Completely Smitten (5 page)

She eased her leg out from beneath her and then looked at it. Something was wrong. If her leg wouldn’t support her weight, then some bone was probably broken.

She ran her hands along her thigh, over her knee, and down her shin. The skin was scraped and raw over the knee and part of the thigh—whoever had bandaged her arm hadn’t found these wounds either—but it was her ankle that caught her attention. It was puffy, red, and three times its normal size.

Broken.

Ariel gritted her teeth and straightened her leg. This was just one of life’s new challenges. She was very lucky. She wasn’t dead. She had to remember that.

Using her elbows, she levered herself up, careful to keep her foot from touching the ground. She stood one-legged, searching for something that would act as a cane and seeing nothing.

So she had to hop out of the room. She sounded like an elephant, thudding her way forward. She hoped the floor was sturdy enough to take all this jumping. Otherwise, she might need to be rescued again.

The room next to hers was a bathroom, long and narrow, with a window that had a view of a private garden. The bathroom dated the house to the 1970s at the very least, even though the furnishings were modern—porcelain and chrome.

A medical kit sat beside the sink, apparently the same kit her rescuer had used to bandage her arms. She found a clean washcloth on the shelf above the sink. Then she sat on the edge of the bathtub, extended her leg so that she wouldn’t bump her ankle, and proceeded to clean up her wounds.

Vivaldi played softly on Dar’s battery-operated boom box. The boom box was on the counter, beside the sink, so that he could listen whenever he cooked—which was often up here. Back home in Portland, he acted like he had never made a meal in his life. Cooking was Aethelstan’s province— Aethelstan Blackstone, who had been Dar’s friend for more than a thousand years.

Most people in the country knew Aethelstan as Alex Blackstone, the famous chef. His restaurant, Quixotic, was a destination for most upscale tourists when they hit town. He also had his own line of gourmet food products, recipe books, and cooking accessories.

Ostensibly, Darius worked in the restaurant, managing its advertising and its work force. He didn’t need the money. He was richer than Aethelstan, richer than almost anyone he knew. And why wouldn’t he be? If a person lived nearly three thousand years and hadn’t learned how to earn and save money, then he was a fool—at least in Darius’s opinion.

He worked at the restaurant because he liked Aethelstan’s companionship and it gave him a cover for the work he had to do to fill out his sentence. While he was in Portland, he’d put two couples together: Aethelstan and his wife Nora, and Aethelstan’s former fiancée, Emma Lost, and her husband, Michael Found.

Darius stirred his spaghetti sauce. The sauce required a lot of attention, particularly since he hadn’t cooked it at this house in perhaps fifty years.

No electrical power wires ran to the house. There weren’t power poles this deep in the wilderness. Most of the electricity ran on two large generators that he kept fueled in the garage. Some of the rest of the power came from the solar units he had added to the house in the 1980s.

And sometimes, when he ran out of fuel for the generator or when he simply had to watch a video or go out of his mind, he conjured up some electrical power all on his own.

Right now, though, he was cooking on the Franklin stove that he had installed in the house in the ‘teens. He considered that quite a sacrifice, because he had to build a fire in the stove to make the burners work, and the stove heated the kitchen unbearably. But this particular sauce had been his specialty since the mid-nineteenth century, and he had to make it.

He wanted his guest to experience the best of everything while she was here.

He wasn’t sure where that impulse came from—perhaps he was lonelier than he thought—or maybe he felt sorry for her. But he doubted it. He was attracted to her courage. He had never seen someone think so quickly or act with such competence. She was amazing. She was clearly an athlete, and a very smart person.

Darius sighed. He hadn’t been attracted to a woman like this in centuries—maybe ever. Especially a woman he hadn’t spoken to. He couldn’t ever remember being attracted before a conversation started.

It was still too early in the evening to open any windows to catch the cool mountain breezes. He had taken off his shirt in preparation, but it didn’t feel like enough. The kitchen was hot and stuffy, although the smell of garlic and oregano and the tomato-based sauce was divine.

