Swallowing against a dry throat as Wolf slipped silently through the door, she met his drowsy gray eyes. Although her legs throbbed with pain, Sarah responded to the warmth smoldering in his gaze and momentarily forgot her discomfort. Taken aback by her heart's response to Wolf, Sarah reminded herself that she didn't have a whole lot of experience with men. Working her father's mine claim and caring for her mother had long overshadowed more personal needs. Was she wrong to think she read an answering longing in his eyes?
Wolf ran his fingers through his hair, pushing the strands aside. Sarah looked like the kind of ethereal spirit that his mind used to conjure up in the jungle after a cool night: Fog would rise in steamy, twisting columns, sometimes taking on human or animal shapes in his imagination.
"Morning. . ." he mumbled.
How could she have not trusted Wolf? No longer was his face hard and unreadable. Sarah felt his presence powerfully, and her lips parted as he made his way to her bedside.
Wolf longed to reach out and graze Sarah's upturned face. This morning she looked fragile and beautiful, even though her hair was in dried, uncombed strands about her face. The wariness he'd been learning to expect in her huge blue eyes was missing, and inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief. He halted near the bed.
"How do you feel?"
Sarah averted her eyes from his burning, intense ones. The man should have been named Hawk, not Wolf, she thought uncomfortably. Retreating within herself, she attempted to block out the oddly heated emotions buffeting her heart. "Okay, I guess," she offered, struggling to keep her tone impersonal.
Wolf froze internally as he saw Sarah suddenly close down and become distant. A good reminder, he thought, disgusted with
himself—
he had no need for confusing emotions. "Let me take a look at your ankles and feet," he
said,
his voice brusque as he leaned over to pull back the sheet and blanket. Sarah tucked her arms against her
nightgowned
chest at his action, and Wolf winced. She still didn't trust him—but why did it matter? Unwillingly Wolf admitted to himself that he knew why. A bitter taste coated the inside of his mouth as he struggled with the memories. Leaving South America should have been enough. Now this waif of a woman was reminding him of what he desperately needed to forget.
Wolf's eyes narrowed as he removed the loose bandages around her right ankle. His gaze held her hostage.
"You're okay?" he ground out, disbelief in his voice.
Sarah shrugged. "I've been hurt before, Harding. Pain's something everyone experiences, don't you think?"
"I won't argue that with you," he whispered. As the bandages came off her slender feet were revealed, looking like bloated black-and-blue sausages. "Look, Sarah, you've got to go to the hospital," Wolf said, his tone no- nonsense. "Your feet are worse. You won't be able to walk on them this morning."
Stiffening, Sarah reached down and jerked the blankets back over her feet. "I
can't
leave!" she cried. "I told you why. If Summers finds out I'm in the hospital, he'll send his men in to start stealing my sapphires." Her voice cracked. "I can mine just enough sapphires monthly to pay my mother's nursing-home bill and the mortgage on this mine. Don't you understand? I'll lose everything if I go to the hospital! I don't have any money saved. I live month to month. My mother's depending on me.
What if I can't pay her nursing-home bill?
They'll throw her out. And then what will I do?"
Wolf
straightened,
her pain cutting through him. The despair, the fear, in Sarah's voice and eyes shook him as nothing had in years. He actually
felt
her desperation and anguish. It was disturbing to realize he was feeling deeply again since meeting Sarah.
He held out his hands. "All right, slow down. What's this about your mother?"
Fighting back welling tears—something she hadn't done since her father's death—Sarah rasped out, "When my dad was murdered, my mother suffered a stroke the same day. She's only fifty, but the shock of having my dad die so suddenly was too much for her to cope with. She was very dependent on him. The stroke affected her memory, so if she isn't watched closely, she'll wander off. She was in the hospital for a month, and it ate up our savings. We couldn't afford health insurance, so it took everything we'd saved."
"When I got Mother out of the hospital, I tried to keep her at the cabin. That first night when I returned from the mine, she was gone. I found her wandering around in the woods, frightened and confused." Sarah took a huge, ragged breath. She would never make the same mistake her mother had—becoming dependent on someone she loved. The price of leaning on another person was just too high. "I tried to keep her with me out at the mine, but half the time I was watching her and not working. Sapphire production fell off. I knew if I didn't do something, I wouldn't be able to make the money I needed to pay the mine mortgage." Her eyes hardened. "Summers is just waiting. If I default on one payment, he's going to have the bank foreclose on my mine so he can buy it."
She rubbed her wrinkled brow. "I didn't know what to do. Eventually I figured out that if I worked seven days a week, dawn to dusk, I could make the money it took to keep Mother in a nursing home and pay the mortgage." Sarah looked away, biting on her lower lip. "I know it's not the whole answer, but it's the best I could come up with. At least she gets three square meals a day, and is taken care of. . ."
Wolf stared at Sarah's profile, aware of the suffering she was valiantly trying to handle by herself. How brave she was in the face of such overwhelming odds. He allowed his hands to drop to his sides. "How long has this been going on?"
"Six months."
"And you're making ends meet?"
