Here to Stay (Silhouette Special Edition) (3 page)

“Leave the pictures, okay? I want to hear more about you next time.” He tried to smile, but he suspected he looked like Quasimodo.

She hesitated, then said, “Sure. I can come back tomorrow evening.”

He didn’t want to let her see he was pleased. And he knew he shouldn’t let himself count on her. But at the moment she was all he had, besides a plastic bag full of stuff, and a name that was supposed to be his.

“What’s your husband going to say about you visiting me?” He had to ask, but he found himself dreading the answer.

“I’m not married,” she told him. “Except to my work.” She smiled. “Sleep well.”

He watched her leave and knew that the last thing he was going to do was sleep well. For someone whose memory seemed to be wiped clean of anything significant, he had an awful lot on his mind.

* * *

Sasha stood in front of Miles’s half-open door, trying to catch her breath after sprinting across the parking lot. Visiting hours would be over in less than ten minutes, but at least she’d made it in time to say hello. After thinking about him all day, whenever she wasn’t concentrating on a patient, it would have been too ironic to miss visiting hours altogether. It had been her thinking about Miles—as well as a tough medical case to puzzle out—that had caused her mind to wander while she’d driven to the wrong farm. Driving the extra distance back again, to the right farm, had cost her almost an hour at the end of an already full day. She was pushing exhaustion, but she’d given her word.

She knocked and pushed the door open a little more at the same time, calling his name softly. Miles was sitting in one of the wooden chairs, a frown on his battered, handsome face. He wore what looked like beige pajama bottoms and a black robe belted at his waist. His feet were bare, his left ankle wrapped in an elastic bandage. The top of the robe gaped open, revealing the dark curling hair across his chest.

Sasha said his name again, but his scowl stayed in place. “Hi. Sorry I’m late. I didn’t even have time to shower and change, so I smell like a horse,” she told him as she stepped inside.

“You’ve obviously got enough to do without these extra little errands of mercy.” Miles’s low voice vibrated with anger. Sasha didn’t know what she’d done wrong in his eyes, but she’d had too long and hard a day to pursue the matter. She did know she didn’t deserve his sarcasm.

Sasha reached for the door handle, her eyes level on his. “You don’t know me well enough to speak to me like that,” she told him quietly. “Good night.” She turned away, her hand touching the door.

“Wait!” he bellowed, then groaned. The sound of the chair legs scraping the floor made her turn back. Miles was trying to stand and clearly not having an easy time of it. “I don’t know
anyone
well enough, not you, and not me, damn it!” His anger came out strained through his effort to speak.

Instantly her irritation evaporated. Of course he was angry. He was in pain, inside and out, physical and spiritual. How insensitive could she be? If he was one of her patients, he’d probably kick or bite, taking it out on whomever was handy. She’d been on the receiving end of that kind of behavior often enough to recognize it, although usually it was from four-footed types.

Nothing personal—that was the important thing to keep in mind. Miles was in pain and she wasn’t. She could certainly deal with that. She stepped back into the room and waited.

“Sasha, I’m sorry,” he said, the softness of his tone surprising her. He met her gaze, half standing, gripping the back of the chair. “Damn! I hate this!”

The anguish in his hazel eyes brought her to his side in a second. Carefully reaching past the tapes and bandages, she slid one arm around his waist and braced herself so he could lean on her shoulders. His arm rested heavily on her. His warmth sank into her. The musk of his skin invaded her senses, reminding her acutely of one of the questions that had needled her all day. Was Miles married? Did he know yet? Was he the kind of man who would tell her the truth, or try to take advantage of her compassion and her proximity?

Those weren’t the most useful questions she could be asking, she realized. Miles was clearly in need of real help.

“Bed?” she asked.

“I take it that isn’t an invitation,” he drawled, but his voice was still strained despite his attempt at humor. She tried not to smile but failed. “Bed, if you can. Chair, if you can’t. I don’t want to hurt you.”

