“You’d better be digging up a pot of gold, you mangy—” She broke off with a startled gasp.
A man… a
“Oh, my God.” Her hands shook as she stripped off her glove and brushed aside his long, platinum hair to put her fingers to his throat. His skin was icy to the touch, which she expected, but when the steady thump of a pulse bounded against her fingertips, she nearly jumped out of her own skin. He was alive. With a strong pulse. Holy cow, how?
Okay, so… think. She had to get help, but they were in the middle of an intensifying snowstorm, and there was no way off the mountain except by snowmobile. She couldn’t risk that in the storm, and it could take hours to get to the nearest town. He could be dead by then.
Shit.
Praying this guy wasn’t a serial killer and trying not to think too hard on why he’d be in the mountains, naked, in the winter, she eased Sam up the trail until the sled was alongside the man’s body. As quickly as she could, she heaved the firewood to the other side of the path and tucked the ax into the loop on Sam’s padded harness.
Rolling the man onto the sled was not as easy as she’d hoped. The guy was heavy as a damned boulder and
“Really?” she muttered to herself. “You’re going to notice how hot he is
Granted, it was impossible not to notice those things, but she still felt a little guilty as she ran her hands over him, checking for injuries. Aside from being unconscious and as frozen as a fish stick, he appeared to be uninjured.
Interesting horse tattoo on his right forearm, though. When she’d skimmed her fingers over it, she’d felt a dim vibration, as if the henna-colored lines pulsed with a mild electrical current. Too bad warmth didn’t ride in on that current, though, because damn, she swore the temperature plummeted twenty degrees in the few minutes it took to check the guy out.
As if Mother Nature had some sort of grudge against her, the biting cold wind picked up even more, and the snow, which she normally loved, became an enemy. It was probably stupid of her, but she stripped off her coat and laid it over the guy, tucking the coat’s sleeves carefully beneath him. The shirt layers she was wearing should protect her for a while, as long as they hurried.
“Let’s go, Sammy.” She urged the gelding to move faster than she’d normally like, but nothing about this situation was normal.
She was freezing and exhausted by the time she smelled the smoke from her wood stove, and her eyelashes were crusted with ice by the time she eased Sam up to the rickety porch. The frigid air burned her lungs with each breath as she dragged the man’s dead weight off the sled and then unhitched Sam. She’d remove the harness later. Right now she had to get the man into the house and the horse into the barn.
She ran the thirty yards to the barn and, battling the wind, tugged open the door. Sam trotted inside, but she didn’t bother taking him to his stall. He’d find it on his own.
Too bad getting the man to her bedroom wasn’t nearly as easy as putting up the horse. As a fitness freak who worked a small farm, Jillian wasn’t a wuss, but she thought she might have dislocated something as she dragged Fish Stick across the floor. She spent another ten minutes heaving and straining to lift him onto her bed.
Once he was sprawled out on his back, his broad shoulders taking up an enormous amount of room on the mattress, she cranked the electric blanket to the highest setting and checked his pulse. Still strong. Shouldn’t it be sluggish? She’d taken basic CPR classes as well as Search and Rescue training, and from what she remembered, hypothermia caused a slow, weak pulse. Fish Stick’s couldn’t be more opposite. Steady, surging, and she swore his skin had already pinked up a little.
Leaving the mystery alone for now, she checked the phone, and sure enough, it was dead. Next, she stoked the fire and turned up the electric heat to eighty degrees. She was lucky to have electricity at all, actually. The power kept flickering, and it was probably only a matter of time before it went the way of the phone line.
Ooh, and then she’d be alone, in the dark with no phone, in the middle of nowhere… with a stranger.
This was a horror movie setup. She even had the token small animal to prove the situation was serious and make all the women in the audience worry.
Her Bengal cat, Doodle, watched the activity from his bed in front of the wood stove, unconcerned that there was a strange man in the house. But then, nothing really fazed him. As long as he had food and someone to pet him, he didn’t bother to get excited about much.
“You’re a big help there, buddy.” She shot Doodle a dirty look as she changed into dry sweats and slippers. “I’m going to check on the complete stranger in my bed, but don’t worry about me, okay?”
Doodle blinked his green eyes at her.
Wishing she had a big dog right about now, Jillian slipped into the bedroom. As she entered, Fish Stick sighed and shifted in the bed, just the smallest movement, but enough to give her a bit of hope.
Then his eyes popped open.
Startled, she leaped back, slapping her hand over her mouth. His eyes… God, they were amazing. The lightest shade of blue, and crystal clear, like the edge of a shallow glacier. They bored into her, but there was nothing cold about them. The raw heat in them pierced her all the way to her core.
Feeling silly for her overreaction but with her legs trembling anyway, she returned to the bedside.
“I’m Jillian. I found you in the woods. You’re going to be okay.” She wasn’t sure if he understood or not, but his eyes closed, and his thickly muscled chest began to rise and fall in a deep, regular rhythm. His color was good now, and his full lips, once pale and chapped, were a smooth, dusky rose.
Remarkable.
What now? Maybe she should get something hot into his stomach. Quietly, she started for the door to put some broth on the stove.
“Hey,” he rasped, his voice a broken whisper. “Did I… hurt you?”
She inhaled sharply and turned, risking a look at him. Once again, his eyes drilled into her, but this time, they seemed to… glow a little.
“No.” She swallowed dryly. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”
His long, golden lashes fluttered down, as if he was satisfied by her answer. But dear God, why would he think he might have hurt her?
Who the hell had she brought into her house?
Two
Fish Stick didn’t wake up again for a full twenty-four hours.
When he did, it was only long enough to drink a cup of hot beef broth. He hadn’t said a word, had merely stared at her with those gorgeous blue eyes and then fallen back into a deep sleep, as if he’d been awake for a year.
Jillian had tried to call Stacey, a local sheriff’s deputy and her best friend of twenty years, but the phone lines were still down. Figured. The storm seemed to have stalled, and Jillian decided she was going to hunt down that meteorologist and beat him with his own anemometer.
Doodle had taken to the stranger, and if the cat wasn’t eating or chasing one of his toys, he was curled up on the bed. The little traitor.
At the forty-six-hour mark, Jillian went to check on Fish Stick, her heart doing a crazy little skip when she saw him sprawled in her queen-sized bed, taking up the whole thing. For some reason, her thoughts went to what he’d do with a woman in it. Someone his size needed a king mattress, especially if he had… company.
