It seemed there would be no rest for him until he acknowledged her. Maybe if he opened his eyes—just for a moment—she’d go away. He forced his lids apart, then groaned when light assaulted his pupils, causing an eruption of pain inside his head.
He glared at the woman leaning into his face. This was her fault. She’d nagged him out of the tranquil darkness and brought this pounding to his temples. All in all, he thought it would be better if he went back to sleep.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “Wake up and tell me your name. I want to know you’re all right before I leave you here.”
Leave him where? Suddenly he realized that he hadn’t the faintest idea where he was. He opened his eyes again and tried to ask, but the results of his attempt at speech were pathetic. Sounded like a bullfrog had mistaken his tongue for a lily pad. The woman touched his face. Her hand was cool. Soft. Felt good. Too bad about her face, though. It kept …changing. Four eyes, then three, then four again. They were rather pretty eyes. Blue. Or maybe green. However many of them she had.
He allowed his own to close again, welcoming the relief of the darkness. The light was too painful to deal with for now.
“Sir? Before you go to sleep again, isn’t there someone you’d like me to call? Your family, perhaps?”
His family? Did he have a family? Funny—at the moment, he couldn’t remember. Probably because the pain drowned out everything else. It seemed so much easier to slip away from it. He allowed himself to do just that.
“He’s out again.” Serena sighed and sat back in the straight chair beside the wounded man’s bed. She was alone in the small hospital room with him, and she glanced at her watch, thinking of the hour that had passed since he’d been brought to the hospital by ambulance, with her following in her own car. The stranger had drifted in and out of consciousness several times, but never fully enough to really consider him awake.
She’d missed her morning meeting, of course. She simply hadn’t been able to abandon this poor guy until she was reassured that there was someone who knew or cared where and how he was. He’d had the misfortune to be brought in at almost the same time a bus full of teenagers returning from a church-sponsored field trip had run off the road and into a ditch on the way home. None of the passengers was critically injured—broken bones and abrasions the most severe consequences of the accident—but the little hospital was in chaos with hysterical adolescents and parents crowding the hallways. Her stranger, as she’d taken to calling him until she had a better name for him, had been examined, pronounced in fair condition except for a concussion and left in this room until one of the overwhelmed small staff had time to deal with him more fully.
Serena knew she had no obligation to sit by his side, since she had done no more than find him in a ditch and summon help for him, but something kept her there. That overdeveloped sense of responsibility of hers, most likely. It seemed like most of her life was spent doing things she felt obligated to do, rather than things she truly wanted to do.
She was becoming concerned about his continued unconsciousness. Sure, he was wired to all sorts of monitors and such, but was anyone really keeping a close eye on him with everything going on outside this room? She could hear an overwrought parent shouting down the hall, demanding attention for his daughter even as an exasperated nurse tried to assure him that someone would be with him as soon as possible. The guy sounded like Red Tucker, Serena thought with a wince, pitying the poor nurse. Everyone knew Red had a temper that matched his nickname, and a severe patience deficiency to boot.
As if the noise outside had disturbed his fitful sleep, her stranger muttered something, bringing Serena’s attention back to him. She studied his face curiously. Though presently disfigured with swelling and bruises, she would bet his features were usually quite handsome. His hair, when clean and styled, was probably a rich gold, and the eyes she had seen so briefly were a bright blue. He was slim and fit, probably in his early thirties—only a year or two older than herself, she would guess. His hands were well-tended, except for the abraded knuckles that indicated he’d fought back when he’d suffered the vicious beating that had landed him here. His nails were clean and neatly trimmed. She doubted that he’d ever done much manual labor.
He wore no watch or other jewelry, had been dressed only in a ripped pullover and a pair of jeans, had carried nothing in his pockets and had worn no shoes or socks. If robbery had been the motive for the vicious beating, his attacker had taken nearly everything. She didn’t recognize this man and neither had anyone else who’d seen him so far, which was unusual for such a small community. So where had he come from? What had he been doing on the side of a gravel road that led nowhere outside of this off-the-beaten-path little Arkansas town?
Someone opened the door behind her. She expected to see a doctor or a nurse when she looked around, but discovered Dan Meadows walking in, instead. “I wondered when someone would get around to calling the police,” she murmured.
“’Evening, Serena,” the chief of police said. He showed no surprise at seeing her there, which meant he’d already talked to someone outside. “Heard you found a wounded stray behind your house.”
She tucked a strand of her chin-length brown hair behind her ear and nodded. “He was in the ditch beside Bullock Lake Road. My sister’s dog got out of my yard and I was chasing him when I found this man lying facedown in the grass.”
A tough-looking, slow-talking man in his mid-thirties, Dan crossed the room with his trademark rolling amble and studied the man in the bed. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Neither have I. I have a feeling he’s not from around here.”
“Got any other hunches you’d like to share with me?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I can’t imagine what he was doing there. There was no ID on him—or anywhere around him in the ditch. I looked.”
“Looks like someone beat the hell out of him.”
“Apparently. Dr. Frank said he has a concussion, a few broken ribs, a badly sprained wrist and several painful cuts and bruises.”
“Stitched up his head, did they?”
“He had a deep cut to the scalp at his right temple. It took six stitches to close it.”
Dan nodded, still looking at the man on the bed. “Has he been awake?”
“Not for more than seconds at a time. I thought he was waking up a few minutes ago, but he drifted off again. They’ve pumped him full of antibiotics and who knows what else. I suppose the drugs could be affecting him.”
“More likely the concussion. LuWanda said she’d be in to check on him as soon as she gets Red Tucker calmed down. I’d better get out there and help her. Nothing like a hospital full of panicky parents to keep everyone hopping.”
“Thank God none of the students was seriously injured.”
“Yeah. My niece was on that bus,” Dan admitted with a grimace. “Scared the stuffing out of me when I heard about it.”
“Polly’s okay?”
“She’s fine. Got herself a bloody nose and a black eye, but she’ll be okay once she gets over the scare.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yeah. By the way, your scoop girl’s out there making a nuisance of herself. Want me to send her in to keep you company?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Let Lindsey do her job.”
“Asking all the parents how it feels to almost lose a child in a bus accident? Hell of a job, if you ask me.”
Dan had never made any secret of his opinion of the reporters who worked for the Evening Star, the newspaper Serena’s great-grandfather had started, and which she now owned through a set of circumstances that still bewildered her. Before she could defend the importance of the press to him—for perhaps the thousandth time—an