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“Because when we found you a couple of minutes ago you were unconscious and I didn’t want to move you until you came to,” the man explained easily. “I went through everything in your handbag looking for a phone. Why don’t you have a phone?”
Connie nodded her head slowly and blinked. Her eyes were heavy and filled with muddy grit. She felt lethargic, overcome by a sudden drowsiness so that she slumped against the man. “I threw it away…” she said before her voice trailed off.
The man grunted. “Do you think you can walk?”
It took a monumental effort for Connie to open her eyes. She nodded her head. The man put his arms around her and lifted her. She came up onto her feet, and then her knee buckled. She staggered against the man and his hands wrapped around her. For a long moment she was pressed to his chest, could feel the muscled resilience of his body and inhale the man smell of him. The unexpected intimate embrace was a shock, and her eyes flung themselves wide. She looked up into the man’s darkened face but said nothing.
The man slung the strap of Connie’s handbag over the big dog’s head and then he lifted her in his arms and held her across his chest. She laced her fingers around his neck, felt the warmth and strength of the man’s body radiate through his sodden shirt and she clung to him until the shivering subsided into tremors.
The man walked, carrying her away into the dark night, and to Connie, the gentle rhythmic sway of his steps was like being rocked to lulling sleep in his arms.
8.
When Connie next awoke, she was laying on a sofa, swathed in blankets. Her head was propped up on the armrest. She blinked, and her eyes adjusted to the light. She turned slowly and saw the man who had rescued her, standing by a stove in a neat kitchen. He was wearing clean dry clothes – a pair of jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms. She watched him silently for long moments as he moved about, and then at last he seemed to sense her gaze upon him. He turned suddenly and came towards her, carrying a mug.
Connie heaved herself upright with a groan. The blankets slipped off her and she snatched at them to drape around her shoulders. She was cold and covered in aches. Her wet dress clung to her uncomfortably and her hands and arms were muddy. The man held out the mug and she wrapped her fingers around it gratefully, then inhaled the steaming aroma of coffee.
“Thank you,” she muttered. The man propped himself on the edge of a chair in front of her and Connie looked up into the stranger’s face.
“How long have I –?”
“Only an hour or so,” the man smiled, and the gesture framed his mouth with etched lines like parentheses, and cast the hint of dimples high upon his cheeks. He had a strong jaw, shadowed gun-metal blue with stubble, and a mop of dark hair that curled about his ears and collar so that her first impression was that he had an almost boyish charm.
Then she saw his eyes, set within the sun-weathered face. They were dark – the eyes of a man who was accustomed to searching far horizons – clouded by a mysterious depth of concealed emotion that mesmerized her.
“How are you feeling?” the man asked.
Connie sipped at the coffee and felt the scald of it against the back of her throat. “Some bruises,” she shrugged and fell silent for a heartbeat. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
The man made a dismissive gesture. “It’s Ned you should be thanking,” he said. “He’s the one who found you.”
The man glanced across the room to where a giant Great Dane sat on a bed mattress. The dog was black, its head and body huge. It was watching Connie with brown soulful eyes.
Connie nodded and smiled across at the dog. “Thank you, Ned,” she said softly and the dog thumped the end of its tail, recognizing the sound of its name.
She turned back to the man – felt her heart flutter when his gaze trapped her. “He’s huge,” she said.
The man nodded. “A gentle giant.” He snapped his fingers and the Great Dane came off his bed and sat obediently beside the man. The dog’s mouth fell open and Connie saw the pink tip of its tongue as the man scratched behind the animal’s ears with a casual kind of affection. “I think he heard the sound of the crash,” the man explained. “We were on the beach, and then suddenly he went bounding away into the woods. That was when I saw your headlights.”
“You were on the beach? In the storm?”
The man shrugged and a shadow of something secret moved behind his eyes. “We always walk along the beach at sunset,” he said, like the words were a stilted ending.
Connie sensed the man’s change in mood with an intuitive feminine understanding, and there was a guilty rise of reproach in her expression. She lowered her gaze to the contents of the mug and took another sip. For a long time there was silence so that all she could hear was the persistent drumming of rain on the roof until the man seemed to shake off the pall of his melancholy. He clasped his hands together and studied Connie closely.
“Were you lost?”
