A Hero’s Redemption
Suzanne McMinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

Haven, West Virginia

Lightning cracked, flaring into the dark vehicle, the heavy June night outside suddenly pressing down on the prison transport van, reaching inside, tightening the air. Still dressed in the suit he’d worn to the sentencing, Dane McGuire forgot that his wrists were bound by handcuffs linked to a metal restraining belt at his waist and tried to reach up, touch his face, feel the strange humming pressure filling his head.

In the matter of the State vs. Dane McGuire in the murder of Calla Jones, the jury finds the defendant, Dane McGuire, guilty.

The prison transport van took a sharp mountain turn in the night, bouncing Dane—the sole occupant in the back—against the side of the vehicle. The chain connecting the shackles at his ankles rattled in the dark of the rear holding cage.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

If only he hadn’t gone to Calla Jones’s farm. If only he’d arrived a few hours earlier, or later, or—

Lightning shot down again, and the humming turned into a stinging in his skin, all over. The van jerked from side to side and he hit the hard wall of the vehicle as he was thrown, first to one side, then the other. For a split second, he thought he was okay, he was in one piece, maybe just a pothole, then the back end of the van came up, tossing him like a ball, and the vehicle plowed end over end. Time suspended in some awful slow motion, turning, just turning, his body flying out of the seat belt. The last thing he knew was impact and his head striking something hard.

He opened his eyes to darkness, blinking in agonized waves of nausea. Cold. He was so cold. Freezing cold. He battled to move by instinct, to lift himself up, every motion dazed, painful.

The mountain road stretched out before him, empty but for a shimmering wave of some thick vapor that disappeared before his eyes, rushing away in an eerie whoosh that left nothing but silence. Dane’s heartbeat filled the void, heavy, stumbling.

The van, the guards—

There was nothing but eerie stillness. Stillness and…something soft and frozen falling on his face. He looked down, confused, seeing the snowy ditch where he’d fallen, seeing the shackles on his wrists and ankles…gone.

He felt himself fall back, hit the ditch again, and he wondered if he was already dead.

Chapter 1

She’d never touched a dead body before and she didn’t want to start now.

Chuck was practically beside himself, the yellow Lab dancing back and forth, barking madly. Do something, he was telling her. Look what I found for you. She jerked into action, half ran, half slid into the ditch, instinct overcoming shock. Ice blew sideways, stinging her cheeks.

She dropped to her knees where the stranger lay, still, utterly still. He wore dark slacks and a white button-down shirt and tie, no suit jacket or overcoat, ridiculous for this weather, and she forced herself to reach out, turn him over. Oh God. That was blood at the dark hairline of his temple. Frozen blood.

His lips were almost white in the scant light of the early storm-dark. The West Virginia mountains were in for the blizzard of all blizzards if forecasters were right, and she didn’t doubt it, not after the way temps had dropped sharply from noon on. She hoped she wouldn’t have to cancel the “choose-and-cut” for this weekend, the last for this year’s Haven Christmas Tree Farm season. She needed a good season, and the weather wasn’t helping. It hadn’t been a good year altogether, starting with an earthquake last spring that had damaged her house and barn, costing her some serious money in repairs. Now she’d lost both her employees in the peak of her season and if that wasn’t enough, her past was rearing its ugly head again. Now this.

A sick lump filled her throat. She tore off a glove, pushed back her hood, reached for the man’s neck to find an artery, laid her cheek over his face—was he breathing? She couldn’t feel a pulse, but her fingers were almost instantly numb. Wind blew. God, she couldn’t tell.

Chuck barked again, running circles around the man’s body. She lifted her head. Icy pellets pecked her face. No, that was snow now. And it was thickening quickly, a world of white suddenly spinning around her. She shivered even inside her thick parka, turning her gaze back to the man. There was ice on his lips, on his eyebrows, his hair. And that blood, frozen on his brow. What had happened to him? Had he fallen, or been attacked? And how the hell had he ended up here? It was miles down the mountain to town.

The man’s eyes opened and she screamed. Screamed and fell back, on her ass, hard. Chuck went nuts, barking and jumping.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” She scrambled back to the man’s side. “You’re alive.” He was alive. Her heart slammed into her throat and it was all she could think for a full second, then—“Are you okay?” No, dammit, stupid question. He was so not okay, that was obvious. Who the hell was he and how had he gotten here were better questions, and suddenly she was scared of him. He was a stranger, a bloody stranger in a ditch on the side of the road in front of her property.

No. His mouth formed the word but he couldn’t get it out, or she couldn’t hear it over the hammering of her own pulse. No, he wasn’t okay, he was telling her, and God, he was gray, frozen. She couldn’t leave him here. She’d never turned her back on anything or anyone hurt, but—

“Can you get up? Can you walk?”

His eyes held her, glassy, bright in his ashen face. Blue, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure and the light was going fast. He just kept staring at her, and she couldn’t have looked away if she’d tried. He didn’t try to say anything else. He had to be hypothermic, and he was hurt—And there was no place to take him but the house, where she lived alone, except for Chuck. Alone, just how she liked it.

And now—She’d call for help. Maybe someone could still get up the mountain.

Maybe.

She was lying to herself. She’d be lucky if the phones even worked now, and she knew damn well the roads from Haven would be impassable at this point. In the rural mountains outside Haven, cell phone coverage was nonexistent.

“Come on,” she shouted, the wind whipping at her words. She wasn’t sure he could hear her, or understand her. She reached for his shoulders, pulling him to a sitting position. He felt heavy, muscular, but utterly helpless, and that should have made her feel better. He was weak—what could he do to her? Nothing. But his condition just scared her more.

He could still die.

She grabbed his arm now. “Help me, dammit!” she yelled at him. Something inside him seemed to snap to understanding. He made it to his feet then instantly buckled at the knees. If he lost consciousness again—She grabbed him around the waist, holding him up. “You’ve got to walk. Please! I can’t do this alone!”

