Here to Stay (Silhouette Special Edition) (7 page)

“Aunt Sasha! Aunt Sasha!” a child cried as his door swung open. A little girl, about five or six, he guessed, flew across the room and practically launched herself into Sasha’s lap, burrowing close. All he could see of the kid was her back, and long, dark hair in braids tied with rawhide thongs.

He winced when he heard Sasha gasp. Another one of those brief flashes of memory slid through his brain, an image of a woman wearing a red lipstick frown and pushing someone
...him?...
off her lap. And then he was back in the present, expecting Sasha to push the child off her lap to protect her injuries. Instead, she closed her arms around the little body.

“Easy, Magpie,” a man’s voice said from the doorway. “Aunt Sasha is hurt, remember?” A tall, powerfully built man with Native Canadian features followed the little girl at a much slower pace. The man, dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt under an open denim jacket, looked at him steadily, sizing him up. Miles looked back, letting the other man know he was doing his own sizing up. This must be Sam, the other foster brother from Sasha’s photographs.

Another image, this time of a faceless man in a plaid shirt, smashing open a door, hand raised, fist clenched around something—a belt?—about to descend. He felt himself cringe away from the image, and gripped the arm of his chair.

“Hi, Sam.” Sasha’s voice steadied him as surely as her touch would have. “I’m okay. Maggie missed the sore spots.” Sasha gave her foster brother a smile that told Miles she was very fond of him. Miles wondered about Sam’s single-parent status. Was there something between him and Sasha? After all, a lonely man and a motherless child were right up her alley.

“Sam,” Sasha said, “this is Miles Kent. Miles, this is Sam Hunter. And this is Maggie-Magpie Hunter.” Her arms around the little girl said without words that the child was very special to her.

Sam leaned over and held out his hand. Miles reached up and shook it, automatically assessing the man’s grip. Strong, self-confident, with nothing to prove.

“You two have a bus-kissing contest?” Sam asked, grinning. Little Maggie giggled infectiously. Sasha gave a tiny laugh, then groaned. He couldn’t help grinning back, himself.

“Does it hurt, Aunt Sasha?” The adult-sounding concern in the childish voice touched Miles in an unexpected, inexplicable way.

“A little, honey. Not enough to keep me down, however. Sam, thanks for coming to get me. I think my jacket is still in Emergency.”

She set Maggie down beside her and started to get up. Miles saw her sway, saw the color drain from her face. He tried to stand, to support her, forgetting how ludicrous that was given his own condition. A second later Sam was gripping Sasha by the elbows and holding her up. Sasha smiled slightly. At that moment Miles couldn’t say if he was jealous of the other man’s closeness to Sasha or furious with his own helplessness. Probably both. What he did know was that Sasha was leaving. That was going to leave an empty feeling he didn’t want to dwell on—but knew he would.

Still leaning on Sam, she asked, “When do you think you’ll be getting out?”

“Probably tomorrow, day after at the latest.” He waited for her to tell him that, on second thought, she couldn’t have him at the farm. In some far corner of his mind Miles wondered why he kept expecting her to reject him, when she’d been going out of her way to help him. Perhaps the reason was buried in his lost memory.

Sasha took a deep breath, then moved out of Sam’s supporting grip. She took a card out of the back pocket of her mud-spattered jeans and put it into his hand. “Call me. I’ll probably be able to pick you up myself. If not, I’ll figure something out.”

“What’s this?” Sam asked.

“I invited Miles to spend some R and R time at the farm.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sam’s black eyes focused on him. Miles read the warning, the suspicion, in that silent look.

“You know how good nature is for healing,” Sasha said, and Miles could see that she didn’t have a clue what was going on between him and Sam. Just as well. No point in making her nervous. Sam looked as if he already was doing plenty of worrying on her account. Sasha smiled sweetly before taking Maggie’s hand and starting toward the door. “If I don’t answer the phone, call the pager number. I’m hoping I can do my rounds tomorrow as usual.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Miles advised.

“I was going to say the same thing,” Sam said, giving him another one of those narrow, warning looks.

