Wild in the Moment (2 page)

The man's groan had seemed to come from the kitchen.

The last time she'd seen it, the room had avocado-green counters and wallpaper with big splashes of orange and green—circa the sixties or seventies—who knew? She'd been a kid, didn't care. Now, though, the kitchen was obviously in the process of a major rehab. A sawhorse and power tools and impressive-looking cords dominated the middle of the room. There was sawdust all over the floor, new counters and cupboards in the process of being installed. Half were done. The ceiling was done, too, except for a light fixture hanging like a drunken sailor. And beneath that, tangled with an overturned ladder, was a man.

Daisy couldn't take in much in that millisecond—just enough to register that he wasn't one of the Cunninghams. The stranger was youngish, somewhere around thirty. She took in his appearance in a mental snap-shot—the dark hair, the lean, broad-shouldered build. He was dressed for work, in jeans and a long-sleeved tee, a tool belt slung around his hips. But God. None of that mattered.

He was lying on the dusty, littered floor, his eyes closed, flat on his back. One of his boots was still caught in the rung of a ladder. A pool of blood gleamed beneath his head, shining dark red under the bald light-bulb.

 

Teague Larson had never gone for angels. It wasn't personal. He'd just always liked sex and sin and trouble too much to waste a lot of time on the saintly types.

On the other hand, he'd never planned on being dead before—and he figured he had to be dead. No one's head could hurt this bad and still be alive. It seemed further proof of his unfortunate demise that the woman had miraculously appeared out of nowhere.

She was so damned gorgeous that he might even forgive her for being an angel. After his head stopped hurting. If his head ever stopped hurting.

It wasn't helping that his personal, breathtakingly unforgettable angel was swearing loudly enough to wake all the rest of the dead.

“Damn it. Damn it.
Damn it.
Does it ever occur to
anybody
that sometime I'd like to be the one who gets rescued? No. Have I ever asked anything from anyone? No. Did I get my sisters married, get my parents retired, get everybody settled? But for Pete's sake, I need a
break
today. The one thing I do
not
need is a problem like you. If you die, I swear, I'm going to kill you, and I'm not kidding! You don't want to see me in a temper. Trust me. You are going to wake up and you're going to be all right, or I swear, you'll be sorry!”

Truth to tell, she wasn't directly talking to him. She just seemed to be shrieking in a top-voice soprano as she flew around the place. He closed his eyes again, willing the room to stop spinning, willing his head to hurt less—at least enough that he could grasp what was going on.

Unfortunately his memory was slowly seeping back in Technicolor and surround sound. Blurry pictures filled his mind of the ladder tipping, then the noisy crash and scrambling fall. It was the worst kind of memory, because it mortifyingly illustrated one guy stubbornly trying to do the job of two. The story of his life. Too
much pride. No ability to compromise. Hell, he'd never played well with others in the sandbox.

His personal angel suddenly pushed the ladder out of the way, which jarred his ankle. Until then, he hadn't known his ankle hurt even worse than his head. He'd been better off when he thought he was dead. It'd been quiet around here then. Safer. Now that she'd forced him back to reality, there was no going back to that nice, warm, unconscious place. She'd ruined it.

On the other hand, there seemed to be compensations.

He watched her peel off a silly farmer's hat, shimmy out of an oversize old barn coat, push off clodhopper boots. If he'd had the energy, he'd damn near have gasped at the transformation. He'd already seen she had a gorgeous face, but beneath all that clothing was some kind of guy's favorite secret fantasy.

Deliberately, enticingly, she stroked the front of his pants, clearly trying to get into his pocket. He wasn't in the mood, no, but pain or no pain, a guy could be forced to rise with enough motivation. She was gentle enough, but she was obviously in a rush, hurrying, hurrying, as if she couldn't wait to get her hands on his you-know-what.

Okay, now he knew definitely that he wasn't dead. The view alone inspired him to keep his eyes open, no matter how badly he was hurting. The way her head was bent over him, he saw a tumble of rich, dark hair. Beneath that crazy old farmer's coat was a Christmas-red coat—the kind of thing women looked at in fashion magazines, not the kind of coat people wore in White Hills, Vermont. Didn't matter, she shrugged out of the coat swiftly.

