out back upon occasion, but he’d never burned anything down. And despite her protests to the contrary, Melody knew that this was exactly the man her mother had fallen in love with all those years ago.
Oh, her mother would hate the news of her relationship with Mark. Mona would be all indignant when she tried to explain the truth. How dare he think he was better than she was, or more worthy of expressing creativity! Or, it could be worse. Her mother believed that she came from a long line of mystics, or healers. She could trace her family back to Saxon England, and she was convinced that she could grow herbs and create medicinal drinks that actually had magical strength. She just might decide that Mark could imbibe enough herbal tea laced with God-knew-exactly-what that he would see the error of his ways.
The thought made her groan aloud.
Mark! she thought, feeling ill, don’t you see, we can’t make it. And trying to pretend that everything is all right just because it’s Christmas is not going to work.
And if all that wasn’t enough stress for this trip home, there was her brother. As much as she loved her brother, Keith.
God only knew who or what he’d have found to come home with him.
Though he’d never played football, Keith looked like a fullback. He was tall, charming, and very good-looking, but he was their father in all aspects of geek. He was attending his father’s alma mater, learning electronics and physics and so on, and when he wasn’t busy studying, he was finding someone or some creature who needed help.
One year, he’d brought home a stripper.
Another year, it had been a wounded raccoon.
He had a great heart. She loved him to death.
She just hoped that they wouldn’t have to share Christmas with Mark and a stripper.
Hmm. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing….
No, it would probably be another animal this year. Like the blind Persian cat he had found last year, the basset with the little roller now to replace the hind legs a driver had crushed the year before, or Jimmy, the big old sheepdog mix he had found three years ago, starved and left to die in a crate on a trash pile. If Keith hadn’t found a wounded animal, he would decide that Melody was one. Maybe, she was. Human beings were, after all, animals. Usually, it was events like Christmas that lifted man above the beasts.
Christmas. How she had once loved it. How she dreaded it now. And this feeling of dread was wrong, so wrong! Because no matter how uncomfortable the festivities proved to be for her, she had to remember that it was Christmas.
She frowned suddenly, slowing the car. The day had been bright and beautiful, despite the ice on the ground and roads. But out of the blue, there was suddenly darkness, as if a cloud had passed the sun. The darkest cloud ever known to man.
And in the midst of it…
Good God, there was a figure in the middle of the road, a dark form…
Melody slammed hard on the brakes, even though she knew better. There was just so much ice on the road. Before the car fishtailed, she saw the figure more fully in the glare of her headlights.
It was a man.
A man dressed as if he were a refugee from the past. He was hatless in the snow, and wearing a white muslin shirt and tight-fitting pants. Tall black boots. He wasn’t in a wig, but his long dark hair was queued back. He was staring at her with pure amazement.
As if the idiot had never seen a car before.
Then, the car started to spin. She had hit black ice. She knew better than to try to stop the way she had. But hell, it had been that, or.
She felt a bump; she’d hit the figure.
Hopefully not as badly as she would have, had she not tried so hard to stop!
She came to a halt against a snowbank. Incredibly, her air bag did not go off. Her lights streamed against the gray color the day had become and the snow, coming down now in a fresh swirling round of flurries. Stunned, she sat still for long seconds, thanking God that she was alive.
Then she remembered the soft thumping sound against the car. She tried to open her door, but she was against the snowbank. She maneuvered across the car to the passenger side and managed to get out.
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
