Color rushed into her cheeks even as she jerked her head back. She wasn’t used to being called beautiful, only competent. “Try some of this. My father’s secret blend. It isn’t even on the market yet.”
Before he could decline, she was holding the cup to his lips. “Thanks.” Oddly, the flavor brought back a foggy memory of childhood. “What am I doing here?”
“Recovering. You crashed your plane in the mountains a few miles from here.”
“My plane?”
“Don’t you remember?” A frown came and went in her eyes. Gold eyes. Big, tawny gold eyes. “It’ll come back after a bit, I imagine. You took a bad hit on the head.” She urged more tea on him and resisted a foolish urge to brush the hair back from his forehead. “I was watching the storm, or I might not have seen you go down. It’s fortunate you’re not hurt more than you are. There’s no phone in the cabin, and the two-way’s in being repaired, so I can’t even call for a doctor.”
“Two-way?”
“The radio,” she said gently. “Do you think you could eat?”
“Maybe. Your name?”
“Liberty Stone.” She set the tea aside, then laid a hand on his brow to check for fever. She considered it a minor miracle that he hadn’t caught a chill. “My parents were in the first wave of sixties counterculture. So I’m Liberty, which is better than my sister, who got stuck with Sunbeam.” Noting his confusion, she laughed. “Just call me Libby. How about you?”
“I don’t—” The hand on his brow was cool and real. So she had to be real, he reasoned. But what in the hell was she talking about?
“What’s your name? I usually like to know who it is I’ve saved from plane wrecks.”
He opened his mouth to tell her—and his mind was blank. Panic skidded along his spine. She saw it whiten his face and glaze his eyes before his fingers clamped hard over her wrist. “I can’t—I can’t remember.”
“Don’t push it.” She swore silently, thinking of the radio she had so conscientiously taken for repairs on her trip in for supplies. “You’re disoriented. I want you to rest, try to relax, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”
When he closed his eyes, she got directly to her feet and started back into the kitchen. He’d had no identification, Libby remembered as she began to prepare an omelet. No wallet, no papers, no permits. He could be anyone. A criminal, a psychopath... No. Laughing to herself, she grated some cheese over the egg mixture. Her imagination had always been fruitful. Hadn’t the ability to picture primitive and ancient cultures as real people—families, lovers, children—pushed her forward in her career?
But, imagination aside, she had also always been a good judge of character. That, too, probably came from her fascination with people and their habits. And, she admitted ruefully, from the fact that she had always been more comfortable observing people than interacting with them.
The man who was wrestling with his own demons in her living room wasn’t a threat to her. Whoever he was, he was harmless. She flipped the omelet expertly, then turned to reach for a plate. With a shriek, she dropped the pan, eggs and all. Her harmless patient was standing, gloriously naked, in her kitchen doorway.
“Hornblower,” he managed as he started to slide down the jamb. “Caleb Hornblower.”
Dimly he heard her swearing at him. Shaking off his giddiness, he surfaced to find her face close to his. Her arms were around him, and she was struggling to drag him up. In an attempt to help her, he reached out and sent them both sprawling.
Winded, Libby lay flat on her back, pinned under his body. “You’d better still be disoriented.”
“Sorry.” He had time to register that she was tall and very firm. “Did I knock you down?”
“Yes.” Her arms were still around him, her hands splayed over a ridge of muscle along his back. She snatched them away, blaming her breathlessness on her fall. “Now, if you don’t mind, you’re a little heavy.”
He managed to brace one hand on the floor and push himself up a couple of inches. He was dazed, he admitted to himself, but he wasn’t dead. And she felt like heaven beneath him. “Maybe I’m too weak to move.”
Was that amusement? Yes, Libby decided, that was definitely amusement in his eyes. That ageless and particularly infuriating male amusement. “Hornblower, if you don’t move, you’re going to be a whole lot weaker.” She caught the quick flash of his grin before she squirmed out from under him. She made a halfhearted attempt to keep her eyes on his face—and only his face—as she helped him up. “If you’re going to walk around, you’re going to have to wait until you can manage it on your own.” She slipped a supporting hand around his waist and instantly felt a strong, uncomfortable reaction. “And until I dig through my father’s things and find you some pants.”
“Right.” He sank gratefully onto the couch.
“This time stay put until I come back.”
He didn’t argue. He couldn’t. The walk to the kitchen doorway and back had sapped what strength he’d had left. It was an odd and unwelcome feeling, this weakness. He couldn’t remember having been sick a day in his adult life. True, he’d bashed himself up pretty good in that aircycle wreck, but he’d been, what—eighteen?
Damn it, if he could remember that, why couldn’t he remember how he’d gotten here? Closing his eyes, he sat back and tried to think above the throbbing in his head.
He’d wrecked his plane. That was what she—Libby—had said. He certainly felt as though he’d wrecked something. It would come back, just as his name had come back to him after that initial terrifying blankness.
She walked back in carrying a plate. “Lucky for you I just laid in supplies.” When he opened his eyes, she hesitated and nearly bobbled the eggs a second time. The way he looked, she told herself, half-naked, with only a blanket tossed over his lap and the glow of the fire dancing over his skin, was enough to make any woman’s hands unsteady. Then he smiled.
“It smells good.”