She was stripping for him. Teague told himself his mind was still jangled with pain, but she took off both
her coats, hadn't she? And she was still moving, still touching him, still in a big rush. Teague liked to think he'd ignited his share of passion—no lover he'd had ever complained—but he'd never provoked a complete stranger to immediate intimacy before. If he weren't half-dead and more than half-goofy, he'd be loving it. He
was
loving it. He just had a sneaky feeling that he was temporarily a pickle short of a brain. On the other hand, who the hell needed reality?

When she leaned over him, her soft black sweater brushed his cheek. The sweater's V-neck offered him a free look at firm, high breasts. Bountiful breasts. Bountiful, god's-gift-to-a-man, turgid-nippled, plump breasts with the scent of exotic perfume deep in the shadow between them. When she shifted a little, he caught a glimpse of sleek, long legs encased in black pants. A pert little butt.

He liked the legs, but man, that little butt was the sexiest thing he'd seen in months. Maybe years.

He'd only caught a glance at her face before—enough to label her looks striking—but now she turned. Even fantasies weren't this perfect. The skin was smoother than a baby's. A slash of elegant cheekbones had been burned by the wind, the cherry color startling next to all that white skin. A high arch of eyebrows framed big, soft eyes, brown gold like cognac, and her mouth…oh, God, that kissable mouth…

But then he forgot her looks altogether, because her fingers dug really deep into his pocket. Instead of closing her hand around his best friend, though, her fingers emerged into the light, clasping his cell phone.

“Come on,” she muttered. “Come on, 911, come on…”

All right, so possibly he wasn't as excited about her
or life as he first thought. His eyelids drooped; he couldn't keep them open. His mind felt as muzzy as steel-wool soup. He heard her voice on the phone, caught partial snatches of her side of a conversation, but he seemed to be uncontrollably fading in and out.

“Sheriff, this is Daisy Campbell…yeah, Margaux and Colin's oldest daughter…. George Webster? You're the sheriff now? Well, that's great, but listen, I…”

She pushed a red-nailed hand through her wild mane of hair. “Yes, I'm back from the south of France. And yes, it's beautiful there. But listen, I…”

She jerked to her feet and spun around, talking faster, appearing more and more agitated. “Yes, I changed my last name back to Campbell. You're right, marriage wasn't for me. Everyone always said that, didn't they? That I'd never settle down…” She seemed to try to interrupt him several more times, and then finally spit out, “
Sheriff!
Would you
listen?
I'm at the Cunningham place. They're not here—”

Again, the person on the other end must have talked some more, because she cut in again. “Well, that's nice to know, that they're vacationing in Pittsburgh, but the
point
is that there's a strange man here…. Teague Larson, you say? Yes. Yes. It does look as if he's a carpenter or electrician or something, but the
point
is that he's
hurt.
Bad hurt. And no, I can't very well calm down and take it easy. I know there's a blizzard but…”

Fade out. Teague tried to catch more, but beneath his eyelids all he could see was a canvas of pea green. Dizzying swirls of pea green. A stomach-churning paisley pattern of swirling pea green.

At some point—who knew how long—he felt her hands on him again. She pulled off his tool belt, which felt a million times better. Smooth, chilled fingers
pressed the inside of his wrist, then the carotid artery in his neck. After that, she laid her cheek right on top of his chest, with all that vibrant dark hair tickling his nostrils. Moments passed before she spoke into the cell phone again.

“I can't do a pulse. I'm not a nurse, for Pete's sake. Yes, it seems as if his heart's beating strong, but I have nothing to compare it—
What the Sam Hill do you mean days! I know
we're in the middle of a blizzard. I don't
care.
I want an ambulance here
right now!
”

Okay. If she was going to do the shrieking thing, he was going back to the unconscious thing. Angel or no angel, the pain just wasn't worth it. If she patted him down again, he'd rethink it, maybe wake up again, but until then there just wasn't a lot of motivation to stay with it.

“Damn it, I'm telling you he could be hurt badly! He could have broken bones. And there's blood beneath his head. Okay, okay, I'll…”

More colorful swirls filled his mind. Not pea green this time. More like the blend of colors from stirring whipped cream into coffee. At first the swirling sensation was as fast as a whirlpool, but then everything seemed to slow down, soften, dance to a far quieter tune.

