Loe raamatut: «Awol Bride»

Chapter One

“This is not turning into a good time.”

There was no one else in the rented SUV to hear Conor Madison’s observation as he drove through a Montana snowstorm that was getting worse by the minute.

When his plane had landed in Billings on that mid-January Sunday, snow had been falling. As promised, he’d called his sister Kinsey to tell her he’d arrived safely. But when he did, he’d discovered that Kinsey wasn’t in their small hometown of Northbridge, where she and Conor were slated to meet. Instead, she was snowed in inside her Denver home.

And by now, the snow was in his path, piling up fast. Conor could barely see two feet in front of him on this mountain road.

And on top of that, he was worried about his brother and thinking this whole idea might have been a mistake.

When he’d left the veterans’ hospital in Maryland, his younger brother Declan’s condition had been stable. In fact, Declan—who had been severely wounded in Afghanistan—had been doing so well he’d pushed Conor to make this trip. But when Conor had talked to Declan from the Billings airport, Declan hadn’t sounded very well, though he’d insisted that Conor stay.

But an hour and a half into the drive, when he’d called to check in with Declan again, Declan had been even more sluggish and lethargic, and had informed Conor that he’d spiked a fever—which could herald a dangerous complication that Conor wouldn’t be there to monitor.

As a doctor Conor couldn’t treat family, but he could follow what was being done closely. Monitoring his brother’s condition was the reason he was on leave from his own duties from the navy. Now he wasn’t where he felt he should be—by his brother’s side. If he hadn’t learned that all flights in and out had been canceled due to the storm, he might have headed back.

But there was no going back either to Billings or to Maryland, so all Conor could do was get somewhere safe—and get back to worrying about his brother once he arrived.

He’d grown up around here so he recognized where he was—about fifteen miles outside of Northbridge. But visibility was getting worse by the minute, and he was having more and more trouble plowing through the deepest of the drifts. There was no way he was going to make those last fifteen miles.

Luckily he wasn’t far from a cabin owned by the family of an old friend. When he noticed his patchy cell service was working for the moment, he’d called Rickie Dale to find out if the cabin was still standing and if he could use it.

Thankfully, the answer to both of those questions had been yes.

Just before he reached the turnoff, he saw the first car he’d seen in the last hour—nose-first in a ditch.

The sedan’s horn was blaring and the driver’s side door was ajar so the dome light was on. In the dim glow he could see that the driver was still in the car, slumped over the steering wheel.

As a doctor, his duty was clear. He came to a slippery stop and ran against the wind to the other vehicle.

The driver was a woman. In a sleeveless wedding dress without so much as a coat on over it. There was an abundance of blood from a head wound, likely the result of hitting the windshield since—for some unknown reason—the airbag hadn’t activated.

She didn’t react to him opening her door. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. So the first thing he did was check for a pulse, grateful to note that it was strong. She might be unconscious, but she was alive.

“Miss!” he shouted to be heard over the howling wind. “Can you hear me?”

She didn’t so much as moan.

But Conor was a doctor of emergency and trauma medicine and a commander in the United States Navy, trained to work in the field. He knew what to do.

He took off his jacket and wrapped it firmly around her neck to stabilize it. Then, keeping her head and neck aligned, he eased her back against the seat.

She had a massive amount of hair and much of it had fallen forward into her face, heavily coated in blood. Still, something about her struck him as familiar. But nothing concrete clicked for him, with his focus on her condition. Right now, all that mattered was getting her out of this cold.

He dashed back to his SUV and opened the passenger door, lowering that seat so it was as flat as it would go. Then he ran back to the sedan. With special care to keep her head and neck supported, he eased her from behind the steering wheel into his arms, took her to the SUV and laid her on the passenger seat.

Conor reached across her to crank up the heat, closed that door, ran back to the sedan to turn it off, lock it and pocket the keys before he rushed back behind the wheel of his own vehicle and put it into gear again.

It was a little less than a mile to the cabin. But already the dirt drive was covered in snow and drifts. The only thing Conor could do was go slow enough to feel that his tires were in the wheel ruts, letting them guide him. And hoping like hell that he’d opted for the right road and was headed toward shelter.

