especially in the long white dress she’d been wearing that night.
That was over a year ago and he hadn’t seen her since. Nor had he expected to since they’d met initially several hundred miles from the ranch. But whatever had struck him about her hadn’t faded. There was something flawless about her—even as scraped up and bruised as she was. It made him furious at whoever was responsible for this.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked as he began to clean the cuts.
“I... I...” Her throat seemed to close on a sob.
“It’s okay, don’t try to talk.” He felt her trembling and could see that she was fighting tears. “This cut under your eye is deep.”
She said nothing, looking as if it was all she could do to keep her eyes open. He took in her torn and filthy dress. It was long, like the white one he’d first seen her in, but faded. It reminded him of something his grandmother might have worn to do housework in. She was also thinner than he remembered.
As he gently cleaned her wounds, he could see dark circles under her eyes, and her long braided hair was in disarray with bits of twigs and leaves stuck in it.
The night he’d met her, her plaited hair had been pinned up at the nape of her neck—until he’d released it, the blond silk dropping to the center of her back.
He finished his doctoring, put away the first-aid kit, and wondered how far she’d come to find him and what she had been through to get here. When he returned to the kitchen, he found her standing at the back window, staring out. As she turned, he saw the fear in her eyes—and the exhaustion.
Colt desperately wanted to know what had happened to her and how she’d ended up on his doorstep. He hadn’t even thought that she’d known his name. “Have you had anything to eat?”
“Not in the past forty-eight hours or so,” she said, squinting at the clock on the wall as if not sure what day it was. “And not all that much before that.”
He’d been meaning to get into Gilt Edge and buy some groceries. “Sit and I’ll see what I can scare up,” he said as he opened the refrigerator. Seeing only one egg left, he said, “How do you feel about pancakes? I have chokecherry syrup.”
She nodded and attempted a smile. She looked skittish as a newborn calf. Worse, he sensed that she was having second thoughts about coming here.
She licked her cracked lips. “I have to tell you. I have to explain—”
“It’s okay. You’re safe here.” But safe from what, he wondered? “There’s no hurry. Let’s get you taken care of first.” He’d feed her and get her settled down.
He motioned her into a chair at the kitchen table. He could tell that she must hurt all over by the way she moved. As much as he wanted to know what had happened, he thought she needed food more than anything else at this moment.
“While I make the pancakes, would you like a hot shower? The guest room is down the hall to the left. I can find you some clothes. They’ll be too large for you, but maybe they will be more comfortable.”
Tears welled in her eyes. He saw her swallow before she nodded. As she started to get to her feet, he noticed her grimace in pain.
“Wait.”
She froze.
“I don’t know how to say this delicately, but if someone assaulted you—”
“I wasn’t raped.”
He nodded, hoping that was true, because a shower would destroy important evidence. “Okay, so the injuries were...”
“From running for my life.” With that she limped out of the kitchen.
He had the pancake batter made and the griddle heating when he heard the shower come on. He stopped to listen to the running water, remembering this woman in a hotel shower with him months ago.
That night he’d bumped into her coming out of the hotel bar. He’d seen that she was upset. She’d told him that she needed his help, that there was someone after her. She’d given him the impression she was running from an old boyfriend. He’d been happy to help. Now he wondered if that was still the case. She said she was running for her life—just as she had the first time they’d met.
But that had been in Billings. This was Gilt Edge, Montana, hundreds of miles away. Didn’t seem likely she would still be running from the same boyfriend. But whoever was chasing her, she’d come to him for help.
He couldn’t turn her away any more than he’d been able to in that hotel hallway in Billings last year.
* * *
LOLA PULLED OUT her braid, discarding the debris stuck in it, then climbed into the steaming shower. She stood under the hot spray, leaned against the smooth, cool tile wall of the shower and closed her eyes. She felt weak from hunger, lack of sleep and constant fear. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept through the night.
Exhaustion pulled at her. It took all of her energy to wash herself. Her body felt alien to her, her skin chafed from the rough fabric of the long dresses she’d been wearing for months. Stumbling from the shower, she wrapped her hair in one of the guest towels. It felt good to free her hair from the braid that had been wound at the nape of her neck.
As she pulled down another clean towel from the bathroom rack, she put it to her face and sniffed its freshness. Tears burned her eyes. It had been so long since she’d had even the smallest creature comforts like good soap, shampoo and clean towels that smelled like this, let alone unlimited hot water.
When she opened the bathroom door, she saw that Colt had left her a sweatshirt and sweatpants on the guest-room bed. She dried and tugged them on, pulling the drawstring tight around her waist. He was right, the clothes were too big, but they felt heavenly.
She took the towels back to the bathroom to hang them and considered her dirty clothing on the floor. The hem of the worn ankle-length coarse cotton dress was torn and filthy with dirt and grime. The long sleeves were just as bad except they were soiled with her blood. The black utilitarian shoes were scuffed, the heels worn unevenly since she’d inherited them well used.
She wadded up the dress and shoved it into the bathroom wastebasket before putting the shoes on top of it, all the time feeling as if she was committing a sin. Then again, she’d already done that, hadn’t she.
Downstairs, she stepped into the kitchen to see Colt slip three more pancakes onto the stack he already had on the plate.
He turned as if sensing her in the doorway and she was reminded of the first time she’d seen him. All she’d noticed that night was his Army uniform—before he’d turned and she’d seen his face.
That he was handsome hadn’t even registered. What she’d seen was a kind face. She’d been desperate and Colt McCloud had suddenly appeared as if it had been meant to be. Just as he’d been here tonight, she thought.
“Last time I saw you, you were on leave and talking about staying in the military,” she said as he pulled out a kitchen chair for her and she sat down. “I was afraid that you had and that—” her voice broke as she met his gaze “—you wouldn’t be here.”