If he was an inch, he was six feet tall. She was five-seven herself, but not near his weight, and just getting him out of the ditch almost did her in. He slipped, twice, and it was all she could do to keep them moving forward then up the winding driveway, Chuck barking and bouncing alongside.

The lights from the front windows of her house came into view as they rounded the curve, and she could have collapsed with relief. Nearly there. She’d left her other glove behind in the ditch and her hand was nearly frozen from the exposure. She couldn’t even imagine how much colder he must be. He felt like a block of ice in her arms, a very solid, very tall block of ice.

One foot in front of the other. The front porch looked like a mountain all by itself. She could feel him struggling as he made the first step, and she was scared to death he was going to tumble backward and take her with him.

When they reached the door she let go of him with one hand to grab the knob, push it open. He weaved on his feet as if he was going to fall over right there and she threw her arm back around him.

“No! Not here!” She had to get him warmed up, and there was no time to lose.

In the light of the small front room, the man’s gaze connected, glassy and lost, but he kept his feet as if by sheer force of will. She kicked the door shut behind Chuck, who made a beeline for the kitchen and his food bowl. The first bedroom was hers and she didn’t think twice. She’d pretty much turned the second bedroom into an office, the bed in there piled with boxes of soaping supplies for her side business. He was far too tall for the short couch in her front room.

She maneuvered him around a small table, between an overstuffed chair and the couch, into the small hallway. Her room was dark, but there was enough light from the front room to see the bed.

A groan escaped him as he literally fell onto the bed. She reached for the lamp on the night table, then the phone.

Please, please, please—

“Dammit.” She slammed the phone down, useless as she’d known it would be, and looked back at the stranger in her house. The enormity of it all hit her.

There was a stranger in her bed, and if she didn’t do something, the right something, he could die. In her bed. Her knees were shaking, and not from the cold.

He was ashen, but even so, she realized with a shock that he was handsome, his jaw square, his cheeks planed, his nose straight, his hair dark, clipped short. He was maybe in his mid-thirties. He looked half-dead now, but he appeared to be fit and athletic in general, broad-shouldered and lean. Blood matted his temple and her pulse stumbled as she realized she wasn’t the only one shaking.

Get his core temperature up then she’d clean his wound, figure out what to do next. And she was going to have to get his clothes off. They were icy, and when they thawed, they’d be wet.

He looked so disoriented, she didn’t think he was going to be a lot of help.

Her head reeled just a little. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched a man, let alone a naked man, and that he was helpless as a kitten didn’t make her feel better. Panic didn’t have to be rational, and neither did marrow-deep fears.

She tore off her parka, dropped it on the floor and approached the bed, sitting down gingerly on the edge of it. He looked huge, filling up her bed. She reached for his hand. God, it was so cold. She pressed it between both of hers, rubbing in what warmth she could. “Hey.” To whatever extent he could help, cooperate, she’d need it.

His eyes opened, blinked. Blue. They really were blue. Searing blue. Her stomach jumped.

She let go of his hand, the awkwardness and strange intimacy rearing that ugly, irrational panic again. She spoke quickly.

“I can’t get help right now. The phone’s out. I need you to stay awake if you can. I need to get you out of these wet clothes.” She reached for his tie, unknotted it. It was a safe place to start. “Maybe tomorrow morning the phones will be working, or I can drive you down the mountain.” In truth, either possibility was slim, but she kept talking, hoping it would give him something to focus on, keep him awake. “I hope there isn’t someone worrying about you tonight.”

She received nothing other than a blank look in response.

Surely he had a family, maybe even a wife. He was clean-cut, good-looking, nice clothes. Without thinking, her gaze fell to his hands. No ring.

“Are you from Haven?” she asked. She pulled and the tie slid out from around his neck without him having to move.

“Haven?”

His voice was slurred, a little raspy. Familiar in a way she couldn’t quite place.

“Haven. You know where you are, right? You’re in Haven, West Virginia. Actually we’re a little outside Haven here. This is Haven Christmas Tree Farm.”

He was watching her with that startlingly lost look again. She reached for the buttons on his shirt and suddenly, sharply, he moved one hand and gripped hers. Stared, just stared at her with such intensity she felt her pulse bang.

She swallowed hard. “Come on. You’ve got to get out of these clothes,” she said, trying to pull her hand away. In an effort to distract him, she asked him another question. “How did you get here?”

“Accident. I—” He squeezed his eyes shut as if he were in pain.

“Accident where? I didn’t see a car.”

He still hadn’t let go of her hand and his cold grip was shockingly strong.

“Come on,” she said again.

His blue gaze blinked and she finally extricated her hand. She moved off the bed, needing that bit of distance. She yanked at the electric blanket cord that was tangled underneath it, hit the highest setting then got back to the bed, to him. She took the buttons of his shirt from the top down, quickly.

Outside, wind howled and the windows were completely dark now. The phones were already out—how much longer before she lost electricity? She had a generator, but it was dicey at best, old and in need of replacement.

She was midway down his shirt when he reached for the buttons as if trying to help, but she could see right away that his frozen fingers weren’t going to cooperate on such a detailed task. She finished the job for him then slipped her arm around him.

He felt hard, solid and so heavy. He managed to lean up for a second, just long enough for her to pull the shirt off one arm then he sank back with a groan, closing his eyes again.

She gently tugged the shirt out from under his back. His chest and shoulders, naked in the spill of golden lamplight, were broad and muscular and she realized she was staring at him. She pulled the sleeve down and off the other arm and saw the marks on his wrists.

Sometime, very recently, he’d been bound.

“Oh, my God,” the woman cried softly. “What happened to you?”

Everything hurt, especially opening his eyes. Dane McGuire’s vision swam, but slowly, in increments, he tried once again to focus on the woman leaning over him. She lifted his hand, touching his wrist. There were bruised marks circling it.

“What happened to you?” she repeated.

