“Ye’ll have to hold on better than that.”
She did look up then, just as a particularly heavy gust of wind caught her back and had her clutching at his bare shoulders, her nails digging into his chilled skin. He found himself grinning and couldn’t, for the life of him, have said why. “Better. Now up ye go.”
He gripped her hips, trying not to note how trim she was, how lithe, as he bent his knees and lifted her up and more or less heaved her onto the bank. She grappled at the slick ground, scrabbling for a hold so she didn’t slide back down again. He reached up and caught her foot and gave her an extra shove, sliding her chest deep across the grass and mud.
She grunted a little, but continued fighting for purchase, finally finding it and immediately climbing to her feet. She wobbled for a moment, but quickly regained her balance. She looked out and around into the dark of the storm, then looked back at him.
She wasn’t close enough to read her expression, but Tristan could tell from the coiled tension in her body that she was thinking of running. Where to, he had no idea. Was she so afraid of him still? He had a flashback to the look on her face when he’d knifed the canvas roof. Perhaps from her perspective, he wasn’t exactly a friendly face.
But before he could say anything to calm her down or reassure her—what that would have been, he had no idea—she turned back to him.
“Can I help you?” she said, yelling over the roar of the wind.
So. Well, then. He didn’t know what to make of her.
“I’m fine,” he said, then set about making his entirely graceless exit from the gully waters, which almost included the loss of what little modesty he’d managed to preserve during his rescue effort as he dragged himself up the slick bank. Mercifully he found purchase before his boxers were scraped clean off him. An instant later she was on her hands and knees in front of him, grabbing at his wrists and pulling with all she had.
The leverage was unexpected, and he’d just found a toehold and shoved with his feet. The end result was that he catapulted up the slope and knocked her clean to her back. Landing square on top of her.
She grunted, surprised by the impact, then turned her face to look directly into his. “Well,” was all she said.
Again, his lips quirked. “Aye.”
He rolled off her, managing to catalogue just how her body had felt beneath his despite the brief contact, not to mention the complete inappropriateness of such a thing. “Are ye okay?”
She sat up. “Define okay.”
He laughed. “Come on. I’ve got dry clothes and a warm house just down the lane.” He rolled to his feet and extended a hand.
She crawled to a stand without taking advantage of his offer. She started to brush herself off, then shook her head at the useless effort. The rain continued to beat at them and the wind snatched at her clothes and hair. “Th-thank you,” she said, stuttering a little as she began to shake. Whether from the aftershock from the accident itself or the chilling effect of the water, he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter.
“I mean ye no harm. I live just down the lane and saw your brake lights streak across my front window. My family owns this property, far as you can see. I manage it. I’ll take you into the village first thing. Beyond that, you’re just going to have to trust me. There’s nowhere else to go and it’s no’ safe standing out here any longer.”
She studied him for a moment, then, crossing her arms across her chest, she looked back at the gully and her mostly submerged car.
“We’ll get it pulled out tomorrow.”
She nodded, rubbing her arms and shivering. She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked back at him. “Okay.”
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
She shook her head.
He paused, then turned and led the way at a trot. She stayed behind him, but said nothing else. He glanced over his shoulder every couple yards to make sure she was keeping up with him and hadn’t had a change of heart and bolted across the field.
A minute later he was opening his gate and motioning her to the rear of the house. “Mud room,” he shouted over the wind.
She didn’t even hesitate, but put her head down and scurried around back. He matched her pace, both reaching the door at the same time. “I have a dog,” he told her as they hunkered down. “Excitable, but friendly. Jinty is her name.”
She just nodded with a jerk of her chin, shivering and shifting from one foot to the other while Tristan opened the door. He went in first, mostly to run interference. He corralled the dancing Jinty and herded her through the mud room door into the kitchen. “You can say hello in a moment,” he told her, then closed the door between them, much to her whining dismay. “Sorry,” he said, turning back to his guest.
