy.”

“No? What do cat kind of guys look like?”

She studied him, the eyes narrow again. “Not like you,” she said decisively.

“So, what do I look like? A rottweiler kind of guy? Bulldog? Boxer?”

Her look was intense. If a person believed that energy crap, they would almost think she was reading his. He raised the light again, shining it in her eyes, hoping to blind her. He was not sure he liked the sensation of being seen .

“You’re not a dog kind of guy, either.”

Accurate, but not spookily so.

“In fact,” she continued, “I’d be surprised if you even had a plant.”

Okay. That was about enough of that.

“I never said it was my cat.” He turned off the light and put it in his pocket. “I don’t think your back is injured, so I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the house.”

“You are not picking me up! I’ll walk.” She tried to find her feet, and glared at him as if the fact that it was his jacket swimming around her stopped her from doing so. “If you’ll just give me your hand—”

But Brendan did not just give her a hand. It wasn’t the jacket. The small effort of trying to get up had made her turn a ghostly white, the freckles and mud standing out in stark relief. So he ignored her protests, slid his arms under her shoulders and her knees and scooped her up easily.

She was tiny, like that wounded sparrow, and despite the barrier of his jacket, he was aware of an unusual warmth oozing out of her where he held her against his chest.

Was it because it had been so long since he had touched another human being that he felt an unwelcome shiver of pleasure?

UNEASILY HOLDING A beautiful stranger in his arms and feeling that unwanted shiver of something good, Brendan Grant was aware it was what he had wanted to feel when he had purchased the car. Just a moment’s pleasure at something. Anything. With the car, he had not even come close.

He should have already learned stuff could never do it. An unwanted memory came, of standing in front of the house he now owned, with Becky at his side, thinking, This is the beginning of my every dream come true .

“Put me down!”

Nora’s hand, smacking hard against his chest, brought him gratefully back to the here and now.

“You couldn’t even stand up by yourself,” he said, unmoved by her tone. “I’ll put you down in a minute. When I get you to the house.”