The Stranger and Tessa Jones

He put up a hand. “Tessa.”

“Hmm?”

“Leave a man a little damn dignity, will you?”

She stopped in midstep. “Have it your way…Bill.” She turned her back, giving him at least a show of privacy, as he shuffled his way to the bed, got in and arranged the covers over himself.

“This is your room, isn’t it?” he asked when he was settled.

She faced him with a nod. “I have a spare sleeping area, but it’s a loft. No way was I dragging you up the stairs. Not good for you, way too much work for me.”

“I’m sorry to put you out of your room.”

“Couldn’t be helped. And if you want to show you’re really grateful, get well.”

“I’m working on it.”

“You do seem better.”

“I am. Is there a remote for the TV?”

“In the nightstand drawer.” She was leaning in the doorway again.

He opened the drawer and took out the remote and pointed it at the TV, which came on to a commercial of a woman in an evening dress mopping a kitchen floor. “Local news?”

She told him the channel. He switched to it and got the weather report. A sexy brunette stood in front of a Doppler-radar map of the western states. “This is a bad one, folks. A blizzard for the record books. The front is slow-moving, which means it will be hanging around over the northern Sierra, dumping up to eight feet of snow before it’s over…”

Tessa said, “Funny about the weather report. Half the time it’s nothing you couldn’t learn by looking out the window.” And she left him.

He sipped more water and waited for the rest of the news, which came after the weather, the blizzard being the main event.

The second story had him sitting up straighter: a Learjet had crashed in nearby Plumas County, in a snowy field not far from the intersection of Highway 49 and Gold Lake Road. The business jet, owned by a Texas-based company called BravoCorp, had been en route to the Bay Area, and blown off course by the storm.

He was reasonably certain the highway that went through North Magdalene was Highway 49. Although he couldn’t recall when or how the trucker had picked him up, he remembered the ride. More or less. There had been a sign, hadn’t there, one that said it was Scenic Highway 49?

His heart pounded faster to match the ache in his head as he waited for a picture of the face he’d seen in the bathroom mirror to flash on the screen, to hear his real name, and that they were looking for him.

But then the pretty, sincere-sounding newscaster said the pilot, copilot and single passenger had miraculously all survived the crash and were hospitalized in fair-to-critical condition…

All present and accounted for. His pulse stopped galloping and the throb in his head diminished. If he’d been in a crash, it hadn’t been on that particular plane.

The news continued. No stories of car crashes or men in clothing inappropriate for freezing weather going missing somewhere in the Sierras. If anyone was looking for him, they hadn’t managed to get it on the news.

He flipped channels for a while. There weren’t many of them. Eventually, he gave up and turned it off. He put the remote on the nightstand and dozed.

After the stranger in her bedroom managed to make it to the bathroom on his own, Tessa decided that checking on him every fifteen minutes was probably overkill. She looked in on him at 7:00 p.m. and again at 7:30. That second time, after he’d been asleep for a while, she crept in to turn off the light and ended up standing by the bed, gazing down at him. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

In the light that bled in from the hallway, she studied his face. It was a very handsome face, square-jawed, with a cleft in the chin and a blade of a nose. His mouth had a certain sexy, tempting curve to it. His hair was black as night and thick, the kind of hair any normal woman would want to run her fingers through. The white bandage on his forehead stood out against his tanned skin. He needed a shave. But the shadow of beard on his sculpted cheekbones only made him look more handsome. More masculine…

Bill, he’d called himself. She felt her lips curve in a smile at the thought. The man was a whole other kind of Bill from the one who had dumped her for a showgirl.

She turned off the light and tiptoed out the door, where Mona Lou was waiting for her, looking slightly puzzled as to why there was a strange man in her human’s bed. Tessa knelt and gave the dog a scratch right where she liked it, in the folds of her neck. She pressed her cheek to Mona’s warm, short coat and whispered, “Don’t worry, everything’s fine.”

The dog let out a low whine and wagged her stumpy tail in response.

In the kitchen, Tessa dished up wet food for both Mona Lou and Gigi. Then she made herself a sandwich and ate in the great room with the TV on, changing the channels, looking for a news bulletin about a tall, blue-eyed, black-haired man who’d gone missing in the Sierras wearing lightweight slacks, a buff-colored jacket and a cashmere sweater.

There was no bulletin. She cleaned up after her meal and went back to her chair in front of the TV. With Gigi cuddled up beside her and Mona stretched out at her feet, she switched channels some more, looking for news of the stranger. She wished she had the Internet—her service was dial-up, no good with the phone dead. Only last summer, North Magdalene had gotten broadband service. She should have switched over, but somehow she’d never gotten around to it.

After checking on her patient again and finding him sleeping, she tried to read. It was hard to concentrate. She was worried about him.

He seemed to be doing pretty well—clear-headed when awake and enjoying normal sleep. But he’d been comatose for hours in the afternoon. According to her FamilyMedical Guide, extended unconsciousness after head trauma was not a good thing. The book advised calling an ambulance when a head trauma victim passed out. He might have a subdural hematoma, blood on the brain. And if he did have one of those and it was acute, even with treatment, which he was not getting, he could die.

The book also said that, as she’d suspected, she shouln’t have moved him. She should have covered him and made him as comfortable as possible where he was and then waited for professional help. Too bad the book didn’t say what to do when you were stuck in a blizzard with the phone line down.

The phone. Maybe it had come on again.

She checked. Still dead.

He’s fine, she kept telling herself. He’s going to be fine.

And then she would stew over how he’d told her nothing about himself except that she should call him Bill. He hadn’t mentioned who might be worried for him, who might be wondering where he’d gone off to and if he was okay.

She had a feeling he didn’t know who he was.

Amnesia. It was one of the symptoms—along with headache, unconsciousness and mental confusion—of acute subdural hematoma. Amnesia. She reached for the medical guide again and looked up the scary word. The book said there were several different types of memory loss. It could happen from emotional trauma. Or head trauma—which it was obvious he’d had.

Then again, maybe he knew exactly who he was. Maybe he was just a closed-mouth kind of guy. Or maybe he had done something…bad. Something he was keeping—along with his identity—strictly to himself.

Maybe he had some other totally valid reason to keep who he really was a secret. She just couldn’t believe he had evil intent. He seemed a good man.

Didn’t he?

How could she tell? How could she know?

Look at Bill Toomey. Tessa groaned and shook her head. The tour bus driver had not been her first romantic disappointment. She had to admit that she wasn’t any great judge of male character. The Bill in her bedroom could be a bad man. Or a good one. He could be hiding something—or simply have forgotten who the heck he was.

Wait, she thought. Why think the worst? The man in her bedroom had been grateful and respectful. And polite. He’d done nothing to make her think ill of him. Until he did something out of line, she would believe in his basic decency and leave it at that.

She went in to check on him at 10:20. He was sleeping peacefully. She took her cell out with her when she left the room.

In the great room, she dialed her dad’s number. Nothing. Feeling slightly frantic, she tried the kitchen phone again. Silence.

She was alone with the stranger and she’d better get used to it. There was no need to panic. He was going to get well. After all, he had been sleeping normally when she checked on him—or at least, she thought he had.

No. Think positive. She knew he had. He was getting better. She was certain of that.

He started shouting at 10:45 p.m.