Here to Stay (Silhouette Special Edition) (2 page)

“Oh!” Emmy gave her an odd look.

“What?” she demanded softly, immediately uneasy. “Is something wrong? I thought he was doing well.”

Emmy shook her head. “He’s doing better. Come on in. I’ll introduce you.”

Puzzled by Emmy’s guarded tone, Sasha followed her into the room. The first of the two beds was empty, its linens stripped. In the second bed lay a large figure of a man, his head partially wrapped in a white bandage. His closed eyes gave Sasha a moment to study him one more time. This time, however, she was aware of him as a man, not an inert body with a battered face and limp hand.

Miles Kent’s face had been badly bruised, but under the shadows of stubble, welts and purple blotches lay the strong bones of a handsome man. His shoulders seemed to stretch the width of the bed, the right one bare and heavily muscled, the left wrapped in an elastic bandage. His left hand was hidden by the light blanket draped over his large body, but his right hand rested above the blanket, lying across his abdomen. She decided she’d better keep her interest in anatomy limited to horses and not speculate about that flat belly.

“Mr. Kent, you have a visitor,” Emmy said with quiet cheeriness. Sasha watched his long-lashed eyes flutter open. “This is Sasha Reiss, Mr. Kent. She’s the one who found you after the accident.”

Judging by the scowl on Miles Kent’s mouth, Sasha doubted he was overjoyed to have her there.

“Go on, Doc.” Emmy lowered her voice to a confidential murmur. “He’s having some trouble recalling the events, and his injuries are making him a little cranky.” Emmy grimaced. “Well, very cranky. Maybe your lovely presence will mellow him out a little. You’ve got a few minutes until the painkillers take effect.”

“Doc? My doctor?” Miles muttered in a gravelly voice.

“Not unless your name is Trigger,” Sasha told him, approaching slowly. Emmy laughed and gave Sasha a little push toward the bed. “I’m a horse doctor,” she added at his blank look.

“For all I know, my name
is
Trigger,” he growled.

Sasha cast a worried glance at Emmy, who merely winked back. “Gotta go. Press the buzzer if you need anything, Mr. Kent. ‘Bye, Sasha!”

The door whooshed shut and Sasha found herself alone with a stranger who was studying her intently. She’d place his age as mid-thirties, although with all the bruising and swelling, it was hard to tell. His eyes were hazel, she discovered. Golden hazel. For some reason, that knowledge made her glad she’d come to visit.

“You found me?” Miles asked, his voice sounding weary, rusty. She nodded. “I can’t remember.... Did you see what happened?”

“No. I’m sorry. You’d been there a while, I think. The engine was pretty cool.”

“I can’t remember anything except waking up in the ditch. How the hell could I total my car without any reason?”

“Black ice. It coats the road, fills in the cracks and grooves until the surface is as slick as a wet skating rink, and at night it’s invisible. I noticed you’re from Florida. You probably aren’t familiar with northern driving conditions. Black ice is terribly treacherous. One touch of your brakes can send you off the road. Even people who know what to expect can get caught. Some winter mornings up to a dozen cars spin off the 404. The towing companies put numbers on them, like at a coat-check counter, because they can’t handle them all at once.”

He didn’t smile at her mild joke. “This isn’t winter,” he muttered. “Is it?”

“No, it’s spring. But even without snow, there’s enough moisture to cause havoc if we get a cold snap. It makes driving like playing Russian roulette.”

His cut lips curved into what seemed to be a smile, a bitter, ironic smile, she thought. “Looks like I lost the game. The cops told me my Corvette is history.”

“But you aren’t, Mr. Kent. Isn’t that the important thing?” Impulsively she reached out to touch his shoulder in reassurance, but the way he glanced at her hand made her pull it back. This was not a man who would accept comfort easily. She hoped no one had told him that she’d been holding his hand for three days.

“Do me a favor, Doc? Stop calling me ‘Mr. Kent.’”

“But they told me that’s your name. Is there something else you’d prefer me to call you?”

