Heather Graham - Home In Time For Christmas

He was there, lying in the snow. He was clad only in eighteenth-century attire, often enough seen around Salem, but ridiculous in this weather. His shirt and pants were simple cotton, no barrier against the bitter cold, though, at the least, his knee-high boots would keep his feet warm. He must have been freezing.

Her initial reaction was panic. She had just struck down a man in the snow.

She flew to his side, saw his chest rise and fall.

Oh, thank God, he was alive!

He was young…her age, maybe a year or two older, but he was under thirty, she was certain. His hair, somewhat frayed from what had been a neat queue.

At a loss in those first few seconds, her own heart thundering, she felt her second reaction kick in.

Anger!

What the hell had the idiot been doing standing in the middle of the road in a snowstorm?

Concern quickly replaced the anger. He was breathing, and she didn’t see blood spewing from any part of his body, but had she…broken him?

She needed to dial 911. Fast. Get help.

She fled from the man back to the car, found her purse and cell phone on the front seat, and dialed. Nothing happened.

The No Signal information screen flashed on.

Swearing, she called her phone service a zillion names in a single breath, and tossed the phone back on the seat. She scrambled back to the man on the ground. Should she move him? She suddenly wished she’d taken some kind of first-aid class. If she moved him and he did have a broken limb, she could make it worse. What if his neck was broken? Moving him, she could finish him off!

As she knelt by him, the snow on the ground seeping through her leggings, the flurries coming fast and furious, he suddenly groaned.

“Oh,” she breathed, looking down at him. “Hey, please. Sir, can you hear me, sir? What hurts? Oh, Lord, speak to me, please!”

The snow fell on the contours of his face and turned his hair white.

She might hurt him if she moved him, but if she didn’t, he was going to freeze to death. Second problem. If she did move him, could she get him to the car? Was she capable? He was tall, she was certain—despite the fact that he was prone, he seemed awfully long. Also, it looked as if he was composed of pure muscle. That meant he’d be heavy. She’d never been that thrilled with her own figure, because, basically, there wasn’t enough of it. She wasn’t exactly a weakling, but she was a probably-too-slim hundred and ten pounds stretched out on a five-seven frame.

“All right, if I’m hurting you, I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to try to get you into the car.”

She stood, trying to figure it out. She’d have to grab him by the feet.

As she did so, she noted his boots were like nothing she had ever seen before. They were reproductions, she was sure, but they must have cost a mint—they had been singularly crafted and were sewn, sole to body, with leather strips meticulously threaded by hand.

Quit with worrying about his state of dress! she warned herself in a puffing silence. He was heavy. She was barely managing to drag him a quarter incha second. She could hear herself grunting and puffing in the cold air, and yet she was straining so hard that it seemed her muscles and lungs were on fire.

Then, suddenly, words in a deep, masculine and explosive tone sounded loudly against the stark landscape.

“Good woman! What on God’s own earth are you doing to me? ”

She dropped his ankles and stared at him, speechless. He was still stretched out, but sitting up, legs out in the snow, staring at her as if she had lost her mind.

“Oh, you’re alive!” she gasped.

To her dismay, he appeared both surprised and puzzled. “Yes, yes, I am. I believe. It is cold, so I must assume this feeling means alive.” He offered her a rueful and very puzzled grimace. “Excuse me, but… who are you, and where are we?”

She frowned. She didn’t much mind the who are you part of the question, but the where are we was more than a bit disturbing.

“My name is Melody Tarleton. We’re in the middle of the road, heading toward Gloucester. You ran out in front of me. I struck you with my car.”

“Your car?” he said, truly puzzled.

She pointed. He tried to rise, staring at the car— gaping at the car, actually. Inwardly, she groaned. What? Was he taking this reenactor thing far too seriously?

“Yeah, yeah, my car. I hit you. I’m responsible, I’m so sorry, except you did run right out into the road. And that’s insane, you know. Totally insane. What, are you crazy? There’s black ice all over, with the temperature going up and down all the time.”

He stared at her, still frowning, blinking furiously. He looked her up and down, noting her sleek wool coat with its fur-lined hood—now completely soaked and covered in melting flurries. He looked at her face, and then around him. Of course, other than her car against the snowbank, there was nothing to see but snow-covered trees.

“Please,” he said with quiet dignity, “I don’t understand. I swear to you that I have never seen such a conveyance. Or anyone that looks quite like you.”

Anyone that looks like me? He had to be kidding. She studied him in return. His face was lean, well sculpted, and yet, in a way, he actually resembled Mark.

But he wasn’t Mark, and she knew Mark had no family. He was just a very strange stranger she had just hit on the road.

“Look, did I break any of your bones?” she demanded.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

So what the hell was she supposed to do now? He had to be bruised and in pain. She couldn’t leave him on the snow-laden, icy road.

Mark would have told her to get in the car as quickly as possible. He might have picked the guy up, but only to drop him at the nearest police station. If he’d been with her, he’d never let her try to help the man. He’d be instantly convinced the guy was a serial killer.

Mark wasn’t with her.

And she made her own choices. And that, to her, was important. She wasn’t against accepting advice, but as far as her life went, she had to make her own choices.

So here, she had a choice.

What to do?

He didn’t look like a serial killer. Then again, was there an actual look? Was there a stereotype, were they blond like Swedes, dark and romantic like Italians or Spaniards. Did they dress up in colonial costume?

“Let’s get out of the snow,” she said. She started walking. He followed her.

“You have no horses,” he said.

“It’s a car,” she said. “It has an engine, a battery… pistons. I don’t know, I’m not a mechanic, I have the oil checked and leave it with the Ford people.”

“The Ford people?” he asked.

She gritted her teeth. “Stop it! Enough. You look great. I don’t own or manage any of the historical museums around here. You don’t need to keep up the act.”

He stopped short, looking at her with indignation again. He stood very straight, and he was handsome and imposing, like a hero out of an adventure book. “My dear young woman, I assure you, I am not performing in any manner. I don’t know where I am, nor do I understand this fascinating mode of transportation you refer to as a car. I…” His voice trailed off. He staggered forward, his knees buckling. She caught him, and he regained some of his strength, coming back to a full stand, but still leaning upon her. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

If he was acting, his work was worthy of an Academy Award. Melody was afraid she had managed to give him a good clip to the head with the front bumper, and that he was suffering some kind of dementia because of it.

“Let’s get to the car, and hope that I can get us out of this snowbank. My cell phone isn’t working.”