Her hair was thick, like a dark cloud, falling around her slender face. Light from the lamp behind her framed her like a halo of fire.

He could hear wind moaning, the creaking of the house in the storm.

That’s why he was so cold. He’d been out there, in the storm. She’d brought him up to the house, gotten him inside. She’d saved his life.

He’d been in an accident. He remembered slashing pain, the force as his body made impact, then—Her. He remembered her…

“Who…?” he whispered roughly. His tongue felt thick, unfamiliar even as his still-swimming vision registered recognition. He remembered her.

“Calla,” she said.

Jones. Calla Jones.

“Jones,” she finished

His mind reeled. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be Calla Jones.

“Can you tell me yours?” she asked.

He stared at her for a beat that seemed to last forever. Pain streaked through his temples and he drew a sharp breath. The pain from his bruised ribs almost had him blacking out.

“Don’t try to talk anymore,” she said sharply. He felt her fingers brush the skin at his waistband. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to ask you anything, not now.”

He struggled to stay conscious, to focus on her, this woman who couldn’t be real, couldn’t be who she said she was. She was a dream, a fantasy. Her eyes were brown, the softest shade of brown he’d ever seen. And she was pretty. So pretty.

She was pretty and she was taking his pants off.

His clothes were wet. That was it. She was just trying to make him warm. He tried to help again, reached for the button of the pants. His stiff fingers shook and wouldn’t bend right. He felt her warm fingers brushing his away. Her long cloud-hair swished across his cold, bare stomach as she leaned over him, then slid away as she moved down the bed, pulled on his shoes.

He felt like a baby. He forced himself up and black spots popped across his vision.

“Just let me do it,” she entreated. He heard her soft voice from far away, but he could feel her right there, her soothing touch as she pulled off his clothes. Then she was back. “Come on, you have to get under the covers.” She reached for him, rolled him to the side, then back as she moved the covers, tucked them around him now.

He’d never been so cold in his life—bone-deep cold even as he could feel the heat of the electric blanket against his skin. For a dream, this one was awfully painful. Inside, deep inside, he was freezing. He drifted, his eyes too heavy…She came and went and he was barely aware of her, then he felt her hands, gently, at his temples and something stinging—

Pure pain ricocheted through his head and his eyes burst open. He moved and more agony seared his chest.

“God, don’t move. I think your ribs are bruised or broken. I don’t know. I’m trying to be careful, but this is a bad cut.”

He fell back, sucking painful air into his lungs. His limbs felt like jelly. He didn’t think he could move again if his life depended on it. It hurt too much.

“Just be still,” she said sternly and he focused on the seductive sound of her voice. He heard something tear, felt her fingers taping something to his head. Felt himself floating, and he went willingly.

This dream might hurt, but reality wasn’t any better. In reality, Calla Jones was dead.

Chapter 2

He woke, disoriented. He couldn’t see anything. He was blind. Then the lamp beside the bed popped on. He blinked, light hurting his eyes.

The windows were dark. Everything was still, silent.

His vision cleared slowly. Faded wallpaper covered the upper half of the room, white wainscoting at the bottom. A quilt in a ringed pattern hung on the opposite wall between an antique dresser and a chair.

A wave of panic washed over him. He pushed up from the bed, hissing in agony as he swung his legs to the floor. Gripping the corner of the headboard, he straightened on wavering knees.

He was naked. The woman—There had been a woman. He’d thought she’d said her name was Calla Jones, even thought she’d looked like Calla Jones. But that wasn’t possible. He’d heard her wrong, imagined the resemblance.

She’d taken his clothes off, everything but his briefs, warmed him in her bed. And he was sure it was her bed. Everything surrounding him in the room—the pretty perfume and cream bottles marching across the old dresser, the flowered wreath on the wall, the lacy coverlet on the bed—screamed feminine occupation.

He hung on to the knobbed corner of the headboard again while he took shallow, agonizing breaths and willed himself to stay upright even as black pain threatened to consume him. He tried to focus, assess the damage—his head throbbed, his ribs screamed. But everything worked, if painfully. He wasn’t broken, just bruised.

And he was in trouble. Terrible trouble. He had to get dressed. He had to get out of here.

“Oh, my God.” He heard a rush of footsteps through the agony wrapping his mind. “Get back in bed. What are you doing? If you pass out and fall, you’ll just hurt yourself more!”

Arms slipped around his waist; soft, caring arms, guiding him back down. Relief buckled his knees and he didn’t fight her, let her ease him back onto the bed in one miserable, slow move.

“You have to rest. You can’t do this.” The woman’s voice was clipped, frustrated. Warm brown eyes sparked at him. Warm brown eyes that looked just like Calla Jones’s eyes. The resemblance was startling.

But it was just that, a resemblance. Calla Jones was dead.

She tucked blankets back around him. “I think you’ve got some bruised ribs, but I’m not a doctor. And you are not a very good patient.”

She chewed her lip in the way he remembered, suddenly, she had before. She was looking at him, too, and the very real, very fragile awareness in her gaze almost hurt to see.

“We lost electricity. I had to go outside and get the generator going,” she said.

That explained the pitch-black he’d woken to, and the lamp suddenly popping on. But it didn’t explain her. She started to rise and without thinking, he reached for her hand, stopping her.

“Don’t go.” His mouth was so dry, he could barely get the words out. “Who are you?”

She stared at him. “I’m just going to put your clothes in the laundry.” She tugged her hand from his, impatient, yet there was something more than impatience in her eyes. Something wounded. “My name is Calla. Calla Jones. This is Haven Christmas Tree Farm.”

His head reeled, and for a moment he couldn’t focus or think. Then her face cleared in his vision, Calla Jones’s face, and he saw her eyes gaze to his wrists.

“It looks,” she whispered, “as if you’d been bound. What happened to you?”

Of course his wrists had been bound. His ankles had been shackled, too. And all of that meant that Calla Jones was long dead. He was dreaming, had to be dreaming. What other explanation was there?

