AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Planting her palms on the floor, she tried to lift herself out of the hole and failed. After a day spent popping boards off the wall, her shoulder and back muscles were spent and she couldn't get much leverage, not with her free leg splayed out behind her. The layers she wore were also part of the problem. All that fabric was crammed into the hole, trapping her.
She eyed the window. The sun was almost down. What little heat there was in the house was evaporating quickly, the temperature dropping inside and out.
Taking a deep breath, she yelled, “Alex! Alex! Can you hear me?”
Chapter Eight
Alex looked up from the desk and frowned. Something was off. Something...
He cocked his head to the side, trying to loosen his neck. His nape was tingling as if someone were standing right behind him, even though he was by himself.
His witchy sense was kicking in, although damned if he knew why. He looked around the workshop. Everything was in order and his phone wasn't ringing with some kind of emergency.
Maybe it was just a draft.
As he bent his head the other way, he smiled a little. His crew hated whenever he started cricking his neck. Usually it meant trouble was coming. Or had arrived but just hadn't introduced itself yet.
He looked back down at the sailboat design he was working on. He'd finally decided to stop fighting the urge toplay around with his father's old plans. And after having gone through all of them, he'd decided they were really good. With some tweaking, a few of them could be spectacular.
Sometime later he took a stretch and checked his watch. Seven o'clock. Time to eat again. He went over to the little refrigerator and started lining up the cans of Ensure. With those, plus the three chicken br**sts he'd boiled that afternoon and some pre-washed lettuce he had, he'd pull down about twelve hundred calories. Not bad, but he was going to have to squeeze in a couple more PowerBars before he went to bed.
He was rubbing the back of his neck, annoyed by the persistent twitchy feeling, when his cell phone went off. He checked caller ID before answering.
“Hey, Libby. What's up?”
The older woman's voice was edgy. “Have you seen Cassandra?”
“Isn't she home with you?”
“She should have been. About two hours ago.”
As his nape went into a crazy spasm, fear condensed in his chest cavity. He looked out the window at White Caps. The lights were off and he couldn't see where she parked her car from this vantage point.
“I'm going over to the house,” he said. “I'll call you back”
He grabbed his parka, clicked on a flashlight and headed out as quickly as he could. The Range Rover was parked where it usually was, but there were no sounds from inside the house. The silence made the cold air seem so much colder.
Pulling back the plastic, he called out, “Cassandra?”
“Alex?” Her thin, ghostly voice drifted down to his ears.
He flipped the flashlight up. Her leg was dangling out of the kitchen ceiling.
“Cassandra!” Punching his cane into the floor, he went upstairs, cursing his cast and the way it slowed him down.
He found her in one of the bathrooms. In a space that was as frigid as the outdoors.
“Th-thank God.” She shuddered. `Alex..."
Without nailing her eyes with direct light, he did a quick assessment of her. She had one leg stretched out behind her, the other through the floor up to her hip. A parka was wrapped loosely around her upper body, but it was so cold, the thing obviously wasn't doing much good. Her teeth were chattering, and the color was sucked out of her cheeks.
He kneeled down, carefully positioning his lower leg. “Does anything feel broken?”
“I can bend my knee a little. Ankle, foot and t-toes flex without pain. I think all the layers I'm w-wearing helped me from getting cut, too. I'm just not strong enough to p-pull myself free.”
“Any problem with your spine?”
She shook her head. “I have f-feeling everywhere. Or I did before the c-cold took it away.”
He put the flashlight down. “Okay, here's the plan. I'm going to grab you under your arms. I want your hands on my shoulders, but don't pull yourself up, let me do the work. You're going to go limp, understand? The less tense you are, the easier this will be. Any questions?”
Cassandra looked up at him. “You've rescued people b-before.”
Yeah, but not like this. His hands were shaking so badly he had to hide them from her.
“Any questions?” he repeated.
“No,” she said in a small voice.
He got close to her, slipped his hands under the parkaand gripped her body. God, she was so small. His palms spanned her rib cage.
“You ready?” he said into her ear.
“Alex?” she whispered.
“Don't worry, I'll go slow. I'm going to try not to hurt you:' ”I'm glad you c-came. I was calling your n-name.“ Squeezing his eyes shut, he took a deep breath. ”Okay, honey. Here we go"
He called upon all the brute strength of his upper body, marshaling the heavy muscles of his shoulders and biceps to lift her weight. Her breath caught and she let out a groan. But she moved.
“How you doing?” he said through clenched teeth. His bad leg was screaming in pain, but he wasn't about to stop. “F-fine. Thank you.”
Alex eased back and she came with him until she was free. With a twist, he laid her out on the floor and stuffed her arms in her parka, zipping her inside. There was a brief silence between them as he leaned over her, breathing deeply, and she stared up at him, lying perfectly still.
He brushed a tendril of hair back from her face.
You are not going to kiss her, Moorehouse. Don't you dare.
