Torn between darting around Brant so she could run upstairs and get her clothes, which she’d taken off because of the heat, and making sure he was okay, Talulah froze. The second she realized he was bleeding, however, his well-being became more important than her modesty. “Are you okay?” she said, trying to cover her breasts with one hand while she dropped down beside him.
He squinted at her. “Are you really naked? Because if you’re not, I hit my head harder than I thought.”
She was tempted to laugh but couldn’t. She was too concerned. He’d hit his forehead near the temple and nearly knocked himself out. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting company. Should I call an ambulance?”
He closed his eyes. “No. Just...give me a minute.”
“Okay. I’m going to get dressed. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
She ran upstairs to where she’d shed her clothing one piece at a time. Then she turned off the music and found her yoga pants where she’d tossed them while throwing out the dated food in the pantry, but she was so panicked and sweaty it wasn’t easy to get them back on. She cursed as she struggled to pull them all the way up, but she didn’t want to take the time to go upstairs and rummage through her luggage to find something else.
Once she’d finally succeeded, she spotted her shirt thrown across the back of a kitchen chair, but didn’t bother looking for her bra. At least she was covered.
After filling one of her aunt’s flour-sack dish towels with all the ice that was left in the freezer, she hurried back to the basement to find Brant trying to get up.
“No, don’t,” she told him. “I have ice.”
He allowed her to press him back down and groaned when she set the makeshift cold pack gently on the knot forming on his head. “What are you doing here?” she asked, but he was so disoriented he couldn’t give her a coherent answer.
She bit her lip as she studied his face. How serious was this? Should she call for help?
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Am I dying?”
Her heart leaped into her throat. “Why would you ask that? How bad do you feel?”
She knew he’d been joking when he tried to chuckle. “The look on your face...”
“I’m a little stunned. That’s all. Let’s get you upstairs.”
“I’m not sure I can stand. I feel pretty woozy,” he admitted. “I was out in the sun all morning. I think that’s making matters worse.”
“I’ll help you.” She draped his arm around her shoulders so she could support him, but he was too big and heavy. Fortunately, he was able to grab hold of the railing and use it to pull himself to his feet.
They made slow progress, but with her support, he managed to climb the stairs. She would’ve put him on the couch in the living room, but her aunt’s Victorian settee was way too small for him and would’ve been almost as uncomfortable as the dirt floor in the basement. “Can you make it up one more flight?” she asked.
“What?” he said as if he didn’t comprehend the question, but he allowed her to guide him up to her aunt’s room, where she eased him onto the bed and removed his boots.
“I’m going to call a doctor,” she said.
“Don’t.” He waved her off. “I’ll be fine—” he winced as he touched the cut on his head “—in a minute.”
Was that true? She’d heard that head wounds typically bled a lot, but the sight of so much blood dripping onto the pillow scared her.
She went into the bathroom, ran some cool water onto a washcloth and returned to clean him up.
“Where am I?” he asked, looking around the unfamiliar room, with its collection of hatpins and hatboxes, as though he’d fallen down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland.
“You’re in Aunt Phoebe’s bed. I bet you never thought you’d find yourself here.”
He looked confused. “I have an aunt Phoebe?”
“No. She’s my aunt. Do you know who I am?”
“Of course.”
“What’s my name?”
He held her gaze. “Talulah.”
“Good answer.”
“I’ve always liked that name,” he volunteered and repeated it a few more times, as though he enjoyed the way it rolled off his tongue: “Talulah... Talulah... Talulah...”
That he remembered her was reassuring; she tried to ignore the rest because it was odd. Obviously, he didn’t know what he was saying. But when she heard her name with a question mark at the end, she pulled the washcloth away. “What?”
“You are so beautiful.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t talking exclusively about her face—could tell it was a reaction to what he’d seen right before he hit his head—and felt her cheeks start to burn. But it was so hot in the room she doubted he’d realize he’d embarrassed her. “When you come back to yourself, you’re going to be mortified you said that to me,” she told him.