She was standing in a growing puddle, looking anywhere but at him. An odd one, he thought. Forthright one moment, shy the next. He supposed being wrecked, stranded, almost drowned, then stuck in a strange man’s house was likely enough to put anyone a bit off their stride, and decided to withhold further judgment. He pulled a towel from the pile and handed it to her. “Start with this,” he instructed, “and I’ll go see what I can round up in the way of dry clothes.”
It was only then that he noticed her gaze had tracked to the pile of wet, muddy clothes he’d already left on the floor earlier. Which then led him to slowly glance down at himself. Och, Christ. And here he’d been thinking her a loon for not being able to rescue herself from her own car. In all the while he’d been freezing his balls off out there, not once had he stopped to think of the picture he was presenting. He’d been focused on getting her out safely and nothing more.
He shot her a quick smile as he snatched a towel from the shelf and wrapped it around his hips. “Perhaps I should see about dry clothes for us both. I apologize for my lack of modesty, but I’d just come in from the fields, caught in the same storm, and peeled out of that muddy pile. When I saw your car head into the gully moments afterward, it seemed best to make haste.” He didn’t bother to mention he’d been even less appropriately clad during his initial rescue attempt. Likely she’d seen him run bare-assed down the lane, anyway. Too late to worry about that now.
She’d wiped her face and arms with the towel he’d given her, and was presently wrapping the dry end around the length of her hair and squeezing the extra water out. All with her gaze carefully averted. But now she looked at him. “I’m sorry I’ve been so uncooperative and seemingly ungrateful. I’m not, really. I just thought you were ...” She let the words trail off, obviously—if the slight color returning to her cheeks was any indication—realizing that whatever she’d been about to say might come off as less than gracious.
“A loon,” he provided, easing her discomfort. He smiled as he took the wet towel from her hands and offered her another dry one. “Dinnae fash yerself,” he told her. “You can hardly be blamed for drawin’ that conclusion, now can you?” He scrubbed at his own hair and let his smile ease into a grin.
For a moment there, he thought he saw her lips twitch, but she was still shivering and trembling, so it was hard to tell. “Enough chatter,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment. Use all you need,” he said, motioning to the pile of worn, frayed towels stacked on the shelf next to the washer. “Those are for cleanup and the like, but they’re fresh washed.”
“Th-thank you,” she said, her lips a bit on the bluish side. “I do really appreciate this.”
“Not a problem.” He slipped out of the room and headed swiftly to his bedroom, Jinty dancing at his side the whole way. “Aye, we have company. And I’ll expect you to be on your best behavior.” He realized he sounded almost jovial about the prospect, which wasn’t like him in the least. But there was no denying the bedraggled woman intrigued him.
He gave Jint a quick scratch, then opened his closet doors and frowned. Jeans, trousers, work pants, a few pairs of summer shorts. There wasn’t much in the way of anything that would fit her smaller frame. He rooted about and finally dug out a pair of dark-
blue cotton drawstring pants that he’d had for ages but rarely wore. He grabbed a sweatshirt down from the shelf, then thought to toss an old Hagg’s Pub t-shirt on the pile as well. A quick dive into his dresser produced a pair of heavy socks. “That should do. Come on,” he said to the dog as he headed back out. “Might as well greet our new guest.” Whose name, he realized, he hadn’t bothered to ask as of yet.
He returned to the washroom to find her still standing right where he’d left her, except she’d taken off her one shoe and was standing on several smaller towels in an effort not to drip any more water onto his floor than necessary. Both of them were covered with grit, grime, and mud. A shower was mandatory, but he didn’t feel right asking her to strip down in here. “Follow me—I’ll show you to the guest room. There’s a bath, fresh towels, and soap. Not sure on shampoo, but I’ll check. Take as long as you like.”
“I don’t want to track muck through your house,” she said, and it struck him then that she was American. He’d been so caught up in the rescue process, he hadn’t really paid attention to her accent.
