DAN HAD ALWAYS BEEN a light sleeper, even more so now that he had the full responsibility of his children. Anything was enough to rouse him, the trace of a cough from Josh, or Chris’s soft whimper during one of her nightmares.
Now he awoke and lay staring at the ceiling, wondering what had disturbed him. There was no sound from the small bedroom next door, and Ellie always slept like a log once she switched off her light.
Still, he had a sense of something alien in his house, a sort of menacing whisper drifting on the silent night air.
There!
He heard it again, the soft creak of a floorboard, a distant muffled sound coming from the direction of the kitchen.
Dan slipped out of bed and moved quietly toward the door. When he reached the hallway, he could see the soft glow of light from the open fridge. A quick glance confirmed that Chris and Josh were both sound asleep in their bunks. Through the living-room window he could see the covers mounded over Ellie’s body.
Then another muffled scrap of sound drifted along the hallway. Dan’s skin prickled, and the hair rose on the nape of his neck. Soundlessly he took a baseball bat that one of the children had left leaning on the arm of the sofa and crept toward the kitchen door. Flattening himself against the archway, he peered in.
What he saw made him suck in his breath and grip the bat tightly in his hands.
A ragged, filthy urchin knelt by the open door of the fridge, wearing torn dark clothes and a baseball cap. Moving with clumsy haste, the boy seized food and piled it onto one of Dan’s heavy work shirts, spread on the floor.
The intruder was so intent on his task that he seemed unaware of any danger. Dan felt a rising anger at this invasion. He stepped into the kitchen just as the thief sprang to his feet and stared, wild-eyed with terror.
Brandishing his bat like a club, Dan gripped the boy’s arm, then looked down in alarm as the kid seemed to faint in his grasp, crumpling slowly to the floor.
By the light spilling from the open refrigerator, Dan realized several things. The slender arm he held was badly gashed and swollen. The pain he’d inflicted when he gripped it had apparently caused the boy to pass out.
Slowly Dan also realized the thief wasn’t a boy at all, but a young woman in a torn jogging outfit. She was filthy and covered with caked blood from many scratches. Her face had a vaguely familiar look, though her hair was matted and dirty, and her features shadowed under the ball cap.
He knelt beside her, automatically putting the food back in the fridge while he kept watch on her, then tugged off the cap to get a better look. When her eyes fluttered open and she stared up at him, he remembered where he’d seen her.
It was the woman whose picture had been in the newspaper, the heiress from San Antonio whose car had plunged off a cliff and into the Claro River the day before.
She tried to scramble to her feet, but Dan grasped her shoulders. Clearly too weak to fight, she subsided, head drooping, and whimpered in terror.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sniffling. “I was so hungry, and my arm hurts.”
Some of Dan’s anger ebbed, but he continued his grasp of her shoulders. “Why didn’t you just knock on the door? I would have been glad to help you.”
“I can’t…” Her head drooped again, and he could see her chin began to tremble.
“What?” he asked.
“I can’t let anybody see me.” She looked up again with passionate entreaty. “Please don’t call the police. Please, I’m begging you, just let me go. I promise I won’t bother you again.”
“I can’t let you go,” Dan said. “What will you do? Your clothes are in shreds, you’re obviously half-starved and that arm needs some medication right away. Of course I’m going to call the police.”
The woman struggled frantically in his grasp. “No!” she cried. “If you do that, he’s going to find me!”
“Who’s going to find you?”
Her face had drained of color and her lips were blue. She seemed completely irrational. “He’ll get to me for sure this time,” she said. “Even my father is on his side now. Nobody believes me when I try to tell them what he’s like. Please, please, don’t let any of them near me. Oh, God, I’m begging you, please…”
Her voice trailed off and she fell heavily against him. Dan held her in his arms, looking down at her with concern.
She was groggy but still conscious, and badly in need of a wash. He put her gently on the floor, then went to the bathroom and began to run water into the tub, adding some of the bubble bath his girls liked to use. As the tub filled, he went back to the kitchen, helped the woman to her feet and supported her down the hallway.
He knew this was probably crazy, bringing a strange woman into the house with his children. Especially one who seemed to be in some kind of danger. But he was moved in spite of himself by her fear, and the fragile look and feel of her body.
In the bathroom he paused awkwardly, looking down at her pale, scratched face.
“Can you manage in here on your own?”
She nodded jerkily and began to fumble with her tattered clothes. After a moment she forced a grimace that he recognized as a smile. “That bath looks like heaven,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful.”
“Well, believe me, this place isn’t heaven,” Dan said grimly, standing on the tiles and looking at the welter of plastic toys on the tub ledge.
Still, he was moved by her courage, and felt a sudden lump in his throat. “Look, I’ll bring a chair and sit in the hall just outside the door,” he told her. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
He left hastily, carried a stool from the living room and set it near the closed door, then listened in silence to the muffled series of small splashes as she lowered her body into the tub.
“Are you all right?” he called in a loud whisper, taking care not to wake the two children who slept just across the hall. “Is the water hot enough?”
“It’s lovely,” she answered. “Thank you so much. I could stay here forever.”
“Stay as long as you like.”
After a few more minutes of silence, followed by a lot of hearty, reassuring splashes, he heard the sound of the woman hauling herself from the tub. Suddenly she uttered a soft cry of distress.
Dan hurried into the bathroom to find her leaning against the wall and clutching a towel loosely around her body. She seemed unsteady and very pale, swaying on her feet.
Dan supported her with one arm, grabbed the towel and wrapped it tight again, but not without catching a fleeting glimpse of her nakedness.
Though cut and bruised, her body was lovely, with long slim legs, a slender, tapering waist and high, firm breasts. She had a golden tan except for the skimpy bikini patches across her nipples and around her hips.
Angry at himself for looking, even so briefly, he turned away and stared grimly at the wall. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you manage on your own now?”
“I think so,” she said from behind him. “I just felt so…so dizzy for a minute right after I got out of the water.”
“I’ll find you some clothes,” he said.
Dan went into the adjoining room to get one of his shirts and a pair of boxers, then handed them through the partly opened door, setting them on the hamper.
“Thank you,” she said from within the room, her voice already sounding a little stronger.
Dan hovered anxiously near the closed door and was relieved when she said, “All