Enigma

“Trust me, the hospital was the last place I needed to be.” He leaned back against the headrest and fought the weariness. What he needed more than anything at the moment was a chance to regain some strength and then he needed to try to contact his twin brother.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” she asked as she turned down a tree-lined residential street. “How can you know somebody is after you? You’ve been in a coma for the past six months.”

He raised his head and looked at her, wondering how much he should tell her. As little as possible, he decided. “I just know,” he replied and couldn’t help the weary sigh that escaped him.

“You’re exhausted. You have no business being out of bed,” she exclaimed. “And I should have my head examined for having anything to do with all this.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your head,” he replied. “Willa, you just have to trust me.”

“How do you know my name?” She cast him a quick sideways glance and then focused back on the road.

“The same way you know mine. The same way I knew I was in danger. It’s complicated.”

She turned into the driveway of a neat ranch house and with a press of a button the garage door rose. She pulled in to the garage, then unbuckled her seat belt and turned to look at him, the only illumination the light from the garage-door opener in the ceiling of the garage.

“Are you crazy or am I?” she asked softly.

“You’re the most sane person I’ve ever known,” he replied. “Can we get inside?” He was irritated to realize he felt slightly faint.

“Of course.” She got out of the car and hurried around to his door to help him out. Once again he found himself leaning heavily against her as they walked through the door that led into a cheerful kitchen.

“On the sofa,” she commanded as they walked through the kitchen and into the living room. She guided him to the overstuffed navy sofa, where he collapsed.

“Lie down,” she said and went over to a desk where she grabbed a blood pressure cuff. “I want to check your vitals.”

“I’m fine. I just need to get my strength back.” He plucked at the gown he wore. “And I need to get some clothes.”

She said nothing as she took his blood pressure and then checked his pulse. As always he found her simplest of touches not only familiar and comforting, but also more than a little bit provocative.

He thought of what they’d shared hours earlier when he’d invaded her dreams. Hot. And wild. They’d moved together in perfect unison. It had only been a dream but it had been one of the best experiences of his life.

As she stepped back from him he noticed the faint pink of her cheeks, as if she, too, was remembering her dream. “Your vitals are all good.”

“I feel fine. I’m just incredibly tired.”

“I’ll get you a pillow and blanket. You need to rest and then in the morning you’re going to answer some questions.” As she left the living room and went down the hallway, he felt her fear, this time not just for him but of him.

She returned a moment later carrying a sheet, blanket and pillow. He stood as she efficiently made the sofa into a bed for him for the night. When she was finished he sat back down. “Willa, you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’d never hurt you. Your voice, your touch, was what pulled me through the darkness.”

Her eyes searched his as if she could find all the answers to her questions there. “We weren’t sure you’d make it back. When they first brought you in we didn’t think you’d last through the night. But I hoped …” She let her voice trail off and again her cheeks filled with color.

“I know, and it was your hope that made the difference.” He knew his words pleased her. He also knew that the connection she’d felt for him had been more than patient and nurse.

In a perfect world he would have loved to explore the crazy connection they shared. He would have loved to pursue a normal relationship with her, but this wasn’t a perfect world and he wasn’t a normal man.

“There’s a twenty-four-hour discount store two blocks from here. I’ll go now and pick up some clothes for you,” she said. “Will you be okay here alone for thirty minutes or so?”

“I’ll be fine, but shouldn’t you get some sleep?” he asked.

“Right now I’m too wound up to sleep,” she replied.

“I’ll get you some things you need and then we’ll figure everything else out in the morning.”

“Willa, thank you.”

For the first time since she’d walked into his hospital room she smiled and it was just as he’d imagined—warm and inviting and lovely. “Don’t thank me yet. I still think that sometime between the time I left work and the time I walked back into your room I went completely and totally crazy.”

She walked back into the kitchen and he heard her grab her purse from the counter, then a moment later the sound of the garage door opening and then closing.

Jared listened to the sounds of the house, so different than the noise in the hospital. Rest. He needed to rest and get his strength back as quickly as possible. The men who were after him wouldn’t just go away.

Somehow they’d figured out that the John Doe in the hospital in Grand Forks was the man they sought. They knew he was in the area and he wouldn’t be safe until he could get far away and even then safety was just a desirable fantasy. Why it had taken them so long to find him, he wasn’t sure. But now that they had, they wouldn’t give up.

Willa. Thoughts of her jumped back into his mind. He’d told her the truth when he’d said that she’d been what had brought him through the darkness of the coma. He’d not only looked forward to her gentle touch and the pleasant scent of her perfume, but also the sound of her voice as she spoke to him and her thoughts that were both exciting and interesting in their very normalcy.

He would have loved to pursue something with her, something deep and meaningful, something hot and wild and like nothing he’d ever experienced before, but he was afraid for her. He brought nothing but danger to her and he couldn’t forget that.

He closed his eyes and wondered if he would ever be safe, if he would ever know what normal felt like.

THREE O’clock in the morning and she was in a store getting clothes for a man who had just come out of a six-month coma and insisted bad men were after him. She had to be out of her mind.

Willa pushed the shopping cart toward the men’s jeans section and hoped she guessed his size right. She could have waited until morning to do this, but she’d needed to get away from him for a few minutes and besides, she hadn’t wanted to see him in the morning with that skimpy butt-baring hospital gown. “And what a fine butt it is,” she muttered as she grabbed two pair of jeans that she thought would fit him.

Was he really in some kind of danger or was he delusional? she wondered as she headed to the T-shirts. She tossed a packet of three T-shirts in different colors into her basket and then frowned as she thought about underwear.

Boxers or briefs?

Briefs.

A gasp escaped her. It was definitely his voice she heard in her head. It was as if he stood next to her in the store and whispered in her ear.

And it wasn’t the first time he’d been inside her head. She grabbed a packet of briefs off the shelf and then hurried toward the checkout.

She felt as if she’d stepped into the middle of some sort of science-fiction flick. The only problem was the movie was halfway over and nobody would explain to her what she’d missed.

She’d never really believed in psychic abilities like mental telepathy and precognition. She never looked up in the sky for UFOs or worried about seven years of bad luck if she broke a mirror.

She was rooted in reality, with no flights of fancy, and yet she knew with an unsettling certainty that somehow he was able to communicate with her inside her head.

Had the dream been real? Had he somehow really been with her in her bedroom, made love to her through some sort of spirit world?

Her cheeks burned with her blush as she paid for her purchases. Funny, she didn’t even consider paying with a credit card because she knew charge card transactions could be traced. She’d already half bought in to his assertion that somebody evil was after him.

She had just gotten into her car and started the engine when her cell phone rang. She jumped and grabbed it from her purse and looked at the caller ID. It was the hospital.

Play dumb. Please, don’t tell. The words thundered in her head.

She shut off the car engine and drew a deep breath. “Don’t worry,” she said dryly. There was no way she could say anything about what happened. Jared would potentially be put in danger, but she’d definitely lose her job and be locked up in a mental ward.