Conception Cover-Up

With her help, he took off his long-sleeved knit shirt. Then he lay on his left side, his head against the cool pillows. He felt her draw a blanket over him.

“I’m going to get the first-aid kit.”

Caleb closed his eyes against the pounding in his head. “I’ll wait here, all right?”

“All right, big guy.”

He liked the way she said “big guy” and wondered if hearing her say his name would sound as sweet. “Caleb,” he said as a black hole started to swallow him. “My name is Caleb.”

“All right, Caleb.”

A half smile revealed a dimple in his right cheek. Shannon watched him sleep for a few minutes. Maybe he wasn’t as hard as he looked.

Or felt.

But the last thought was quickly quashed. She turned and left the room. A sensible woman didn’t think such thoughts about an injured stranger who landed on her doorstep. Even if the stranger was lying naked in her bed.

Especially because he was lying naked in her bed.

If being with Tony had taught her nothing else, it had taught her that she was better off being sensible. The roller coaster of their life together had left her at the bottom, hurt and disoriented. She had no intention of getting on that ride again. Its effects were devastating.

Retrieving the first-aid kit from the living room, Shannon returned to find Caleb dozing against the pillows. The quilt had fallen down around his waist, revealing his bare chest. Shannon’s breath caught. Broad, tanned, with a black mat of hair, his chest revealed that he was indeed a big strong man. A spurt of longing went through her, in spite of her earlier resolve to be sensible. He looked solid, down-to-earth, the kind of man who would walk through hell to protect a woman, the kind to hold that woman forever.

She turned away abruptly. She had no right to be looking at the man as anything other than someone hurt and in need. Just because she hadn’t had much human contact since she’d lost Tony didn’t mean she should turn this man into a romantic fantasy, even if he was tall, dark, dangerously attractive and mysterious as the night.

Shannon walked back to the foot of the bed. He’s a stranger, she reminded herself deliberately. Once the storm was over, he would go back to his own life, leaving her to her solitude. That was the way she wanted it, and that was how it would be.

Caleb opened his eyes and smiled wryly. “I can’t seem to stay awake.”

Hardening her heart against his vulnerability, Shannon moved around the bed to his right side and set the first-aid kit down on the quilt. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal,” she said stiffly. “It’s only natural your body should want to rest and recover.” God, she thought, I sound like some frightened schoolmarm. The man could barely stay awake. What did she think he was going to do to her?

Caleb’s eyelids drifted shut again.

Shannon frowned, worried a little about his sleepiness. She’d done enough research on the subject of concussion to know she mustn’t let him sleep long.

His eyes opened suddenly. “What ordeal?”

Shannon raised a brow. His question had bordered on suspicious, which seemed a strange reaction. “You mentioned a landslide. Don’t you remember it?”

He gazed at her for a moment as if trying to read her mind. “It all happened so fast.”

His answer unsettled her a little. It sounded like the truth, yet she sensed something more was going on. She thought about questioning him, then decided against it. The man had been banged around so much he probably didn’t have any idea what he was saying. Besides, it didn’t really matter to her, anyway.

She turned her attention to his arm. “I’m going to clean this and put some antibiotic ointment on it. I’ll try not to hurt you.”

Caleb nodded. “Do what you have to. I really appreciate everything you’ve done. A woman alone, you could have left me out on the doorstep.”

“Well, it did cross my mind,” she admitted, venturing a smile.

She looked at the deep red groove on his upper arm. Suddenly she didn’t feel like smiling.

What had she done? What kind of man had she taken into her home? Only one thing could have made a wound like that.

A bullet.

She stepped back from the bed. “Who are you?”

His light-blue eyes showed bewilderment. “What’s wrong?”

Shannon glared at him. “You didn’t receive that cut in any landslide. That wound came from a gun. Someone shot at you and grazed your arm. Now, I want to know who you are and what you’re doing in these hills.”

Chapter Three

The fact that Shannon was more angry than afraid intrigued Caleb. A woman alone in a remote cabin, a wounded stranger collapses on her doorstep. Turns out he’s been shot. It would be only natural for her to feel fear at her discovery. But the angry flush on Shannon’s cheeks showed nothing of the kind. He wondered why.

Hands on hips, Shannon glared at him. “I’d like an answer, Caleb, or whatever your name is.”

She was really something. It took guts to question a stranger when there was a very real possibility he could be dangerous. Because of that, his first instinct was to reassure her. His second told him that reassuring her couldn’t be his first priority. She might be gutsy and gorgeous, but she was still an unknown quantity.

“Well?” she said impatiently.

Time for some fast thinking. He’d already made the mistake of giving her his first name, but that didn’t mean he had to tell her the last, or his reason for showing up on her doorstep bloody and torn, beyond the landslide.

He’d learned in his undercover work that the key to successfully hiding your identity was to keep as close to the truth as possible. “My name is Caleb Joseph,” he said, using his middle name. “A friend and I were visiting a cabin up here.”

“In the middle of one of the worst winters this area has known?”

He shrugged off her suspicion. “We didn’t know the hillside was going to fall down on us.”

“I can imagine,” she said dryly. “So what were you doing up here?” She glanced at his arm. “Hunting?”

The horror that filled her gaze brought an immediately denial. “Of course not!”

He realized his mistake just as her eyes narrowed.

“Dammit, I should have known. You’re a cop, aren’t you?” The conclusion seemed to raise her ire even more.

He regarded her with genuine surprise. “What makes you say that?”

“The lack of detailed information in your answer. And the fact that you have a bullet wound, yet you weren’t hunting. Either you’re a cop or you’re a criminal.”

Good deduction, he thought. Convincing his hostess that she had nothing to fear without revealing his identity was going to be harder than he thought. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but the gunshot wound was the result of a ricochet, just some guys doing target practice.” He thought it better not to mention that he was the target. “And I work in computers.” Everything he’d said was the truth, as far as it went.

She still looked skeptical. Time to try a different tack. “I have to say I’m a little surprised by your earlier reaction. Most people would be thrilled to find out they had a cop collapse on their doorstep, rather than some criminal on the run.”

“I’m not most people,” she snapped. “One was enough.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And you are not some dweeb from Silicon Valley, so cut the bull.”

“A man can work in the computer industry and not be a dweeb,” he countered, doing his best to sound offended.