When he heard her voice again, she seemed calmer. At least a little calmer. She'd quit swearing a blue streak at the sheriff, anyway.

“Yeah, I did that. Yeah, okay. I can do that, too. And yes, I can plug in his cell phone somewhere, as long as there's power here. But you have to promise to pick him up as soon as you can. I can keep calling with a report every few hours, but the very
second
you can get an ambulance or Medi-Vac here, I want…”

Teague remembered nothing else for a while. When he woke the next time, shadows had darkened. The wind outside was still howling like a lonely wolf, but the kitchen was completely silent. The naked light fixture over the sink glared straight in his eyes—but not for long.

Huge, gorgeous dark eyes suddenly blocked that sharp, bright light. It was her again. She was real, after all. Who'd ever believe it?

And then there was her voice, not screaming at all now, but low, low as a sexy blues singer, low as sexual promises in the dead of night, whispering an ardent,
“Merde!”

D
aisy had notoriously bad judgment—and bad luck—with men, but this was ridiculous.

“Even Jean-Luc never put me through this,” she muttered. “If I never take care of another man as long as I live, it'll be too soon. I'm not only going to be celibate. I'm going to buy a chastity belt with a lock and no key. I'm going to take antiestrogen pills. Maybe I could try to turn gay. Maybe I could try hypnotism, see if there's a way I could get an automatic flight response near an attractive guy….”

Temporarily she forgot that train of thought, enticing though it was.

Man,
she was tired. Her eyes were stinging. Her feet ached. Her heart hurt. She had no battery of energy left, hadn't for the last hour, but it's not as if she had a choice to keep moving.

Crouching down by the fireplace in the Cunningham
living room, she touched a match to kindling, and while waiting to make sure the fire took, mentally ran through a checklist of what still had to be done.

She'd scooped up a box of candles from the Cunninghams' pantry, collected matches, three flashlights, then found a metal tray to put it all in. She located the generator in the basement, which was great, because who knew how long the house would have power? But power, of course, was just the tip of the iceberg.

No one grew up in Vermont without blizzard training. She'd brought in four loads of cut wood from the garage. Stacked it in the living room by the fireplace, then checked the flue and stacked the first branches and kindling. Before starting the fire, though, she'd raided the downstairs closets and cupboards for coats, pillows and blankets. She pulled the curtains and closed all doors to the living room, rolling towels at window and door bases so drafts couldn't get in.

The living room had been updated since the kitchen, judging from the furnishings—which were heavy on the neutrals, and colored up with afghans and pictures and keepsakes. Cluttered or not, Daisy judged it to be potentially the warmest room in the house, which was why she'd set up everything here. It was basic winter storm thinking. Conserve energy. Conserve resources. Not to mention, she didn't want to intrude on the Cunninghams' house or stuff any more than she had to.

All that seemed pretty solid planning—only, she'd been running on fumes for hours now. At least she wasn't still cold, but she was darn close to falling asleep standing up—and there were still three chores she absolutely had to do.

One was fill the bathtubs, for an emergency water
source. The second was food. Soup would do, but she simply had to get something in her stomach soon.

And then there was the other chore.

The kindling took. She watched the little flames lick around the branches, then catch on a small log, and knew her baby fire was going to make it. So she dusted her hands on her fanny and stood up. With a frown deeper than a crater, she aimed for the kitchen.

He
was her other chore.

Somehow he had to be moved—but how on earth was she supposed to move a man almost twice as big as she was?

Hands on hips, she edged closer. Long before she'd started the house preparations, she'd tackled what she could for the stranger. Feeling guiltier than a prowler, she'd opened cupboards and drawers until she'd located the Cunninghams' first-aid supplies. As quickly as she could, then, she'd put a clean towel under his head and tried to cleanse the head wound. After that, she tugged off his boots. He'd groaned so roughly when she touched his right foot that she'd gingerly explored, pulling off his sock—and found one ankle swollen like a puff ball.

Great. Another injury. She'd wrapped the ankle with some tape—God knew that might be the wrong thing if he had a broken bone. But doing nothing seemed the worse choice, so she kept moving, packed the ankle in some ice, then covered him with a light blanket for shock. For quite a while she just stayed there with him, hunkered down, worried sick he was going to die on her—until she realized she was acting like a scared goose.

