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“Can’t do this much longer.”
That makes two of us. But she forgave him. “Hold on. We’re almost through.”
“Too much trouble.”
“No, you’re a good sport.” Better than me.
“You. And you have… hands.”
She smiled. “There’s something else we have in common.”
“Great. Meant great hands.”
The fragmented compliment was another throwaway. He was grateful, that’s all; and yet a sharp little thrill raced through her. She was beginning to enjoy this a bit too much.
She tried to be discreet as she put some distance between them and concentrated on washing his neck and shoulders, his chest and arms. It didn’t help. How was she supposed to ignore that although he was on the pale side, his body had the well-developed tone of an athlete?
“Do you run, maybe on an indoor track? Work out at a gym?”
He was slow to answer. “Wish I knew.”
There it was again—that hesitant, anxious tone, As she dealt with yet another wave of sympathy for him, she forced a cheery note into her own voice. “I hate exercise myself. It’s crazy, because I’m going all the time. But tell me that I have to do some formal physical training and I turn into an amoeba. Almost failed gym in school.”
The stranger merely sighed.
It didn’t matter. They were finished anyway. Or finished enough. “Why don’t we get you to your feet.”
She instructed him how to stand, like before, and once again she tried to steady him. He had been a handful earlier; however, it took all her strength this time. As a result, there was no avoiding absolute intimacy—her breasts being crushed against his muscular torso, her cheek against the heavy thud of his heart, and lower…
Omigosh!
No longer was the stranger in a daze. At least one part of him was wide awake! He sucked in a sharp breath, as if only now realizing the problem himself.
“Here.” Once she had him out of the stall, she leaned him against the damp tile wall and reached for the towel. She needed to think, and she would do that better if they put something between them.
He seemed as eager to get the thick length of material around his waist as she was. But he also tried to catch her eye. “Frankie—”
“Careful where you step. We’ve made quite a puddle leaving the door open like we did.”
“Frankie.”
Blast him, but the man was persistent. “What?”
“Why won’t you let me…? I apologize.”
Yes, she was a wuss. She had only to hear his anguish, see the concern in his poor battered face, and she instantly turned into mush inside. And all this time she’d thought only animals could do that to her.
“Apologize for what? Being human?” She looked up at him and accepted another truth about his condition. “You’re not going to be able to endure another move tonight, are you?”
“Just want to… rest.”
“I know. Stay put.”
She’d been right about the hunch of letting him he down on her bed. She knew what to do now.
In the bedroom she flipped on only the small reading lamp, out of concern for his eyes. Then she folded back the coverlet from her queen-size bed and tugged down the sheet. Without trying, her imagination pictured him there, naked between her fresh sheets.
Get over it, Jonesy.
“I know you’re not quite dry,” she said upon her return to the bathroom. “But you won’t hurt anything. The important thing is to get you off your feet. You look ready to drop.”
She helped him to her room and into her bed, where as soon as she made him comfortable, she realized his forehead was bleeding again. Rushing back to the bathroom, she got her first-aid kit. Luckily she kept it well stocked for her animals.
Once she had him patched up, all the while chatting away like a computer phone recording, she thought of something else to do. “Aspirin. Your head has to be throbbing by now.”
She was gone and back in a flash. After feeding him the pill, she set the cup of water on the table beside the bed in case he got thirsty later.
“Can you think of anything else you might need?”
“No. Yes. Frankie, I didn’t want—”
Here they went again. “Try to get some rest now,” she said, not wanting to let him finish. She knew what he was going to say, and it was better left alone. She began to rise. “Don’t hesitate to call if you start feeling worse. I usually stay up for a while after I get home. I don’t need much sleep.”
“Francesca, stop.”
Who had a choice? Despite his condition, he’d moved faster than Samson when the little oinklet spotted anything edible, and now he had firm hold of her wrist. Wary but resigned, Frankie sat down on the edge of the bed. “What?”
“God, you make me dizzy.”
If only he knew his effect on her.
“You have to let me speak,” he continued.
“You don’t need to be speaking, you need to be resting.”
“But you’re still not—Don’t be afraid of me.”