But in spite of Sasha’s resolve to be dispassionate, to treat him as if he were a patient, Miles already had hurt her, irrational as it was. She decided it would be best for both of them to keep things light. He had enough to deal with without her feelings getting in the way.

“What do you weigh, one eighty?” she asked.

His unbruised eyebrow arched. “My ID says one eighty-five. Why? You planning to sweep me off my feet?”

She tilted her head to smile up at him. “Miles, most of my patients weigh upward of twelve hundred pounds and aren’t nearly as good with English as you are. Compared to them, you’re a featherweight. But just like you,” she added, “they’re seldom reasonable when they feel cranky.”

He snorted. She blinked in mock innocence.

“If you put your mind to it, you probably could be reasonable.” His smile told her he understood her strategy and would accept her help. “Let’s go. One foot in front of the other.”

She could feel the effort it cost him to move back to the bed, a step at a time. His muscles bunched, and he hardly drew a breath until he was sitting on the mattress. He was a powerful man, but obviously he was terribly sore. He sat for a moment, head bowed, then looked up into her eyes.

“You do smell like a horse,” he drawled. “I like it.”

His crooked grin was pure, totally unexpected, totally unapologetic devilment. Sasha felt herself smiling in response. When he wasn’t carrying on like a wounded bear—which he was, in a way, of course—Miles Kent could charm the spots off a Dalmatian. She needed some distance to let her keep her objectivity. She needed to turn his attention away from her.

“Did you learn anything more about...?” she started to ask, breaking off when she couldn’t think of a tactful way to continue.

His grin faded. “Who I am?” He looked straight into her eyes and she could feel him measuring her response as he said, “Yeah. For one thing, I’m not married.”

He studied the doc’s reaction. One eyebrow went up a fraction of an inch and she said, “Ah,” very thoughtfully, as if he’d done nothing more than given her the answer to a tough math problem. Cool. Un-interested. Impersonal. She might have carried it off if she hadn’t blushed.

He was tired of being a body, a patient, the “mild head injury,” the “memory deficit case,” a room number. Whoever he was, he was a person, a male person, and he was damn glad Sasha had noticed.

She cleared her throat. “Do you need help lying down?”

“Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t turn down your offer,” he told her, playing shamelessly on her compassion just to keep her close, to keep her strong hands on him. After the impersonal probing and poking of doctors and nurses, Sasha’s firm touch felt so good. Still, he couldn’t come right out and ask her to keep touching him. He wanted to, but something beyond the fact that he hardly knew her made him bottle up that need.

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

Oh, Doc!
he thought.
What a loaded question!
But the truth was, what he wanted from her had very little to do with the delayed realization that made her blush again. He wanted some of her strength, her calm, her inner peace, because he couldn’t find any of his own. He didn’t even know if he’d ever had his own. Judging from the bare facts he’d learned about his life earlier, he suspected not.

“Can you support my shoulders? I can do the rest.”

Sasha smiled, the way he’d hoped she would. “Okay. Just lean back into my hands.”

She stepped closer to the side of the bed, facing him, and slid her hands under his arms to cup the backs of his shoulders. She bent toward him until her head was almost beside his, giving him a jolt of awareness. God, she smelled good! Earthy. Sexy.

“Trust me, Miles. I can hold you,” she murmured, her breath warming his neck.

He was weaker than he wanted to be. She was stronger than he’d guessed. Miles didn’t like it. He resented having no control over this bizarre situation. Whoever he was, he thought, he wasn’t someone who asked for or accepted help easily. He didn’t like being forced to now, much as he liked being this close to Sasha. He hoped to hell he was a fast healer.

Sasha took much of his weight as he drew his legs up onto the mattress, then eased down onto his pillows. Every injury screamed in protest until he stopped moving. When he realized he’d inadvertently pinned her hands beneath his back, the pain no longer seemed important. She stayed there, trapped into a mock embrace, her breasts inches from his chest, her soft mouth within easy reach if he just lifted his head a few inches. Instead of trying, he shifted until she could free her hands and straighten. She moved away as if nothing had happened.

