Seth regretted his refusal to have a phone line run to the cabin. Not that help could have reached them. The storm would render the road impassable for days, and no helicopter could fly in this weather. But he could have talked to a physician, gotten some backup. It had been a long time since he’d used any part of his training.
Her lapse into unconsciousness worried him. A subdural hematoma could send a person into coma hours after the original blow to the head, even if they’d been up and lucid afterward. He checked her pulse again. It was still fast, which didn’t indicate hematoma but might presage shock. She was very pale. Even the warm glow of the lanterns hadn’t put any color in her face.
It was a lovely face. Delicate. He couldn’t help noticing that as he pulled the penlight from his kit. She had a dainty little nose, and lips that were probably pretty when they weren’t all cracked and colorless. He peeled back one of her eyelids, shining his light directly into her eye. The pupil contracted quickly. He let the lid close again.
Even her coloring was delicate. Her eyebrows arched in perfect, pastel half-moons above her closed eyes. Pale lashes rested, motionless, against her bleached cheeks, and short blond hair clung to her scalp like mud.
He checked the other eye. Her pupils responded evenly, thank God.
Blood covered one side of that pretty face. He hesitated briefly—his kit was fairly complete but lacked disposable gloves, since he’d never expected to treat anyone but himself with it. Still, what choice was there? Leaving her untended wasn’t an option.
He explored the left side of her head carefully and found a swelling above her temple, then began cleaning away the blood so he could see where she was hurt. She stirred but didn’t wake. He found several lacerations. It looked as if she’d fallen and scraped or torn the skin on a rough surface. None of the scrapes were deep enough to worry about, and the cuts had pretty much stopped bleeding.
Time for a proper reading of her pulse and pressure. He cuffed her and timed the pulse, watching her chest rise and fall as he counted. Respiration shallow but not too fast, which was good. Pulse over ninety…bad. Blood pressure at the low end of normal. Skin chilly to the touch.
She wasn’t in shock yet. But she was in danger of it. He had to get her warm and pray there was no internal bleeding.
She sure wasn’t dressed for the mountains. Or for a storm. Her sleeveless green top and full pants looked dressy. They had the sheen of silk, too. Linda had worn a lot of silk, expensive things like this. Whatever this woman’s outfit had cost originally, though, it was useless now, muddy and torn.
The top buttoned down the front with those aggravating little cloth-covered buttons that women like. Her skin beneath the cloth had a disturbing chill, and his big fingers made slow work of those blasted buttons. So he quit trying to preserve her ruined clothes and tore the top open.
She had beautiful breasts.
Seth didn’t stop, couldn’t stop in the middle of stripping her chilled body to stare, but he couldn’t keep from looking, either. To save him he couldn’t have stopped looking.
She was soft and white and…perfect. From the coral tips of her breasts, nicely peaked from the cold, to the way her slender waist flared into the curve of her hips, to the pretty nest of curls at the top of her thighs, she was the most perfectly shaped woman he’d ever seen.
Or maybe I’ve just forgotten, he thought, lips tight with anger at himself when he realized he’d been so busy gawking at her that he’d forgotten to take her shoes off before pulling down her slacks and panties. Her well-worn running shoes sure didn’t go with the rest of her outfit. Quickly he pulled the knotted laces free, jerked the shoes off and finished stripping her.
It had been so long. So very long.
He removed everything—socks, watch and a dainty little locket on a chain, dropping them in the pile with her clothes. But he kept his touch impersonal as he checked her as quickly as he could for any injuries that had been hidden by her clothing.
No detectable damage. He could hope that meant he’d found everything. He wrapped her carefully in a blanket, struck with a ridiculous sense of loss when her lovely body was covered. Changing the damp bedding beneath her didn’t take long. By the time he had her settled between clean sheets and fresh blankets with her legs slightly elevated by pillows, her skin was warming, though her color was still bad.
He waited a few minutes, rubbing his knee, then took another blood pressure reading. The results told him plainly that she was responding to the increased warmth, which meant it was unlikely she had any internal hemorrhaging. Relief swamped him.
He decided to get an antibiotic dressing on the facial lacerations. When he applied it, though, she jerked away, dislodging the covers. He paused, waiting to see if she’d wake. Almost hoping she wouldn’t. Because then she’d see him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and he meant for everything he was and wasn’t, everything he’d thought but hadn’t done when he looked at her. His hand lingered for a moment, just a moment, on her soft flesh before he tugged the covers up and stood.
First he added a couple of logs to the fire. Then he got out of his own wet things, rubbed himself dry briskly and pulled on jeans and a shirt he didn’t bother to button. He filled the coffeepot with water and hung it from the hook over the fire.
It was going to be a long night. He’d have to keep an eye on her, try to wake her every hour or so.
He looked over her clothing as he spread it out on the hearth to dry, noting the designer label hand-stitched inside. Damp sheets and quilts went anywhere he found a spot for them. Good thing he didn’t intend to sleep anytime soon. There wasn’t a dry blanket in the place, except for those covering her.
He pulled the big, handmade rocker next to the hearth in the sleeping area and sat, heaving a sigh of relief. His knee and calf ached badly, but he hoped the heat from the fire would help enough that he wouldn’t be too crippled up tomorrow.
He held up her watch and necklace, examining the mellow gold in the glow of firelight. Both were expensive. Neither told him why a woman like her was out in the wilderness at midnight, bloody and wounded.
An automobile accident? It wasn’t completely consistent with her injuries—the lump on her head was in the wrong place, for one thing—but it was all he could think of just then. Highway 142 did lie on the other side of Old Baldy, and the climb wasn’t a difficult one—in dry, daylit weather, for a hiker in good shape. Hard to believe she’d crossed Old Baldy’s slopes in the middle of a thunderstorm, at night, with an injury to her head.
He glanced at the bed where she lay, a small, helpless lump under the blankets. He had no business, no business whatsoever, remembering what she looked like without the covers, without any covering at all. He’d better remember that. Because she was going to wake up. That was the only acceptable alternative. She was going to look at him and realize he’d undressed her, that he’d seen her.
She’d probably hate him for that.
His hand lifted absently to stroke the scar tissue on the left side of his face, scarring that ran down his neck to his shoulder and splashed across the top of his chest. Life wasn’t like fairy tales. The woman in his bed wasn’t going to like knowing that the Beast had looked on her beauty.
Pain came in colors and textures. At the bottom of the ocean, pain was mostly pressure, a