“They told me that’s my name, too, and I haven’t a clue if there’s something else I’d prefer,” he growled. “If they told me I was Napoleon, I’d have to believe them.”

Sasha bit her lip and clasped her hands together. Why hadn’t Emmy told her what was going on before she put both feet into her mouth?

“Oh,” she managed to say.

“Yeah.”

“I...I’m sorry,” she murmured, wishing she had more than that inane expression to convey that she really was sorry. She raised her hands in an open, helpless gesture, then lowered them, feeling ex-tremely inadequate. She knew what to do when a client needed comforting over bad news about a horse, but she’d never encountered anything like Miles’s situation.

As if he could read her thoughts, his lips moved into a smile that had none of the bitterness of his earlier one. Despite the bruises, Miles Kent was a very handsome man.

“I can’t tell you about me until the cops get their report from Florida. So why don’t you tell me about you? Do you live around where you found me?” Without the bitterness in his voice, he sounded rather nice. Gruffly persuasive. She was intrigued.

“No. I was out on an emergency call. I actually don’t live far from here.”

“And where the hell
is
here?”

“Newmarket.”

“Newmarket.” He echoed her exact tone, as if the town’s name didn’t mean anything to him.

“Ontario? Canada?” she prompted, wondering how much he’d blanked out. “About twenty-five miles north of Toronto.”

“So they tell me. I seem to have forgotten, remember?”

She gave him an apologetic little smile. “Touché.”

“I wouldn’t fence with you, Doc,” he murmured, his eyes meeting hers in a way that sent warm tingles up and down her spine.

Sasha couldn’t think of a thing to say, clever or otherwise. All she could think of was that, whoever he was, bruises and all, Miles Kent had more than his fair share of charisma and sex appeal. She found him very attractive, more so than any other man she could think of, even though he was trussed up in a hospital bed. Not that it mattered. He’d be gone as soon as he could travel.

“You live on a farm, Doc?” Miles’s voice was starting to fade. Whatever Emmy had given him for pain was finally starting to take effect, but Sasha could see he was fighting it.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it tomorrow.”

Sasha smiled to herself. He was a very confident, assertive man, apparently used to getting his way. Even in this condition he took charge, and he probably wouldn’t take well to frustration. She could understand why Emmy had warned her that he was a little cranky. She’d be pretty cranky herself, in his situation. More than that, she’d be angry, frustrated and scared. Miles Kent also must be, she rea-soned, but being of the male persuasion, he’d probably rather die than admit it.

His eyes closed. “Right now, need sleep,” he mumbled. “‘Night.”

Ordinarily, Sasha was a toucher, and she never hesitated to stroke or caress her patients or her friends. But now that he was awake, Miles was a different case. Sasha fought the urge to touch him, to brush her fingertips over his brow or lay her hand gently on his unbandaged shoulder. The last thing she wanted to do was make him more uncomfortable than he already was.

“Good night.”

“Hey, Doc.” Miles opened his eyes again, but Sasha could see he was out of focus. Their eyes had barely met before he shut his again. “See you ‘morrow,” he muttered.

He fell asleep smiling. Oddly touched, she left quietly, waving at Emmy as she walked toward the elevators. Only when she was opening the door of her truck did she think of giving Emmy a piece of her mind for setting her up like that. Too late now, and not really important, she told herself. She probably wouldn’t be seeing Miles Kent much past tomorrow. He looked like the robust type who healed quickly, and she’d already seen how little he liked being fussed over. She’d bet he’d be on a plane for Florida within a few days, and she’d be just a memory in his vacation from hell.

M
iles stared at the photo on the United States passport. It was more or less the same face that had stared back at him from the bathroom mirror, but it wasn’t one he recognized. The description on his driver’s license didn’t help, either. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Six feet two inches tall. One hun-dred and eighty-five pounds. Age thirty-four, unless he’d also forgotten how to subtract. Address, Secret Island, Florida, wherever the hell that was. No street, just an island and a zip code. Maybe he was a beach bum.