He was too sharp for his own good. “May I remind you that you’re the one with the busted head and the Vacant sign flashing on and off in your eyes?”
“Frankie…” He looked as if he wanted to argue with her, but the effort was clearly more than he had to give. “You’re a very sweet and… sexy lady.”
This was what she’d really been afraid of; that he would say something considerate and tender when she was already reacting way too strongly to him. What’s more, the man not only had amnesia, he was blind as a bat! She’d caught a glimpse of herself in the vanity mirror. She looked about as appealing as Callie the time Maury had inadvertently pushed the cat off the dock and into the pond. She’d had no time to brush out her hair, and what little makeup she’d been wearing had either washed off or smeared.
“I’d better go,” she said, attempting to gently pry his fingers from around her wrist. She might as well have tried to reshape tungsten steel with a feather.
“I may not know who I am, but I don’t think—I know I would never hurt you.”
Frankie went still, and reluctantly met his troubled gaze. She knew that he told her the truth. At least, as he understood it. But he couldn’t know how that only served to add to her sense of wonder about him, about what was happening between them.
“I believe you,” she said, able to do nothing but accept the soft and achy feelings churning inside her. “Now will you please try to get some rest?”
He did ease his grip, but he didn’t release her completely.
A helpless laugh bubbled up her throat. “What’s wrong now?”
“You’re really going to leave me?”
“I’ll be in the next room.”
“Not yet.”
“You have to sleep.”
“I know. But… you make it bearable.”
‘It’?”
“Not knowing who… what I am.”
That had to be terrifying. She couldn’t imagine such a predicament herself, and she only had to look at him to see how it was tearing him up inside. That made chopped meat of the rest of her determination to put some distance between them.
“Keep telling yourself that this is only temporary,” she said, keeping her voice low and soothing. “Tomorrow you’ll probably open your eyes and, except for one humdinger of a headache, be as good as new. They do say the mind can do the most amazing things when it comes to healing and survival.”
“What if I’m not that lucky?”
“Wrong attitude. My gramps used to say, ‘Never let the negative gremlins get hold of you. Think of the possibilities and that’s half the battle.’ “ Frankie grinned at his dubious look. “It’s true. He had the best outlook on life, and I rarely saw him depressed or angry.”
“That explains you.”
“Oh, I’m a grouch in comparison.”
“Doubt it.” The stranger let his eyes drift shut. “You… lived with him?”
“Sometimes. As much as I could. My parents didn’t always approve. They didn’t understand the wanderlust that drove him, especially after my grandmother died. I had to settle for brief summer visits as a kid, until I got out of school and moved in with him. We had a wonderful time for a while. He passed away five years ago.”
“Parents?”
“They’re still back east in Pittsburgh, in the brownstone they bought shortly after they were married. My father is with a big insurance company. My mother is… Well, she buys things at garage and estate sales, polishes them up and sells them at a profit to her friends.”
“Your grandfather… whose?”
“Whose…oh! Whose parent? Mother’s. And she’s never stopped apologizing to my father and brothers.”
“How many brothers?”
Goodness, he was tenacious. What besides two knocks on the head did it take to put him out of action? “Four. Carson, Blake, Jason and Pierce. I’m the runt of the litter. An accident, actually. Mr. and Mrs. Jones had a little too much sparkling wine on their twelfth wedding anniversary, and nine months later, there I was. The bane of everyone’s existence.”
“Exaggeration.”
“Oh, it’s true. I played better bridge than Mom, better poker than Dad. You could never catch me to spank me, and I deserved more than a few. I got better grades in school, even while maintaining the largest paper route in our county, and just when my father had himself convinced that I was going to get through college and become something traditional like a teacher or nurse, I dropped out and began traveling with Gramps. My father wouldn’t speak to me for weeks.”
The story went over well. The stranger almost smiled. His breathing also was growing slower, deeper. Frankie began to inch off the bed.
He opened his eyes. “What do you do?”
“I’m an unapologetic underachiever now. I work at The Two-Step.” At his frown, she explained that it was a bar and grill on the other side of the interstate. “Far enough so that we don’t get any of its traffic, which makes it difficult for Benny, my boss, to keep a cook, so the ‘grill’ part isn’t always accurate.”