“Och, no worries. This auld place has suffered far worse the last few hundred years and fared well enough. It’ll survive a bit of grit and grime.” He smiled. “Or a bit more, I should say.” He gestured to his own less-than-shiny-clean self. He didn’t wait for her to argue. He opened the door and let the dog romp into the room. She set to racing circles around his guest, tail whipping back and forth.
“This is Jinty, my sheep dog and all-around companion.”
His guest didn’t shy away from the dog at all, quite the opposite. She immediately reached for Jinty’s ears and gave her a good scratch. “Hi, there. Good girl.”
Jinty all but preened, quite pleased with the attention. Tristan found himself warming even more toward his guest.
“You’ve a friend for life now,” he told her. “Come on, follow me.” He steered her through the kitchen, into the living area, and turned the opposite way from his own rooms. “Guest room is here,” he motioned. “Bathroom in here.” He opened the door and stuck his head in. “I think you have what you need. Take as long as you like. I’m going to the opposite end of the house and take a shower myself. Make yourself at home when you’re done. I’ll find something for us to eat once we’ve scraped ourselves clean.”
He held open the door and she scooted past him. She was a head shorter than he, and even with muck and mire, or maybe because of it, he found himself drawn to the unusual angles of her face. She had shadows beneath her eyes and hollows beneath her cheeks. Somehow he doubted those were just the result of this evening’s adventures. Her eyes reflected a fatigue that went far beyond a single, difficult night.
“Thank you,” she said. “I won’t take too long.”
“I’ve a water heater at both ends of the house, so take all you need. No hurry.” He smiled. “It’s no’ like we have anywhere we have to be.”
She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach very far. He couldn’t recall ever seeing someone who looked so ... weary. Soul-deep weary.
He put the pile of dry clothes on the small towel stand beside the tub and left her to it. But even as he stood under the stinging spray of his own hot shower, he couldn’t erase those eyes from his thoughts. It made him wonder what she’d been doing out here after all, racing around the countryside in that little death trap of hers. Maybe he’d been too quick to assume. Had she been running toward something? Running away?
Of course, he had no idea. But he couldn’t look into those eyes of hers and make himself believe she’d just been happily out and about, only to find herself suddenly stuck in a storm burst.
No, there was a story behind those eyes.
He’d always been drawn to landscapes, wanting to capture the energy of nature in all her glory with nothing more than a pen or brush. But something about his guest made his fingers twitch with the need to draw, to sketch those eyes, that face, to ferret out her secrets and find a way to convey them to paper so as to have more than his memory to call upon when he thought about her.
He shook his head at the folly of that and turned his face toward the spray of water. One night. Then she’d move on. She wasn’t going to linger under his roof.
If only he could be so certain she wasn’t going to linger any longer in his thoughts.
Chapter 5
Bree carefully stepped into the high-sided, claw-foot tub and pulled the circular shower curtain around her. She groaned in deep appreciation the instant the hot water hit her skin. I might never come back out of here, she thought, as all the accumulated tension from the past several hours eased out of her muscles.
And if she stayed in the shower forever—or at least till morning—there was the added bonus of not having to face her rescuer again tonight.
She shivered a little, only this time it had absolutely nothing to do with being stuck in bone-chillingly wet clothes. Or no clothes, which is what he might as well have been wearing. Jesus. She had to stop thinking about him. She closed her eyes and ducked her head under the spray. But that only served to allow his image to pop up, fully formed and quite detailed, in her mind’s eye.
Out in the dark, in the storm, he’d looked like nothing more than a crazed lunatic.
However, standing in his mud room, with nothing more than a towel wrapped around his lean hips and a grin on his handsome face ... well ... She twitched a little as she ran the washcloth over her breasts and belly, sensations that were definitely pleasurable as they skated across her skin. Dangerous thoughts, Bree. But, dear Lord, who wouldn’t have X-rated thoughts about a man like that? With those dark eyes, that long hair, a hint of a beard shadowing his jaw, and a bottom lip just made for nibbling on ... not to mention the accent. Seriously, with the accent. He was every woman’s Scottish hero fantasy come to life. He was certainly hers, anyway. The man cut quite the arresting figure, even in a towel.
