If You Dare (2 page)

He'd been in and out of consciousness for what felt like days when the current finally calmed. In the lull, he perceived that the freezing temperature had muted the worst pain of his injuries. In fact, he felt nothing but the subtle warming of the water as he drifted into a static pool by the bank.

Succumbing to the blackness was an overwhelming temptation now, nearly stronger than his will, but he forced himself to crawl to the stony shore on one hand and his knees. Free of the river, he collapsed onto his back and cradled his broken wrist.

The sun warmed him, taking away the worst of the chill, and for how long he lay there he didn't know. He only noticed when a shadow passed before it. He squinted to bring a thin line of vision to his one good eye.

He must've sucked in a breath—his bashed ribs screamed that he did—because a woman with shining hair knelt beside him, peering down with widened green eyes. Her lips were parted in surprise, and an unusual stone glinted light from a choker around the pale column of her neck. When she tilted her head at him, a breeze blew a dark curl across her cheek.

Breathtaking.
“Aingeal . . . ,”
he murmured as he resisted the blackness once more.

“Perfect,”
she answered with utter sarcasm as she rose and put her hands on her hips. “Simply perfect. This animal's alive.”

•  •  •

Tea.

Annalía Elisabet Catherina Tristán, daughter of the family Llorente, had ridden out for flowers to brighten the afternoon tea. Where did the marsh marigolds grow best? By the river. By the cursed river, where apparently the cursed mercenaries wash to shore.

She hadn't known what to think when she'd spied the body from afar. Perhaps a shepherd had fallen in the Valira during a storm to the north? Yet as she approached she'd recognized that this giant was no shepherd, and she hadn't missed the nationality. Around his waist he had a thick, wide belt, the style of which was foreign. Attached to the belt had been a swatch of plaid left from some larger cloth.

Plaid meant Scot. Scot meant killer.

She bemoaned the situation yet again and tugged on the reins looped over her shoulder, trudging forward, pulling along Iambe, her hunter, who had two hundred plus pounds of Scottish deadweight attached to her. Neither she nor Iambe was used to such labor. Annalía sighed wearily—they were both thoroughbreds born for a different purpose altogether.

She was ill equipped for a rescue—or truly anything more involved than
gathering flowers
—so the conveyance she'd fashioned consisted of a rope tightened around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides, then another rope pulled under both his arms and tied to the saddle.

But why was she dragging him up the steep mountain incline to her home? Scots were hated in Andorra, and yet she was taking one straight through the narrow rock entrance—the only entrance—to the three higher plateaus separating the river from the manor. Her ancestors had gated the passage, and for five hundred years it had kept the horses on their ranch in—and strangers out.

Surely he was one of the Highland mercenaries brought here by Pascal. Their tiny, almost hidden country so high in the Pyrenees wasn't exactly overrun with Highlanders. But what if he was the singular Scot who came here for other reasons? And she let him die? She thought he'd called her an angel and he'd looked so relieved to see her, as if he had every confidence she would save him.

If he was one of Pascal's men, she'd simply have to heal him, then kill him herself.

After plodding past the crystal lake Casa del Llac derived its name from, she and her baggage arrived in the manor's central courtyard. “Vitale!” Annalía called for her steward but received no answer. Where was he?

Smoking, no doubt. Over dice. “Vitale!” This whole place
was going to ruin without her brother. “I know you're smoking behind the stable, and I don't care just now!”

Vitale leVieux peeked his craggy face around the side of the stable. “Yes, mademoiselle—” he began before he gasped at the injured man, smoke wafting from his open mouth. His crinkly gray hair bounced as he rushed to her side. “What have you done?” he exclaimed, his French accent sharp. “He's Scottish—look at the plaid.”

“I saw the plaid,” she said in disgust. Spotting Vitale's ancient dice partners lining up to see the spectacle, she said in a hushed voice, “We shall discuss this inside.”

Undeterred, he cried, “He must be one of the blood-drinking Highlanders the general hired!”