His head dipped down. As she shivered, he pulled himself up short, appalled. He needed to get her the hell out of this house and warmed up. He did not need to waste time doing something he shouldn't do even when she was perfectly well.
“I want to check your leg before you try and stand on it, okay?”
She nodded, burrowing into her coat.
Keeping his hands impersonal, he ran them over her ankle and calf, bending the bones a little. She winced when he got to her thigh.
“How bad's the pain?”
“Just a bruise kind of thing. And, no, I don't need a doctor.”
He tried to ignore the fact that his hand was way up on the inside of her leg, but the intimacy was too loud for him to drown it out. God, he was a bastard. The poor woman was freezing cold; he could feel her trembling. And he was thinking about sex?
Men truly are pigs, he thought.
“I don't feel anything,” he said. Now, there was a lie. His body was on fire. “Let's get you out of here. Light-headed?”
She shook her head and sat up, pushing him away when he would have helped her. She awkwardly got to her feet and reached for the wall. As she swayed, he wondered how he was going to keep her upright when he had so little balance himself.
Except before he even got off the floor, Cassandra turned away and started for the stairs.
Alex palmed his cane, wondering why she'd rather go it on her own when it was clear she was so unsteady.
“I want to take you to Gray's,” he called out while strug?gling to get up off the floor. “Cassandra! Wait!”
He caught her on the stairs only because she was taking them slowly.
“I'm taking you to Gray's,” he said to her back. “That's okay.” She stumbled and caught herself on the banister. “It's not far.”
The hell he was going to let her get behind the wheel. “I'll drive you.”
“Not with that c-cast you won't. The Range Rover is a stick shift. Reese liked to t-trailer boats behind it.”
“Why are you racing out of here? Will you—damn it, Cassandra! Stop”
They came into the kitchen. While she went for the clipboard and her cell phone, he headed to the door, blocking the exit.
As she came up to him, she looked right through him. “Pl-please get out of the w-way, Alex.”
She was so cold her lips were blue.
He widened his stance. If she wanted out, she was going to have to break through him. “You're coming up to the shop. You're getting under the hot water. Then maybe I'll let you drive home. Otherwise, I'm calling Spike to come pick you up”
“Three words,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Not. Your. Problem.”
He cursed with a nasty, dark word. “There's no fricking way I'm letting you drive in this condition.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I d-don't want to argue with you” He took her arm. “Good. Let's go.”
“Alex—”
“Now.”
When she followed him past her car and up to the shop, he was relieved.
Once they were inside, he led her right over to his bed, forcing her down gently, getting her as close to the pot?bellied stove as he could. Moving quickly, he put some more wood on the fire and went into the bathroom. After the shower was running strong, he picked up the wet towel he'd used after his workout and shut the door so the room would warm up.
“Water should be ready in a minute.” He tossed the towel into the laundry duffel and went over to the desk. He dialed Gray's.
“Libby?” he said when the woman answered. “I have her. She's fine. Just warming up. No, she's okay. She'll be home in a while.”
He hung up and looked across the room.
Cassandra was shivering more now that she was out of the cold.
“Let's get your boots off,” he said, going over to her. He leaned on his cane and lowered himself to her feet.
“I can do it.” But when she reached down, her fingers skipped over the laces.
He removed her Timberlands, being careful with the one on the right. Then he stripped off her socks.
She had very pretty feet.
He curled his hand around her ankle and he felt the bones again, sliding his palm under her pant leg and up her calf. Her long johns prevented him from knowing how smooth her skin was. Which was just as well.
When she went dead still under his touch, he knew she was hiding something from him.
“Where's the pain?” he asked in a low voice. “Cassandra?” He looked up. Her eyes were watching him from under lowered lids.
“Cassandra, where does it hurt?”
“It doesn't. Not really.”
Yeah, right. Then why was she so motionless? “Look, I know you don't think you need a physician, but tomorrow you should go see Doc John.”
“I'm driving back to Manhattan tomorrow. First thing in the morning.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“The holidays.”
“When will you be back?”“Right after New Year's.”
God, that was forever. “Do you need help getting to the bathroom?”
She shook her head and started to shrug out of her parka. Her hands were clumsy as she took it off and he eyed her flannel shirt. The thing was buttoned to the neck.
Instead of getting up and going to the desk, Alex nudged her hands aside.
“Let me do it,” he said gruffly.
“No, I can—”
“Yeah, right.” When she tried to bat him away, he muttered, “Don't worry, I've seen it all before.”
That last comment was for him, not her. He couldn't believe he was about to take off her clothes.
She was silent as he worked on the flannel, which was just fine with him. Any conversation would have gone nowhere because he was using all his focus to keep his hands from shaking as badly as hers were. Especially as he went for the button between her br**sts.
Even though she was wearing a turtleneck under the shirt, he imagined he was seeing her with nothing on. The idea of all that creamy skin...
Her breath caught and he flicked his eyes to her face. She was watching his fingers.