Except he didn’t think beach bums drove classic cars and carried gold credit cards. At least, not all current, valid and in the same name: Miles Kent. Same name as on the Social Security card. If he was a beach bum, he probably wouldn’t have the wad of cash the police had found in his wallet, along with charge receipts from places in Canada he had no recollection of visiting. In fact, the cops had found a whole paper trail in the wrecked Corvette, leading from the Gulf Coast of Florida all the way up past the Canadian border. Interesting, since he also had no memory of driving for two days, or of going through the Canadian border checkpoint.

Then again, he had no memory of anything prior to waking up in the mangled Corvette.

The cops hadn’t found anything else in the car, except a small leather suitcase packed with several changes of clothes and basic toiletries. No illegal substances, thank God, but nothing of value to him right now, either. No address books or letters or agendas or anything to hint at where he’d been going, or why he was here. No clues to who he was. Only a name—supposedly his own—that meant nothing to him.

A staff shrink had come in earlier, a tall, lanky man in rimless glasses, whose laid-back manner had made Miles think of a cowboy, not a psychiatrist. This Dr. Simmons had asked him if he wanted a chance to talk about what had happened, in particular how he felt about his “memory deficit.” He hadn’t.

Before he left, the shrink had suggested that Miles think about how he felt, anyway. Well, hell, he knew exactly how he felt. He was confused, frustrated and angry, and he didn’t think talking about it with a total stranger was going to change that. The shrink’s theory, that his brain was shutting out something he couldn’t deal with emotionally, didn’t wash. There had to be a better explanation for this than that it was all in his head. Miles might not know who he was, but he was pretty damn sure he wasn’t crazy.

But what did he really know about himself? So far, all he knew for certain was that he hated being helpless—and eating hospital food.

With a groan of raw frustration Miles gathered up the cards and the license and stuffed them back into the envelope. He handed them back to the young pup of a cop, McLeod, and shook his head. McLeod shrugged.

“We’ve requested help from the Florida state police. I should have more information for you later today. Tomorrow morning at the latest. I tried phoning that fancy restaurant you have receipts from, but they must not be open this early. I’ll have to try a little closer to dinnertime.”

“Whatever you get, let me know.” McLeod nodded. “As soon as you get it,” he added, not certain the cop understood his sense of urgency.

McLeod just looked at him for a moment. “When are you getting out of here?” he asked finally.

The change in topic didn’t surprise Miles. They’d been vying for dominance. The kid had his badge, but Miles didn’t feel like someone intimidated by authority figures. Other feelings simmered under the surface when he thought about cops and bureaucrats, but awe wasn’t one of them.

“I think they’re stalling to make sure they get paid, just in case I’m a deadbeat.” The thought left a bitter taste, a vaguely familiar feeling, as if maybe that had been a problem at some time in his murky past. But if that was true, then where had he gotten all those credit cards, all that cash? Could he have mugged the real Miles Kent and stolen everything?

Including his face? Nah. One more theory down the pipe, but one theory he didn’t mind flushing. Thinking of himself as a thief felt more than a little uncomfortable. What would he do if he turned out to be some high-wheeling crook on the lam?

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” McLeod told him, grinning. Sure. He could grin. He knew who he was. “We’ll know soon enough.”

“Not soon enough for me.”

McLeod stood and shrugged into his shiny blue winter jacket. “Don’t play detective. Leave it to the professionals.”

Miles couldn’t resist needling the pompous puppy. “What if I
am
a professional?”

McLeod snorted. “Save that one for the movies.” He picked up the envelope of credit cards and cash that the police were keeping in their safe and nodded before heading for the door. With his hand on the handle, he stopped and turned back. “By the way, did Sasha Reiss visit you?”

For some reason Miles felt caution settle into place like a mask. The nurses had mentioned that his rescuer had visited him almost every day he’d been unconscious, but he was still processing how he felt about that. Was there some connection between McLeod and Dr. Reiss? Whatever the cop’s reason for asking, Miles didn’t like him being in his face.

“What if she did?”