“I don’t know what’s happened to me,” he said, his voice hoarse suddenly. He’d lost his mind, maybe. I was being transported, bound, to prison for your murder. Dane supposed he could tell her that.

She was looking at him, confusion in her gaze. She seemed young, he thought suddenly, really young, with slender hollows in her cheeks and those soft, soft brown eyes, even as he could detect the faint lines around her eyes that proved she wasn’t really that young at all. She was thirty-one. The district attorney had said so. The D.A. had passed around all sorts of photographs of her bloodied body to the jury, posted enlarged shots on huge easel boards, shoved them in front of his face while he sat in the witness box.

“You can’t be Calla Jones,” he rasped desperately, almost angrily, suddenly. What game was this? If it wasn’t a dream, then could it be some kind of cruel hoax? Anything was possible. After all, someone had set him up for murder. Now what?

He could hear a huff of exasperation, then she got up from the bed, marched to the dresser, grabbed something—her purse, he realized, and pulled a wallet from inside. She flipped the small leather case open and held it up in front of him.

“Look.”

Calla Jones’s name leaped up at him from the West Virginia driver’s license.

His vision spun to a tiny pinprick of light and blood and her. Slicing pain ripped through his head. No. Calla Jones had died six months ago. No one knew that better than him. He’d been on his way to prison for the crime, a crime he hadn’t committed, but that had stopped mattering a long time ago. His life as he’d known it had been over. He’d almost accepted it. One minute, he’d been an attorney for Ledger Pharmaceuticals. The next, he was a number headed for prison. Almost, but not quite. He’d never accept it, not really.

“Tell me the truth,” he gasped hoarsely, reaching frantically for her hand again. “You’re with them, aren’t you?”

“Them? Who are you talking about?”

“The ones who did this to me.”

“The ones who did what?” she whispered, and his vision reeled backward as if sucked through a vortex, and he could see her, now, backing away, her hand slipping from his. He was scaring her.

But she was scaring him and the spinning of his vision was making him sick.

“The ones who did this to you,” he said, almost blindly, the edges of his vision folding together now, darkness closing in.

“Did what to me?” Panic rose sharp in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“The ones who killed you.”

Then the black swallowed him whole.

The hair lifted at Calla’s nape. She felt cold again suddenly, and more than a little unnerved.

The stranger had passed out now. He’d been half out of it even when he’d had his eyes open. The ones who killed you.

Was he crazy? Or just disoriented? Maybe he didn’t know what he was saying. He hadn’t been able to tell her his name. Did he even remember his name? He had a head injury.

And he was freaking her out.

She picked up his wet clothes and walked out into the front room. The urge to check the locks on the door was suddenly almost unbearable, as if she thought someone was out there, poised to break in. The stranger’s words reverberated in her head. She shook herself. It was snowing so hard, she’d barely been able to see when she’d gone out to the shed to turn on the generator. She’d been almost frightened she wouldn’t be able to get back to the house. Thank God she hadn’t had to go that far.

There was no one lurking outside waiting to kill her, not in this storm, and not ever. There was someone inside, and that was enough to make her uncomfortable. He couldn’t hurt her, not in his condition, she repeated to herself. And she wasn’t that twenty-year-old girl she’d been once, either. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her, not ever again. The old panic deep in her gut didn’t believe her sometimes, but she did, in her heart, in her head. She was older, wiser, tougher. And the stranger was just out of his mind from hypothermia and possibly concussed.

Chuck was stretched out in the middle of the floor, flat on his back, legs splayed out in total abandon.

“This is all your fault,” she said softly as she passed the dog. His tail thumped the floor lightly but he didn’t get up. He was exhausted from his big day of following her around the farm, chasing the new kittens, and finding a stranger in the ditch for her.

Not that Calla could regret finding the man, John Doe for now, tonight, since she didn’t know his name. If she hadn’t found him, he’d have died. And she couldn’t bear that thought, knowing that bringing him in meant she’d saved a life. And it hadn’t really been Chuck’s fault, though he was the one who’d directed her to the ditch.

How had he come to be here? There were only two reasons she would have expected people at Haven Christmas Tree Farm today—to get a tree or to talk to her about a job, and in this weather, she hadn’t expected either, though there was always room for a miracle after losing both her farmhands this week. Pete had done another of his disappearing acts then Jimmy had taken off the next day. Something had scared the bejeebers out of him in the woods. Probably a bear. But there’d been no talking sense to Jimmy, especially with the recent nonsense going around town.

It had all started after a so-called paranormal detective with some cable TV channel had reported earthquakes could release “positive ions” into the atmosphere and trigger supernatural activity. She was pretty sure everything since was the product of the town’s collective overactive imagination. Either that or it was the mayor’s latest attempt at beefing up tourism. She just hoped it meant more people came to Haven to buy Christmas trees.

She flipped the light on in the small utility room off the kitchen and dumped the bundle of clothes on the butcher block counter beside the washer. The shirt was soiled from where he’d lain on the ground and she set it aside. She’d try some stain treatment, but it might be hopeless. She stuck her hands in the pockets of the pants, hoping for something, some identification, some clue to the stranger.

Nothing. No wallet—she’d noticed that as soon as she’d stripped his clothes off, but she’d been hoping—She started to pull her hand out then realized there was something. Small and wet.

She pulled out the folded bit of paper, carefully laid it on the counter and used her fingernail to slowly pull the soggy pieces apart to reveal the printed logo at the top. It was a receipt. A-Plus Cleaners, Haven, WV. There was a hand-scrawled drop-off date. June 7, she thought, but the date was blurred, the ink smeared from moisture. It looked like June 7…of next year? She picked up the wet receipt, too quickly, to hold it up to the bare bulb above the counter and it tore in her hands. She put the two halves back down on the counter, and there was that chill lifting the hair at the back of her neck again. Jeez, what was wrong with her?