One of Vitale's friends mumbled, “Highlander, you say?” When Vitale nodded emphatically, his compadres called goodbyes and shuffled off with their canes for hills unknown.

Apparently everyone had heard the tales of their brutality.

“Why would you save him?” Vitale demanded when they were alone.

“What if he isn't one of the mercenaries?”

“Oh, of course, he must be here for the . . .” He trailed off, scratching his head as though stumped, then flashed an expression of realization. “I have just recalled—there's nothing here to see!”

And everyone wondered where she'd gotten her sarcasm.

She gave him a lowering look. “Are you going to help me? I need you to get the doctor.”

“The doctor went north to join your brother's men.” Vitale looked the man over, all nine feet of him, it seemed. “Besides, we bring the injured to you.”

“You bring injured animals and children to me, not beaten-senseless giants bleeding from every limb,” she corrected. When Annalía was younger, her Andorran nanny had taught her to treat some injuries—broken bones, burns, cuts,
and the like, but then she'd probably never envisioned a patient like this one. “It's not proper for me to attend him.”

He gave her a patronizing smile. “Perhaps mademoiselle should have thought of that before dragging the enemy into our home? Hmmm?”

Lips thinned, she replied, “Perhaps mademoiselle is displaying the same compassion she showed when she hired Vitale the Old.” Though they both knew her taking him in from the streets of Paris to her home in Andorra hadn't been simply because of kindness. Gratitude had compelled her.

He sighed. “What do you wish me to do?”

“Help me put him in the room off the stable.”

“We can't lock that room! He could slit our throats while we sleep.”

“Then where?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off, “And don't you dare say back to the riverside.”

He closed his mouth abruptly. They both looked down at the man as though searching for the answer.

Vitale finally said, “We should put him in the manor house so we can lock him in a bedroom.”

“Where
I
sleep?” “Mademoiselle has demonstrated compassion”—he smiled too serenely—“which is but a slippery stone away from hospitality.”

She ignored his expression. “The only room downstairs that locks is the study and that's private. I don't want him to know our business affairs.”

He gave the man a rousing kick in the hip. When no response came, he cackled.

“Vitale!”

He turned to her with an impassive face. “So mademoiselle suggests upstairs?”

“We simply can't do it. My
horse
had problems pulling his weight.”

Some of the ranch hands' children ran by then, eyes wide, reminding Annalía of the state of the man's clothing. Most of it had ripped away. A tear spread up his thigh, close to his . . . She straddled his legs, sweeping her skirt over him for cover. “Run along.” Her voice was strident.

They looked to Vitale, and though he rolled his eyes, he told them, “Untie the ropes and go take care of poor Iambe.” Facing her, he said, “If you're insisting it must be upstairs, we can attempt it. Besides, do we really care if we drop him?”

So by dint of strategizing, straining, and yes, using the children she'd pleaded with to return, they managed to get him to the nearest guest bedroom and transferred onto the bed. Though she was exhausted, with her palm jammed into her lower back like a washerwoman closing the day, she knew she still had to tend to him.

While Vitale shooed the curious children from the room, Annalía assessed her patient, noting the broken wrist and the possibility of a couple of broken ribs. She removed her riding gloves, then ran her hands through his thick, damp hair past his temple and along the side of his head. She discovered a nasty knot, and the same inspection on the other side revealed a second head injury. His eyes were so swollen she doubted he could open them when awake. To cap it all, ragged cuts covered his skin, no doubt inflicted by the river bottom.

“Vitale, I need some shears. And some bandages. Bring two big wooden spoons and some hot water as well.”

He exhaled as though very put out. “Forthwith.” He added something in a mumble. Even his mumble could convey a heavy Gallic sarcasm.

When he returned with all the supplies, she scarcely noticed him. “Thank you,” she murmured.

He said nothing, just bowed, turned on his heel, and abandoned her.

“Fine! Go,” she called. “I have no need of you anyway. . . .”

