Bad Nights (3 page)

Yeah, he remembered that. It wasn't pleasant, but it gave him a sense of reality. It must have been in the U.S. Or perhaps Mexico because half the guys had spoken Spanish. Well, not Mexican Spanish. Cuban Spanish. Weird how he recalled that detail.

Maybe those memories brought him up to a year ago. Trying to remember more, he shifted his body, wincing as skin and bones moved against the hard floor.

How the hell had he gotten into this shape?

He must have taken a job. Something dangerous. But what was it, exactly?

He clenched his teeth, remembering pain as men punched him, burned him, beat him with a cane while a low, controlled voice spoke to him.

“You lied to me.”

“No.”

“No more lies. Who are you?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Who sent you?”

They were questions that he hoped he hadn't answered.

But there was something else. Something he had to remember now. Something dangerous that was going to happen. An attack? Maybe, unless he was making it up.

He scrambled to remember, but it was simply gone.

His mind snapped into the present as the woman came back into the room, and he watched her through slitted eyes. Well, through the eye that wasn't swollen shut. This time he was better able to take her measure.

She was medium height with dark blond hair worn straight and chin length. Her slender figure was covered by jeans and a long-sleeved knit shirt. Running shoes completed her fashion statement. Her breasts were medium-sized. Her hips narrow. And her blue eyes were filled with concern. Her lips parted as though she was getting ready to speak to him.

She came down beside him on the floor. “You're awake,” she said in a soft voice as she pressed her fingers to his cheek.

He liked her touch. It was the softest thing he had felt since forever.

When he didn't speak, she said, “I saw you watching me.”

No use pretending he was still out cold. He made a grunting sound.

“What happened to you?”

She'd saved him. Maybe he owed her an explanation. Or was she like the Afghan villagers—pretending to be his friend? He guessed he'd find out.

His mouth was so dry he could barely speak, but he managed to say, “I don't know.” It was only partly a lie. If he remembered more than the flashes that had come to him, he wasn't going to tell her. The knowledge would put her in danger. In fact, he thought with a flare of coherence that being close to him now was as risky as playing with a stick of dynamite.

Some of what he was thinking must have showed on his face.

“What?”

He tried to push himself up and fell back against the floor. “I need to get out of here.”

She dragged in a breath and let it out. “You can't be serious.”

“Perfectly serious.”

“You were just unconscious. You're… injured. It's pouring rain. You're naked. You're not going anywhere.” The last part was said with finality like a teacher informing a student of the classroom rules and giving no options.

To prove her wrong, he tried to get up again. Although he was panting from the effort, he couldn't even get to a sitting position. Unfortunately, she was correct; he wasn't going anywhere until he got a little stronger.

“I brought you some water.”

Her words made him zero in on the terrible thirst he'd tried to ignore.

When she reached to ease him up, her touch was gentle. Still, he struggled not to groan as she got him to a sitting position, resting his back against her front with the blanket draped across his lap. When she lifted a cup of water to his lips, he drank eagerly before she took the cup away.

“Better take it slow.”

He didn't protest. He knew that if he drank too much, he'd probably throw up.

“What's your name?” she asked.

“Jack.” He didn't volunteer more, partly because he wasn't sure of his real name.

“I'm Morgan Rains.”

“You came outside with a gun,” he said as pictures flashed in his mind.

“I keep it for protection. Since my husband was shot by a burglar.”

The clipped explanation told him she wasn't going to say any more about the weapon. Or her personal life.

“I'm going to put some salve on your burns.”

He said nothing, because he was in no position to object.

Morgan still held the man in a sitting position, his back cradled against her front. Picking up the tube of burn salve, she reached around him so that she could unscrew the cap and set it on the floor.

She spread some of the salve on her fingers, then eased him forward so that she could stroke the ointment onto the angry red circles on his back, feeling his firm skin slide beneath her fingertips. Ministering to him like that was much too intimate. She should have brought a tissue to use.

But she wasn't going to get one. The best thing to do was just to finish this and let him rest because that would help him mend.