She wasn't helping him, staying there and tucking the blanket around him another dozen times. The only thing
she
could
do was get her butt in gear and do some survival preparation stuff. So she'd done all that, but now…

Damn. She couldn't just leave him on the hard kitchen floor. It was drafty, cold, dirty. The couch or carpet in the living room was warmer, safer, more protected.

But how to move him, without moving his right ankle or his head? How to move his weight at all?

She thought, then trekked upstairs, thinking Mrs. Cunningham had to have a linen closet somewhere. She found it and pulled a sheet from the bottom shelf, hoping it wasn't a good one. The plan was to somehow wrestle him onto the sheet, with the hope that she'd be able to pull him across the floor that way.

If that didn't work… But she amended that thought. It
had
to work. She had no other ideas.

Crouching down, she gently pushed and prodded until she'd maneuvered the sheet under his weight. It took a while, partly because she was so worried about injuring him further, and partly because she kept glancing at his face.

He took her breath away; she had to admit it. He just had the kind of looks that really rang her chimes. Rugged jaw, dusted with whiskers. The kind of thick, rough hair that never stayed brushed, not too short, not too styled, just…himself. Shoulders that wouldn't be subdued in an ordinary shirt. Jeans worn soft, the kind that said he didn't give a damn what they looked like.

Physical, she thought dispassionately. One look, and she could immediately picture him hot and sweaty, throwing a woman on the bed and diving in after her. The kind of guy who was lusty about sex, lusty about life, lusty about everything he did. Bullheaded. Those
kinds of guys always were. The thicker the neck, the more stubborn the brain. And the bigger the feet, the bigger… Well, it wasn't as if she cared how big he was under that zipper.

She was immune. She could look, she could enjoy—as long as he stayed alive for her, anyway. But she already knew he was totally wrong for her. She didn't know why at that precise moment. Maybe he was married. Or maybe he couldn't define
faithful
with a big-print dictionary. Or maybe he'd found some creative, new way to break a woman's heart.

The details didn't matter.

The reality was that she had never—ever—fallen for a good guy. The flaw was in her, not them. She had some kind of chemistry surge near bad boys. The difference between when she was seventeen and now, though, was that she faced her problems. No more ducking or denial.

Which meant that when and if she liked the looks of a guy, that was it—she shut the barn door and padlocked it.

Right now, though, she couldn't be worried less about falling for Mr. Adorable. She was focused on one goal and one goal only—which was to pull the big guy into the living room before she collapsed from 1) a broken back, 2) exhaustion, 3) starvation, or 4) all of the above. My God, he was heavy. Sweat prickled the back of her neck. She pulled with all her might, groaning to give herself extra strength, and still only managed to drag him a few more inches.

Jean-Luc, her ex, had less character than a boa constrictor. But at least he'd been relatively light. Even when he'd been three sheets to the wind—or high—
he'd usually been able to at least
help
her move him around. This guy…

When she glanced down at him again, the guy in question not only seemed to be conscious, but was staring with fascination at her face. “Not that I mind being carried…but wouldn't it be easier for me to get up and walk?” he asked.

She couldn't kill him. No matter how mad she was, you just couldn't murder a man who was already hurt. But an hour later she was still ticked off.

That was also the soonest she could find time to close the door on the kitchen and call the sheriff to make another report.

“I hear you, George,” she said into the receiver. “And I admit it. He's alive. I even admit that it doesn't look as if he's going back into a coma anytime soon. But I still have no way to know how badly hurt he is. I need an ambulance. Or a helicopter. Or a snowmobile—”

While she listened, she also ground a little fresh pepper onto the potato soup. The stove and refrigerator were still functioning in the torn-up kitchen, but that was about it. There was no sink or running water. All the pots and pans and dishes had been moved elsewhere, ditto for silverware, food and spices.

Daisy considered herself outstanding at making something out of nothing—not because she'd ever wanted that talent, but God knows, because being married to Jean-Luc had required some inventive scrambling to just survive. She'd always been her mom's daughter in the kitchen, besides. So she started out with a bald can of potato soup she found in a basement pantry, then found kitchen tools and the spices in boxes in the dining room, then raided the depths of the fridge,
finally came through with some bacon crumbs and a beautiful hunk of cheddar.