She nodded. “Sort of,” she admitted. “I came south from Hoyt Harbor. I was looking for a green mailbox, but I couldn’t find it. This was the first turnoff from the road…”
The man sat back, narrowed his eyes. “A green mailbox?” he repeated warily. “The only person anywhere around here I know of with a mailbox like that is Bill Mason.”
At the mention of the name, Connie’s face lifted and their eyes met. Connie felt a little flutter – some giddy thrill – and she had to glance away before her attraction became transparent.
“That’s right,” she said with a rise in her voice. “That was who I had come to find. He’s a local artist. He lives around here, somewhere.”
The man nodded slowly. “I know him,” he said, and then paused. “What makes him so important you were willing to almost get yourself killed driving through a storm to find him?”
Connie made an ingratiating face. “I’m from New York,” Connie said, then took another sip of the coffee. She could feel the warmth of it spreading in her empty stomach. “I represent one of the country’s finest and most prestigious art galleries. I saw some of Mr. Mason’s breathtaking paintings in town, and I wanted to meet him.”
The man sat back in the chair and his eyes became flinty. “Gallery,” he said the word with the same kind of derision that other people would say ‘lawyer’.
Connie winced. “You’re not an art lover, I take it.”
The man didn’t answer. He got to his feet and went back to the kitchen, making a slow circuit of the little room, checking dials on the stove and re-arranging coffee cups, and then paused at a window and stared out into the black night.
Connie watched the man for several moments and then looked around her. It was a pleasant space that appeared to have been expanded in size some time in the past. She got the sense that the living room and kitchen were the heart of the home, but there were corridors and hallways branching out in several directions with closed doors that must lead to bedrooms. The floors were wooden boards, covered in rugs that had been thrown down without any real attempt at decoration. She glanced around the walls. There was a sagging old bookcase, groaning under the weight of paperback novels across the far side of the living room, and a large undraped window set beside the front door. There was nothing hanging on the walls, and no ornaments on shelves. Nothing that suggested the house was a home – nothing to show that it was anything more than a building that served as shelter.
When the man came back into the living room at last, Connie could see the hardness had gone from his eyes. “You need a shower,” he said. “And you will stay here tonight.”
Connie’s face registered shock and a flicker of alarm. “No, I can’t do that,” she said, and got to her feet instinctively. The blankets fell from her shoulders so that she stood before him in only the damp little dress that clung to every curve of her body. She became aware of the fact that she felt almost naked and exposed with a sudden blush of self-conscious panic. “I couldn’t…” her knee buckled and she winced as needles of pain shot
up through her thigh, all the way to her hip. She threw a desperate hand out for the armrest of the sofa to steady herself and there were fresh tears of agony in her eyes.
The man arched his eyebrows in a challenge and he smiled without any trace of humor. “The shower is down the hall,” he said in a no-nonsense voice and pointed past Connie’s shoulder. “I’ll help you.”
He hooked his arm around her back and she let her weight fall against him like a crutch. She could feel the press of his hip against hers and the tender strength in his grip. She hobbled down a passage until the man stopped before a closed door. “I’ll find you something to wear,” he said. “Take your time. There’s plenty of hot water. When you’re done, I’ll wrap your knee. You should be right by the morning.”
She nodded and then caught her breath. “My car!”
The man’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “I have a truck. I’ll tow you out tomorrow. The car didn’t look too banged up. I think you’ll be fine to be on your way.”
Connie shook her head. “No, I have a suitcase on the back seat. It has clothes… and some personal things…”
The man frowned for a moment and then took a breath. “I’ll go and fetch it,” he said.
She smiled her gratitude. The man pushed open the bathroom door and Connie used the doorframe to support herself. She teetered on the threshold for a moment while the man reached behind him into a linen press and then ducked under her arm to set fresh towels on the bathroom vanity and start the shower running. A billow of steam swirled across the floor. The vanity mirror was already fogged and the bathroom carried the lingering warmth of recent use.
“Are you going to be able to undress yourself?” the man asked with only genuine concern in his face. Connie jerked her head in a nod. She felt somehow gangling and skittish being so close to this man and she was sure she was blushing. Despite her pain, she could feel a burning flood of hectic color on her cheeks as he fixed her with his steady gaze.
