This Perfect Stranger. Barbara Ankrum

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СКАЧАТЬ voice was hers. Wasn’t it? She willed herself to try. Her fingernails sank into the mud in her pathetic effort to drag herself toward the nearby rail, but found no purchase around the cold chunks of ice that littered the ground. She could hear the frantic barking of her dog, Jigger, coming from inside the house and she suddenly wished she hadn’t left him there, safe from the storm.

      Dimly, it occurred to her that this was a sloppy way to die. Slogged in mud, trampled in her own paddock by a dumb animal who depended on her for its very survival.

      Embarrassing, really—

      Before she could finish the thought, someone was tugging on her wrists. Pulling her effortlessly away from the sound of oncoming hooves. She felt the heavy, pounding closeness of them as they barely missed her legs. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled with a fierce howl.

      And then she was sprawled outside the paddock with someone leaning urgently over her, shielding her from the hail. Touching her face.

      “Can you hear me?”

      It was a man’s voice. That realization only dimly registered. The sky above her was still doing a slow rotation. “I—” she croaked, licking the rain off her lips. “Ben—?”

      The shadow above her shook his head. “Don’t move. You might’ve broken something.”

      Not Ben, she thought. Of course, not Ben. Someone else. She tried to sit up. “Who—?”

      “Lie still,” he commanded, pressing her back down. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

      He didn’t have to. Everything ached. Maggie squinted up at him past the rain as he ran his hands down the sides of her ribs. Big was the first word that came to mind.

      And just like that, her head cleared.

      Oh, no.

      Pushing his hands off her, she tried to sit up again. “Don’t—”

      He swore under his breath, but let her sit.

      She couldn’t think. Not coherently anyway. And not while he was touching her. “I’m all right,” she told him. “I just…just had the wind knocked out of me, that’s all.”

      Her shaking hands were muddy, but she fingered her aching cheek, taking in the beat up old motorcyle parked twenty feet away.

      “You—you were…at Moody’s.”

      “That’s right.”

      “What—” she shook her head “—what’re…you doing here?”

      “Saving your pretty little behind apparently.” The hail was still pelting them, but he scanned her empty yard with a look close to anger. “Where the hell is everybody?”

      Everybody? Maggie tried to get to her feet and failed, bracing a hand against the post. A soft curse spilled from her lips.

      In one effortless movement, he scooped her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing at all and headed toward the house.

      She gasped. “No, wait! I’m perfectly capable of—”

      “The hell you are.” Unmoved, he trudged through the mud toward her front door. His arms were strong and thick and she felt unreasonably small in them.

      She swung a look back at the paddock and the gelding still racing around in a froth of panic. “But Geronimo—”

      A humorless laugh escaped him. “You mean that loco horse that just tried to trample you to death?”

      Her head ached. “He’s afraid of ropes. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

      “And if you had the sense God gave a flea, you’ll call the knacker’s truck for him tomorrow.”

      The knacker! She would’ve argued if she had the where-withal, but she couldn’t seem to muster it.

      They reached the door then, and he yanked open the screen and gave the handle a twist, shoving it open the rest of the way with his foot. A low growl froze him in his tracks. It was Jigger, who’d planted himself just inside the doorway, poised to do battle with this stranger. But at the sight of Maggie in the man’s arms, the dog whined happily and jumped up to lick her hand.

      “It’s okay, Jigger,” Maggie told him. “He’s a friend.” She looked up at Cain, whose expression was considerably more guarded. “Don’t worry. He only bites when I tell him to.”

      “That’s reassuring,” he said, carrying her into the warm room and setting her down gently on the corner of the pine-planked kitchen table.

      Maggie braced a hand behind her, surprisingly unsteady. She had every intention of getting immediately to her feet, but her knees had the tensile strength of water.

      Wordlessly, he tugged off his gloves, reached for her mud-covered right boot and began pulling it off.

      “I can do that,” she argued, even though she wasn’t precisely sure that was true. Her head felt like a fractured egg and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

      “Moody was right about you,” he said, as the boot released her foot with a watery pop.

      She frowned. “Moody?”

      “She said you were stubborn as mud.”

      “She actually said that?”

      “Which I see now is true.”

      She stared down at the top of his head as he worked on her other boot, at his dark hair, slicked with rain and hanging in dripping hanks against his forehead. His shoulders were thick and wide with a man’s strength. “What else did she say?”

      He cupped his palm against her calf and tugged at the heel of her boot. “That you need help.” That boot came off with a pop and his hands followed her muddy sock up her calf and pulled it down.

      Help. Yes, she needed help right now, she thought, inhaling sharply at the touch of his hands on her skin. Lord, what was she doing letting this stranger undress her?

      As if he’d heard her thought, his gaze lifted to hers, his cool palm still cradling her leg. The penetrating blue heat of his eyes seared her and she tried to remember ever feeling more off balance than she did right now.

      “I…don’t even know your name,” she said, reclaiming her leg and scooting backward on the table.

      “Cain,” he said. “Cain MacCallister.”

      Biblical references of the dark kind flitted through her mind. Cain. As in the second original sin. She watched him pull a hand towel off a towel rack and run it under the kitchen faucet until the water got hot. Jigger was watching him, too, with a proprietary sweep of his tail across the floor.

      “Listen, Mr. MacCallister—” she began.

      “It’s just Cain.”

      “Okay. Cain. Thank you for helping me. I mean, I owe you, but if you don’t mind, СКАЧАТЬ