But he had seen it in her eyes. She’d been on the same wavelength. Aware. Oh, yeah, aware. Curious—but cautious. Especially cautious. She didn’t know him. He couldn’t blame her. What could he say to reassure her? He didn’t know who he was.

He should do something to ease the tension, at least for her. His tension seemed to be an integral part of him and he felt like an overwound clock, ready to spring loose at any time.

“How’d you break your nose, Doc?” he asked. He wanted to trace the line of her nose, over the little bump, softly teasing her, making her think about kissing him. He didn’t, but he wanted to.

She smiled, making him glad he’d lightened the mood. She was all he had. He’d come too close to jeopardizing that tenuous connection already once tonight.

“One of my very first patients took exception to having his teeth floated,” she told him.

“Floated? You mean like some old grandpa with his teeth in a glass?”

Her laugh was like magic. “No! The file used to rasp the sharp edges of horses’ teeth is called a float. None of them like having it done, but some can be pretty piggy.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get your face broken.”

“Don’t I know it.” She shrugged. “All occupations have hazards, but mine tend to think for themselves.”

The thought of her being vulnerable to physical danger made him uneasy. Impulsively he caught her hand in his. “Be careful, Doc.”

She looked down at their joined hands. “Thanks, Miles.”

He liked the way she said the name, making him feel it really was his name. He wondered if any other woman in his life had said his name like that. “Thanks for what?”

“For worrying about my safety. I’m a pretty tough old bird, but it’s still nice to have someone...” She shrugged again, and he saw the color rise in her cheeks. “You know. Express concern.”

He didn’t think that was exactly what she was going to say, but he understood her hesitation. How could someone care about someone else without knowing them? How could you know someone who didn’t know himself? Miles rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, feeling the steel under the silk, and raged inside at the silence of his memory. Who was he? Who was the man inside Miles Kent? Would he ever know?

A bored-sounding voice from the speakers announced that visiting hours were over. “I better go,” she told him, tugging her hand out of his. “I still have chores to do before I can shower.”

“You take care of the place alone?” He wouldn’t be surprised. There was such a sense of competence about her—and a sense of independence. Comfort with herself. He envied and resented her for it, even as he admired it.

“Not entirely. A couple of the nearby farmers’ kids work for me part-time, and some of the Pony Club kids use my horses for their projects. But there’s always something to do before I can lock up for the night.”

And he was the reason she was going to be doing her chores late tonight. Because she felt sorry for him, she kept visiting him. Disgust at his helpless state, at his dependency, colored his words with pent-up fury and resentment.

“Don’t keep coming back because you feel sorry for me. I don’t want your pity!” he snarled, hating himself even as he lashed out.

Sasha shook her head. There were sparks in her dark eyes. “Compassion, Miles, not pity. I’m sorry you can’t see the difference, but I’m not willing to be a target for your anger. You better get over it, or it won’t matter who you are.”

“S
tupid, insensitive, awful thing to say,” Sasha muttered, her teeth clamped on the plastic cap from a syringe. She thumped the big gray gelding on the neck, then gave him a tetanus shot so skillfully that he didn’t seem to notice. Too bad she hadn’t been so skillful last night when she’d scolded Miles for having a bad attitude. He’d given her a look that could have frozen lava and told her she better leave before the nurses kicked her out.

She’d barely slept last night, tormented by visions of Miles trapped in his car. Of being within inches of kissing his mouth. Of holding his hand, unknown to him, willing him to heal. Of his crooked smiles and warm hazel eyes. And of Miles curtly telling her to go. The images refused to dissolve in daylight.

“Did you say something, Doc?” Donna, her longtime friend and the gelding’s doting owner, asked from the other side of the big horse.