Then the music thudded. Darius frowned. Vivaldi never thudded, not even when played by a particularly bad orchestra—and the recording he had was certainly thud-proof. He turned, wondering if the sound had come from the guest room.

He shut off the Vivaldi and listened for a moment but didn’t hear anything else. Finally he turned the Vivaldi back on and continued to stir the sauce.

Then he heard the thud again. It was followed by another, and another. He shut off the Vivaldi and listened to the thudding. It was irregular, and it definitely hadn’t come from outside.

Which meant his visitor was awake. Although he had no clue what was causing her to thud.

He hurried down the hallway. The door to the guest room was open, and the covers were thrown back on the bed. He peered inside the room but didn’t see her.

Instead, he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. She sat on his bathtub, her left leg extended, her shirt unbuttoned.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were perfectly shaped ski jumps. Stunning, except for the long red scrapes running down the front.

She hadn’t seen him.

He looked away, silently cursing himself for not thinking that she’d be scraped under her clothing. If he’d thought of that, he would have had to repair the scrapes, or at least bandage them, which would require cleaning out the wounds, which would allow him to run a cloth along that upturned skin, down to the nipple …

A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead. He was hotter than he’d thought he was. Damn that stove. Its effects even reached back here.

He backed away, considering himself fortunate that she hadn’t seen him. He moved silently, going back into the living room. He grabbed his shirt, wiped off his hot face, and slipped on the shirt. Then he started whistling the Vivaldi as he made his way down the hall.

Something clanged against the porcelain tub, followed by a soft female curse. He walked more slowly, giving her time to cover herself up—although part of him wondered why he was doing that. He would never have done so in the past. But then, he wouldn’t have cooked his special sauce for just anyone either. He would have radioed for a plane and gotten the offending tourist off his property as quickly as possible.

He looked into the bedroom as if he hadn’t known she was gone. Then he looked in the bathroom.

She was still sitting on the edge of the tub, but she had covered herself. She clutched the washcloth in one hand. The medical kit had fallen into the tub.

He hadn’t realized how very beautiful she was. In repose, she had been merely lovely, her angular features almost mismatched. But with light in her eyes and animation in her face, she became the most beautiful woman he had ever seen—and he’d seen some world-famous beauties, from Helen of Troy to Emma Lost.

He attempted nonchalance. He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms. Then he smiled.

“Hello,” he said, and waited for her response.

Four

Ariel clutched the damp washcloth in her right hand. She was unable to move, unable to speak. Her dream angel stood before her.

His voice was as stunning as he was. Deep, rich, warm. He had a bit of an accent, one that she couldn’t place except by elimination. It wasn’t Southern or Midwestern. It had a clipped edge, but it wasn’t British or Australian, maybe not even European. It seemed almost uniquely its own.

She hadn’t imagined him. He had carried her from the cliff face. He had brought her here, to his house, and bandaged the wounds on her arms. He had put her in his bed and covered her with his blanket.

He had held her close, just like she had dreamed.

He was staring at her, waiting for some kind of response to his greeting.

“Hi,” she said, feeling like a complete idiot. He had saved her life and she couldn’t say anything other than “hi” ? He probably thought her as dumb as she felt.

“How’re you feeling?”

She shrugged. “Pretty good, considering.”

That was dumb too. She should have told him about the ankle, about the muscles and scrapes.

His skin glistened. He looked completely robust, the picture of health. “I didn’t realize how badly scraped your legs were.”

“I’m scraped all over,” she said, and flushed.

He averted his gaze, as if she were sitting in front of him naked. “I only saw your arms.”

Was that an apology? “I figured that out from the bandages.”

She set the washcloth on the side of the tub. She wasn’t going to work on her scrapes, not while the handsomest man she’d ever seen was standing right in front of her.

“What happened?” she asked. “I mean, after I slid off the cliff.”

His gaze met hers again, and something passed through his eyes. She got the oddest sense that he was about to lie to her.

“You landed on a ledge.”

That wasn’t what she had expected him to say, and yet it felt right. She remembered lying on stone when she first saw him, remembered the eagles flying overhead.

“How far down?”

“Thirty feet or so.”

“Wow.” Falls like that killed people all the time. “I really must be tough.”