Of course the date wasn’t next June. It had to be last June. The stranger must not wear his suits very often for the receipt to still be in his pocket in December. But it didn’t matter and she couldn’t read it now anyway. The receipt had torn right across the year. And she was just still good and freaked out about his earlier comment and that whole positive ions hooey. She focused on what the receipt could mean.

The stranger hadn’t seemed to recognize the name Haven when she’d asked him if he was from here, but clearly he’d had tailoring done on his clothes in town. Calla had never seen him around, but that didn’t mean much. She didn’t know everyone in Haven even though she’d grown up there. She’d been gone for nearly twelve years between college, graduate school and the career she’d thought would be her lifetime work. Then it had all gone very, very wrong, and she’d come home to lick her wounds, start over. Haven hadn’t changed much, though it had certainly grown in population.

Once the phones were back, if the stranger still didn’t remember his name, she’d be able to give the receipt to the authorities. They could call the shop. Maybe they’d have records, be able to track down his ID. Or maybe his confusion tonight was temporary. He’d know his name tomorrow.

Not that that was her problem. Once the roads were clear, he would be someone else’s problem. All she had to do was make sure he lived till then. And if he would just stay in bed, he would probably be fine. His skin had already begun to feel warmer to the touch, and his color had been coming back.

She popped the pants in the dryer and set the stained shirt to soak. And she wondered if she would really forget the stranger as easily as that, as easily as dropping him off at the county hospital or the police station, depending on his condition when she could get him out of here. She checked on the stranger again. He was alive, sleeping. She went to the living room, grabbed the folded quilt off the back of it and stretched out. She tried really hard not to think about the fact that a man was sleeping in the next room. In her bed. A stranger.

Mostly, she tried not to think about the morning.

Chapter 3

Dawn crept through lace at the windows and Dane McGuire stared at the rectangle of light in the shadowed room, his head throbbing, his mind searching through some disembodied sea of broken pieces that slipped and slid on waves of pain. The courthouse, the conviction, the crash—The woman who couldn’t be Calla Jones.

It nearly killed him but he got out of the bed, holding on to the bedpost and his breath. His chest felt like someone had used him for a punching bag. As for his head—He reached up, felt the bandage there. He pulled the sheet with him, wrapping it awkwardly around his waist. He had to get out of here. He had to find his clothes. She’d said something about putting them in the laundry.

He made it to the window on legs that felt like water, pushed the curtains aside and grabbed on to the window frame for support. Outside, a winter world greeted him, winter, not summer. It was June. How could there be snow? The sun broke through the clouded morning, and he blinked against the suddenly bright light on all that white landscape. Snow. There was a barn, snow drifting high against it, right where he knew it would be. The greenhouse and the trees, the mountains scraping sky above. And the snow was still falling, light now, but continuous. He knew this farm. He’d been here before. This really was Haven Christmas Tree Farm. He was back where it all started, last December, when his entire life had been destroyed in one fell swoop.

And the woman who said she was Calla Jones, looked like Calla Jones, had shown him Calla Jones’s identification—He pivoted, ignoring the rush of pain and wave of sickness. The dresser where the woman had gotten the purse with the driver’s license was there. There were photographs all lined up; a little girl, a teenager, an adult, a woman as she grew. A lifetime in a few pictures. There was a framed West Virginia University diploma with Calla Jones’s name. A stack of envelopes, bills, addressed to Calla Jones.

Winter, not summer.

A calendar was tacked to the wall with a stick pin, open to December of the previous year. There was a CD player on the dresser. He fumbled for it, pushed the button. Classic rock poured out. He pushed it off the CD mode, switched to radio. No cord, so it was on battery. Fuzz. He pushed the selector until he found a clear station. More music. Another one with a commercial jingle. He kept pushing the button. Weather for today, December 20, in the Appalachian foothill region—

Something bone-deep and dark rushed him and he felt his knees shaking, hard.

Calla woke with a start, her eyes blinking open against the pale dawn shafting through the windows of the front room, nerves strung taut—A bang. That’s what had woken her. A loud bang from the back of the house—

She jerked forward, tossing the blanket, uncurling her legs, remembered the stranger and—She rushed to the next room.

The radio played the day’s news to an empty bed. He was gone.

Her blood pumped hot in the chilly room. Panic at the stranger’s disappearance combined with the realization that there was no heat. The generator must have died.

And the stranger, the stranger who was in no fit state to travel on foot, was gone. He’d die out there.

The forecast airing on the radio was for a bad one, the storm expected to last at least another day, steady snow this morning and increasing again by noon to blizzard-strength. Mountainous roads were already impassable. People were being warned to stay home, even in the towns. Electric and phone service out for thousands of homes. The governor was calling for a state of emergency, requesting federal assistance in clearing roads and restoring basic services.

She rushed out of the room. The sound had come from the back of the house. Grabbing and shoving on shoes, she ran, through the kitchen, through the utility room, blasting out into the icy morning. As she took the first step, she slipped and then slid on the concrete stair. She grappled for the railing, desperate to keep from landing on her ass. Failed. The heels of her bare hands hit the snow-covered steps, barely breaking her fall. The cold impact stunned her for a beat then arms swept her, warm arms in the cold snow.

Blinking, her vision clearing, she saw it was him.

“Get in the house!” Calla barked at him, angry, she realized. Very angry. It was his fault she was out here. Saving his life yet again and mad about that, too. She didn’t want to have to save his life, didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

He stared back at her, snow on his very long, very dark eyelashes that she noticed suddenly, sharply. He didn’t say anything, just pulled her to her feet, set her steady and stepped back. He wasn’t even wearing a shirt, she realized.

“Are you crazy?” she yelled at him. He was wearing only the pants she’d dried last night, and his shoes. His stained shirt was still soaking, she remembered. Then she saw him wincing in pain. His ribs, she remembered that, too. He’d hurt his ribs. And maybe he was crazy.

But he’d die out here.

