Sheri WhiteFeather - The Heart of a Stranger

Find the logic in that, she told herself, recalling every detail from last night, including her offer to bring him breakfast.

The logic? Hadn’t Cáco already convinced her they were meant to help him?

“Is your patient ready for solid food?” Lourdes asked.

The old woman lifted the lid on a small pot. “Oatmeal.”

Hot cereal made sense, she supposed. Easier on the stomach than bacon and fried eggs, but heavy enough to stick to his ribs.

“I dressed his wounds this morning,” Cáco said. “Argued with him to take his medicine, too.”

“Argued?”

“He doesn’t like the taste. Stubborn man.”

“Yes.” Lourdes’s entire body went warm.

Stubborn man. Stubborn woman. Will you lie down with me? Will you kiss me?

She finished her coffee and spooned oatmeal into a bowl. “Is it all right to bring him some juice?”

Cáco looked up. “You’re feeding him?”

Not literally, she hoped. “You’re busy. I don’t mind helping out.”

“Give him fruit instead.”

“Canned peaches?” Her daughters liked them in the morning. Maybe he would, too.

“That’s fine. Don’t dawdle. Your own breakfast is almost ready.”

With an indignant sniff, Lourdes prepared his tray. “I never dawdle.”

Cáco sniffed, too. “You haven’t been in the company of a handsome man in a long time.”

She wouldn’t let the old woman rile her. Not now. Not while her heart had picked up speed at the prospect of seeing him. “He’s handsome? I hadn’t noticed. It’s a little hard to tell through all those bruises.”

“You’re a bad liar.” Her surrogate grandmother almost smiled, then added a napkin to the tray. “And I suppose your breakfast will keep.”

Okay, so she’d been found out. But hey, she had the right to look, didn’t she?

Yes, but not too closely, she decided as she ventured down the hall with his breakfast. He could be married. Not all married men wore wedding bands. She’d do well to remember that. To keep reminding herself that she knew absolutely nothing about him.

Lourdes found him sitting up in bed, staring into space.

“Hi.” She moved closer. “I brought you some food.”

He shifted his gaze, looked at her. “Where am I?”

“You’re in Texas, on the outskirts of Mission Creek.” Not knowing what else to do, she placed the tray in front of him and sat on the edge of his bed. “At a horse farm. We’re taking care of you until you feel better.”

“I’m not a horse.”

She almost smiled. “No, of course not.” Adjusting the tray, she centered it over his lap. She wanted to comfort him. To ease his confusion. “Do you remember me? My name is Lourdes.”

He measured her, the way he’d done last night. “The girl from France. From my dream.”

“It wasn’t a dream, and I’m not from France. But my father was.” She caught sight of the silver cross. Her father’s necklace, the one he’d given her mother a month before he’d died. “Do you like oatmeal? Cáco added milk and sugar to it.”

“Cáco?”

“My surrogate grandmother. She helped raise me.” When Lourdes was a child, Cáco had been hired as a cook and housekeeper, but somewhere along the way, she’d become family.

“The gray-haired lady?”

“Yes. It’s okay to think of her as an old woman. She’s Comanche, and they recognize five age groups.” Or at least Cáco did. “Old men and women are one of the age groups.”

“She made me drink that awful tea. I don’t like tea.”

Now Lourdes did smile. “Coral root is a plant that grows around the roots of trees in dry, wooded areas. It’s rather scarce. Some people call it fever root because it’s an effective fever remedy.”

He reached for his spoon and tasted the oatmeal. Then alternated to the peaches and back again. She poured him a glass of fresh water. He put his cut-and-swollen mouth around the straw and sipped.

Will you kiss me?

Your lip is split.

“Cáco is helping me raise my daughters,” she said, filling the awkward silence.

“You have children?”

“Yes. Twins. They’re four. Very smart and very pretty.”

“You’re pretty,” he told her. “I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed about a girl from France before.”

“I’m not from France,” she reminded him again, flattered that he thought she was pretty and uncomfortable that he still considered her a dream.

It seemed romantic somehow. Like a transposed fairy tale, where the princess awakens the handsome stranger with a warm, sensual kiss.

“Why am I so confused?” He pushed the oatmeal away. “I don’t like being bumble-brained.”

“Cáco says it will pass. It’s part of the concussion. Your head injury,” she clarified.

He went after the peaches again, ignoring the oatmeal he’d discarded. He ate carefully, inserting the spoon in the side of his mouth that wasn’t swollen. “Your name is Lourdes, and you’re not from France.”

“That’s right. What’s your name?” she asked, wondering why she hadn’t inquired before now.

He gave her a panicked stare.

Dear God, she thought. Dear, sweet God. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. “It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t.” He dropped his spoon, and it bounced against the tray, making a metallic hum. “I don’t know who the hell I am. Not my name. Where I live. Where I’m from.”

“It’ll come back to you.”

“When?”

A few days? A few weeks? She had no idea. “I’ll ask Cáco. She understands more about head injuries than I do.”

“Where’s my driver’s license?”

“We think it was stolen. With your wallet.”

“I don’t have a name. What kind of person doesn’t have a name?”

She reached for his hand to stop the quaking. She would be afraid if she’d lost her identity, too. “I’ll give you one.”

His chest rose and fell. He was a handsome stranger, she thought. A disoriented John Doe.

John?

No, that was too obvious. “Juan,” she said.

“Juan,” he repeated, accepting her choice. “Juan what? I need a last name. People have last names.”

A handsome stranger.

“Guapo,” Lourdes decided.

He merely blinked.

“Is that all right?” she asked.

Was it? he wondered. He knew what Guapo meant. Handsome in Spanish.

Had she chosen that name purposely? Did she like the way he looked?

How could she? He’d caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He’d seen the swelling and the bruising, the gash across his mouth.

What was ugly in Spanish?

Feo.

Maybe she should have called him Juan Feo instead.

“Is the name I gave you all right?” she asked again.

A little embarrassed, he nodded. If the pretty woman in his dream thought he was handsome, what could he do?

He cocked his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. This wasn’t a dream. She kept telling him that. This was real.

But how was that possible? She seemed like an angel, with the honey-colored streaks in her hair and the gilded light in her chocolate-brown eyes.

Angels only existed in dreams.

A French angel who spoke Spanish. Surely, he was confused.

He didn’t stop to think of why he spoke Spanish, too. He just knew that he did. Or that he understood enough of the language to get by.

“I’m not very hungry anymore,” he said. His head hurt from all the confusion, and his eyelids had grown heavy.

She took the tray away and placed it on top of a simple oak dresser. “You look sleepy.”

“I am.” He wanted to ask her to lie down with him, but decided that wouldn’t be a very gentlemanly thing to do. Then he remembered that he’d already asked her, and she’d refused. Of course, she’d refused. They were strangers. And she had children with another man.