hand up to his forehead.
‘That falling tree gashed your scalp,’ she explained, wondering how much of the accident he actually remembered. ‘I’m cleaning it up so I can see how deep the cut is.’
He lowered his hand and stared at his stained fingertips. ‘I’m bleeding like a stuck pig,’ he groaned.
‘Scalp wounds are like that,’ she said bracingly. Men were such babies when it came to their physical hurts. ‘From what I can see, the cut’s shallow but it’s quite long. You may need a few stitches to hold it together.’
His eyes had fluttered closed. ‘Bitch!’ he muttered.
‘I was only offering an opinion.’ Nina tried not to take the insult personally. If his mind was suffering the lingering effects of a blow to his head, she couldn’t expect him to obey the usual rules of polite conversation. Perhaps his comment had been aimed at some other female who had suddenly flitted into his hazed brain. ‘I wasn’t threatening to darn you up myself. How are you feeling…apart from the head, I mean?’
‘You were copping a free feel a few minutes ago. You tell me,’ he said without opening his eyes.
She flushed at his raw imagery. So he had been fully cognisant all along…thank goodness she hadn’t lingered over her task! In the circumstances, it had been the practical thing to do, but it had still seemed uncomfortably intimate. Moulding the stranger’s muscles through his chilled clothes, she had found it impossible to remain as detached as she would have liked.
‘I was just checking to see whether you had any obvious broken bones,’ she defended herself. Since his eyes had been closed then, too, he couldn’t have possibly known her eyes had strayed where her touch had dared not….
‘I’m never obvious. Discretion is my middle name.’ He made it sound like a sinful accomplishment.
‘What’s your first?’
‘Hmm?’ His thick lashes rose to half-mast, showing a sliver of blue bemusement. ‘My first what? First woman?’
Nina felt a surprising kick of fury. She flicked back her heavy mane of wet hair in a gesture of haughty disdain. She didn’t know why he thought she might be interested in his sexual peccadilloes.
‘No—your first name. Who are you? My name is Nina—Nina Dowling,’ she repeated emphatically, anxious to extract a response before he lost the thread of the conversation again. ‘What’s yours? What are you doing in Puriri Bay? Is there someone who’s going to be worried if you don’t turn up?’
‘Nina?’ He seemed confused by her string of questions, unable to concentrate sufficiently to answer any of them. She placed a flat hand against his hard cheek and moved her face closer to his, silently demanding he give her his full attention. He blinked up into her worried green eyes, his pupils visibly expanding, melting the circles of blue ice to a silvery rim of frost. ‘Nina…’ His gaze sank to the tiny mole just above the neat pink bow of her mouth. ‘It’s you,’ he said in a tone of deep satisfaction.
Except for his lack of surliness, they were right back where they had started, Nina realised in exasperation. He was looking at her as if he expected congratulations for his simple act of recognition. ‘Yes, that’s right, it’s me, Nina—I just told you that. But who—are—you?’
She separated each word to stress the vital importance of the question.
‘Who am I?’ he repeated equally slowly, a disturbing blankness beginning to steal across his face, wiping it clean of all expression.
Her fingers tensed against his hard cheek, keenly aware of the strength—and the terrifying fragility—of the skull beneath the skin.
‘Don’t you know?’ she asked, trying not to let her panic leak into her voice.
His silence was echoed in his empty eyes, and her hand flew up to cover her appalled mouth.
‘Oh, God, you have no idea, do you?’ she said in a shattered whisper. ‘You can’t tell me who you are because you don’t even remember your own name!’
CHAPTER TWO
THE stranger’s eyelids drooped and Nina’s stomach hollowed with fear. Wasn’t excessive drowsiness supposed to be a bad sign? What if he lapsed into a coma?
‘Hey!’ She shook him by the shoulder, trying not to jar his head. ‘Open your eyes—you can’t go to sleep now!’
‘Why not? You planning on turfing me back out into the storm?’ he roused himself to challenge, still wearing the alarmingly vacant expression that persuaded her it would do little good to keep pressing him about his identity. At this point, it might even be dangerous to get him overagitated about his condition.
‘Of course not, but you could have a bit of concussion,’ she told him. She had been far too ready to assume that because he was walking and talking after the accident his injuries were superficial. But what if she was wrong? She, of all people, should know how unpredictable a seemingly minor bump on the head could be….
Unfortunately, as far as getting help was concerned, her options were severely limited. Emergency services were out; there were none on the island—not even a practising GP—and for the duration of the storm they were effectively cut off from the mainland. Even the rescue helicopter would be grounded. Ray had left her his key so she could dash over there and use his telephone, but she didn’t like the idea of having to leave the injured stranger alone in unfamiliar surroundings. Besides, whom would she call?
Who amongst her other close neighbours was likely to be useful? It was no use running off to beg help from someone who was just as ignorant as herself. But at this time of year the candidates were pathetically few.
Almost all of the houses in Puriri Bay were weekenders, and when the weather forecast had been so wretched, most of the owners would have flagged away their weekly pilgrimage to the island. During the winter, the neighbourhood was frequently reduced to a few hardy old-timers and some casual renters with whom Nina had only a nodding acquaintance.
But the Freemans were here! Her back straightened as she recalled seeing their distinctive, shiny green four-wheel drive roll off the ferry the previous day when she had walked over to the jetty to wave Ray off and pick up a mail-order package from the post-box at the store.
Although Nina didn’t know Dave Freeman particularly well herself—he was only an intermittent visitor to his bach—he was a long-time fishing buddy of Ray’s and she knew that he freely gave the older man advice on his arthritis. He was actually a psychiatrist, but shrinks were medical doctors in the first instance, weren’t they? Just because she had been stand-offish to him in the past was no reason to be reluctant to approach him now. While Shearwater Islanders were fiercely respectful of each other’s right to privacy—that was why the island was such a haven for social misfits—in a crisis their community spirit was invariably staunch.
She jumped up and found herself tethered to the couch by a hand that had shot out with surprising speed to fist in the saturated denim bagging around her knee.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Nowhere,’ she soothed, easing the bunched fabric out of his grasp, taken aback by the raw suspicion in his voice. ‘But I’ve just thought of someone who can give me some advice