“Just get back in the house,” she said, lowering her voice, though the words still came out clipped. And shaking. Her teeth were starting to chatter. “You’ll freeze out here. And if you want to kill yourself, that’s fine, but not on my watch.”

She wanted to tell him he deserved to freeze, but that wasn’t true or necessary or kind. It would just be venting. Maybe he did have a head injury. He was still staring back at her through the snow as if in some kind of shock, though he’d been with it enough to come to her aid. What the hell had driven him out into the snow half-dressed?

He didn’t move so she grabbed his arm with one hand, the railing with the other, and dragged him back the few steps to the door, pushed him inside ahead of her. She shoved the door shut with a slam. She was back in her house with a frozen, mysterious stranger.

She stood there, shivering.

“You’re underdressed,” she said into the sharp quiet of the house. She crossed the utility room, grabbing open the cellar door.

The utility room was an add-on to the old building, connecting what used to be a separate cellar to the main house. There were boxes and boxes stacked against one wall of her grandfather’s things and a hanging rack with some of his old clothes. She jerked open a box and grabbed the first shirt on top, a heavy plaid flannel shirt. Another box held folded jeans. She pulled down a jacket from the rack.

“Here,” she said, returning to the stranger. “Put this on.” She handed him the shirt and the jeans, which would be heavier protection than the slacks he’d come with last night. Then she set the jacket on top of the big chest freezer across from the washer and dryer. “And if you take a hankering to go strolling outside again, wear a jacket!”

Her irritation vanished as she watched him slide his arms awkwardly into the flannel shirt and try to use his frozen fingers to connect the buttons. She marched the few steps between them and took matters into her own hands. Her knuckles brushed his solid, very muscular chest. Something she would have been better off avoiding. She was actually turned on. It was ludicrous. Here he was, a stranger, half out of his head for all she knew, and she couldn’t stop noticing that he was extremely attractive.

She finished with the buttons. She felt his eyes following her every nervous movement and she blamed the cold that her own hands were shaking, almost as useless as his.

“Come on,” she said abruptly, stepping back from him. He was still watching her. Just watching her. Like she was some unknown specimen. Well, she felt the same about him, so she supposed that was fair. “I’ll fix some coffee. You need to get something warm inside you. There’s a bathroom there—” She pointed it out on the way to the kitchen. “You can change your pants in there.”

She headed for the kitchen, wondering if he’d come after her or go back outside. If he kept acting crazy, she’d have to let him go. She couldn’t call for help at this point, and what else could she do? Tie him up? If he wanted to leave, he was free to go. She’d done everything she could.

Acting as if she didn’t care when, for some stupid reason, she did, she flipped on the light over the deep farmhouse sink and set about filling the coffeemaker with water and grounds. The water was still running, but for how long?

Tension tightened her shoulders. The enormity of this storm was hitting her.

“Can I help?”

Calla felt him behind her and turned, found him standing there, in her kitchen, still watching her with those curiously daunting eyes. He was pale, but under that bloodless cold, he was a strong, fit man. She knew that. There were fine etchings of pain in his expression, but determination revealed itself in the hard line of his mouth. He looked effortlessly sexy in the flannel shirt and jeans she’d given him. They fit perfectly.

His voice…It was deep and Southern. Very typically West Virginian. Maybe that was why it had sounded so familiar somehow. She knew she had never met him before.

She would have remembered him. Oh boy, would she have remembered him.

“No. I’m fine. I’ve got it all set.” She gestured at the coffeemaker. “You should sit down. You should probably lie down.” For sure, he shouldn’t be out tramping in the snow. Her heart thumped when she saw him blink rapidly. “Are you going to pass out?”

“No.”

Yep, very determined.

She closed the distance between them, pressed her hands down on his shoulders and guided him back toward the kitchen table. It was nicked, nearly as old as the house itself, surrounded by six cane-back chairs. A carved walnut baby chair sat, long-unused, in the corner. The room, like the house, was rustic, with scarred wood floors, shelves lined with beautiful, antique canning jars she used to store dry goods, a pie safe for a cabinet. Old-fashioned ceramic jars and jugs crowded the mantel of an old stone fireplace.

She’d brought in a supply of wood the day before, and laid in extra in the utility room to keep it from getting wet. The rest lay under a tarp behind the barn, but with the way the wind had been howling all night, she wondered if that had stayed dry.

“Sit down anyway,” she insisted. “I’ve got enough problems as it is.”

He cooperated, which said something.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

Guilt pricked her. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I can’t pick you up off the floor, that’s all.”

His gaze was flat, direct. “You saved my life.”

“Can you tell me what happened, now? What is your name?” Did he know who he was? She’d heard of amnesia, but she’d never encountered it outside the soap operas she used to watch in college. Wasn’t this a soap opera scenario? Trapped in a blizzard with a stranger who couldn’t remember his name.

She might have laughed but for the lump of fear in her throat. You’re with them, aren’t you? His bizarre words from the night before rang again in her mind.

The ones who killed you.

It was all too creepy. She didn’t like it.

She wanted the soap opera scenario where she got stranded on a deserted island and magically had makeup and sexy clothes to wear every day. They’d feast on bananas and speared fish and drink coconut milk till the ship found them. Yeah, she liked that one better…Except for the part where she’d have to have anything to do with a man at all.

He still hadn’t answered.

She hadn’t turned the lantern-style fixture on over the table. The gauzy morning sun filtering through the snow outside didn’t do much to illuminate the room. The single bulb from the light over the sink created shadows across his face, revealing the cut of his jawline, the straight line of his nose, the unsettling darkness of his eyes.

Suddenly she wasn’t thinking how sexy he was, how some wild, bad side of her would like it if she could just spread him on a cracker and eat him up. She was thinking instead about how she wanted to run. Far. And fast.

Even before he spoke, dread thumped, almost painful, in her veins. This wasn’t the fun soap opera storyline. It was the nightmarish one.

“I don’t know what happened to me,” he finally said. “I don’t know how I got here.”

