The nurse called, “Mr. Donatelli.” Nick dropped the wallet in her purse as if it were on fire and rushed to the desk.
“The doctor would like to speak with you.”
He found Dr. Taylor in the tiny exam room with Cara. He was examining her leg, which was an angry shade of red. “Ah, Mr. Donatelli, I was just telling your wife that her leg is infected.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. What about her shoulder?”
“I’m sure it’s painful, but it should heal with rest. Her leg is my primary concern. I’ll clean it up, give her some antibiotics, and send her home, but I want to see her back here if that fever doesn’t stay down.”
Nick shook his head. “The roads are out.”
“We can keep her here a day or two if—”
“No,” said Cara. “I can’t stay here.”
He understood why she didn’t want to stay in the hospital. She was afraid someone would recognize her. If they did, it would be on the news and her husband would know where to find her.
Nick held her hand. He’d done his part, but it looked like he was stuck with her, at least for now. “If she has to come back, I’ll find a way to get her here.”
Before the doctor fixed her leg, Nick leaned down close and gazed into Cara’s eyes. She whispered, “I owe you big time for this.”
“No, you don’t.” Nick kissed her forehead, squeezed her hand, and left the room. She may be rich and famous, but right now she was a scared little girl.
He sat in the waiting room, drinking lousy coffee, flipping through magazines without seeing anything, and thinking about Cara. He remembered a news report when her mother died last fall. The reporter said Cara would inherit everything, because she was the only one left in her family.
Someone turned on the television and Cara’s face appeared on the screen. He listened closely as a slick, muscle-bound man talked about her disappearance.
That’s her husband?
He seemed distraught, but Nick knew better. “So the bastard can act.”
A woman turned to glare at him and he realized he’d said the words out loud. “Sorry,” he said to the woman, and she looked away.
The reporter said Cara had bought a used car in Tacoma, and Nick’s heart sank. How much time did they have before her husband found her? She was in no shape to fight anybody now, especially the man who intended to lock her up.
<>
Cara woke slowly and glanced around. The nurse checked her IV and inspected her leg. “Dr. Taylor did a good job on your leg,” said the nurse. “We’re giving you IV antibiotics now, and when the bottle is empty, your husband can take you home.”
Husband? Oh, God, not Lance.
“My husband is Italian, too.” She was talking about Nick, Cara’s pretend husband. The nurse didn’t recognize her. Nobody recognized her, or if they did, they didn’t say anything.
Still groggy, Cara closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. When she woke again, Nick was there, holding her hand and joking with the nurse. “She was checking on the neighbor’s house when the quake hit,” he said. “The foundation failed and the thing caved in with her inside. Thank God she didn’t die in there.”
As the nurse talked about some of the people she’d seen, Cara realized how fortunate she was to be alive and to have a leg to operate on. If not for Nick, she’d still be under that beam, because she never would have gotten out on her own.
<>
Hours later, the boat brought Nick and Cara back to the neighbor’s dock. Nick had mixed feelings about bringing Cara Andrews back to his little house, but what else could he do? She had enough money to find another place to live, but he couldn’t turn her loose while she was so sick, especially with that muscle-bound jerk after her.
Tony met the boat. “Hey, Nicky, everything all right?”
“We went to the hospital. Tony, this is Max. Max, this is my cousin, Tony Donatelli.”
“Hi, Tony.” Cara reached up to rub her forehead with her left hand. Her right arm was in a sling.
Nick helped Cara up the steps and into the house, and Tony followed. “I put those clothes in the back bedroom, and there’s more water and stuff in the kitchen.”
Cara kept turning her face away from Tony, and Nick realized she was trying to hide her face so he wouldn’t recognize her. He motioned for Tony to come outside with him.
“You look kinda funny,” said Tony. “Something wrong?”
Nick took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Look, Tony, I appreciate you coming down here and bringing all that stuff, but Max needs to rest. She was up half the night with a high fever, throwing up.”
“What about her family?”
“I don’t think there is anyone. I’ll take care of her until she gets better, and then she’s on her own. Bring Angelo down tomorrow, if he’s around. She needs a haircut. I had to whack it off to get her loose.”
Tony trudged up the hill and waved, and Nick walked inside to find Cara standing in the kitchen, looking through the food on the counter. She put her hand on her stomach. “I’m hungry. Can you make something hot?”
“Sure. Sit down.” She sat in the recliner, and Nick put the leg rest up and tucked a pillow under her left leg. She looked better. The antibiotics were working already.
Setting the frying pan on the woodstove, he added a slab of butter and put a sandwich in to brown. She’d probably never eaten anything greasy like that in her whole life. And he fed her peanut butter and canned chicken noodle soup. He was embarrassed to look at her.
“Nick? Is something wrong?”
He shook his head. He didn’t know what to say.
She sighed. “You looked through my purse, didn’t you?”
“When you said your husband was trying to steal your estate, I thought you meant a house or a little money.” He turned to look at her. “You’ve got more money in that purse than I earn in a year. In two years.”
“I emptied my bank accounts before I left Seattle. Does my money make you uncomfortable?”
“Of course it makes me uncomfortable. People like you don’t hang around with people like me.” This morning she was just an ordinary woman, injured and sick, but regular people. Now she was one of the rich and famous he read about in magazines and saw on television.
The light in her eyes went out as if she’d flipped a switch. “Let me up. I’ll call someone to come and get me. Please let me up.” Her voice quavered with emotion.
Nick stood by the woodstove as if frozen to the spot. He couldn’t let her leave now. Where would she go? Who’d take care of her? “Why don’t you stay until your leg is healed?”