And then she was alone. With the big, terrifying Scot.

She really should be having tea right now.

She billowed a sheet over him, then blindly endeavored to cut away his ruined trousers underneath it. Frowning in concentration, she placed the shears only to yank her hand back. She was fairly certain she'd stabbed his waist.

Focusing on the opposite wall, she tried again, but pushed the sharp tips into his skin once more. This time he moaned and she jumped back. She'd bet her Limoges porcelain that any red-blooded male would rather die than have an exhausted, unseeing woman cutting near his groin.

So she tugged the sheet down to his waist to shear away the remains of his shirt. His boots they'd discarded as unnecessary weight on the stairs. Which again left . . . his trousers.

Biting her lip, she unfastened and pulled free his sodden belt, noticing that his torso was flat, the ridges of muscle pronounced, with a thin trail of black hair leading down.

He was so heavy and yet he hadn't an inch of spare flesh on him. A strong body—he would heal fast if she helped him. But she'd never seen a grown man wholly nude before. No one here swam unclothed. There simply wasn't the laissez-faire attitude about nudity here as in neighboring Spain and France. And he was about to be completely unclothed, where she could see if she chose.

She would
not
choose!
Disregard these thoughts,
she commanded herself. Putting her shoulders back, she assumed a brisk attitude. She was a nurse today, and a lady always.

She opened the front of his trousers, ignoring the foreign, remarkable textures, the fascinating shape she brushed. With the fastening undone she was able to pull and cut around until they were off, always striving to keep the sheet between him and her eyes. And mostly succeeding.

Wiping perspiration from her brow, she began on his wrist, splinting it with the spoons and tight linen strips until
she could cast it with flour in the morning. When she finished, she lay his arm back above his head and spread the other arm out to the side to wrap his ribs. Again and again, she pulled the cloth around him, tightened it, then forced the material under his back. His chest was deep, and bandaging it meant reaching over him, grazing him.

When she was done, she was oddly irritable and fidgety. Though she wanted nothing more than a bath and her bed, her gaze kept returning to his good hand. Finally she gave in to temptation and leaned beside him in the bed to lift it. The fingers and back of it were as scarred as the rest of his body and the palm was abrasive. Her brows drew together as she placed the palm flat against her own.

She marveled at the size of his hand, at how it could swallow her own, and pressed each finger against his matching one. If he was a mercenary, and he must be, judging by all the battle scars, she wondered how many guns and knives and swords he had wielded with it. Had he ever used it to strangle the life from someone?

Had she been completely crazed to bring a man like this into her home?

•  •  •

For the last two days Annalía had wondered if he'd ever wake up. She'd browbeaten Vitale into washing the man each day—there were just some things she
refused
to do—and into helping her set his wrist with a cast. Afterward she'd settled into a daily routine where she would check the Scot's ribs and wrist and grapple to pour broth and water down his throat.

Each day some of the swelling around his eyes and jaws receded, but she suspected that even uninjured he still would look like a ruffian.

This morning had already heated the casa miserably. The wind was absent, and even the usually cool mountain nights had been balmy this summer. Though she'd already checked
on him, she should probably return and make certain that Vitale had locked up after he tended to the man earlier.

Who was she fooling? Vitale was still convinced the Highlander would murder them all in their sleep without the proper precautions.

She would go because she was restless and watching the even rise and fall of his chest was . . . agreeable.

As was touching him. Every day she would trace the star-burst scar just below his temple, along with each mark across his broad chest and down his muscular arms. She'd memorized them all and had imagined a scenario for each.

Though he was surely her enemy, his presence broke up the monotony and loneliness in the house. Since war was on the horizon, many of her people had fled to mountains even more remote than this one, and she could only get cooks and maids from the valley to come by a few times a month. With her older brother away fighting Pascal and her parents dead, Annalía had been living alone in the main house. She'd invited the ranch hands' wives and their children to stay, but they were ill at ease in the luxurious home. Even Vitale declined.