“No.” Sasha took the plastic cap out of her teeth and recapped the syringe before tossing it in the garbage can. “Just talking to myself. Bats in my belfry.” She gave the gray a pat. “Casper’s done. He’s a good fella, aren’t you, boy?”

Casper lowered his muzzle to blow against her palm, then swiped his big tongue across her hand. Smiling, Sasha reached up and scratched behind his ear. It was so much easier with animals. So much more straightforward. Most of the time, anyway. She’d known a few hard cases in her day. Almost as hard as Miles Kent. Those were always the ones she cared about most.

“Who do you want next?” Donna called as she led the horse back to his stall. “Sox or Elite?”

“Either one.” Sasha crouched over her medical kit, a huge molded-plastic toolbox, to prepare the next shot. From the pocket of her jacket, which hung on a nearby peg, her pager beeped. “Hang on. I have to use the phone.”

She phoned her service and picked up the message from her lawyer. A Humane Society seizure order against a local man who’d tried to get her, and several other vets, to destroy a perfectly healthy horse he couldn’t handle had been upheld. In disgust, the owner had agreed to sell the horse to Sasha for a nominal amount. If she could load the horse into a trailer, he was hers. Elated, Sasha shared the news with Donna, who squealed with delight and hugged her.

“If you need help, let me know.”

“Thanks, but it may not be the safest job you’ll ever volunteer for. Desperado’s pretty unpredictable. I’ll probably have to tranquilize him. Even then, he could be a tough customer.”

Funny, she mused, but whenever she thought of Desperado, she thought of Miles. A tough customer with attitude, who could have the most disarming moments of sweetness. The words
fascinating
and
cap-tivating
also came to mind, but somehow, in both cases, they seemed to imply danger.

* * *

He was a brass-plated fool to care whether Sasha showed up or not. She was just another itch he couldn’t quite scratch, like the memories that teased at the corner of his mind. He didn’t want her, really, except that he couldn’t have her. Literally and figuratively. And she only came to see him because she felt sorry for him. She was just a do-gooder.

He knew one more thing about Miles Kent now, although he didn’t know why: he hated do-gooders.

So why the hell was he staring at the clock, for the third evening in a row, as if it could tell him anything more than that time expanded to fit the waiting?

That shrink had dropped by again. No pressure, the guy swore, just a few minutes of shooting the breeze—while he sized Miles up. Take it easy, the shrink had told him. Let the mind heal itself. But he’d be damned if he was going to force himself to sit around until his memory snuck up on him. He needed to
do
something to make it happen. But what? The harder he tried to think, the more his head ached, and the more frustrated and angry he got.

Miles grunted and turned his attention back to the two-day-old Canadian newspaper one of the nurses had given him. He’d automatically turned to the business section first. The small print made his vi-sion swim, but he managed to focus on a piece about small Canadian companies seeking U.S. investors to bail them out of trouble. That set him thinking....

The knock on his door, when it finally came, made his heart pound as wildly as a blown piston.

“Yeah!” he snapped. He was mad at her for making him look forward to seeing her, and mad at himself, too. He didn’t want to depend on anyone for anything. Another thing he knew for sure about the man called Miles Kent. Maybe one of these days he’d find out why.

“Hi,” she chirped, as if she hadn’t kept him waiting for three days. “I hear you’ve been charming the nurses,” she said, a little too sweetly.

Miles refused to lower his paper immediately. Damn! He’d forgotten she had a friend on staff when he’d pitched a fit about not being allowed to shower or shave himself. “They tried to treat me like a baby,” he growled from behind the newspaper, but he felt his face heat up.

“You could stop acting like one.”

He crushed the paper into his lap and glared, but her smile stayed sweet. It was getting harder to stay mad.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, serious now.

“Mean enough.”

“You know what we do with horses who don’t cooperate for treatment? We use a thing called a humane twitch. It’s a short pole with a loop of rope at the end. We wrap the loop around the horse’s upper lip and twist the loop to tighten it. It doesn’t hurt the horse, but it gets his attention. Maybe I should have my Pony Club kids teach the nurses how to twitch snarky patients.”