Chapter 4

S he looked scared. Dane didn’t blame her. He was a little scared himself, and that was a little bit of an understatement.

But it was growing more and more impossible for him to ignore what appeared to be the fantastical truth. He’d gone back in time six months, to the week of Calla Jones’s murder. How? Why?

Reality stung him from every direction, and yet how could this be reality? He’d considered, for a few blind, mind-boggling moments, running away. Just…running away. He’d gone outside, in the snow. Half-dressed. Out of his head.

He had to start thinking clearly even while the world around him had rocked completely off its foundation. There was a freaking blizzard out there, and Calla Jones in here. His choices were limited, but heading for certain death in the frozen world gone mad outside this old farmhouse wasn’t the best one. He needed time. Time to make a plan.

In the meantime, he wasn’t sharing his secret with Calla Jones. Or his name. Not until he’d had time to think.

He had no idea what was going on. Yet.

Neither did he have much idea how he was going to figure it out, but it all centered around Calla Jones, didn’t it? That realization shot home suddenly, nearly sucking the breath out of his chest. His life had been destroyed the day he’d come out to her farm. She’d been murdered. He’d been blamed. Now he’d somehow ended up right back here on Calla Jones’s farm, six months earlier, where it all started.

And if whatever Twilight Zone craziness was going on rotated around Calla Jones…His nape prickled and he took a sharp breath, felt the pain. His ribs were bruised, at the very least. He was shaky, and not just from his injuries.

“You…You really don’t know who you are? No idea? Nothing?”

She was staring at him like she wanted to back up, maybe scream. Her hair, auburn-streaked, he realized now in the pale light framing her, not mere brown, was tousled—she’d been sleeping on the couch when he’d left the farmhouse. She’d slept in her clothes, he guessed. She wouldn’t have had time to change before she’d come tearing out after him.

The beat stretched between them. The gurgle of the coffeemaker and wind creaking against the farmhouse filled the space.

He avoided a direct response. “I was in an accident,” he said, remembering now that he’d told her that last night. “I don’t know what happened.” That much was true.

“I didn’t see anything out there. I didn’t see a car or anything.”

“Maybe the accident didn’t happen on the road outside your farm. Maybe I was trying to walk back to town.” Really, he didn’t know whether that was true or not. For all he remembered, it could be.

“You need to be looked at by a doctor. I can’t get you to town, and I can’t call for help. The phone’s dead in the farmhouse, and cell phones don’t work out here. Even if I could call, I doubt anyone could get up here right now. The roads are impassable when we have this kind of storm.”

Now she did back up, as if it was hitting her, again, that she was stuck with this stranger. She had to have realized that before, and yet she’d saved him last night and had rushed out again this morning after him. She was “good people,” this Calla Jones he’d been convicted of murdering. Of course, he’d known that. He’d heard her friends extol her virtues at the sentencing hearing.

“I can try to walk back to town,” he said. He didn’t want to leave, not now, not yet. He’d been thrown back in time, back to the very scene of the crime, for a reason. There had to be a reason. Nothing made sense, but that was why he had to stay.

He had to make sense of it. As much as he’d been ready to, crazily, run away in the storm moments before, now he knew he had to stay. Calla Jones was the key.

But Calla Jones was scared. He had to gamble that, bighearted person that she was, she wasn’t going to think his tromping off in the storm was a good idea.

“No, you can’t do that,” she said finally. “It’s snowing, and it’s supposed to snow harder later. It’s miles into town. You’re already suffering from exposure. You’d never make it.”

She chewed her lip, watched him worriedly from wary eyes. “I couldn’t find any identification on you,” she went on. “I did find a receipt from a dry cleaner’s in town.”

The suit he’d worn at the sentencing, right before he’d been loaded into the transport van, had been cleaned in Haven for his court appearance. The high-priced attorney that Carter Sloane, the Ledger CEO, had hired had taken care of it. Unfortunately Edward Jeffries hadn’t taken care of much else he’d needed. Like getting him off.

She watched him with those deep brown eyes of hers, eyes flecked with amber lights, scared but concerned. They were gentle and sweet eyes.

She didn’t deserve to die, not any more than he deserved to go to prison for the rest of his life. His head reeled again. It was a tall order he was setting himself up to fill, saving the both of them. And he was still in shock and having a hard time accepting this strange new reality.

He propped his elbow on the table and leaned his head into his palm, a wash of disorientation hitting him.

“Are you okay? Are you going to be sick?”

She was there, kneeling at his feet. He lifted his gaze, found hers tight on his.

He swallowed hard over the lump of dread in his throat. “I’m all right.” He had to be all right. “I just feel like I’ve been beaten up by fifty guys, that’s all.”

“My name’s Calla, in case you don’t remember,” she said. “This is Haven Christmas Tree Farm. Haven, West Virginia. It’s December 20.”

She’d been murdered on December 22. Whatever quirk of fate had given him this second chance, it hadn’t been generous with time. He had two days…

And then would it happen all over again?

Calla Jones would die and he would end up in jail? He’d come out to her farm that day, from his office in Parkersburg where Ledger Pharmaceuticals was headquartered. He’d come on routine business—an audit had uncovered a legal form misplaced from her employee records. She hadn’t even worked for Ledger for some time. She’d been in the research department, but he wasn’t aware of much more than that, nor had he been much interested. He’d arrived at the farm and next thing he’d known, he’d been knocked out. He’d woken to the nightmare of her dead body and the rest was documented in court records.

Her hand rested on his knee. She was so damn nice and pretty to boot. Why would anyone want to kill her?

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t know what I can do to help you, but you’re welcome to stay here, ride out the storm.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.” Very kind, and perhaps too innocent. Someone had come to her farm that day and killed her, possibly they’d been lying in wait when he’d arrived, taken advantage of the opportunity to set someone else up for the crime. Not that his lawyer had had much luck with any of the conspiracy theories he’d floated. The jury had bought the prosecutor’s premise that he’d had some kind of relationship with her at Ledger, putting it all down to a crime of passion despite evidence that he’d come to Haven for a specific business purpose.