When she'd taken care of his back, she eased him down to the tarp again and adjusted the blanket.

“I should get you a sheet.”

“This is fine.”

His eyes were closed as though he was trying to distance himself from her as she kept working on him. And she understood why.

They were two strangers, yet she was touching him as a woman might touch a lover. And working on his broad chest with its covering of dark hair was more intimate than treating his back. Then there was the rest of him.

She stole a quick look at his face, relieved that his eyes were still closed as she pulled the covering down, then squeezed out more salve. Some of the burns were close to his penis, and she bent her head to hide her face as she soothed on the salve. She hadn't stared at a lot of penises this close up. His was long and thick. Bigger than Glenn's.

She grimaced at that inappropriate thought. What did the size of his penis matter? She wasn't going to make love with this guy.

She pushed the sexual speculations out of her head. As quickly as she could, she finished with the salve and pulled up the blanket, covering him again. Maybe if she put some clothes on him, she wouldn't have to think about his body. She'd come up here to get Glenn's clothing out of the dresser and the closet. Although Jack No-Last-Name was taller than her husband and a bit leaner, the size wouldn't be too far off.

But she was pretty sure that the effort to dress him was more than he needed now.

“Thanks,” he murmured, the weariness in his voice confirming her assessment.

“Get some rest.”

“Don't have much choice,” he mumbled.

She thought he was going to sleep when his good eye blinked open. “Keep the gun with you.”

“Why?”

“They're looking for me.”

“Who?”

“Guys you don't want to meet.” He kept his gaze on her for long moments, and she saw the concern in his eyes.

“Maybe you'd better tell me about them.”

“Can't,” he whispered.

“Did you do something illegal?”

He hesitated for a moment, then answered, “No.”

She didn't like that hesitation. What had he been doing that he thought was against the law?

“You'd better tell me.”

He made a low sound. “Just push me out the door again, and you won't have to worry about it.”

It was an audacious suggestion under the circumstances, but apparently the exchange had drained away his strength. She listened to the sound of his breathing change and knew he had drifted off to sleep again. Although she was relieved that he was getting the rest he needed, their conversation had unsettled her. He'd said men were looking for him. Bad men, she assumed. Did that mean she had to stand guard all night?

Or she could simply call 911 and let someone else decide what to do with him.

But before she did anything else, she'd better eat something, or she was going to fall over.

As the options for dinner ran through her mind, she made a dismissive sound. Once she had loved to cook. She'd learned the basics from her mother and continued her kitchen adventures after she'd graduated from college. She'd met Glenn in her first year of graduate school. One of the early things they'd discovered was that they both loved creating great dishes and sharing them.

They'd enjoyed paging through ethnic cookbooks for recipes to try. Then they'd shopped together and commanded the kitchen together.

Their first triumph had been a great paella, followed by beef paprikash, crème brûlée, the sugar topping caramelized with a blowtorch, chocolate lava cake, lobster bisque. She smiled as she remembered some of their kitchen adventures, then sobered. The fun had evaporated from cooking when her husband had been taken from her.

For the past year, eating had been something she did to keep up her strength because she had to go to work and make a living.

Not that she didn't like teaching, she added hastily. Too bad it wasn't the same when there was no one at home to share her victories with—or to listen to her complaints when the head of the psychology department made his power plays.

Glenn had been an engineer working for an aerospace company. Men with that background didn't necessarily want to discuss abnormal psychology. But he'd been different. He'd listened when she'd talked about the fine points of diagnosing mental illness or the pros and cons of behavior modification versus medication. He'd even given her some insights into aberrant behavior by discussing his colleagues at work.

She smiled as she recalled some of their discussions, then snapped back to the present as she opened a kitchen cabinet and began searching for something appealing.

Why was she thinking about the past now? Because a man was in her house for the first time since Glenn had died? She hadn't sought out a relationship with anyone, even the men who had made it clear that they were interested in her. But none of them had measured up to Glenn. Not in her estimation.