Just as he was beginning to doubt it, he caught sight of the small log cabin in the clearing of trees.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he drove the SUV up to the cabin’s front porch and stopped. Leaving the engine—and the heat—running for his passenger, he made his way onto the porch and found the key in Rickie’s hiding spot. He unlocked the door and entered with a mental thank-you to whoever had used the cabin last and left wood and tinder in the fireplace, ready to be lit.

If only he could find matches.

Matches. Matches. Matches...

After a moment of searching, he finally found a box of stick matches near a bucket of wood to the side of the hearth.

With a fire going, he returned to the SUV and carefully removed his passenger.

Inside with her, he laid her on the floor in front of the fire, letting the hard wooden surface act as the backboard he would have used had he had one.

She was breathing without any problems—that was good.

As he covered her with a blanket from the worn sofa nearby, the woman groaned.

“Good girl,” he praised. “Come on, come to...”

But when she didn’t stir again, he ran outside to turn off the SUV and then returned to survey the territory.

With the exception of shelter, the cabin didn’t likely offer much in terms of medical tools or supplies. Rickie had assured him that there was plenty of bottled water so Conor went in search of that, a cloth of some sort to clean the wound as best he could and a first-aid kit.

Returning to his patient—who was moaning again—he saw that bleeding from her head wound was increasing as she warmed up.

Working fast, he dampened the cloth with the bottled water and cleaned the wound.

“Can you wake up for me?” he urged. “Come on, open your eyes...”

More moaning but her eyes remained closed.

The wound was a clean cut free of debris. It could have used a couple of stitches but he had to settle for three butterfly bandages covered with a compression wrap.

Then he wet the cloth again to clean her face and get the hair away from it. The more he saw of her, the more he was struck by that sense of familiarity.

Her hair was thick and lush and the color of a new penny—he hadn’t registered that before but now he did.

Red hair.

Maicy had had hair like that...

Just as that thought struck him, the woman opened her emerald green eyes.

Conor reared back and froze.

It couldn’t be.

Could it?

No, it couldn’t be. It just wasn’t possible for the woman coming to on the floor in front of him to be the girl he’d left behind.

And yet the more closely he looked at her, the more he knew it was...

* * *

Everything was hazy. Maicy’s mind, her senses, were slowly fading in from darkness. She could hear a voice but she couldn’t quite make out words. And she felt too heavy to move.

Her head hurt. And she was lying on something hard.

Why would that be?

She remembered that she’d been in her car...

And it had been cold. So cold.

And then, too, there was that voice. A man.

She faded in a little more and blinked open her eyes. Her vision was blurry, and the light seemed dim. There was a man there...

“Good girl! Come on, wake up.”

This time she heard the words.

But she still couldn’t quite focus her eyes. And she was so disoriented that for a minute the sound of the man’s voice actually made her think of Conor Madison. As if that made any sense...

“Can you tell me your name?” the man asked.

Definitely not Conor Madison, then—he would know her.

“Maicy,” she managed.

“How about your last name, Maicy?”

“Clark,” she muttered.

She heard him say, “Holy...” under his breath before shifting back into a calm, professional tone to ask, “Can you tell me what year it is?”

“A new year. January...” The date rolled off her tongue.

But maybe that wasn’t the right date. Maybe she only said it out of habit. She’d given that particular date a million times in the last few months while planning the wedding.

The wedding...

“How old are you?” the man asked.

These questions were dumb. “Old enough,” she said peevishly.

She pinched her eyes closed against the pain in her head and reached up to feel the source. She discovered that her hair was damp and that there were bandages of some sort on her forehead, just below her hairline.

“Good, you can move your right arm. How about this side?” the man asked, taking her other hand. “Can you squeeze my hand?”

She did that. He had a big hand.

“Strength is good,” he decreed. “How about your feet? Can you flex those for me?”

She did as he asked and felt that her feet were bare.

Bare feet? She didn’t leave home in her bare feet.

Her wedding shoes...

“Where are my shoes—I love those shoes!”

He didn’t answer her question. Instead he asked, “Can you tell me what happened to you?”

She opened her eyes again. Her vision was a bit clearer this time, and the fuzzy image of the man on his knees beside her looked even more like her old boyfriend.

This really was bizarre.

“There was a deer. I swerved to miss hitting him,” she said, remembering. She also recalled that it was her wedding she’d come from.

And Gary...

“What’s around my neck?” she asked when she also became aware that there was something there.

“My coat,” the man answered. “Are you experiencing pain anywhere?”

“My head.”

“Anywhere else?”