Sarah nodded. "I'm a little ahead. I've got a bit of money in the bank, but I have to get more to help us make it through the winter. I can't mine during winter and early spring. The ground freezes and then turns muddy. The dirt has to be dry for me to sift the gravel."
Wolf looked around the quiet cabin. He'd felt at home in its comfortable simplicity as soon as he'd entered it yesterday. Blue-and-white calico curtains at the windows enhanced its hominess. The handmade furniture was of the same cedar as the floors. A few framed pictures of wildflowers hung on the walls. His gaze returned to Sarah, who was watching him with open curiosity. The wariness came back into her eyes, but not as much as before.
"Why are you entrusting me with all this information?" he asked. His tone was gentle.
Sarah shrugged. "I don't know." She sighed. "Maybe you don't look as threatening to me this morning as you did last night." She gestured to his bare feet.
For the first time, Wolf genuinely smiled. The people of South America had always regarded him as a giant and stood in awe of him. He was sure he looked far more human this morning, barefoot and out of uniform.
"Big feet," he noted ruefully.
"They sure are. What size do you wear?"
His smile widened, and an ache seized him. Sarah's mouth was pulled tentatively into a smile. It was the first time he'd seen her lips in something softer than a tight line or frown. "Thirteen," he admitted. "I have to have my shoes specially made."
"I'll bet."
"They keep me upright, though."
Sarah leaned back against the brass headboard and studied Wolf. The smile had eased the harshness from his darkly tanned features, and she felt her heart opening to him. She didn't know this man, she tried to remind herself. A huge part of Sarah, the inexperienced woman, longed to know Wolf better, to find out why that haunted look remained deep in his eyes. But she'd already learned the hard way the folly of putting her trust in anyone but herself, and she tamped down her unruly heart's yearnings.
"Now you see why I can't go to the hospital," she said quietly.
"As bad as your feet are, Sarah, you can't afford not to be in the hospital for a couple of days."
"I can't afford it."
"I can."
She snapped a look up at him.
"I've got money, so don't worry about it."
Her mouth flattened. "I don't take money from anyone.
Especially strangers."
Wolf reined in his impatience. "It'll be a loan, until you can get on your feet again, so to speak."
Sarah ignored his pun. "The bottom line is, if I leave the mine unattended,
Summers
will send his men to steal everything I own."
"No, he won't," Wolf said smoothly, "because I'll check up on it. Most of my duties involve patrolling the forest area, the creeks, and checking for licenses. It will be easy to run by your cabin a couple times a day."
Her eyes grew huge. "What?"
"You heard me. I'll be your guard dog while you're recuperating." Wolf felt a tightening in his chest at his own confident words.
Him, a guard dog.
Sure.
He'd failed miserably at that once before. So why was he reaching out to protect Sarah? Caught in his own damning trap, Wolf wrestled with his conflicting emotions.
The offer sounded too good to be true. Sarah hedged. "I don't want your money."
"Fine.
Use your own, then."
"If Summers finds out I'm hospitalized, he will send his men up here, Harding."
"I'll deal with it," Wolf said with a shrug. Moving over to her dresser, he rummaged through the drawers until he found a tank top, lingerie and a pair of jeans for her. He brought them over to the bed. "Get dressed, and I'll take you in."
Sarah held on to the clean clothes in her lap. "I made a promise never to trust anyone again," she flung back heatedly.
Wolf turned at the door and studied her grimly. He was sure Sarah sensed that he was incapable of protecting her, but somehow he had to try. "You don't have a choice."
There was
a sadness
in his voice that he wished he could have disguised. "You're caught between a rock and a hard place."
With a shake of her head, Sarah muttered, "I don't want your help!"
"Too bad.
You're getting it."
Sarah sat there, tense and frustrated. She wasn't willing to listen to her instincts, which were whispering that Wolf was trustworthy. Not after all that had happened in the past six months of her life. How many times had she dreamed of someone coming to help her defend what was rightfully hers, rightfully her
family's
? But no one had come.
Angrily she said, "Knights on white horses don't exist. They never did! Didn't you know that?"
A gutting pain shattered through Wolf. "Yeah," he whispered
rawly
. "No one knows that better than me." He turned and left the
room as quietly as he'd come
.
The silence wrapped around Sarah as she sat digesting the awful sound of his words, the horror that had been banked in his eyes. Then she slowly began to dress, her mind ranging from her own predicament to Wolf's admission. The anguish in his gray eyes had touched her even more than her own dire situation. Who was he? What was he doing here? And what terrible secrets weighted down those magnificent shoulders of his? And, more importantly, why did she care?
By the time they reached Philipsburg Hospital, it was 9:00 a.m. Sarah sat on the passenger side of the truck, with Skeet as a barrier between her and Wolf. She had to give Wolf credit: He knew how to drive the truck through the muddy mire of the road. Was there anything he didn't do well? Didn't know about? She stole a look at him. His profile could have been chiseled from the rugged Rockies of Glacier National Park. But somehow the unforgiving set of his mouth made her heart ache for him. Sarah kept replaying his last words, about not being a knight in shining armor. What had happened in his past to make him believe that?
Because, like it or not, Sarah, right now, he rescued you,
her conscience taunted.