A sudden, brief image of small wrists bound tightly with graying rope flashed into his mind. A chill settled into the pit of his stomach even as he tried to answer Sasha’s gentle teasing. Was he remem-bering something from his own life? Or a scene from some movie or book?

She moved into the room. He caught a hint of her perfume, something light and soft, and stopped trying to think. He watched her settle herself in the other chair and wondered if she ever wore anything besides jeans and sweaters. Not that they didn’t do her justice. It was just idle curiosity about a beautiful woman who stirred his interest, that was all. Apparently his libido was healing faster than the rest of him.

She gazed at him with those dark eyes that had haunted his dreams. “So, have the police been able to get any more information for you?”

He lifted his good shoulder in a weak shrug. “Some. A few basic facts.” Facts he wasn’t ready to deal with yet. “Not enough to figure out what I’m doing here.” The pity in her eyes prompted him to change the subject. “We never finished looking at those photos you brought.”

She smiled. “I didn’t think you’d still be interested.”

“Hell, yeah. I feel like I’m in solitary confinement here. You’re the only person I see all day who doesn’t call me Mr. Kent and treat me like a collection of body parts.”

He hadn’t intended to make her blush again, but it was nice that she did. He reached for the packet of photos on the nightstand, pleased to note that broad movements hurt considerably less with each day.

She started toward the bed, then hesitated, her dark eyes suddenly as wary as a stick-shy dog’s. His simmering anger at the situation turned against himself. He couldn’t afford to alienate her. She was all he had linking him to reality, until he could make sense of what was supposed to be his identity.

“It’s okay, Doc. I don’t bite,” he told her a little more gruffly than he’d intended. “Not hard, anyway.”

“But you do bark,” she teased, bringing her chair close to the side of his bed.

“I probably bay at the moon, too.”

“A lone wolf?”

“Feels that way,” he conceded. The information Constable McLeod had given him was more than proof that he was very much a lone wolf. “Who’s this?” He pointed to the top photo of an older couple standing in the doorway of an old stone house, a golden retriever and a German shepherd staring up at them.

“My grandparents, with Midas and Schnitzel, about fifteen years ago.” The smile on her face was so sweet, so sad. It made him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t inclined to figure out why. He turned to the next photo, a middle-aged couple standing in front of a windmill. “My parents,” she told him. “They retired a few years ago, and every year spend months traveling. Right now they’re in Holland.”

If he had parents, he couldn’t remember. “What’s this?” It was a slightly out-of-focus close-up of a pile of assorted fluffy kittens.

“My first litter of barn kittens. Their mother was dumped in a sack at the end of my driveway in the middle of February, a few months after I moved to the farm. I still have two of them. Friends took the other four, but there are always more being abandoned.”

“And this?” A three-legged black Lab stood over a small goat.

“That’s Topsy. Triceratops. And her pet goat, Gruff.”

“Triceratops?” Miles laughed. “Doc, you have a strange sense of humor.”

She chuckled. “Not me. I let the Pony Club kids name the animals I adopt.”

“So how did you end up with a three-legged dog and a goat?”

“A hunter claimed he mistook Topsy for a deer—a black deer, right?—and her owners didn’t want to pay big vet bills or care for a disabled dog. And Gruff was abandoned when she grew too big to be a cute Easter gift. They were inseparable right up until the day they died together in their sleep.”

He held up a shot of a dark horse that wouldn’t win any beauty contests. It had a long face, a skinny neck and a sagging back, with a tail that looked like an old string mop. Sasha, standing beside the beast, looked gorgeous. Her face glowed with love, as if that ugly plug were her pride and joy. He wondered if there was something Sasha
wouldn’t
take in.

“Okay. Who’s this?”

