He knew he shouldn’t move her. But she was clearly freezing. Now was not the time to confront her about any claims she had made to Deedee. He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around her.
She looked as if she planned to protest his act of chivalry, but when he tucked his coat around her, he could clearly see the warmth seduced her. She snuggled inside it instead. She looked innocent, about as threatening as a wounded sparrow.
Stripping away any censure he felt about her claims of extraordinary power, he said, “Can you move your hands? How about your feet? Can you turn your head from side to side for me?”
“What are you? A doctor?” Despite the protest, she tested each of her body parts as he named it.
He touched the ugly-looking bump rising above her right eye. She winced.
“You’re not lucky enough to have conjured up a doctor. You’ll have to work on your conjuring a little. I’m an architect. Luckily, I have a little construction site first aid experience.”
As he had hoped, at the mention of his profession—oh, those professional men were so trustworthy—her wariness of him faded, though annoyance at his conjuring remark had turned her green eyes to slits that reminded him of Charlie.
He picked the flashlight out of the mud and shone it in her eyes, looking for pupil reaction.
“Tell me about your cat,” she said, swatting at the light.
“So you can send him energy?”
“Why are you here, if you’re so cynical?”
He felt a shiver along his spine, similar to what he had felt when he passed under the ark sign. What if he hadn’t come along when he had? Would she have lain in the mud until she had hypothermia? Would the horses have trampled her?
But he was certainly not going to let her see that for a moment he was in the sway of an idea that some power he did not understand might have drawn him here at the exact moment she needed him.
Ridiculous. If such a power existed, where had it been the night Becky had needed it?
He actually saw Nora flinch, and realized he had grimaced. It no doubt gave him the pirate look that Deedee had seen earlier.
Keeping his tone level, Brendan said, “I’m here as the result of a comedy of errors. I thought I was on my way to a legitimate practitioner of animal medicine.”
“With your cat.”
He nodded.
“You don’t really look like a cat kind of guy.”
“No? What do cat kind of guys look like?”
She studied him, the eyes narrow again. “Not like you,” she said decisively.
“So, what do I look like? A rottweiler kind of guy? Bulldog? Boxer?”
Her look was intense. If a person believed that energy crap, they would almost think she was reading his. He raised the light again, shining it in her eyes, hoping to blind her. He was not sure he liked the sensation of being seen.
“You’re not a dog kind of guy, either.”
Accurate, but not spookily so.
“In fact,” she continued, “I’d be surprised if you even had a plant.”
Okay. That was about enough of that.
“I never said it was my cat.” He turned off the light and put it in his pocket. “I don’t think your back is injured, so I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the house.”
“You are not picking me up! I’ll walk.” She tried to find her feet, and glared at him as if the fact that it was his jacket swimming around her stopped her from doing so. “If you’ll just give me your hand—”
But Brendan did not just give her a hand. It wasn’t the jacket. The small effort of trying to get up had made her turn a ghostly white, the freckles and mud standing out in stark relief. So he ignored her protests, slid his arms under her shoulders and her knees and scooped her up easily.
She was tiny, like that wounded sparrow, and despite the barrier of his jacket, he was aware of an unusual warmth oozing out of her where he held her against his chest.
Was it because it had been so long since he had touched another human being that he felt an unwelcome shiver of pleasure?
UNEASILY HOLDING A beautiful stranger in his arms and feeling that unwanted shiver of something good, Brendan Grant was aware it was what he had wanted to feel when he had purchased the car. Just a moment’s pleasure at something. Anything. With the car, he had not even come close.
He should have already learned stuff could never do it. An unwanted memory came, of standing in front of the house he now owned, with Becky at his side, thinking, This is the beginning of my every dream come true.
“Put me down!”
Nora’s hand, smacking hard against his chest, brought him gratefully back to the here and now.
“You couldn’t even stand up by yourself,” he said, unmoved by her tone. “I’ll put you down in a minute. When I get you to the house.”
Her expression was mutinous, but she winced, suddenly in pain, and conceded with ill grace.
He strode to the house. The woman in his arms was rigid with tension for a few seconds, then relaxed noticeably. He glanced down at her to make sure she hadn’t passed out.
Wide green eyes stared up at him, defiant, unblinking. If ever there were eyes that could cast a spell, it would be those ones!
Just as he got close the porch light came on, illuminating the fact that Deedee had grown tired of waiting, had exited the passenger seat of the car and was feebly trying to wrestle her cat carrier out of the back.
A boy, at that awkward stage somewhere between twelve and fifteen, who also had ginger hair like Charlie’s, exploded out the front door of the cottage, and the woman in Brendan’s arms squirmed to life.
His architect’s mind insisted on filling in pieces of the puzzle as he looked at the boy: too old to be hers.
“Put me down,” she insisted, then shook herself as if waking from a dream. “Honestly! I told you I could walk.”
The boy looked as if he had been sleeping, his hair flat against his face on one side and sticking straight up on the other. But he was now wide-awake and ready to fight.
“You heard her,” he said, “put her down. Who are you? What have you done to my aunt Nora?”
Not his mother. His aunt.
The boy dashed back into the house and came out wielding a coat rack. He held it over his shoulder, like a baseball bat he was prepared to swing. His level of menace was laughable. Brendan was careful not to show that he had rarely felt less threatened.
Still, he couldn’t help but admire a kid prepared to do battle with a full-grown man.
Brendan closed his eyes, and was suddenly aware he didn’t feel the weight of new cynicism. Instead he was acutely aware of how the sweet weight in his arms and the woman’s warmth were making his skin tingle. He was aware that the air smelled of rain and rose petals, and that those smells mingled with the clean scent of her hair and her skin.
Two and a half years ago, in the night, a phone call had changed everything forever. He’d been sleepwalking through life ever since, aware that he was missing something essential that other people had. That it was locked inside the tomb, and that even if he could have rolled the rock away, he was not sure that he would.
And now, another middle of the night