The Loner And The Lady

Or did she just want Seth?

He was back with her juice. “You haven’t finished your soup.”

“It’s delicious, but my appetite is a little off.”

He studied her, then took the almost empty bowl away. “All right. But you’re looking tired,” he said in his definite way. Bossy. “You need some more rest.”

“I’m not sleepy, Seth. I’ve slept for most of the past forty-eight hours.”

“You were unconscious for fifteen of those hours, and you get dizzy when you try to do anything. I’m no doctor, but that sounds like a concussion to me. You need to stay in bed.”

She ignored the last statement. “What are you, then? You’re not a doctor, but you seem to know what you’re doing.”

He hesitated, then set the bowl down. “I’ve had some paramedic training. These days, though, I’m a student.” He tried to pull the covers up.

She swatted at his hand. “You are not tucking me in again. What are you studying? Medicine?”

“No. They don’t offer medical degrees through correspondence courses.”

Correspondence courses? “Yet you think you can boss me around.” She tipped her head to one side, pleased when it didn’t feel as if it were going to fall off. “I know. You’re getting a degree from The Terminator School of Nursing, right?”

“No.” But for all the terseness of his reply, his face relaxed. He was almost smiling.

Had she seen him smile? Since he rescued her and her memory started, had she once seen him really smile? She wanted suddenly, urgently, to know what he looked like when he was happy. “Ah,” she said. “I’ve figured it out. You’re embarrassed to admit it because you’re a man, but you shouldn’t be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Cooking.” She gestured at the bowl on the table beside her. “You’re taking cooking courses, and you’ve been practicing your lessons on me.”

He shook his head. His hair swung loosely around his face, and she wondered if the scarred side was as sensitive as the other, if that skin felt the tickle of hair as acutely as unmarked skin. She wanted to find out. To touch him, and learn where he was sensitive…

His thin, cleanly shaped lips almost turned up. Almost. “Not cooking or nursing.”

He liked being teased, she decided. He wasn’t giving anything away, but he liked her teasing. The knowledge sang through her veins like a heady liquor. “Magic,” she said softly.

He looked startled.

“I’ve figured out your secret. The five sides to your cabin give you away. You’re a warlock, or at least you will be one when you graduate from Dr. Faust’s Correspondence School of Magick. I’ll be able to prove it,” she added, “if I can find your gramarye.”

“My grammar?” His lips twitched. “Do warlocks worry a lot about dangling participles, then?”

“Gram-ar-ee. You know, a magician’s occult knowledge. A book of spells.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Ah, you must not read any fantasy.”

“Do you?” he asked casually.

“I—” She stopped. Blinked, and fumbled mentally through the clouds that hid her memory, and came up with handfuls of fog. “I was going to say that I used to,” she said slowly. “It was there for a minute, the knowledge that I used to read fantasy. But it’s gone.”

Thank goodness…

“But for a minute you knew,” he said softly. “That proves your memory will come back.” He supported her neck with one of his big, fascinating hands while the other urged her to lie back on the nest of pillows he’d built for her. “All you have to do is take it easy. Everything will come back in time.”

He probably thinks he won that round, Sophie thought as Seth pulled the covers back up, his hands gentle, his face far too controlled. After all, she was lying down again, resting, like he wanted.

But that wasn’t because of anything he’d done. Her own mind had distracted her after the glimpse of her past vanished back into whatever limbo it came from.

I was glad, she thought, bewildered, as Seth left on quiet feet. I was glad I couldn’t remember who I was.

What was wrong with her? What kind of person was she? She craved a man she didn’t know. And apparently she would prefer anything—or nothing—to reclaiming her own identity.

Three (#ulink_13c3d709-53a8-5505-924e-19fa4d07655e)

In the morning after breakfast, Seth excused himself to go up on the roof and check out possible storm damage since, he said, the radio had reported the passing of the storm cell that had dumped all that rain on them. His guest managed not to comment on the foolishness of a man with a bad leg climbing around on the roof. At least he didn’t seem to be limping today.

She took advantage of his absence to check something else out.

“Sophie.” She said the name out loud, weighing it on her tongue. She smiled. “Sophie,” she said again. A friendly name. Comfortable.

Her hand went to the delicate chain around her throat and the locket suspended there, with that name engraved in flowing script. She liked the feel of the dainty necklace, liked that one tangible link with her past.

Surely “Sophie” was a diminutive of some other, longer name. “Sophronia?” She had to smile at that one. Surely not. “Sophia,” she tried, but the name sounded heavy and formal, and she couldn’t summon any recognition.

She felt decidedly ambivalent about her name hunt. Part of her wanted to know. Part wanted to hide, wanted to lie here in Seth’s bed where she felt safe and curiously free.

A loud clatter overhead recalled her to what she was supposed to be doing, and she started unbuttoning the shirt she’d slept in. Seth’s trip to his roof gave her privacy to change into another of his shirts and the pair of panties that he’d washed out for her.

Why did she find the idea of Seth washing her panties more embarrassing than the idea of Seth washing her?

Sophie sighed as she drew the blue cotton down her arm. It was a nice arm, she thought. A little scrawny, maybe. Pausing with the shirt half off, half on, she made a muscle and giggled at her nonexistent biceps.

Apparently she was not into bodybuilding.

She glanced up. Continued sounds reassured her that Seth was still busy with his roof. In the bath last night she’d been so aware of Seth looking—or studiously not looking, at first—that she hadn’t especially taken note of her body herself.

Sophie slipped the shirt all the way off and looked.

Her breasts were small. Her nipples were rather large, a sort of blushy tan color, but. the breasts themselves were definitely on the small side. Oh, well. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about sagging when she got older.

She frowned. Someone had said that to her. Someone, a woman quite a bit older, when Sophie was…was…but the thought trailed into a wisp. Vapor.

Maybe she was already “older.” What an unsettling idea!

She stretched a leg out. She had pretty good muscle definition in her legs, she thought, but that didn’t give her much of a clue as to her age. A dedicated runner or aerobics teacher might stay fit and firm well into her forties.

“I don’t want to be forty,” she muttered. She wasn’t supposed to be forty. She was—well, she didn’t know, but surely not forty.