T
wo days after the Desperado incident Sasha parked her truck close to the front doors of the hospital, turned off the ignition, then sat, gath-ering what little reserve energy she had left. Of all the Sundays to be on rotating emergency call! All day her head had ached and her face had hurt. She’d popped so many ibuprofen that she suspected she’d rattle if she shook herself, except she was too sore to try.

It had been a perfectly awful day so far, and the rest of it didn’t promise any improvement. The weather couldn’t decide what to do. It was mid-April, but while nights still brought frost warnings in rural areas, the days were either unseasonably hot or cold. Today the weather had alternated between gray, heavy, cold and damp, then hot and muggy. Full of spring fever, her patients had been silly, skittish and uncooperative. Some of their owners hadn’t been much better. Now she felt sticky from sweating, then getting chilled when the sun retreated, and she needed a shower in the worst way. But she’d driven straight from her last emergency call to the hospital, foolishly eager to bring Miles home while there was still daylight left.

Now that she’d stopped moving, however, exhaustion made her limbs feel too heavy to move. With a sigh Sasha pocketed her keys and climbed out of the truck. How Miles was going to get himself up onto the front seat, she couldn’t guess. She should have thought to borrow a car from Peter’s wife, Marla. Irritated with her inefficiency, Sasha strode toward the front doors, ignoring the curious glances at her battered face from people passing her.

“Yeah?” Miles barked in answer to her knock on his door.

Summoning a stiff smile, Sasha pushed open the door and stepped inside. Miles stood in the middle of the room, a cane in his free hand, scowling. He looked as if he could chew quarters and spit nickels, as her grandfather used to say of his gardener when any of the animals feasted on the shrubbery.

He also looked very, very good, in a soft, black cotton sweater, faded blue jeans and a denim jacket. His left arm was in a sling under the jacket. Miles looked much better than he probably felt, judging by his tone of voice. If his aches had reacted to the damp as hers had, she couldn’t blame him for being grumpy.

“Hi,” she said as cheerfully as she could.

Miles met her eyes and the scowl disappeared. In its place was a wariness that made her wonder what
he
was wary about when
she
was the one facing the unknown.

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” he said, his gruff tone challenging, as if he expected her to revoke her invitation. Or perhaps hoping she would back out to save him the hassle of telling her he’d changed his mind.

“Are
you
having second thoughts?”

He leaned forward against the support of the cane, his gaze steady, probing. Sasha felt as if he were stripping away the layers of herself that protected her softest, most vulnerable parts. What was he looking for?

“Nothing a few seconds out of this place can’t cure,” he drawled. “I can’t remember being in any hospitals in the past, but I think it’s safe to say they don’t bring out the best in me.” He gave her a crooked grin. “Your friend Emmy was mumbling about cattle prods earlier.”

A tiny laugh sputtered out of Sasha. “She’s seen worse, I can assure you. Is that your duffel bag?” She started toward the lumpy canvas bag lying on the unmade bed.

Miles stepped toward her, intercepting her. She had to look up into his eyes now, and from where she stood, he looked peeved.

“I’ll get it. Bad enough they want me to leave here in a wheelchair.” Abruptly his frown faded into a look of grave concern, at least equal to the ones Sam had given her the past two evenings during chores. But Miles studied her so intently that she felt herself blushing. “How’s your face?”

“Stiff. Sore.” She shrugged off her self-consciousness about the Technicolor bruising on one side of her face. It had defied her meager attempts to camouflage the worst of it with makeup. Now she wished she’d tried harder. This was infinitely worse than a bad hair day. “I’m using a lot of ice. How are you feeling?”

“Better.” His gruff answer wasn’t very convincing. She knew from experience that better was a very relative concept.

Sasha wished she could use the healing power of touch to reach Miles’s pain, but she didn’t dare touch him the way she would touch a patient. Long, soothing strokes. Gentle, focused pressures. Familiar, reassuring touches. Loving touches. The kind of comforting touches she sometimes ached for, body and soul.

Oh, no, touching Miles like that would be highly inappropriate. Being touched like that by Miles would be even worse. The awkwardness of the situation weighed on her. Not for the first time, she wondered if her impulse to help had gotten her into deep water. Or hot water.