Clenching her teeth to reinforce her resolve, she reached for a can of pea soup in the cabinet next to the sink. Just as her fingers closed around the cylinder, a gust of wind shook the house. Setting the can on the counter, she turned to the window and saw trees swaying wildly. A loud thud nearby told her one of them had gone down. She was just thinking she was lucky the house hadn't been hit when the lights went off.

Fumbling in the dark, she found a flashlight in the utility drawer and clicked it on, grateful that the batteries were okay. With the light in her hand, she ran into the living room. Jack No-Last-Name was still lying on the floor, dead to the world. The nearby crash hadn't even made him crack an eyelid.

Her next stop was the phone, where she picked up the receiver and found the line was dead. And she knew her cell phone wouldn't do her any good. She'd intended to charge it when she'd arrived here, but she'd forgotten.

Which meant that she was stuck. Even if she'd wanted to turn her visitor over to the cops or have him transported to the hospital, that was impossible now.

Once again, possibilities chased themselves through her head. He could be hiding his identity because he was a criminal. But she suspected he was trying to keep her from getting involved in whatever had happened to him.

She looked down at him for long moments, then knelt beside him and pressed her hand to his jawline. His skin felt warm but not hot. He didn't stir when she touched him. He'd been on alert earlier, but he was deep in sleep now. Was that dangerous? Like, what if he had a concussion? Too bad Dr. Rains didn't have a medical degree instead of a PhD.

Back in the kitchen she put the soup back into the cabinet and took out a box of crackers, then some sliced cheese from the refrigerator. After putting the simple meal on a plate, she carried it to the living room and set it on the end table beside the wingback chair where she'd been sitting before Jack had stumbled into her woods. Now the chair and everything around it felt like they'd been transported to another reality.

Munching on the cheese and crackers, she shined the beam around the room. The light fell on the simple furnishings that her mother had bought years ago, and nobody had felt the need to update. The low maple coffee table. The sofa with its faded chintz slipcover. The familiar picture was marred by the unconscious man lying near one wall, and the gun she'd set on the end table.

When she finished eating, she brought one of the coal oil lamps from the pantry and lit the wick. It seemed weird trying to go about her normal life with a guy sprawled on the floor, but what was she going to do? Sit and stare at him?

Instead, she sank back into the chair where she'd been watching the videos and picked up the book of seventeenth-century American literature that one of the women in the English department had recommended. It fell open to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet, a remarkable woman who had sailed to the Massachusetts Colony with her husband in 1629. Married at sixteen and the mother of eight children, she'd found time to write and publish a four-hundred-page book of her verse.

Morgan had marked one of the poems: “To My Dear and Loving Husband.”

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

Maybe it wasn't as eloquently phrased as a Shakespeare sonnet, but her eyes misted as she read the lines. Once she could have boasted the same thing. Not now. Not ever again because hers had been an extraordinary partnership in an age when couples got married and divorced with alarming regularity. She'd had a match to last a lifetime. Too bad Glenn's life had been cut short at thirty-two.

With a jerky motion, she stood and walked to the window, trying to see something. It was too dark, but she could hear the wind blowing the tree branches. Too bad she hadn't already called the police and turned over her problem to them. It might be storming outside, but that wouldn't have stopped the cops from driving out here.

And why did she want to get rid of Jack? Because she was afraid of him? Or because his big cock had fascinated her?

The deliberately crude phrasing made her snort. Just because he had a big cock didn't make him a good lover. Her study of sexual functioning had taught her that some men with superior physical equipment assumed that they didn't have to do much to please a lover besides shove their dick inside her.

Shocked by the path her mind was wandering into, she returned to the chair. Tomorrow she'd find out what had actually happened to her guest. Maybe she could even drive him out of the area. Then she'd be finished with him, and she could comfort herself that she'd done the best she could under difficult circumstances.

She picked up the book of poetry again, but instead of reading she leaned back in the chair again, thinking she needed to relax. She'd just close her eyes for a moment, she thought as she let her body sink into the cushiony chair. That was a mistake. As soon as she gave into fatigue, she was lost to the world.