He turned his head quizzically. “What?”

She grinned. “People always said I was superhuman. I guess this proves it.”

He grinned back. It added an impish charm to his face. “I guess so.”

A strange euphoria was building inside her. Maybe it was finally becoming clear to her deep down that she had survived the impossible.

“No one’ll believe I came out of a thirty-foot fall with scrapes and a broken ankle. Absolutely no one. You didn’t, by chance, make a video?”

“What?” The grin had left his face.

“A video,” she said. “To show my friends, maybe sell to those late-night real-life video shows—‘Amazing Disasters’ or something like that.”

He stepped into the room. “What happened to your ankle?”

She tilted her leg toward him. “I think I broke it.”

He stared at her ankle as if it had betrayed him. “I thought I went all the way down your leg.”

“What?” she asked.

He blinked at her, as if hearing her for the first time, and said, “I didn’t know you’d broken your ankle.”

“Me either,” she said, “until I tried to get out of bed and landed flat on my butt.”

“That shouldn’t have happened.” He took a step closer to her.

“That’s what I said. Well, what I thought. I think I probably said nothing intelligible …”

She let her voice trail off as he knelt before her and held his hands over her swollen ankle. He flattened one hand and reached toward her injury with the other.

The last thing she wanted to do was have anyone touch her swollen skin. She slid her leg back.

He clenched his hand into a fist. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m just skittish. It hurts.”

“I’m sure it does.” He continued to stare at her ankle, as if he hadn’t seen anything like it before. “I had no idea. I’m really sorry.”

Almost as if it were his fault. She smiled. Good-looking and kind. How lucky could a girl get? “It’s okay, really. I mean, it’s not okay. It hurts, but it’s not your fault. After all, what could you have done? You’re not a doctor, are you?”

He bit his lower lip, and she had that sensation again. It felt like he was preparing to lie to her. “No.”

And yet the word had a ring of truth. How odd. She thought he was lying and telling the truth at the same time. And she didn’t really care. She was so attracted to him that she could scarcely believe they were in the same room together.

She had never had a reaction like this to anyone. Perhaps she was still in shock.

“It’s just …” He paused, as if he were choosing his words carefully. “If I had known that you were hurt this badly, I’d have radioed for an airplane.”

She sighed. She didn’t want to think about the plane and what it meant to her trip. Not yet. “You said that ledge was thirty feet down. How did you get me back up?”

He glanced at her. “You don’t remember? You were talking to me.”

She grinned. “I don’t think I was myself. I thought we were flying.”

He studied her for a moment. Then he swallowed and glanced at her ankle again. “I guess that makes sense. I used a pulley system to lever you up.”

She frowned. “I remember you carrying me.”

“I did.” He rocked back on his heels and then stood up. “Once I got you off the ledge, I carried you to the house. You seemed okay except for the scrapes. How do you feel?”

“Sore,” she said. “But otherwise pretty healthy. I mean, a broken ankle is a problem, but it’s not like I punctured a lung or something.”

He looked away again. Her comment had disturbed him somehow, yet she couldn’t figure out how. What was going on up here? Did he have something to do with her fall? Had he booby-trapped the trail or something?

But that didn’t make sense. She knew that the mountains slid all the time. Nothing set them off; the slides just happened. The books she’d read preparing for this trip had warned her. People who’d made the hike had warned her. Even the signs on the trail had warned her.

Besides, she had seen the small bits of rock move even before the trail slid out from underneath her. He had had nothing to do with it.

So why was he acting so guilty?

He ran a hand through his curls. They fell back into place perfectly. “It’s getting dark. I can radio for help, but they can’t land a plane here at night. I have an airstrip. I suppose I could ask for a helicopter, if they’re willing to send one in. I’d tell them you were injured. That might bring them faster.”

She was shaking her head even before he finished speaking. A plane was going to be expensive enough. She had researched that before hiking into the wilderness area and had opted not to hire one to get her in or out just because of the cost. A helicopter, sent to rescue her at night, would be even more expensive. And Idaho, like other western states, made people who put rescuers at unnecessary risk pay for their rescues.