The chives and pepper weren't as fresh as she'd like, but a decent soup was still coming together. If she could just get rid of her unwanted invalid, she might even be able to relax.

“Yes, George, I hear that wind outside. And I can't even see for the snow. But that's why you guys have snow machines, isn't it? To be able to rescue people in all conditions? No, I'm not exaggerating! At the very least, he needs some X-rays. And some antibiotics or medicine like that—oh, for Pete's sake.” She stared in disbelief at the cell phone. “
No,
I won't go out with you when this is all over, you…you cretinous
canard! Des clous!
”

The French insults didn't even dent his attitude. George just laughed. The sheriff! The one person in town who was supposed to rescue you no matter what the problem!

When it came down to it, the law had never done her a lick of good.

The soup was finally ready. She wrapped a spoon in a napkin, flicked off the kitchen light and carried her steaming bowl into the living room. The fire was popping-hot now. She'd have to wake up in the night to make sure it was fed—otherwise it'd go out, and suck all their warmth out the chimney. But for now, the cherry and apple logs smelled as soothing as an old-fashioned Christmas.

She ignored the shrieking wind, as easily as she ignored the long, blanket-covered lump on the couch. Darn it, she'd earned this meal. And she was actually getting woozy-headed from exhaustion and jet lag and too many hours without something in her stomach.
Quickly she settled in the giant recliner—obviously Mr. Cunningham's favorite chair, judging from the hunting magazines stacked next to it—and reached for the spoon.

A sexy voice—a pitiful, weak, vulnerable but nevertheless sexy voice—piped up from the deep shadows of the couch. “Could I have just a little of that?”

“No.”

A moment passed, and then the voice piped up again, this time adding a desperate, ingratiating tone on top of the weak and pitiful. “It smells really good. In fact, it smells fantastic.”

“Tough. You're not getting any food.”

When he responded with silence again this time, she had to relent. “Look. I'm not eating in front of you to be mean. There's nowhere to sit in the kitchen and I'm beat and this is the only other room that's really warm. Honestly, though, it's just not a good idea for you to have food after a head bump. You could throw up.”

Like any other guy who'd made it to first base, he immediately tried for second. “I won't. I promise I won't.”

“So you say. But the sheriff said I was to make sure you stayed awake, check your pupils every couple of hours and not give you any food until tomorrow morning.” She scooped up more soup, still not looking at him. She still remembered the ka-boom of her heartbeat when she half carried the big lug into the living room. Then she'd had to suffer through a whole bunch more intimate body contact in the process of settling him on the couch and tucked him in again.

That was her whole problem with men. They looked at her a certain way, she caved. He was one of them, she could sense it, smell it, taste it. For right now at
least he was hurt. How much damage could a guy do when he was hurt? Particularly when she refused to look at him. She wasn't volunteering for any more of those ka-booms.

“Please,” he begged charmingly.

She plunked down her soup, growled a four letter word in total disgust, then marched into the kitchen to spoon out another bowl. A
small
bowl. She brought it back with a scowl. “You get two spoonfuls. No more.”

“Okay.”

“You keep that down, then we'll talk. But I don't want to hear any whining or bribes.”

“No whining. No bribes. Got it,” he promised her.

Yeah. That big baritone promising not to whine was like a bear promising not to roar, but she slid the ottoman over and sat down with the bowl. “Don't try sitting. Just lean up a little bit.”

“I think there's a slim chance I could feed myself.”

“I think there's a big chance you'll eat the whole bowl. That's the point. I'm controlling this.”

“Ah. A bossy, controlling woman, are you?”

“No. A scared woman. If you die or get hurt any worse, I'm going to be stuck with you until this blizzard is over.” She lifted the spoonful, and he obediently opened his mouth, his eyes on hers. Again she told herself he was
hurt,
for Pete's sake. But how the hell could an injured guy have so much devilment in those eyes?

“Are we going to sleep together in here?”

She sighed, then plugged his mouth with another spoonful. “When
I'm
hurt,” she said pointedly, “I usually make an extra point of being nice to the people who are stuck taking care of me.”

“Well, if you won't sleep with me, would you consider taking a shower with me? Because I've got saw
dust itches from my neck to my toes. My hands are full of grit. I just want to clean up.”