Authors: Judy Griffith; Gill
Forbidden Dreams
Judy Griffith Gill
Chapter One
W
HAM! WHAM! WHAM!
Shell jumped at the first kick on the door and was on her feet when the second one struck. She had her hand on the knob in time for the third, and with her black Labrador beside her, opened the door before the fourth one landed.
“Ned, take it easy,” she said with a laugh, ducking her head against the lash of rain-laden wind off the bay. The relentless surf pounded on the tiny gravel beach, and the harsh tang of the roiled ocean came strong. “You didn’t need to come out on a night like—” she stepped back involuntarily “—this,” she finished in a whisper. She stared up at the tall figure—who was definitely not Ned—standing on her threshold, clutching the doorframe with both hands and swaying as if the wind had him in its teeth and was about to blow him over.
“Oh!” she closed her hand in the thick fur at Skeena’s nape. “I thought you were Ned with an armload of firewood. He brings me some every night about this time and … What can I do for—”
The man pitched face-first into the room.
Shell tried to catch him, but his weight was too much. She did little more than break his fall before she let him collapse, his upper body lying on the rag rug.
Skeena growled low in her throat as she stood wary, watchful, her ruff straight up.
Shell stared at the recumbent man, noticing with surprise that he wore no shoes, just very wet, tattered socks that showed a bloody scrape on the sole of his right foot. Even as she watched, rain sluiced over that foot, diluting the blood, soaking it into the once-white sock before fresh blood welled up. Bending, she grasped his shoulders and skidded him and the rug along the hardwood floor, farther into the room. When he was all the way in, she shut the door, closing out the wildness of the December night.
Shell grabbed the oil lamp from the desk where she’d been going over book catalogs and hunkered beside the man, holding the lamp high. In its glow she saw that the back of his jeans and jacket were coated in mud, but other than the cut foot, she discerned no injury. With faint amazement she realized she’d expected to see something horrible, like a bullet wound. Lord, she’d been watching too much television, reading too many thrillers. Spies didn’t exist in coastal British Columbia as far as she knew. Although, she thought, frowning, drug dealers had been known to die violently even in remote areas. She also noticed with the same detached amazement that her hands shook as she slid one around his neck, seeking a pulse in his throat.
It beat steadily. His skin was warm inside the collar of his jacket, warmer than she’d anticipated. That suggested he hadn’t been washed ashore from a shipwreck, though his jeans and jacket were surely wet enough for him to have swum all the way from Vancouver Island.
He groaned, rose up as far as his elbows, and turned his head from side to side as if testing his neck. Skeena growled again, and he peered at the dog before slumping back down, his eyes closed. He appeared not to have noticed Shell.
“Wake up.” Her voice was as sharp as her finger and thumb pinching his earlobe. She remembered reading somewhere—likely in a spy novel—that a good pinch there would make a faker flinch. He didn’t flinch. More gently, she prodded him with one hand until he moaned and opened his eyes, focusing on her with difficulty.
He muttered a single syllable that had the intonation of a question, and she answered as best she could. “You’re safe. You’re in my house. I’ll help you.”
“Sh-ell?”
She started. Shell? Had he said her name? Of course not. There was no way this stranger could possibly know her name. The state he was in, it would be a miracle if he knew his own. But what if he wasn’t a stranger? His face was half-obscured by a thick swatch of dark hair that tumbled over his forehead and temple, and a five o’clock shadow that had reached ten o’clock. Nevertheless, she was sure she didn’t know him.
“Can you turn over?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”
He mumbled something more, then with great effort managed to help her as she rolled him to his back. The action clearly caused him intense pain, because his face creased and his lips pulled back, baring his teeth. His front was as liberally smeared with mud as his back, as if he’d been wallowing in a swamp. His lack of shoes supported that supposition, but Shell wasted little time wondering where he’d been. Blood poured from a gash high on his left thigh, and he covered it with a hand as he groaned.
“All right,” she said, sweeping the flaring skirt of her flannel granny gown aside and inching closer on her knees. “Let me look.” She gently pried his fingers away from the injury. Wet, torn denim clung to his leg, dark and sticky where blood had soaked the fabric. She set the lamp down to grasp the cloth in both hands, enlarging the tear. Holding the lamp up again, she saw an ugly wound, long, deep, gaping wide at one end, and bleeding thickly.
For a second the lamp trembled in her hand, and the man raised his own hand to steady it. “Easy, Florence,” he said with a weak chuckle, which surprised her. If she had a wound like that, she wouldn’t be laughing. His chuckle didn’t last long, though. He tried to sit up, then flopped back down, grimacing with pain, one arm wrapped around his chest. His eyes fell shut, and his head flopped to one side.
“Lie still,” she said unnecessarily, because he appeared to be unconscious. Damn! The hard planes and angles of his face were so white, he looked green. Was he bleeding elsewhere? Internally, maybe? She grabbed a blanket off the back of the sofa and covered him, then snatched up the phone.
Of course it was dead. She’d known that. It had crackled and fallen silent even while she’d tried to call the electricity people to say that the power was out, but she’d hoped …
The man groaned, and Shell turned, feeling helpless, stupid, incompetent to help him.