She started vigorously scrubbing at her arms and legs. She was the one who should be arrested. She had no business thinking anything remotely of that sort about him. He’d raced out into a dangerous storm to rescue her, and what had she done but scream and beat at his hand with her shoe. Lord, but he must have thought her a completely brainless twit. She realized now, of course, what he’d been so wildly gesturing at. No wonder he’d looked so fierce and wild. Trying to rescue a woman who was drowning in a damn convertible.
She dropped her chin and let the water beat on her back and neck. She’d always thought she’d be calm and collected in the face of crisis, but no, she’d completely lost it. So what if she hadn’t slept in days and was a little strung out? No excuse for the total loss of anything resembling common sense. She’d apologized to him, but of course that was hardly enough, considering.
She could offer him a monetary reward for his heroics, but something told her he’d reject that out of hand as a matter of pride, and might even be insulted. She’d have to figure out something. Just as soon as she found the energy to get out of this heavenly, steamy shower.
She massaged shampoo into her scalp and worked it through her hair, trying to focus on a plan of attack for tomorrow. She’d need another car, she’d have to decide whether or not to contact Dana, or anyone else, and let them know she was all right. She’d intended to do that once she found a place to stay—she didn’t want anyone to worry. Not that she’d planned to tell them where she was, just that she was fine. She just wanted to drop out for a while, find someplace where nobody knew her, and be left alone to figure things out. But there had been no signal anywhere—then the storm had whipped up.
And once again, her thoughts drifted back to him. To his broad, sculpted chest, the scattering of hair dusting the taut skin, arrowing down his flat belly in a nice little line that went straight to—she cut herself off before she could think of how indecently his soaked boxers had molded to his body. He might as well have been naked, as she pretty much knew the contour of what lay beneath. And ... well ... she definitely needed to stop thinking about that.
Not that it helped. Her rampant thoughts merely hopscotched to that moment he’d gripped her hips and heaved her up onto the bank. Granted, there was nothing remotely sexy about being shoved face first into mud and muck ... but that hadn’t negated for one second her surprise at his easy strength. He’d barely exerted himself. And those hands ... she remembered being surprised they weren’t broad and rough-hewn, as the rest of him would indicate. Long, tapered fingers ... almost elegantly refined ... and yet they’d dug into her hips with surprising confidence and power.
She absently slid her hands over her body again, then realized what she was doing and abruptly went back to rinsing the rest of the suds from her hair. With everything that had happened to her over the past year and a half, it wasn’t any surprise she had lacked any kind of intimate companionship. Not that it wasn’t available. As even a minor, flash-in-the-pan celebrity, she’d had guys all but throw themselves at her. She just hadn’t wanted to catch any of them. Their motives were all suspect now. Besides, she’d been so overwhelmed with the whirlwind her life had become, that despite the fact that she’d long since grown tired of crawling into a hotel bed alone at the end of another exhausting day, it wasn’t like she had anything left to devote to a relationship of any kind. And one-night stands were not for her.
All she’d wanted lately was to crawl into a cave somewhere, nurse herself and her creative spark back to life ... and write. Write something all for herself. With no expectations, no pressure, no deadline.
Ha. Fat chance.
But it was nice to know she had enough of something left inside herself to react at all to the rather virile charms of her rescuer. Any other time in her life, she might even entertain a few impure thoughts of just how she could pay him back for his troubles. She snorted and rinsed the last of the soap from her skin. Yeah, right. Worn out, beaten down, and recently hysterical, she was just certain he was all but drooling at the chance to have her. Not that it really mattered one way or the other. She might be world-traveled now, having hobnobbed with celebrities and even dined with royalty. But when it came down to being a woman, she was still a small-town librarian from Mason, Missouri. And while not entirely the embodiment of the tight-bunned, and even tighter-assed cliché long associated with her profession, she was hardly a wanton, either. This was the first time that it had actually bothered her, though.
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