“Wonder what I do.”
Frankie didn’t like the tense note that had reentered his voice and endeavored to keep things light. “Well, you sure don’t mess with dirt-loving critters the way I do.” To prove it, she placed her hand next to his. Besides the obvious differences in size, hers displayed the short, sometimes-chipped nails and scratches that came from loving her pets too much.
The stranger stared at his hand. “He even took my ring.”
“What ring?” Frankie gasped.
“I don’t know. It just feels so… naked.”
A ring. The possibility that he had a wife, children waiting somewhere grew stronger. What were they going through tonight?
She would have liked pursuing the subject, but she could see it was having a debilitating effect on her patient. “That does it. Enough talking,” she told him, and rose. “Now you try to sleep.”
“You’ll stay close?”
At the rate he was tying knots in her emotions, he would be lucky if she let him go tomorrow. She always had time in her day and room in her heart to take in another lost or injured soul.
“Right on the couch, but sometimes not even that far, because I am going to have to wake you every once in a while to make sure you don’t slip into a coma.”
“Thanks.”
“One thing—if you need to get up at any time, call me. I don’t want you to, um, accidentally step on something. In this place it’s likely to bite in return.”
He looked a bit disturbed about that. “I’ll call.”
“Good night. Sleep well.”
“Frankie?”
She’d gotten as far as the door. Real progress. “Yes?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to say your name. To make sure there was one thing I remembered when I wake again.”
She couldn’t.answer because of the lump that lodged in her throat. But she thought of that unknown family again, and she knew an intense pang of envy. She hoped that whoever they were, if they existed, they knew how very lucky they were.
Three
Frankie kept her word, and over the next few hours checked on him frequently—partly out of concern that one of the animals might sneak into the back room and add to the few gray hairs he already had. But she also stayed close because of the man himself; aware that she was dealing with something unique here, something more complicated than anything she’d ever dealt with before.
If she was smart, she would have used the time he slept to dash over to Mr. Miller’s and ask him to call the sheriff’s office for her. The old man had become like a surrogate grandfather to her, allowing her to have her mail delivered to his place, and even taking calls from her family, because she refused to be bothered with a telephone. He wouldn’t have minded the ungodly hour, not once he recognized Petunia’s coughy-cranky engine.
She could have put an end to this, before it got out of hand. Before she let the dreamer in her get too much control of her imagination. But she didn’t.
Every half hour or so, she returned to the bedroom to gently rouse him, give him a drink of water, get him to say a few words. Afterward, she would brush his ash brown hair from his bandaged forehead, and softly encourage him to close his eyes and go back to sleep. He responded so well. Like a child. How could she leave him?
He finalized her decision the last time she checked on him. No sooner did she set the cup back on the nightstand, than he took hold of her hand and wouldn’t let go.
“I opened my eyes before,” he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. “You weren’t here.”
“You only had to call me, and I would have come right away.”
That wasn’t good enough for him. He refused to release her.
She told him about how it was now past her bedtime. Fatigue was beginning to set in and she yearned for the length of the couch, old and lumpy though it was, not to mention hot due to its foam cushions and her lack of air-conditioning. “If I don’t lie down for a bit, I’m going to fall flat on my face come morning when you and everyone else around here will be wanting breakfast,” she told him, stifling a yawn.
To her surprise, he patted the vacant side of the bed. “I’ll share,” he told her for the second time tonight.
If he had been anyone else, she would have laughed in his face. As much as she loved people and tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that didn’t mean she had the naiveté of a just-hatched chick. Yet instinctively she knew that despite their earlier reaction to each other, there was only one thing the stranger wanted from her right now.
Without another moment’s hesitation, she circled to the far side of the bed. “Keep it up and I’ll nominate you for sainthood,” she said, gratefully stretching out beside him.
“Want some of the sheet?”
Although she’d changed into a dry sleeper T-shirt, which was anything but suggestive, the thought of being under the same sheet with his stunning, naked body threatened to wipe the thought of sleep completely out of her mind. “That’s all right,” she murmured, curling into a fetal position with her back to him. “I’m fine. Sweet dreams.”