“No.”

“Any pain in your neck? Your shoulders? Your back or arms?”

“No.”

“I’m going to pinch you a little bit—tell me if you can feel it.”

He did, pinching different spots on her arms and legs. She could feel it so she told him so.

Then he said, “Can you raise your legs? One at a time?”

She did that, feeling satin around them. The wedding dress. From the wedding that hadn’t been. Because she’d run away from it...

“Okay, very carefully, I want you to try to move your head—can you do that?”

She could do that, too.

“Any pain with that? Any tingling in your shoulders, arms or legs?”

“No.”

“Good. I’m going to unwrap your neck but I’m going to do it slowly, if you feel anything out of the ordinary, you tell me right away, okay?”

He came closer to unwrap his coat and her vision cleared more so she could take a better look at him.

He had dark hair the color of a double espresso—short on the sides, longer on top—and a handsome face even at that odd angle.

In spite of it she could still tell that his nose was slightly long and flat across the bridge but worked well with the sharp lines of a great bone structure—high cheekbones and a strong jawline and chin.

All refined and tougher versions of what she remembered of the young Conor...

Why did he keep coming to mind?

“Nothing? No pain—shooting or otherwise?” the man asked.

“No,” she said softly as she went on assessing his face and finding more and more that reminded her of the boy she’d loved.

And learned to wish she hadn’t...

Those full lips.

Those thick eyebrows, the same dark brown as his hair.

Even his ears...

Conor had had really nice ears...

Then her neck was free and he raised his eyes to her face.

And that was when she knew for sure.

No one she’d ever met except the Madison siblings had eyes like that. Bluer than blue, with silver streaks in them.

“Oh my God!” she said in alarm.

“What? Pain? Numbness?” he asked with more urgency.

“You’re Conor Madison,” she accused.

He relaxed and nodded. “Hi, Maicy,” he said calmly.

“I get it—I’ve died and gone to hell,” she muttered.

As much as she’d wanted to escape her own wedding today, she wanted to get away from Conor even more. So she started to sit up.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” He held her down by the shoulders. “I don’t want you moving at all yet, let alone like that!”

“And we know that what you want is all that counts.”

He didn’t address that. He only said, “It’s important that I make sure you don’t aggravate any injuries. So please, just let me check you out?”

“I guess that means you did become a doctor?” she said, curious but trying to hide it.

“I did. So let me do my job,” he reiterated.

Begrudgingly, she conceded to that, doing some checking out of her own as he continued his examination.

Conor Madison. How, on this day of all days, could she open her eyes and find herself with him?

Maybe she was hallucinating. That would be so much better...

But if she was hallucinating, wouldn’t she see him as the boy he’d been when they were last together rather than this solid, muscular, all-grown-up version of him?

The man who was fully developed—broad of chest and shoulders, with biceps that filled and tested the sleeves of the gray sweatshirt he had on.

He’d aged from youthful good looks into a striking handsomeness.

That aggravated Maicy all the more...

“Shouldn’t you be wearing a uniform?” she asked with some impudence.

“I’m on leave,” he answered curtly as he took her pulse.

His voice was the same. It had been deep then and it was deep now. But now it held more confidence, more certainty, more authority, as he told her what to do.

“I’m fine,” she insisted when his examination seemed finished.

“You aren’t completely fine,” he said. “You were in a car accident, you have a gash in your head and were unconscious for some amount of time. If I had you in a hospital I’d send you for X-rays and a CT scan. But since we aren’t in a hospital—”

“Where are we?” she said.

“The Dale family’s hunting cabin.”

“Rickie Dale?” She hadn’t thought of him in years.

“Right—glad to see that you seem to be firing on all burners. That’s a good sign when there’s the potential for a brain injury.”

“And how is it that I’m here with you?” she asked derisively, thinking that she’d answered enough of his questions and followed enough of his instructions to have earned some reciprocity.

“I was headed for Northbridge when the storm hit, and I knew I wouldn’t make it. I called Rickie and asked if I could use the place now, to wait out this weather. I came across your car on my way here.”

“My car...” Maicy said. “Did I wreck it?”

“You were nose-first in a ditch.”

Maicy closed her eyes again, overwhelmed for a moment by all this day had brought with it.

“Hey! You aren’t passing out on me again, are you?” Conor said in a louder voice.

