cussing—he possessed quite an amazing vocabulary of cuss words in several languages—he stomped back toward the staggering figure in gray. The snow continued to swirl, thick enough to be almost foglike. He really needed this, he thought. Now he would have to drive back to town in this damn storm to make sure this idiot didn’t freeze to death out here.
It wasn’t until he was only a few steps away that he realized the idiot was a woman and, worse, a woman dressed only in a gray sweatshirt and pants. And when she lifted her head at his approach, he saw a shiner that would have looked appropriate on a boxer, not on a tiny woman with straggly blond hair and blue eyes the size of saucers.
At least they became saucer-size when they saw him.
Well, he could kind of understand that. He was a large man, well over six feet, and years in Special Ops had given him a need to stay in shape that wouldn’t quit even though he’d left the military well behind him. Then there was his face. The faces on Mt. Rushmore looked less stony.
Too bad.
“Hey, lady!” he called. “You’re going to freeze!”
She staggered another step, then turned and started to run. Only she couldn’t quite run, because her feet didn’t seem to be cooperating, and moments later she tumbled facedown on the shoulder.
At once he raced to her side and squatted. “Lady …”
“Go away!” she cried. “Get away from me!”
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, making his voice as gentle as when he talked to his horses. Not exactly second nature, but he knew how.
“No! No! Get away from me.”
Another time, another place, he might have been happy to oblige. But not out here. Not even on a sunny day. Not when she had a black eye like that, which might mean a bad concussion.
“Easy,” he said quietly. “Easy. I won’t hurt you, I swear. But you’ll freeze out here.”
Then he reached out to help her up and realized he might as well have tried to lift an angry mountain lion. She started fighting the instant she felt his hands, kicking and swinging and trying to scratch him.
Experience came to his aid. Keeping his hold as gentle as he could, keeping her back to his chest to minimize the damage to himself, he lifted her. “Shh,” he said soothingly near her ear. “Shh. I’m just going to take you to a doctor.”
“No! No!” She wriggled wildly. “He’ll find me! He’ll find me!” There was no mistaking the terror and desperation in her voice.
“All right, then,” he agreed gently, all the while wondering why he was making such an insane promise. “All right. But how about you come home with me and get warm? You’ll freeze out here.”
“I don’t care! He’ll find me!”
“Nobody’s going to find you at my place, I swear. I promise you’ll be safe….”
He kept murmuring soothingly, taking care to keep his grip without hurting her. She fought a little longer, but she didn’t have a whole lot of strength left, and soon enough she began to sag.
He shifted her a bit, so his hold was more comfortable, then swung her up and began carrying her toward his truck. A car drove by, slowing down, but he barely glanced at it before it sped up. He didn’t recognize it, so it didn’t belong to the only other rancher on this road before it dead-ended. He felt a fleeting suspicion, but dismissed it. If someone were following her in a car, he would certainly have caught her long since. Probably someone visiting. Not that he cared.
“No doctor,” she said again, but her blue eyes had begun to look hazy.
“No doctor,” he agreed. “Just a warm fire and some food.”
Then she said something that tore at his heart. Her huge blue eyes focused on his face, and she said, “You’re not him.”
Then she passed out.
Kay Young returned to woozy consciousness to find she was lying on a soft sofa beneath a heap of quilts near a cheerfully burning fire. Dimly she realized it felt odd to be warm, because she had been cold for so long, so very long. But she no longer felt frozen to the bone.
When she tried to move, however, everything hurt, from her head to her feet, and she groaned. The pounding in her head alone nauseated her, and the world around her spun.
At once she heard a sound; then a stranger with a hard, harsh face was squatting beside her. “Shh,” he said softly. “You’re safe here. I promise. Shh. You might have a concussion.”
“I have to go,” she said weakly, struggling against pain, a swimming world and the quilts. “He’ll find me. I can’t let him find me.” Run! The word shrieked in her brain, burned into every cell. Escape! Flee!
“Easy, lady,” he said quietly. “Easy. You’re hurt. No one’s going to find you here. No one.”
“He will,” she said desperately, terror clutching at her insides with bony, knifing fingers. “He always finds me.”
“Easy,” he said again. “There’s a blizzard outside. No one’s getting here tonight, not even the doctor. I know because I tried.”
“Doctor? I don’t need a doctor! I’ve got to get away.”
“There’s nowhere to go tonight,” he said levelly. “Nowhere. And if I thought you could stand, I’d take you to a window and show you.”
But even as she tried once more to push away the quilts, she remembered something else—this man had been gentle when he’d found her beside the road, even when she had kicked and clawed. He hadn’t hurt her. Not like her ex-boyfriend.
Terror receded just a bit. She looked at him, really looked at him, and though his face might have been granite, she detected signs of true concern there. True kindness.
The terror eased another notch, and she let her head sag on the pillow. “He always finds me,” she whispered.
“Not here. Not tonight. That much I can guarantee.”
And she believed him. Oh, God, she believed him. “Thank you,” she murmured finally.
“I heated up some broth. Let’s see if you can hold a little bit of it down. Do you feel sick to your stomach?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe a couple of crackers first, then. After that we can try broth. I’ll be right back.”
She watched him straighten, amazed at his sheer size. Everything about him looked as if it might have been carved out of the nearby mountains. As he walked away from her, other things began to penetrate. She was in a warm room, a cozy room, with walls that looked like a log cabin. The furnishings were sparse but colorful, and they looked comfortable. The fire blazed merrily in a stone fireplace.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, about this place seemed in any way related to her tormentor or her experience since … since when? She didn’t even know how
