she readily abandoned it.
Daisy had never had a problem attracting men—but they were always the wrong men. The ones she took care of. The ones who were never there when the chips went down. She knew better than to expect anything else, so there was no point in whining—or panicking.
She mentally kicked herself in the fanny and moved. Quickly. All her stuff was being shipped from Europe, but she had the small overnight case. The back hall closet still had some of Dad’s old coats, her mom’s old boots. There were always spare gloves and hats under the back hall bench. Most of it was older than the hills and worn, but who cared?
She simply had to be covered enough, protected enough, to get to a neighbor. This was White Hills. No matter what reputation she’d had years ago, there wasn’t a soul who wouldn’t help a Campbell—or who she wouldn’t help, for that matter. The MacDougals were gone, because Camille had married into them. But across the sideroad to the west was the Cunningham Farm. The Cunninghams were old, seventies at least by now. But she knew they’d take her in, and undoubtedly try to feed her. Mr. Cunningham would know something about furnaces. Or he’d have ideas.
She plunked down in the rocker and leaned over to tug off her wonderful—and now ruined—boots. They didn’t want to come off. They were frozen to her feet, stiff enough to make tears sting her eyes to get them loose. Beneath, her feet and toes were red as bricks, and stung.
Not good, not good, not good.
Fear was sneaking up, biting at the edges, threatening to overwhelm her if she let it. She wanted to let it. She put on thick old wool socks, her dad’s old farm boots, a barn jacket right over her beautiful red cashmere coat. A little warmth started to penetrate, but she wanted to go back in that god-awful screaming wind like she wanted a bullet. It wasn’t safe out there, and she knew it.
Still, she swathed her face and neck in a long wool scarf, pulled on double mittens, grabbed her stuff. Don’t think, she told herself, just do it. When she opened the door, the wind and snow slapped her like a bully, trying to scare her again, but she forced herself back down the drive. She’d be okay if she didn’t lose her head. It might have been years, but she knew exactly where the Cunningham house was.
God knew how long it took to walk a quarter mile down the road—an hour? Longer? But finally she saw lights. The lights not only reassured her that the Cunninghams were home, but that they had power, so they must have a generator. A generator meant heat, light, food. Tears of relief stung her eyes as she trudged the last few feet to the back door and thumped with her dad’s big mitten.
No one answered.
They were there. A pickup was parked in the driveway, buried in snow. Lights lit up the whole downstairs. Come on, come on, Daisy thought desperately. I don’t really need a big hero. Just a little one. Just once, just once, just the least little break, and I swear I’ll be tough again tomorrow.
She thumped again. Louder. Harder.
Still, no one answered.
Impatiently she turned the knob, and was relieved to find the door unlocked. “Mrs. Cunningham? Mr. Cunningham?” One step inside and she immediately felt the gush of warm, wonderful heat. Nothing and no one could have forced her back out in the cold again. Swiftly she latched the door behind her, still calling out, “Yoo-hoo! It’s just me, Daisy Campbell. You know, Margaux and Colin’s daughter from across the road. Are you there?”
She heard something. A groan. A man’s groan. The sound was so unnerving and unexpected that she responded instinctively by running toward it. Someone sounded hurt. Badly hurt.
She’d been in the Cunninghams’ house before, but that was years ago. They had no children of their own, but she’d been there trick-or-treating, selling magazines for school projects, bringing a bushel of apples from her dad’s orchard, that kind of thing. She’d never seen the upstairs, but she knew the front hall led to a living room off to the right, then a dining area, then the big, old fashioned kitchen.
The man’s groan had seemed to come from the kitchen.
The last time she’d seen it, the room had avocado-green counters and wallpaper with big splashes of orange and green—circa the sixties or seventies—who knew? She’d been a kid, didn’t care. Now, though, the kitchen was obviously in the process of a major rehab. A sawhorse and power tools and impressive-looking cords dominated the middle of the room. There was sawdust all over the floor, new counters and cupboards in the process of being installed. Half were done. The ceiling was done, too, except for a light fixture hanging like a drunken sailor. And beneath that, tangled with an overturned ladder, was a man.
Daisy couldn’t take in much in that millisecond—just enough to register that he wasn’t one of the Cunninghams. The stranger was youngish, somewhere around thirty. She took in his appearance in a mental snap-shot—the dark hair, the lean, broad-shouldered build. He was dressed for work, in jeans and a long-sleeved tee, a tool belt slung around his hips. But God. None of that mattered.
He was lying on the dusty, littered floor, his eyes closed, flat on his back. One of his boots was still caught in the rung of a ladder. A pool of blood gleamed beneath his head, shining dark red under the bald light-bulb.
Teague Larson had never gone for angels. It wasn’t personal. He’d just always liked sex and sin and trouble too much to waste a lot of time on the saintly types.
On the other hand, he’d never planned on being dead before—and he figured he had to be dead. No one’s head could hurt this bad and still be alive. It seemed further proof of his unfortunate demise that the woman had miraculously appeared out of nowhere.
She was so damned gorgeous that he might even forgive her for being an angel. After his head stopped hurting. If his head ever stopped hurting.
It wasn’t helping that his personal, breathtakingly unforgettable angel was swearing loudly enough to wake all the rest of the dead.
“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Does it ever occur to anybody that sometime I’d like to be the one who gets rescued? No. Have I ever asked anything from anyone? No. Did I get my sisters married, get my parents retired, get everybody settled? But for Pete’s sake, I need a break today. The one thing I do not need is a problem like you. If you die, I swear, I’m going to kill you, and I’m not kidding! You don’t want to see me in a temper. Trust me. You are going to wake up and you’re going to be all right, or I swear, you’ll be sorry!”
Truth to tell, she wasn’t directly talking to him. She just seemed to be shrieking in a top-voice soprano as she flew around the place. He closed his eyes again, willing the room to stop spinning, willing his head to hurt less—at least enough that he could grasp what was going on.
Unfortunately his memory was slowly seeping back in Technicolor and surround sound. Blurry pictures filled his mind of the ladder tipping, then the noisy crash and scrambling fall. It was the worst kind of memory, because it mortifyingly illustrated one guy stubbornly trying to do the job of two. The story of his life. Too much pride. No ability to compromise. Hell, he’d never played well with others in the sandbox.
His personal angel suddenly pushed the ladder out of the way, which jarred his ankle. Until then, he hadn’t known his ankle hurt even worse than his head. He’d been better off when he thought he was dead. It’d been quiet around here then. Safer. Now that she’d forced him back to reality, there was no going back to that nice, warm, unconscious place. She’d ruined it.
On the other hand, there seemed to be compensations.
He
