Eileen Wilks - The Loner And The Lady

Her eyes opened. Someone groaned. And above her, bending over her…

He was big. His inky dark hair hung loose around his face, and his eyes were as black as his hair. His skin was rough, as were the features in his narrow face, and half of his face was ruined.

And she knew him. He’d come to her out of the terrible darkness, catching her when she fell, stopping her flight with his big arms. She remembered seeing his face in the white flare of lightning, seeing his eyes, black and liquid as the night around them, seeing the ruined side of his face and thinking that he was hurt, too, hurt like her. With a sigh of relief she closed her eyes and let herself sink back down, knowing she was safe. Because he was here.

Seth stared down at the woman in his bed. She’d woken. She was going to be all right. She’d woken and seen him…

And smiled.

She woke to the smell of food cooking and the sound of bird song. Dreams and nightmares sluiced off her like water as she surfaced, a swimmer rising from murky depths. Her head hurt worse than it ever had in her life, and her bladder was miserably full. When she cracked open her eyes, light seeped in like pain.

Bacon? Did she smell bacon frying?

She looked around without turning her head. Moving would definitely be a mistake. The light wasn’t really very bright, she realized as her eyes focused. The closest window showed a dim, rainy day outside, though that didn’t seem to discourage the noisy chorus of birds. Inside was a cabin, a real log cabin with the walls planed smooth and varnished in some places, left rough in others. The effect was unusual but pleasing. She looked up at a high ceiling of glossy boards. The big bed she was in pointed her feet at a fireplace in the center of the room, circled by a low, brick hearth.

Something—no, someone—was missing. Someone who had been taking care of her. “I, uh…” She stopped and tried to swallow. Her throat was as dry as her bladder was full.

He moved into her range of vision from somewhere near her feet. He was big—one of those really big men who, she thought with a slow blink, when seen from a distance, don’t look unusually large because everything is in balance. He didn’t make a sound as he came to stand next to her bed and looked down at her.

Her eyes drifted up to his face. His dark hair hung loose below his jaw line. Livid scar tissue covered him from the crest of his cheekbone on down past his jaw, his neck, disappearing under the collar of his plain blue work shirt. The skin was shiny smooth, the angry color left by bad burns. The scarring distracted her.

Then she noticed the way his hands were knotted into fists at his sides. “What’s wrong?” she croaked, alarmed. Was she even sicker, more damaged, than her pounding head suggested?

His big hands relaxed. “I didn’t know if you were completely awake this time.” His voice matched the rest of him, deep and solid and vaguely reassuring.

“How long…?”

“You’ve been out for over fifteen hours,” he said, sitting on the bed beside her. “I think you’ve just been sleeping, though, not unconscious, since the last time I woke you. Where do you hurt?” He put his big hands on her neck and probed gently.

“My head.” Fifteen hours. She tried, and failed, to think of what had happened to her.

“Anywhere else?” He prodded her lightly. “Here? Or here?”

“No.” Why was she here, in this cabin, with him? The effort to think made the pounding in her head increase until it throbbed all the way along her jaw and down her neck. She gave up and closed her eyes. “I’m very thirsty.”

The bed creaked as he shifted. “It should be okay for you to sit up for a drink. I’ll have to lift you a bit,” he said, and slid an arm carefully under her shoulders, supporting her neck. For all his care, it still hurt fiercely when he raised her off the pillow, and she made a small sound.

“Take it easy,” he murmured, and held a glass to her lips. His low voice cooled the jagged edges of her pain the way the water soothed her dry throat. She managed several sips.

“Better?” he asked in that comforting voice as he laid her back down.

She thought about nodding and didn’t. She thought about lying there until her other problem went away—but it wasn’t going to. She forced her eyes open, wretchedly embarrassed. “I need to use the bathroom.”

He nodded, the undamaged half of his face as unrevealing as the burned side. “I’ll get a bowl for you to use as a bedpan.”

“No way.” Surely, if he helped her, she could make it to the bathroom. She couldn’t stand the idea of some stranger, no matter how kind, helping her with such a private matter.

Some stranger?

No, he wasn’t a stranger. He was…his face was familiar, of course it was, and she’d think of his name in a minute. In a minute she’d remember…

By the time he came back to the bed, the humiliating bowl in his hand, her breath came in quick, fearful pants, like a dog. “Who are you?” she whispered.

He stopped dead. If his face had been unrevealing before, it was flatly blank now. “Seth,” he said slowly. “Seth Brogan.”

She closed her mouth. Licked her dry lips. Stared at him as if she could force her way through his deliberate blankness, force her way through to what she desperately needed. And asked her next question. “Who am I?”

She couldn’t remember?

Seth stood rooted to the floor, holding the stupid bowl. All he could think, selfishly, was that the fear he’d seen twisting her pallid face hadn’t been about him, after all. She was afraid because she didn’t remember who she was.

Finally he got his tongue unstuck. “A blow to the head can affect the memory, but it’s temporary. Mostly temporary. You may never remember everything that happened right around your accident.” If whatever happened to her had been an accident. He’d begun to have some doubts about that.

“But the rest—my name—will come back to me?”

“Sure,” he said as if he knew the answer.

She wanted to believe him, that was obvious from the way her face relaxed. Then she saw the bowl in his hands and stiffened up again. “Are you a doctor?”

He shook his head.

She bit her lip. “I don’t suppose you’re my brother or something?”

He could have told her he was. She’d have accepted it. For some ungodly reason, probably because she had so little choice, she trusted him. Being cared for like this would be easier on her if she thought they were related.

Only how could he lie to her, when she trusted him? “Afraid not,” he said. “But listen, it could be worse.” The corner of his mouth, the one on the undamaged side, creaked up. “You could need a catheter. Trust me, that’s worse.”

In spite of everything, there was a faint, answering spark of humor in her eyes. Big, shamrock green eyes, he noticed for the first time. Green as the grass of Ireland, and somehow twice as pretty with the way her pale lashes left her eyes all open and unshielded.

Her humor died in the painful, awkward moments that followed. She hid by closing her eyes again. He went outside, leaving the door open so she could call him.

When he came back in she was white with pain and exhaustion, too worn-out, he thought, to feel more than mild embarrassment at their forced intimacy. He understood how that felt, too.

He had hoped she’d be able to get some soup down, but she fell asleep almost before he could get the covers settled back around her. Seth let his hands linger briefly while tucking her in, not invasively, he told himself. An innocent sort of touching, through the sheet and two blankets, and far less personal than the task he’d just performed for her.