“Because you don’t want me here.” He heard the tears in her voice, and he felt like a jerk for not being more considerate. She didn’t cry when she was buried under that cabin, and now she was on the verge of falling apart.
He turned to the pan on the woodstove and flipped the sandwich, then hunched down beside her and lifted her chin. Her eyes swam with unshed tears. “Cara, if you left now, I’d worry about you.”
“You would?”
“Of course I would.” Nick jumped up and grabbed the pan off the woodstove. “Damn, I burned the sandwich.”
“It doesn’t smell burned.” She reached out. “It smells good and I’m hungry.”
He put it on a paper towel and handed it to her. She took a bite. “Mmm, it is good.”
He knew she didn’t eat junk like that at home. She’d probably never eaten anything greasy in her life. “I can make you something else.”
She looked up. “Don’t tiptoe around me, Nick. I’m the same person I was yesterday.”
Sure she was, but now he knew who she was. It shouldn’t make a difference, but it did. She didn’t belong in his dinky little house. Surely she had someone somewhere she could depend on, someone who’d help her through this. “Don’t you have somebody to check in with?”
“No.” She took another bite.
Nick took a deep breath and blew it out. It wasn’t the best time to tell her, but she had to know her husband was tracking her down. “Cara, your husband knows you bought a used car in Tacoma. It was on the news this morning.”
She groaned. “Oh, not already.”
“Hey, it’s okay. He doesn’t know you’re here with me.”
“You don’t understand. I bought a computer and had it delivered. Those people know where I live, and so does Elaine Martin, my landlady.”
“Where you
lived
, you mean. If he comes looking for you, what’ll he find?”
“The car and a destroyed cabin.”
“Would he dig in that mess to find you?”
It took her a few seconds to answer. “No, but he’d check the other cabins along here, including yours. I have to be gone by then.”
Nick shrugged. “Unless he hikes in or comes by boat, he can’t get here anyway, not with the roads out. I figure that buys you some time to recuperate.”
While she ate, he fixed himself a sandwich. He didn’t have a lot of food in the house, but he’d have to make it stretch until he could find a way to get to the store. He couldn’t count the times he’d gone hungry when he was a kid. His mother got welfare, but she bought scotch instead of food, and there wasn’t enough money for both.
Cara scratched her head. “Do you think we could find a way to wash my hair?”
“Yeah, sure. Tony brought another big jug of water. I’ll heat some on the stove.”
She sat on the edge of the bathtub, a towel wrapped around her chest, while Nick shampooed her hair. She closed her eyes and smiled. “Oh, Nick! That feels so good.”
“Tip your head back a little, if you can.... Hey, the black is washing out.”
“It’s not supposed to be permanent.”
Using a small plastic bowl, he rinsed the shampoo out. “The black didn’t all come out.”
“It will in time.”
He wrung it out and grabbed a towel. “That’s good.”
“You don’t like black hair?”
“Not on you.” He rubbed her hair with the towel.
“Is there enough warm water left for a bath? I feel really grubby.”
He stopped rubbing. “You
are
really grubby.”
She laughed, a rich, throaty sound that filled the room and woke parts of his body that had been dormant the past year. He gently washed Cara’s back and shoulders and arms, then handed her the washrag and left the room. She’d have to do the rest herself.
Cara Andrews.
Imagine a rich woman like that staying in his little house and pretending to be his wife.
She came out holding the towel around her. “Where are those clothes?”
He pointed to the back bedroom and followed her through the door. “They’re not pretty, but they’re clean.”
“I don’t care what they look like.”
He held up a pair of panties and she stepped into them. Careful of her sore leg, he pulled them up to her knees. She reached down to pull them up and their hands touched.
In that instant, the atmosphere changed. Before, she was a woman who needed his help, and then she was a famous heiress. Now, she was simply a woman, he was a man, and she was nearly naked in his back bedroom.
She couldn’t hold the towel and pull the panties up at the same time. “Oh, hell!” Nick muttered. He’d seen naked women before, and he’d seen this one nearly naked, so he pulled her towel off and pulled up the panties. She stood quietly while he helped her on with a green flannel shirt. He tried not to stare at her breasts, but it wasn’t easy. They were gorgeous, pale and full and perfectly shaped. After he buttoned the shirt, Nick grabbed a long, full, denim skirt with an elastic waist and held it while she stepped into it.
Funny how she’d let him see her like this, but he had to snoop in her purse to find her real name.
Her hair was starting to curl, but it was such a mess. She was a mess all over, wearing wrinkled, mismatched clothes, with cuts and scratches on her face and hands. He propped his hands on his hips and looked her up and down. “If those tabloid photographers could see you now.”
“Do I look that bad?” The light sparkled in her eyes. She liked to be teased.
He touched her hair. “I’m sorry I had to cut it off.”
“I’ve had long hair all my life. It was time for a change.”
Cara saw the look of hunger in Nick’s eyes and knew it no longer mattered to him who she was. No man had ever looked at her as if he’d like to devour her. Her body tingled every time he touched her. He was too much of a gentleman to seduce an injured woman, but she knew he was thinking about it. And, God help her, so was she.
<>
The private detective wanted more money, and Lance didn’t have much left. The cleaning woman wanted to be paid, too. Sally had wired him a couple thou, but he’d have to give it all to the detective. The detective was necessary, the cleaning woman wasn’t. He’d tell her to take a hike. He wouldn’t be there much longer anyway. So what if the house got dirty?
He’d take more of Cara’s little trinkets to the pawn shop tomorrow, maybe her antique jewelry box collection. She wouldn’t like it, but so what? It was her own fault for cutting him off.