She opened her eyes. “No,” she said, hating that there was gloom in her own tone for him to hear. “It’s just been a bad day,” she added, hoping he’d leave it at that.

No such luck.

“Yeah, I’d say so... Were you on your way to your wedding or coming from it?”

“Neither.” She just wasn’t sure how to qualify it. “I got to the church but left before the wedding happened.”

“Without a coat?”

“I took my coat—it’s in the back seat with my suitcase. I just didn’t put it on. I was in a hurry.”

He didn’t push it. Instead he said, “Do you feel like you can sit up?”

“Sure,” she answered, not revealing that she felt unsteady and drained because she didn’t want him to know there was any weakness in her at all. Not now or ever again.

“I want you to take it slow,” he told her. “Let me help you, and tell me immediately if you feel any hint of pain or tingling or numbness.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she clipped out.

He helped her sit up, and she made it there without saying anything, containing the groan that almost escaped when her head throbbed with the movement. Her expression must have shown her pain, though, because he said, “There’s some pain reliever in the first-aid kit but I don’t want to give you that until I know that the bleeding is under control. Can you stand to wait?”

“Yes.” And even if she hadn’t been able to, she wouldn’t have told him. “Now can I get off this floor?”

“Give it a minute. Let’s see what sitting here does first.”

Maicy sighed, feeling impatient. Methodical and cautious. That was Conor Madison. To a fault.

And she had faulted him for it. With good reason.

Glancing down, Maicy noticed her dress.

“Oh, I’m a mess...” she lamented. And it had been such a beautiful dress—white satin, scooped neck with cowl-like draping to the hem that ended at her ankles in front and gracefully expanded into a short train in back. Now it was wrinkled, soiled and stained with blood.

“Actually, you look pretty damn good...” Conor said. She might have been flattered if she’d been willing to accept a compliment from the likes of him.

But as it was she ignored the remark and announced once more, “I feel fine. Now can I get up?”

“How’s the dizziness?”

“Good. Gone,” she lied. “I’m sure I can drive. All I have to do is get to my car and back it out of the ditch and—”

He looked at her as if she was crazy. “In the first place,” he said, “you’re not fine—you’re doing well, but you are not unscathed. You’re nowhere near ready to go outside into the snow without shoes or a coat, much less to hike a mile to your car—because that’s where it is, at the end of the drive up to this cabin. It’s not drivable even if you could get to it—it’s going to need a tow truck. Then there’s the fact that if you were in an emergency room where you belong, they’d admit you to keep an eye on you overnight, and there is no way in hell I’d let you drive even if this was a balmy summer day. So no matter how you want to cut it, you, Maicy Clark, are stuck here. With me.”

Oh...it was worse than she thought. Not only had she encountered the one person she’d hoped never to see again in her life, she was stranded with him?

“You look sick—what’s going on?” he said.

“What’s going on is that I don’t want to be here.” With you! she added in her head.

But what she said was, “I don’t see mine, but surely you have a cell phone—call for help! Maybe somebody could come and get me—an ambulance, or the fire department.” She refused to believe that things were as impossible as he claimed.

“If I couldn’t get in to town, no one can get out,” he reasoned.

“I don’t want to be here with you!” she blurted, unable to stop herself this time.

“I get that,” he said. “But right now we have to do what we have to do. And arguing about it will only waste time we don’t have to spare. This place is not a four-star hotel and we’re going to have to work to stay warm and fed. So if you think you’re doing okay enough for me to get you onto the couch, there are some things I need to do to get this place up and running—as much as it runs—in order to get us through tonight.”

Tonight? They’d be spending the whole night together in this cabin?

Could this day possibly get any worse?

First her wedding had become a disaster.

And now here she was, isolated and alone with the guy who had broken her heart and abandoned her in her most desperate time of need.

Oh yeah, it definitely would have been better if she were just hallucinating.

Maicy took a deep breath, rallied the strength she’d had to find in herself years before and said, “I can get to the couch myself.”

He ignored that.

Which was good because once he’d helped her to her feet her knees buckled and she nearly collapsed.

He caught her in strong, powerful arms that—if she’d had even an iota of strength herself—she would have slapped away.

As it was she had no choice but to let him help her to the sofa.

Once she was there, she shrugged out of his grip and swore to herself that if she couldn’t get back up again without his help, she would stay rooted to that spot.

Because the last thing she would ever do again was lean on Conor Madison.