Wanted Woman

He had a half dozen leaning against the bare living-room wall waiting to go to the framer for the exhibit. She limped over to them, staring at one and then another.

“How about coffee?” he offered, uncomfortable with the way she continued to study his work as if she were seeing something in the paintings he didn’t want exposed.

He couldn’t decide if she liked them or not. He wasn’t about to ask. He had a feeling she might tell him.

While she’d been studying the paintings he’d been studying her. As she shrugged out of her jacket, he saw that she wore a short-sleeved white T-shirt that molded her breasts and the muscles of her back. She was in good shape and her body was just as exquisite as he’d thought it would be beneath the leather.

But what stole his attention was the hole he’d seen in the jacket just below her left shoulder—and the corresponding fresh wound on her left biceps. He’d seen enough gunshot wounds in his day to recognize one even without the telltale hole in the leather jacket.

The bullet had grazed her flesh and would leave a scar. It wasn’t her first scar though. There was another one on her right forearm, an older one that had required stitches.

Who the hell was this woman and what was it about her?

“These are all yours,” she said, studying the paintings again. It was a statement of fact as if there was no doubt in her mind that he’d painted them.

“I have tea if you don’t like coffee.”

“Do you have anything stronger?” she asked without turning around.

He lifted a brow behind her back and went to the cupboard. “I have some whiskey.” He turned to find her glancing around the cabin. Her gaze had settled on an old rocker he’d picked up at a flea market in Portland.

“That chair is pretty comfortable if you’d like to sit down,” he said, as he watched her run her fingers over the oak arm of the antique rocker.

She looked at him as she turned and lowered herself into the rocker, obviously trying hard not to let him see that her ankle was hurting her if not the rest of her body. Maybe nothing was broken but she’d been beat up. Wait until tomorrow. She was going to be hurtin’ for certain.

He handed her half a glass of whiskey. He poured himself a tall glass of lemonade. The whiskey had been a housewarming gift from a well-meaning friend in town. He’d given up alcohol when he’d decided it was time to settle down. He’d seen what alcohol had done for his old man and he’d never needed the stuff, especially now that he was painting again.

He watched Maggie over the rim of his glass as he took a drink. He’d made the lemonade from real lemons. It wasn’t half-bad. Could use a little more sugar though.

She sniffed the whiskey, then drained the glass and grimaced, nose wrinkling, as if she’d just downed paint thinner. Then she pushed herself to her feet, limped over to him and handed him the glass. “Thank you.”

“Feeling better?” he asked, worried about her and not just because of her bike wreck.

“Fine.”

He nodded, doubting it. He wanted to ask her how she’d gotten the bullet wound, what she’d been doing on the highway below his place at three in the morning, where she was headed and what kind of trouble she was in. But he knew better. He’d been there and he wasn’t that far from that life that he didn’t know how she would react to even well-meaning questions.

“I promised you ice,” he said and finished his lemonade, then put their glasses in the sink and filled a plastic bag with ice cubes for her ankle. “And a place to lie down while I take a look at your bike.” He met her gaze. She still wasn’t sure about him.

He realized just how badly he wanted her to trust him as he gazed into those brown eyes. Like her face, there was something startlingly familiar about them.

She took the bag of ice cubes and he led her up the stairs, stopping at his bedroom door.

“You can have this room. The sheets are clean.” He hadn’t slept on them since he’d changed them.

“No, that one’s yours,” she said and turned toward the open doorway to the screened-in deck. There was an old futon out there and a pine dresser he planned to refinish when he had time. “I’ll sleep in here.”

He started to argue, but without turning on the light, she took the bag of ice and limped over to the screened windows, her back to him as she looked out into the darkness beyond.

Fetching a towel from the bathroom, he returned to find her still standing at the window. She didn’t turn when he put the towel on the futon, just said, “Thank you.”

“De nada.” He was struck with the thought that if he had been able to sleep he would never have seen her accident, would never have met her. For some reason that seemed important as if cosmically it had all been planned. He was starting to think like his future sister-in-law Charity and her crazy aunt Florie, the self-proclaimed psychic.

He really needed to get some decent sleep, he concluded wryly, if he was going to start thinking crap like that. “There are sheets and blankets in the dresser and more towels in the bathroom.” He would have gladly made a bed for her but he knew instinctively that she needed to be alone.

“About my bike—”

“I think I can fix it,” he said. “Otherwise, I can give you and the bike a lift into Eugene.”

She turned then to frown at him. “You’d do that?”

He nodded. “I used to travel a lot on my bike and people helped me. Payback. I need the karma.” He smiled.

Her expression softened with her smile. She really was exquisite. For some reason, he thought of Desiree Dennison, the woman he’d seen driving the red sports car that had hit Maggie. “I can also take you in to see the sheriff in the morning. I know him pretty well.”

“Why would I want to see him?” she asked, frowning and looking leery again.

“You’ll want to press charges against the driver of the car that hit you.”

She said nothing, but he saw the answer in her eyes. No chance in hell was she sticking around to press charges against anyone.

“Just give a holler if you need anything,” he said.

Her gaze softened again and for an instant he thought he glimpsed vulnerability. The instant passed. “Thank you again for everything.”

My pleasure. He left the bathroom door open and a light on so she could find it if she needed it, then went downstairs, smiling as he recalled the face she’d made after chugging the whiskey. Who the hell was she? Ruefully, he realized the chances were good that he would never know.

MAGGIE HURT ALL OVER. She put the ice down on the futon and limped closer to the screened window. The night air was damp and cool, but not cold.

She stared out, still shaken by what had happened on the dock, what she’d learned, what she’d witnessed. She’d gotten Norman killed because she’d called Detective Rupert Blackmore.

Below, a door opened and closed. She watched Jesse Tanner cross the mountainside to a garage, open the door and turn on the light. An older classic Harley was parked inside, the garage neat and clean.

She watched from the darkness as he went to the truck, dropped the tailgate, pulled out the plank, then climbed up and carefully rolled her bike down and over to the garage.

For a long moment he stood back as if admiring the cycle, then slowly he approached it. She caught her breath as he ran his big hands over it, gentle hands, caressing the bike the way a man caressed a woman he cherished.

She moved away from the window, letting the night air slow her throbbing pulse and cool the heat that burned across her bare skin. She told herself it was the effects of the whiskey not the man below her window as she tried to close her mind to the feelings he evoked in her. How could she feel desire when her life was in danger?

She’d been running on adrenalin for almost thirty-six hours now, too keyed up to sleep or eat. Her stomach growled but she knew she needed rest more than food at this point. She could hear the soft clink of tools in the garage, almost feel the warm glow of the light drifting up to her.

She took a couple of blankets from the chest of drawers. Wrapping the towel he’d left her around the bag of ice, she curled up on the futon bed, put the ice on her ankle and pulled the blankets up over her.

The bed smelled of the forest and the night and possibly the man who lived here. She breathed it in finding a strange kind of comfort in the smell of him and the sound of him below her.

She closed her eyes tighter, just planning to rest until he was through with her bike, knowing she would never be able to sleep. Not when she was this close to Timber Falls. This close to learning the truth. Just a few more miles. A few more hours.

Tonight on the highway when the car had pulled out in front of her, she’d thought at first it was Detective Rupert Blackmore trying to kill her again.