His eyes opened and he slowly levered himself up, clutching the front of the bookcase by the door, then the doorknob, then, as she stepped in close, her waist, her shoulder. His hands were large and cold, and she slid herself under his arm, lending her strength. At last, fully on his feet, he swayed, half clinging to her, half leaning on the door. He pressed a hand to his forehead. “Damn head …”
Shell glanced at the couch. It was short, more a love seat than a sofa, and it would never do for this man who towered over her now that he was upright. The spare room, of course.
She hesitated, chewing on her lip. Was she out of her mind, bringing a stranger into her house and considering putting him to bed in her guest room? Yet what choice did she have? A storm raged outside. He was obviously a victim of it, and he needed help. Actually, he needed more help than she could provide, but she was the only one around at the moment.
A few feet away Skeena still stood alert and watchful. Her hackles were no longer up, but she was very much on guard, the muscles under her sleek black fur alive with tension. No, she wasn’t alone, Shell decided and turned the man toward the hallway. With Skeena at her side there wasn’t much she wouldn’t face.
“Come with me,” she said to the man. “You need to lie down.”
“Yeah.” His voice was thin now, breathy, and he moved very slowly, as if at the end of his strength. In the spare room, dimly illuminated by the light from the lamp in the hall, Shell continued to prop him while she struggled to get him out of his wet suede jacket. “Okay,” she said soothingly when he moaned. “You can lie down soon.” She dropped his jacket. It landed on the floor with a sodden thump and was quickly followed by his shirt. Leaving him clinging to the dresser, she flung back the covers on the bed, then unsnapped and unzipped his jeans, exactly as if she made a habit of stripping strange men—or even men she knew. Her silent laugh contained a touch of hysteria.
He was on the point of collapse when she backed him to the bed, hauled his jeans down over his hips, and eased him to a sitting position on the edge of the mattress. She dragged his pants off the rest of the way, cringing when he gasped with pain as they scraped over the wound on his thigh. She murmured an apology, but he didn’t seem to hear. His socks resisted removal, but she rolled them down and off his wet, cold, scraped feet, which looked oddly white and vulnerable for their size.
As she helped him swing his legs up and his torso around, he sighed raggedly. When his head connected with the pillow, he covered the top half of his face with one arm. His breathing was shallow, his mouth twisted.
“Got to … phone,” he muttered as she pulled the sheet over him. “Washout. Tell cops. Warn people.”
“The phone’s out,” she said, carefully draping the covers to leave his injured leg exposed and pulling them free of his abused feet. She peered at him in the shadowy light. “If it wasn’t, do you think I wouldn’t have called an ambulance already to get you to a hospital, a doctor?”
He let his arm fall from his face and gazed at her. His eyes were dark, brown or possibly black. It was hard to tell in the shadows. “Don’t need … doctor.” He looked stubborn in that moment, and oddly boyish, as if in the next instant his lower lip might jut out and tremble. He also looked … familiar?
Shell had to smile. “Yes, you do need a doctor, but I’m afraid I’m all you’ve got for the moment. So do what I say. Lie still and don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”
His eyes pleaded with her. “Pills. Pocket.” His teeth were chattering now as he shivered, and he pressed the fingers and thumb of his left hand to his temples.
A quick search of his jacket produced a stick of gum and a bottle of prescription pain medication, with a rain-soaked label made out to “Ja n ee e” and instructions that they be taken with food or milk.
With an inner lurch of unease she saw that the issuing drugstore was in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles. California. Hollywood. She swallowed dryly and stared at the mostly obliterated name. What was a man from California doing falling through her doorway only weeks before an important anniversary for the entertainment industry?
“J, a, blank, blank, n,” she whispered. “Jason?” Nothing else seemed to fit.
He groaned again, rolling his head from side to side. She set the pill bottle on the bedside table and darted to the kitchen for a glass of milk. When she returned, she crouched by the bed and slid a hand under his head. “Jason?” He opened his eyes and didn’t dispute the name. “Can you sit up a bit? I’ve brought you some milk and your pills.” He managed to lift his head far enough to swallow, then flopped back down again, his breathing stertorous. His muttered word might have been “Thanks.”
Shell swiftly collected the equipment she’d need and scooped up a lamp from the living room before returning to her patient. He appeared to be sleeping though his breathing was still much too shallow and rapid, as if he weren’t getting enough oxygen.
She set a basin of disinfectant-laced water on the dresser, then held the lamp near him as she peeled back the covers. The light showed her how badly bruised his chest was. She was certain he must have broken ribs, possibly even a damaged kidney, judging by the discoloration that wrapped around his lower chest and disappeared under his back.
“Oh, brother, you really, really need a doc—” she began, then broke off as the light fell fully on his face. She stared at him, recoiling slightly in … It wasn’t quite recognition, she realized, but it was, again, a sense of familiarity. Something about the eyes, the set of the eyebrows and that diagonal scar bisecting the left one.
She shivered. Some part of her mind associated that face with … a camera. Danger! The response was immediate and powerful, and sent her staggering back several paces.
Lilianne! Oh, heavens, he was from Los Angeles, and he’d come looking for Lilianne! A flurry of tremors shook her, and she quickly set down the lamp, chewing on her knuckles as she stared at the stranger. What was she going to do? Ned! She had to get Ned. She had to—No, dammit! Shell clamped down on her moment of pure panic. Don’t be an idiot! she told the frightened little girl who still lived inside her. No one’s looking for Lilianne.