“That’s Houdini, a retired Standardbred racehorse. He’s actually rather famous, but not for his racing career. He escaped from a truck on its way to a slaughterhouse in Montreal and crossed sixteen lanes of traffic on the 401 without a scratch. The slaughterhouse owner decided to let him go, if the Humane Society could find a home for him. I had an extra stall, so in he moved. The slaughterhouse agent said he admired the horse’s spirit, but I’m sure he also had his eye on adverse publicity.”

He studied her face. She was beaming. “You’re a sucker for a sob story, aren’t you, Doc?” Like his, he thought.

She laughed lightly. “Mmm-hmm. So it would seem. This next one is a family portrait of my pensioners.” She pointed to a group shot of horses even uglier than Houdini, which he hadn’t thought possible until he saw the evidence.

“They look like beggars.”

“They are, in a way, poor guys. Three of these horses were retired, with nowhere to go. A couple were seized in raids. And these two smaller ones are mustangs, from the adoption program, whose owners got too old to keep them.”

“No lady horses?”

She shook her head. “That’s the way it’s worked out lately, but it’s just as well. Mares would drive the stallion crazy when they were in season.”

He gave her a long look that made her blush. “You got anything you can put a saddle on, or are they all hard-luck cases?”

“Next one.” The horses in this photo looked fit and glossy, standing in the sunshine in a green field. “These are the last three Canadian Hunters from my granddad’s breeding program. They’re magnificent.” She beamed with pride.

“I can see that.” He flipped to the next photo, of a spotted white horse in a small, dirty enclosure. The animal was rearing up, its eyes wild. “What the hell is this?”

Sasha’s eyes sparkled. “That’s Desperado. He’s the leopard Appaloosa stallion I just bought.”

The woman was truly nuts! “Why would you buy this maniac when you’ve got those hunters?”

“The owner approached me to put Desperado down, so he could collect on the insurance. The Humane Society issued a seizure order to prevent him from going to any other vet after I refused, so he sold the horse to me for a song.”

Sasha was a compulsive soft touch, but she was obviously willing to play hardball when she believed in something. Instinctively he admired that, but he couldn’t understand her making such a bad bargain for herself. “This thing looks homicidal.”

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the horse. I won’t destroy a healthy animal because the owner is incompetent. That stallion has fabulous conformation and bloodlines, and he should have an excellent disposition. But he had the bad luck to be bought as a weanling by a real creep. The guy abused him, then sold him to another creep. Desperado’s been through four owners in three years, each one meaner than the last. He doesn’t know how to trust or whom to trust. So he lashes out to protect himself, just in case.”

A strange uneasiness crept through him at her words. It was as if something about this crazed horse’s history resonated deep within his own silent memories, but he couldn’t pinpoint anything that trig-gered a single specific memory or image. Disturbed, he kept his eyes focused on the picture. Sasha continued talking, saving him from having to look at her or comment. Just as well. He didn’t want her to see his face just then. He didn’t trust himself not to look pitiful.

“But now Desperado’s mine.”

“So what are you going to do with him? Sweet-talk him into being a good boy?”

She nodded, a dreamy smile on her face. “I’m going to try.”

“What if he tries to attack you?” The thought made him clench his fists, as if he could fight the stallion to protect her.

“I’m sure he will,” she said a little too cheerfully. Was she a glutton for punishment? “I’ll just have to psych him out and be patient.”

“Well, Doc, if anyone can, it’s probably you.” He flipped to the next photo, trying to dismiss the fear he felt that she could be hurt. She must know what she was doing. It was her profession. Anyway, it wasn’t his concern.

He glanced down at a group shot on the first stairs of Sasha’s house. Sasha’s parents stood on the bottom stairs. Sasha stood above them, flanked by two men with their arms around her. All of them were grinning. The taller of the two men looked familiar. For a split second Miles felt the rush of adrenaline at the possibility that he’d found a missing piece of his memory. Then he realized why the tall guy looked familiar. He pointed to the image and looked at Sasha for confirmation.