“Let’s go,” Miles said gruffly.

He grabbed the strap of the duffel bag and tried to maneuver it despite using the cane. The bag must have hit him in a sore spot—one other than between his ears, Sasha thought—because he cursed and dropped it. Sasha stepped around Miles and hefted the duffel bag. It was heavy, but not as heavy as a bale of hay or the front end of a trailer stuck in the mud. Miles glared at her.

She paused. “Didn’t you say something about a wheelchair?”

“Yeah, but I won’t repeat it in mixed company.” She smiled. His glare faded. “Let’s go. I paid my bills and signed about twenty forms saying they aren’t responsible for anything they did or didn’t do to me, for me, or with me. Makes me wonder what the hell I even came here for.”

As he spoke he moved toward the open door. She followed him out, reluctantly realizing that her own aches were making Miles’s duffel bag feel heavier by the second. It took long minutes to reach the exit, with the silence between them stretching until Sasha felt as if her nerves would snap.

She wondered—not for the first time—if she was doing Miles a disservice. He wasn’t a mistreated horse. He was an intelligent, proud and vulnerable man, and he was in distress beyond her expertise. What if, despite her good intentions, she made things worse for him? She’d invited him to the farm hoping that the peace and quiet would help him heal spiritually as well as physically. But even a few days’ stay might be too long for him to be away from the things that could trigger his recovery.

Timing in any healing process was vitally important. What if she was interfering at precisely the wrong time for Miles to ever regain his memory? She would have to make sure neither of them got too com-fortable with their arrangement. She’d never forgive herself if her well-intentioned interference set back his recovery.

Sasha followed him through the automatic exit doors. The late-afternoon sun sent shafts of light between the clouds. The cool air snuck into her open jacket, making her shiver after the heat of the hospital. Miles, wearing only a light shirt and jacket, didn’t seem to feel the cooler air. Instead, he paused, looked up at the sky and took in a deep breath. Probably too glad to be free to care about the temperature, she guessed.

“What are you driving?” Miles’s gruff voice broke into her thoughts.

“The white pickup truck with the shell, over there.”

He started across the driveway, moving quickly despite the exhausting trip from his room to the exit. It gave her some insight into how strong, and how determined, Miles was.

“Will you be able to get in? I’d forgotten how high that first step is.”

“I will get into your truck, even if you have to haul me in with a winch,” he said from between clenched teeth.

“Stubborn fool,” she muttered. Miles grunted.

Sasha sighed but smiled. She also favored determination over resignation. That was one of the things that had drawn her to Desperado—and to Miles. “Let me stow your bag inside, and I’ll see if I can help you without resorting to the winch.”

Once she’d tossed his duffel bag into the back seat, she studied him and the situation, trying desperately not to notice that Miles seemed more attractive every time she saw him. It was an attraction she understood well, even though it was inexplicable. It was an animal magnetism. A powerful appeal that had nothing to do with common sense or reason or how many things they had or didn’t have in common, and everything to do with chemistry. Sasha had never had trouble resisting animal magnetism in the past, but then, she’d never before met Miles Kent.

Miles gazed down at her, one eyebrow lifting. “The way I see it,” Miles drawled, “you can either get in front of me and push, or get behind me and pull.”

Either way, she understood she’d have to put her hands on him. She felt heat rise in her cheeks at the same time that her dependable resistance slipped dangerously. “I think I’ll be more effective behind you. Give me a second to climb in from the other side.”

Grateful for the chance to get away from his intense scrutiny, Sasha dashed around the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat. Miles already had the passenger door open and had slid the cane into the back with his duffel bag. He stood with his back toward her, leaning against the seat. Sasha knelt on the edge of the passenger seat behind his broad shoulders and took a deep breath.

“Okay, I’m ready,” she said.

“So am I,” he answered, and she wondered if they were talking about the same thing.

Miles gritted his teeth against the pain in his ribs and left arm and tried to hoist himself backward into the passenger seat of Sasha’s truck. Too late, he realized the damn thing was higher than he’d thought. At the moment that he was slipping back to the ground, without the damn cane for support, and his bad leg unwilling to hold him so he could use his good leg to push him up from the running board, he felt Sasha’s arms slide under his from behind.