She must have fallen asleep quickly, because the next thing she knew the room was bathed in sunlight and a hand—a large, male hand—had a manacle grip on her thigh. Her heart thudded in sudden panic as she remembered. Everything.
What was he doing? Had she been wrong after all?
Not sure what to expect, she rolled over, startled to find her bedmate looking as if he was facing a firing squad himself. For good reason, she realized, once she followed his gaze.
While he attempted to push the bed’s headboard through the trailer’s wall, a boa constrictor inched up between his legs. It looked particularly ominous when it flicked out its forked tongue.
With a sigh, Frankie rose onto one elbow, snatched the snake, and brought it up to her face. “Stretch, you terrorist. I told you no funny stuff until you were properly introduced.” She scooped him up in both hands and carried him down the hall to his bed beneath the couch. “Bad snake. You’re lucky our company’s last name isn’t Robespierre. Now stay there until I apologize on your behalf.”
Since she was already close, she detoured to the kitchen to switch on the coffeemaker. On the way back to the bedroom, she let Dr. J. outside, patted Bugsy and uncovered Honey’s cage.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the man who remained frozen where she’d left him. “That was Stretch. He’s usually much friendlier. Most of the time you can use him as a pillow and he won’t care.” She did, however, keep her fingers crossed behind her back as she made that claim, for as well as she and Stretch got along, he liked to toy with Honey’s cage and Dr. J.’s mind, whenever the opportunity presented itself.
“You live with a snake?”
“A baby one. Barely more than three feet.” When her guest’s expression remained glazed, she added, “It’s not as though he’s a cobra or a rattler.”
“You mean he’ll get bigger?”
“He’s a boa,” she said, as if that explained everything. It certainly did to her. “But I won’t have him much longer. I took him in when a friend at the club found him in her bathroom after work one night. She lives in a pretty wild apartment complex, so there’s no telling how he got in there. At any rate, as much as I love him, I do have a problem with his dietary needs.”
“What does he eat? No, never mind,” her guest replied with a feeble gesture. “I don’t want to know.”
“Mmm. Not wise before breakfast. The zoo in Houston said they’d be happy to take him. I just have to wait for them to tell me that they have his new home ready. It will be good knowing he’ll have friends, because he does enjoy company.”
The stranger closed his eyes.
Frankie used the opportunity to study him. He looked both better and worse this morning; his coloring was better, but his injuries appeared angrier in the light of day. Unable to harness all of her caretaker instincts, she crossed over to him, settled on the edge of the bed and touched his forehead. Her fingers were twice as tanned as his pale, broad forehead.
“Your fever’s gone,” she murmured, sensitive to how strong his pull was when she got this close. “How do you feel?”
“As if there should be an ax sticking out of my head. Is there?”
“No, no ax, but…” Frankie noticed that the bandage at the back of his head had come off in his sleep, and she retrieved it while gently checking the injury with her other hand. “Oh, poor man. That’s one humongous Easter egg you have back there. No wonder your hurting. I’ll get you more aspirin as soon as we put something in your stomach. The good news is that there doesn’t seem to be any more bleeding.”
“Did I mess up your bed?” He began to twist around, only to wince at the sudden move.
“Easy.” Frankie stopped him with a fleeting touch to his cheek. “Don’t worry about blood. I’m an expert at stains and stuff. I have to be, or else I’d be replacing my clothes every week. Is the pain receding? Maybe you better lie back down.”
“It doesn’t hurt so much when you’re with me.”
How could anyone who looked like next month’s centerfold for a women’s pinup magazine be this sweet? She hesitated, but knew she had to ask. “Do you remember my name?”
Slate-blue eyes that should probably have seemed cold and hard warmed as he took in her sleep-tousled hair, her rumpled T-shirt and tanned, bare legs. “Frankie.”
She could have kissed him. “And your name?”
He tried. She could see it in the way the veins swelled at his temples, the way the muscles around his mouth and along his neck tensed. But in the end he could only make a negative movement with his head.
“Nothing?”
“Adam…?” he murmured, looking confused. “I remember hearing or dreaming the name Adam.”
Frankie grimaced. “That was a joke. I called you that last night when I found you, because you were—Never mind.”
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