“Nice lady. I sure wouldn’t mind her coming to my rescue,” McLeod said, grinning smugly. Then he turned his back and walked out the door.

Miles glared at the door as it closed slowly, shutting him in alone with his thoughts. And one of those thoughts was that Constable McLeod was too damn young for Sasha Reiss.

Not that it was any of his business.

* * *

Sunday evening, when Miles answered Sasha’s knock, she noticed immediately that his voice was much stronger than the day before. She took a fortifying breath and pushed open the door. Miles was lying propped up in his bed, his battered face clean-shaven. The sheet and blanket bunched just above his waist, exposing a powerfully muscular chest so bruised that he looked as if he were wearing camouflage. The mat of hair covering the upper half of his chest was the same sable color as the hair spilling rakishly over the bandage on his forehead.

Sasha swallowed hard, then summoned a smile to answer his. It wasn’t fair, she thought, for him to be so attractive. She didn’t know if he was married or involved, and the awful thing was, neither did he. She’d just have to pretend he was a horse. An old, swaybacked, flea-bitten, knock-kneed nag.

Just the kind of horse she’d find herself adopting because no one else wanted him. No, better think of him as a man she didn’t know from Adam.

“Hey, Doc. I thought you’d stood me up for some four-footed rival.” Miles’s golden eyes met hers. He sounded gruff, but she saw that he was trying to smile. His mouth looked so sore she could almost ignore the temptation to speculate about how mobile and expressive it must be. Good Lord, what was the matter with her?

“I usually don’t work on Sundays unless I’m on a call, but I had a special job that ran late. A shipment of—” She broke off at the way he watched her speak. No, she couldn’t tell him.

“A shipment of...?” he prompted. “Horses?”

Inexplicably, heat rose to her cheeks. “No. It was nothing.”

“C’mon, Doc. Your nothing is better than what’s been going on here. I’m too full of painkillers to focus on the paper, and the soap operas don’t do anything for me.”

She studied the light fixture above Miles’s bed as if it were a piece of fine sculpture. “A shipment of stallion semen was delayed at the airport in Montreal. By the time the mare’s owner picked it up at the Buttonville airport, between here and Toronto, it was late afternoon.”

“So you were playing Cupid by proxy?”

She nodded, wondering why she was having so much trouble looking him in the eye when she’d given public lectures on artificial insemination to rooms full of strangers.

“I don’t think I’d like being a stallion,” he said solemnly.

Sasha glanced at him and he winked. She laughed, suddenly more comfortable with him. And yet, not comfortable at all. Instinctively she recognized that Miles Kent was not the kind of man who’d be a woman’s buddy. He’d be a lover, maybe a business associate, but not a chum. There was too much raw vitality, too much pure sexuality emanating from him to let any woman relax completely. It was the kind of reaction she’d longed to feel for that one “right man,” which Miles, a stranger just passing through her life, definitely wasn’t.

“Some stallions are luckier than others,” she told him, firmly tamping down her awareness of him. “But distance makes some relationships difficult, if not impossible. Not everyone can afford to ship a mare and board her for a month or more at the stallion’s farm. A couple of hundred years ago stallion owners would travel with their horses. But that’s pretty tough on the stallion.”

Miles raised his dark brows. “Puts a new spin on the concept of cruising, doesn’t it?”

She smiled. “At least these studs don’t have to pay for drinks.”

Miles started to laugh, coughed, then groaned and pressed his hand to his taped ribs. “Oh, God! Don’t make me laugh,” he wheezed.

She took a step forward, then hesitated. “I’m sorry. Should I call the nurse?”

“No. I’ll be fine as long as you aren’t funny.” His bruised lips quirked up into an infectious grin that sent warmth spreading through her. “Tell me about your farm.”

“I can do better than that. I brought some pictures.”

She dug the packet out of her huge leather purse and handed it to him. When Miles took it, she noticed again how strong his hands were. She realized she didn’t have any idea what he did for a living, but she knew that at some point in his life Miles Kent had worked with his hands. If she was an artist, she would want to sketch hands like his. If she was a romantic fool, she would imagine what hands like his would feel like on her body.