Her scent, her warmth closed around him as she locked her arms across his chest. He felt the pressure of her shoulder, the softness of her breasts against his back and the kiss of her breath on his neck. Through the layers of their clothes he felt her strength as she held him from sliding down.

“On three,” she said, her voice low and a little shaky.

Miles got some satisfaction that the situation was having some effect on Sasha, too. It took some of the bitterness out of having to accept her help just to get his butt into the truck.

“One, two,” she counted.

On three, he pushed upward against the running board and Sasha pulled backward, her grip somehow avoiding the sore ribs that protested the sudden movement. His hand slipped from the doorframe with a painful thump on his chest. He just barely swallowed his moan. A second later he felt himself falling backward into the truck.

Sasha made a soft little sound of surprise as he crushed her backward, but her arms stayed locked around him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. There he was, in pain, rolling around in the front seat of a truck with a beautiful woman, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about the woman or the pain.

“Sorry,” he muttered when he caught his breath. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s just like assisting at a foaling, suddenly finding a hundred and seventy-five pounds or so in my lap.” He felt her shift slightly under his back. “Fortunately, you aren’t nearly as wet as a foal, and you’re a lot less helpless.”

He felt himself smile a little, relax a little. “I take it that’s a hint for me to move.”

“If you can.”

He could, but some devilish impulse made him hesitate. Leaning against Sasha like this was pretty damn pleasant, even if it made him look like a wimp. He’d stayed awake a long time last night, thinking about kissing her. That first kiss had been sweet, oddly innocent. He wasn’t sure how he was going to stay under the same roof with her and not want more, and it would be a rotten violation of her hospi-tality for him to try for more. Miles was pretty certain he’d spent a lot of his life wanting what he couldn’t have. That was probably the engine that drove him. The question was, did he have enough con-science not to take Sasha just because he wanted her?

Holding back a groan, he eased himself upright. Immediately the cool, damp air replaced the warmth of Sasha against his back. While he was gathering himself for the next move, she slid out her side and appeared at his knees. He could see the worry in those big doe eyes of hers, and cursed himself for a fool. While he’d been thinking about kissing her, she’d been thinking of him as a helpless, two-legged patient.

“Would you like a hand swinging your legs inside?” Sasha asked.

She was hugging herself in that dark green parka, as if the cold was seeping through her jacket. Personally, he felt as if he had a furnace going full blast inside him, thanks to that impromptu tumble with her. He didn’t want to accept her help, especially since her offer made him wonder what her hands would feel like on his knees, on his thighs.

“I can do it,” he told her, more gruffly than he’d intended.

He succeeded, but it was a while into the drive before he could manage to speak. He flashed on a barely remembered impression of being in the passenger seat of a big car, too small to see out the window or above the dashboard. He felt the helplessness, and the fear, that belonged to that brief memory and shifted in his seat, trying to push it aside. “How far are we going?”

Sasha glanced at him quickly, smiled, then turned her eyes back to the narrow country road. “About ten more minutes.”

She was a good driver, he noticed. At ease with her truck and the road. Every few seconds she’d flick her gaze up to her rearview mirror, then back to the road. What was going on in her head? he wondered. Regrets, no doubt. He had a few of his own.

Finally Sasha flipped on her right-turn signal and slowed to turn onto a narrow dirt-and-gravel road. He could feel the ruts grabbing at the truck’s tires, but Sasha seemed perfectly at ease wrestling with the steering wheel. She slowed the truck almost to a crawl and made a left turn onto a long, straight gravel lane lined with tall cedars. As they drove toward the parking area, Miles looked around and whistled under his breath.

The photos hadn’t done this place justice, he thought. The old stone farmhouse sat perched at the top of a small hill, with enough trees around it to protect it from the weather without blocking the spectacular view of farms and forests for miles around. The hills rolled gently for as far as he could see, marked off in rectangles of brown, gold and pale green, with the shapes of houses and barns dotted here and there. The roads ran straight as a grid.