The dog barked a little yippy greeting at him but didn’t move from her spot at the woman’s feet.
He took off his hat and coat and hung them in the mudroom, then returned to the family room. His touching her forehead—or perhaps the dog’s bark—must have awakened her. She was sitting up and this time her eyes were finally wide open.
They were a soft and luscious green, the kind of color he dreamed about during the harsh and desolate Afghan winters, of spring grasses covering the mountains, of hope and growth and life.
She gave him a hesitant smile and his jaw sagged as he finally placed how he knew her.
Holy Mother of God.
The woman on his couch, the one he had dressed in his most disreputable sweats, the woman who had crashed her vehicle into Cold Creek just outside his gates and whose little pink panties he had taken such guilty pleasure in glimpsing, was none other than Mimi frigging Van Hoyt.
A man was staring at her.
Not just any man, either. He was tall, perhaps six-one or two, with short dark hair and blue eyes, powerful muscles and a square, determined sort of jaw. He was just the sort of man who made her most nervous, the kind who didn’t look as if they could be swayed by a flirty smile and a sidelong look.
He was staring at her as if she had just sprouted horns out of the top of her head. She frowned, uncomfortable with his scrutiny though she couldn’t have said exactly why.
Her gaze shifted to her surroundings and she discovered she was on a red plaid sofa in a room she didn’t recognize, with rather outdated beige flowered wallpaper and a jumble of mismatched furnishings.
She had no clear memory of arriving here, only a vague sense that something was very wrong in her life, that someone was supposed to help her sort everything out. And then she was driving, driving, with snow flying, and a sharp moment of fear.
She looked at the man again, registering that he was extraordinarily handsome in a clean-cut, all-American sort of way.
Had she been looking for him? She blinked, trying to sort through the jumble of her thoughts.
“How are you feeling?” he finally asked. “I couldn’t find any broken bones and I think the air bag probably saved you from a nasty bump on the head when you hit the creek.”
Creek. She closed her eyes as a memory returned of her hands gripping a steering wheel and a desperate need to reach someone who could help her.
Baby. The baby.
She clutched her hands over her abdomen and made a low sort of moan.
“Here, take it easy. Do you have a stomachache? That could be from the air bag. It’s not unusual to bruise a rib or two when one of those things deploys. Do you want me to take you into the clinic in town to check things out?”
She didn’t know. She couldn’t think, as if every coherent thought in her head had been squirreled away on a high shelf just out of her reach.
She hugged her arms around herself. She had to trust her instincts, since she didn’t know what else to do. “No clinic. I don’t want to go to the doctor.”
He raised one dark eyebrow at that but then shrugged. “Your call. For now, anyway. If you start babbling and speaking in tongues, I’m calling the doctor in Pine Gulch, no matter what you say.”
“Fair enough.” The baby was fine, she told herself. She wouldn’t accept any other alternative. “Where am I?”
“My ranch. The Western Sky. I told you my name before but I’ll do it again. I’m Brant Western.”
To her surprise, Simone, who usually distrusted everything with a Y chromosome, jumped down from the sofa to sniff at his boots. He picked the dog up and held her, somehow still managing to look ridiculously masculine with a little powder puff in his arms.
Western Sky. Gwen. That’s where she had been running. Gwen would fix everything, she knew it.
No. This problem was too big for even Gwen to fix.
“I’m Maura Howard,” she answered instinctively, using the alias she preferred when she traveled, for security reasons.
“Are you?” he said. An odd question, she thought briefly, but she was more concerned with why she was here and not where she wanted to be.
She had visited Gwen’s cabin once before but she didn’t remember this room. “This isn’t Gwen’s house.”
At once, a certain understanding flashed in blue eyes that reminded her of the ocean near her beach house in Malibu on her favorite stormy afternoons.
“You know Gwen Bianca?”
She nodded. “I need to call her, to let her know I’m here.”
“That’s not going to do you much good. Gwen’s not around.”
That set her back and she frowned. “Do you know where she is?”
“Not at the ranch, I’m afraid. Not even in the country, actually. She’s at a gallery opening in Milan.”
Oh, no. Mimi closed her eyes. How stupid and shortsighted of her, to assume Gwen would be just waiting here to offer help if Mimi ever needed it.
Egocentric, silly, selfish. That was certainly her.
No wonder she preferred being Maura Howard whenever she had the chance.
“Well, Maura.” Was it her imagination, or did he stress her name in an unnatural sort of way? “I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere tonight. It’s too dangerous for you to drive on these snowy roads even if I could manage to go out in the dark and snow to pull your vehicle out of the creek. I’m afraid you’re stuck for now.”
Oh, what a mess. She wanted to sink back onto the pillows of this comfortable sofa, just close her eyes and slide back into blissful oblivion. But she couldn’t very well do that with her host watching her out of those intense blue eyes.
As tough and dangerous as Brant Western looked, she had the strangest assurance that she was safe with him. On the other hand, her instincts hadn’t been all that reliable where men where concerned for the past, oh, twenty-six years.
But Simone liked him and that counted for a great deal in her book.
As if sensing the direction of her gaze, he set the dog down. Simone’s white furry face looked crestfallen for just a moment, then she jumped back up to Mimi’s lap.
“I’m assuming Gwen didn’t know you were coming.”
“No. I should have called her.” Her voice trembled on the words and she fought down the panic and the fear and the whole tangled mess of emotions she’d been fighting since that stark moment in her ob-gyn’s office the day before.
Gwen had been her logical refuge as she faced this latest disaster in her life. Mimi’s favorite of her father’s ex-wives, Gwen had always offered comfort and support through boarding schools and breakups and scandals.
For twenty-four hours, all she had been able to think about was escaping to Gwen, in desperate need of her calm good sense and her unfailing confidence in Mimi. But Gwen wasn’t here. She was in Milan right now, just when Mimi needed her most and she felt, ridiculously, as if all the underpinnings of her world were shaking loose.
First driving her car into a creek and now this. It was all too much. She sniffled and made a valiant effort to fight back the tears, but it was too late. The panic swallowed her whole and she started to cry.
Simone licked at her tears and Mimi held the dog closer, burying her face in her fur.
Through her tears, she thought she saw utter horror