Doc Reiss was a very attractive woman, Miles decided. Striking, not pretty. Those dark eyes of hers were beautiful, and gentle as a doe’s. Her features were strong, and her body taut, athletic, grace-ful. He’d bet there were honest muscles, not shoulder pads, under her sweater. And her hands. God, her hands were incredible. Long, slender fingers, narrow wrists, short nails. They were hands that looked sensitive and gentle. Hands that had held his when he’d been unconscious. Competent hands that would soothe a skittish patient, hands that might tremble when they stroked a lover.

The rush of heat to his gut warned him that such thoughts could very well embarrass him much more than their brief discussion of artificial insemination had embarrassed her. Besides, what did he know about Dr. Sasha Reiss, except that she was a softie? Even though she didn’t wear any rings, she could be married, and mother to a small brood of kids. Hell, he didn’t even know if he was married. Frus-tration made him grit his teeth.

Miles took the packet of photos from her, careful not to let their fingers touch. Then he looked into her face until she finally met his eyes. Was she shy? The idea amused him. He had a feeling he didn’t meet many shy women.

“C’mere, Doc. Stand over my shoulder and tell me what I’m looking at.”

It was a reasonable request, but her effect on his senses wasn’t anywhere near reasonable. She smelled soft. When she moved, she moved softly, sounded soft. In self-defense he took out the photos and looked at the top one, an aerial shot of a rambling stone farmhouse and stone barn, with rolling green pastures neatly fenced. The dark blobs were probably horses. Oblong blobs, he guessed, were of baled hay or straw scattered in adjacent fields. Two white horse trailers, one small and one large, a white pickup truck and a red tractor stood parked between the house and the barn. On the far side of the barn stood a large warehouse-style structure.

“A friend of mine took that from his plane,” she told him.

“How many acres?”

“Forty-five. I lease twenty acres to the farmer next door, and he provides me with hay.”

“Looks nice.”

Her smile looked a little misty. “Mmm. It was my grandparents’ farm. My mother’s parents. Actually, it originally belonged to my great-great-grandparents. Granddad was a hobby breeder. Canadian Hunters. I inherited the farm from him.”

Her pride in her ancestors made him uncomfortable. Why? he wondered. Was there something about his family that he was less than proud of? Or was it just that she knew who she was and who’d come before her, while he was stuck with a passport photo that looked like him but didn’t ring any bells?

“What’s this thing here?” He pointed to the warehouse.

“The riding arena, for riding in winter weather.”

“It’s winter weather now,” he muttered. “The calendar says it’s the middle of April.”

Sasha laughed softly. He wanted to say a dozen more silly things to make her laugh, just to hear the sound. He wanted to untie her braid and let that dark hair slip free over his bare skin. He hoped he was free to do so. He hoped he wasn’t the kind of man to feel this way if he was married.

“You know what they say about the climate in Canada?” she asked. “Nine months of winter and three months of lousy skating.”

And lousy driving,
he could have added, but he didn’t want to spoil the moment by making Sasha feel sorry for him again. He forced a smile, which made his face ache.

“Seems like it.” More to himself than to Sasha, he went on, “I wonder what the hell I was doing up here? Seems I have credit card receipts from a restaurant somewhere near the Quebec border, but damned if I know why I was there.”

She stared at him with those dark eyes that made him think of Bambi’s mother. Just when he was sure she was going to get serious on him and make him regret his unguarded speech, she smiled.

“I imagine you were having dinner,” she said.

His smothered laugh came out in a snort.

A voice burst out of the speaker in his wall, announcing that visiting hours were over for the day. Sasha started to move away. He fought a sudden wave of panic. She was a stranger, but she was the only person he knew. The only one he
knew
that he knew, anyway. He hadn’t known his own face in the mirror. But he knew Sasha’s face, her voice, her scent. He didn’t want to lose that connection, no matter how flimsy.