yours,” she said and turned toward the open doorway to the screened-in deck. There was an old futon out there and a pine dresser he planned to refinish when he had time. “I’ll sleep in here.”
He started to argue, but without turning on the light, she took the bag of ice and limped over to the screened windows, her back to him as she looked out into the darkness beyond.
Fetching a towel from the bathroom, he returned to find her still standing at the window. She didn’t turn when he put the towel on the futon, just said, “Thank you.”
“De nada.” He was struck with the thought that if he had been able to sleep he would never have seen her accident, would never have met her. For some reason that seemed important as if cosmically it had all been planned. He was starting to think like his future sister-in-law Charity and her crazy aunt Florie, the self-proclaimed psychic.
He really needed to get some decent sleep, he concluded wryly, if he was going to start thinking crap like that. “There are sheets and blankets in the dresser and more towels in the bathroom.” He would have gladly made a bed for her but he knew instinctively that she needed to be alone.
“About my bike—”
“I think I can fix it,” he said. “Otherwise, I can give you and the bike a lift into Eugene.”
She turned then to frown at him. “You’d do that?”
He nodded. “I used to travel a lot on my bike and people helped me. Payback. I need the karma.” He smiled.
Her expression softened with her smile. She really was exquisite. For some reason, he thought of Desiree Dennison, the woman he’d seen driving the red sports car that had hit Maggie. “I can also take you in to see the sheriff in the morning. I know him pretty well.”
“Why would I want to see him?” she asked, frowning and looking leery again.
“You’ll want to press charges against the driver of the car that hit you.”
She said nothing, but he saw the answer in her eyes. No chance in hell was she sticking around to press charges against anyone.
“Just give a holler if you need anything,” he said.
Her gaze softened again and for an instant he thought he glimpsed vulnerability. The instant passed. “Thank you again for everything.”
My pleasure. He left the bathroom door open and a light on so she could find it if she needed it, then went downstairs, smiling as he recalled the face she’d made after chugging the whiskey. Who the hell was she? Ruefully, he realized the chances were good that he would never know.
MAGGIE HURT ALL OVER. She put the ice down on the futon and limped closer to the screened window. The night air was damp and cool, but not cold.
She stared out, still shaken by what had happened on the dock, what she’d learned, what she’d witnessed. She’d gotten Norman killed because she’d called Detective Rupert Blackmore.
Below, a door opened and closed. She watched Jesse Tanner cross the mountainside to a garage, open the door and turn on the light. An older classic Harley was parked inside, the garage neat and clean.
She watched from the darkness as he went to the truck, dropped the tailgate, pulled out the plank, then climbed up and carefully rolled her bike down and over to the garage.
For a long moment he stood back as if admiring the cycle, then slowly he approached it. She caught her breath as he ran his big hands over it, gentle hands, caressing the bike the way a man caressed a woman he cherished.
She moved away from the window, letting the night air slow her throbbing pulse and cool the heat that burned across her bare skin. She told herself it was the effects of the whiskey not the man below her window as she tried to close her mind to the feelings he evoked in her. How could she feel desire when her life was in danger?
She’d been running on adrenalin for almost thirty-six hours now, too keyed up to sleep or eat. Her stomach growled but she knew she needed rest more than food at this point. She could hear the soft clink of tools in the garage, almost feel the warm glow of the light drifting up to her.
She took a couple of blankets from the chest of drawers. Wrapping the towel he’d left her around the bag of ice, she curled up on the futon bed, put the ice on her ankle and pulled the blankets up over her.
The bed smelled of the forest and the night and possibly the man who lived here. She breathed it in finding a strange kind of comfort in the smell of him and the sound of him below her.
She closed her eyes tighter, just planning to rest until he was through with her bike, knowing she would never be able to sleep. Not when she was this close to Timber Falls. This close to learning the truth. Just a few more miles. A few more hours.
Tonight on the highway when the car had pulled out in front of her, she’d thought at first it was Detective Rupert Blackmore trying to kill her again.
But then she’d caught a glimpse of the female driver in that instant before she’d hit the bright red sports car.
She’d seen the young woman’s startled face in the bike’s headlight, seen the long dark hair and wide eyes, and as Maggie had laid the bike on its side, she’d heard the car speed off into the night all the time knowing that the cop would have never left. He would have finished her off.
She’d feared that Norman’s body had washed up by now. And it was only a matter of time before Blackmore realized her body wouldn’t be washing up because she hadn’t drowned.
How soon would he figure out where she’d gone and what she was up to and come here to stop her?
But what was it he didn’t want her finding out? That she was kidnapped? Or was there something more, something he feared even worse that she would uncover?
Right now, all she knew was that people were dying because of her. Because her parents had wanted a baby so desperately that they’d bought one, not knowing that she’d been kidnapped from a family in Timber Falls, Oregon.
Her ankle ached. She tried not to think. Detective Rupert Blackmore was bound to follow her to Timber Falls. Unless he was already in town waiting for her.
Sleep came like a dark black cloak that enveloped her. She didn’t see the fog or Norman lying dead at her feet or the cop on the pier with the gun coming after her. And for a while, she felt safe.
Chapter Three
Maggie woke with a start, her heart pounding. Her eyes flew open but she stayed perfectly still, listening for the thing she feared most.
The creak of a floorboard nearby. The soft rustle of clothing. The sound of a furtive breath taken and held.
She heard nothing but the cry of a blue jay and the soft whisper of the breeze in the swaying dark pines beyond her bed.
She opened her eyes surprised to see that the soft pale hues of dawn had lightened the screened-in room. She’d slept. That surprised her. Obviously she’d been tired, but to sleep in a perfect stranger’s house knowing there was someone out there who wanted her dead? She must have been more exhausted than she’d thought.
She