There’d been absolutely no proof that he’d had any kind of affair with Calla Jones at all, no witnesses, but the district attorney had theorized that since relationships between coworkers were frowned on at Ledger, they’d kept it secret. Motive had hardly mattered, not when there was a dead body and his fingerprints all over the murder weapon. He was an outsider in a small and clannish town, accused of killing one of their own, caught seemingly red-handed. The jury had been quick enough to believe what was in front of them, evidence of motive be damned.

He’d never had a chance.

“There’s not much point being anything other than kind,” Calla Jones said now. Calla Jones, alive and well and two days from death. She removed her hand from his knee, straightened.

Oddly, he missed her touch, unfamiliar as it was. He hadn’t been touched with such gentleness in six months. He’d barely felt human touch at all, other than prison guards shackling and unshackling him, guiding him from place to place. The judge hadn’t set a bond. He’d spent six months in the county lockup waiting for trial. The murder had been too shocking. The town had been up in arms. Bail had been a hopeless dream.

“The coffee’s ready,” she added, and he could hear the nervous thread in her voice.

She was kind, but maybe she wasn’t as naive as he’d been thinking. She was scared of him, still. He’d have to break through her wariness. He needed to get to know her, to get to know why someone would want her dead. If it had been a crime of passion, as the “overkilling” suggested, who was passionate about Calla Jones? Passionate enough to shoot her not once but five times?

A minute later, she had a steaming cup of coffee in front of him.

“Sugar? Cream?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Black’s fine.”

She didn’t get herself a cup and sit down with him. Instead she headed toward the back of the house again, coming back with an armful of what looked like empty plastic milk jugs. He watched, sipping the coffee that injected sorely needed heat to his veins.

“Can I help?” He had no idea what she was doing, but he wasn’t going to sit here and let her do all the work.

And he needed to get her talking. Somehow. She was nervous around him and he needed to make her more comfortable.

His brain was starting to work. Now he just had to control the slight blast of nearly uncontainable excitement that hit him. He had a second chance. If this was real, if he really had gone six months back in time, he had a second chance.

And everything around him, including Calla Jones, seemed very real. If this was a dream, he didn’t want to wake up now.

She placed one of the jugs in the deep sink, ignoring his offer to help. “The generator’s not dependable and this storm’s predicted to go through the night, at least. We’re on well water here, and the well needs power to run.” She turned on the faucet, started filling the container. “The generator could go bad and we’ll have no power. Or the pipes could freeze. Either way, we’ll have no water.”

Dane downed the last of the coffee and rose. “Then we’ll have no heat, either. And if this is all the firewood you’ve got in the house—”

She flipped around. “There’s more stacked in the utility room, but you’re right. It’s not enough.”

“Where’s more?”

“Out behind the barn. Under a tarp. Should be pretty dry. I hope. You’re not going out there.”

“Someone has to. If the snow’s going to pick up later, now’s the time.”

Frustration etched her face. Her eyes sparked, making her even prettier. “I’m trying to get you warmed up. Going out in the cold again is not a good idea.”

“Someone has to,” he repeated. “I can always warm up again.”

She took a step toward him as if she might physically stop him.

“I said no.” She stamped her foot.

She actually stamped her foot. He guessed she wasn’t even aware of doing it.

A sudden, unexpected and truly unwanted vision of various ways Calla Jones could warm him up invaded his head. A hot trail of surprising and not-experienced-for-over-six-months sexual desire nipped at his loins.

“That was really cute,” he blurted out.

“What was cute?” She looked even more irritated.

“You, stamping your foot.”

“I did not stamp my foot!”

“There, you did it again!”

“I did not. Okay, maybe I did.” She blushed now, and that wasn’t just cute, it was sexy as hell. She swiped at her hair, brushing it out of her face. “But whatever. You’re not going outside.”

“And you’re not doing all the work here,” he countered, working on grounding himself, keeping it sane. What was he doing anyway? Flirting with her? Really, his head must still be reeling.

He couldn’t even pretend to himself that this was all part of his big plan to get close to her and figure out who might want to kill her. He’d just flat-out been enjoying himself for a second, and maybe he was feeling a little heady from the sensation of having a second chance here, but that was no excuse, either.

They were in deep trouble, both of them. Trouble Calla knew and understood, and trouble she didn’t. Trouble even he didn’t understand.

Dane stood, swaying slightly, but he was all right. Or he would be. He certainly wasn’t going to get his strength back sitting on his ass drinking coffee while she did everything.

“You’re so weak you can hardly stand up,” she started.

“I’m fine,” he promised, steadying himself. He was shaky, but he’d make it. “I want to help. And since I’m bound and determined to do it and you can’t stop me, you might as well keep filling up on water. I’ll put on that jacket out there. If you’ve got gloves and a hat, I’ll take that, too.”

“You could lose your way. I’ll go with you.”

“The generator could die anytime. You said that. We need the water, too. How long do you think it could be before the road is cleared and electricity is back on if this storm keeps up as predicted throughout the rest of today and tonight?”

“Later in the day tomorrow if we’re lucky. Maybe not till the day after. Depending on what else goes wrong along with the storm. One time when I was a kid, I was spending Christmas here with my grandfather and the storm lasted a week. There were power lines down everywhere and trees across the roads.”

Her gaze drifted to the kitchen window where snow continued to swirl the air, harder already. She chewed her lip.

“Then it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? There’s no time to waste. We need water, and we need wood. If this gets worse, soon we won’t even be able to see our way out to the barn and I can haul more wood in one trip than you can. Meanwhile, you can get the water. Divide and conquer, right?”

Dane didn’t wait for her answer, a fierce need to protect Calla driving him. Maybe too fierce to be explainable, even by the circumstances. He didn’t want to think about what was behind the strength of that feeling.

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