she reminded herself deliberately. Once the storm was over, he would go back to his own life, leaving her to her solitude. That was the way she wanted it, and that was how it would be.
Caleb opened his eyes and smiled wryly. “I can’t seem to stay awake.”
Hardening her heart against his vulnerability, Shannon moved around the bed to his right side and set the first-aid kit down on the quilt. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal,” she said stiffly. “It’s only natural your body should want to rest and recover.” God, she thought, I sound like some frightened schoolmarm. The man could barely stay awake. What did she think he was going to do to her?
Caleb’s eyelids drifted shut again.
Shannon frowned, worried a little about his sleepiness. She’d done enough research on the subject of concussion to know she mustn’t let him sleep long.
His eyes opened suddenly. “What ordeal?”
Shannon raised a brow. His question had bordered on suspicious, which seemed a strange reaction. “You mentioned a landslide. Don’t you remember it?”
He gazed at her for a moment as if trying to read her mind. “It all happened so fast.”
His answer unsettled her a little. It sounded like the truth, yet she sensed something more was going on. She thought about questioning him, then decided against it. The man had been banged around so much he probably didn’t have any idea what he was saying. Besides, it didn’t really matter to her, anyway.
She turned her attention to his arm. “I’m going to clean this and put some antibiotic ointment on it. I’ll try not to hurt you.”
Caleb nodded. “Do what you have to. I really appreciate everything you’ve done. A woman alone, you could have left me out on the doorstep.”
“Well, it did cross my mind,” she admitted, venturing a smile.
She looked at the deep red groove on his upper arm. Suddenly she didn’t feel like smiling.
What had she done? What kind of man had she taken into her home? Only one thing could have made a wound like that.
A bullet.
She stepped back from the bed. “Who are you?”
His light-blue eyes showed bewilderment. “What’s wrong?”
Shannon glared at him. “You didn’t receive that cut in any landslide. That wound came from a gun. Someone shot at you and grazed your arm. Now, I want to know who you are and what you’re doing in these hills.”
Chapter Three
The fact that Shannon was more angry than afraid intrigued Caleb. A woman alone in a remote cabin, a wounded stranger collapses on her doorstep. Turns out he’s been shot. It would be only natural for her to feel fear at her discovery. But the angry flush on Shannon’s cheeks showed nothing of the kind. He wondered why.
Hands on hips, Shannon glared at him. “I’d like an answer, Caleb, or whatever your name is.”
She was really something. It took guts to question a stranger when there was a very real possibility he could be dangerous. Because of that, his first instinct was to reassure her. His second told him that reassuring her couldn’t be his first priority. She might be gutsy and gorgeous, but she was still an unknown quantity.
“Well?” she said impatiently.
Time for some fast thinking. He’d already made the mistake of giving her his first name, but that didn’t mean he had to tell her the last, or his reason for showing up on her doorstep bloody and torn, beyond the landslide.
He’d learned in his undercover work that the key to successfully hiding your identity was to keep as close to the truth as possible. “My name is Caleb Joseph,” he said, using his middle name. “A friend and I were visiting a cabin up here.”
“In the middle of one of the worst winters this area has known?”
He shrugged off her suspicion. “We didn’t know the hillside was going to fall down on us.”
“I can imagine,” she said dryly. “So what were you doing up here?” She glanced at his arm. “Hunting?”
The horror that filled her gaze brought an immediately denial. “Of course not!”
He realized his mistake just as her eyes narrowed.
“Dammit, I should have known. You’re a cop, aren’t you?” The conclusion seemed to raise her ire even more.
He regarded her with genuine surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“The lack of detailed information in your answer. And the fact that you have a bullet wound, yet you weren’t hunting. Either you’re a cop or you’re a criminal.”
Good deduction, he thought. Convincing his hostess that she had nothing to fear without revealing his identity was going to be harder than he thought. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but the gunshot wound was the result of a ricochet, just some guys doing target practice.” He thought it better not to mention that he was the target. “And I work in computers.” Everything he’d said was the truth, as far as it went.
She still looked skeptical. Time to try a different tack. “I have to say I’m a little surprised by your earlier reaction. Most people would be thrilled to find out they had a cop collapse on their doorstep, rather than some criminal on the run.”
“I’m not most people,” she snapped. “One was enough.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And you are not some dweeb from Silicon Valley, so cut the bull.”
“A man can work in the computer industry and not be a dweeb,” he countered, doing his best to sound offended.
He didn’t know what to make of the bitterness that edged her voice, and his head ached from trying. He closed his eyes and reached up his good hand to try to rub away the pain. The logical answer was that she’d had a run-in with the cops. Which put her on the other side of the law. But Caleb couldn’t see this beautiful caring woman as a criminal. Petty or otherwise. Damn, he wished he didn’t have such a headache. It made it hard to think clearly.
He opened his eyes. “How did you know a bullet made the mark on my arm?”
“Personal experience,” she said stiffly.
“Really?” Disbelief colored his voice. His instincts told him she was as innocent as she looked. “Were you the grazer or the grazee?”
“Neither.”
This time Caleb recognized a hint of pain behind the anger. Whoever had been injured was someone she’d cared about. Her father? Brother? Husband?
“Then who?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She moved to the bed and picked up a sterile pad. “We need to finish this.” She started swabbing at his wound.
The antiseptic stung, and he flinched.