He blinked at her, obviously perplexed. “Why? I’m just being honest.”
“Because you don’t like me, remember?”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“You’re wrong. I like you a lot.”
She found this earnest, boyish version of Brant rather endearing, despite everything that’d happened, and tried to galvanize herself against the effect he was having on her as she worked to wash him up. Then she wrapped his head in a bath towel along with the ice.
When she was finished and had changed the pillowcase, too, he looked up at her and said, “Where am I again?”
He couldn’t remember from five minutes ago. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m calling for help.”
“No, I’m okay,” he argued, but she went to find her phone anyway and used it to ask Google what to do in the case of a head injury.
“It says to seek medical attention if there’s been a loss of consciousness, even a brief one,” she told him. “Do you think you lost consciousness?”
“When?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Never mind. How are you feeling?”
“My head is killing me.”
“According to what I’m reading, I can give you some painkillers—if I can find some in this house.”
She ran downstairs and rifled through the cupboards and drawers, eventually coming up with a small bottle of ibuprofen. It’d expired last year, but she figured even if it wasn’t as effective as usual, something was better than nothing. She got a glass of water and carried that up with two tablets.
His eyes were closed when she got back. “You’re not going to sleep, are you?” she asked in alarm. If he had a concussion, she couldn’t let him drift off. Everything she’d ever heard about blows to the head made that clear.
When he didn’t answer, she jiggled his arm. “Brant?”
His eyelashes fluttered, as if it was a major effort to lift his eyelids. But he eventually managed to look up at her. “Talulah?”
He still knew who she was, although he sounded surprised she was there. “What?” she asked.
“I like your name.”
“You’ve already told me that,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t say she was beautiful again.
He tried to finger the gash on his forehead, but she pushed his hands away. “Did you hit me with something?” he asked.
“No, of course not!” He definitely needed to be checked, she decided. Was a knock on the head like this one serious enough to bring him to the emergency room?
She was about to get him up so she could help him to her car when she remembered that there’d been a doctor in her family’s church, and she’d seen a telephone list of the members—the entire congregation—in a kitchen drawer when she was searching for painkiller.
What was the guy’s name? She knew him from when she used to attend services. Gregory... Or Gregor... Dr. Gregor!
Hopefully, he still lived in town.
After returning to the kitchen, she located the list. Sure enough, Dr. Joseph Gregor was on it.
She used her aunt’s ancient rotary phone to make the call. She thought he’d be more likely to pick up if he saw a number he recognized.
Thankfully, someone—a man—answered on the second ring. “Phoebe?” he said uncertainly.
She could tell that whoever had answered the phone found it strange to be getting a call from a woman who was supposed to be dead. “No, it’s her great niece, Talulah.”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Your mother’s aunt played the piano for me whenever I sang in church. I couldn’t imagine anyone else calling me from this number. But I remember you from when you were just a little girl.”
“Is this Dr. Gregor?”
“It is.”
“Then I remember you, too. And I hate to bother you on a weekend, but there’s been a little accident over here.”
“What happened?”
“Someone has a head injury. Can you come over right away?”
“Of course. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
As soon as she hung up, Talulah hurried back to the bedroom. “Don’t fall asleep,” she reminded Brant, grabbing his hand.
She was taken aback when he held on to her. “I’m not,” he mumbled, but he was clearly on the brink of it.
“I have a doctor coming,” she informed him.
“Who needs a doctor?”
“You do. You have a concussion, remember?”
“Oh.” He seemed to mull that over for several seconds. Then he said, “Is that why my head hurts?”
“Your head hurts because you hit it on the ceiling in the basement.”
“Right. And I hit my head because...” Lines formed on his forehead as he struggled to remember. Then his expression cleared. “You were naked!”
Talulah winced. “Not completely naked.”
“Almost naked,” he insisted. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“Do we have to talk about this again?”
His teeth flashed in a roguish grin. “It certainly helps keep me awake...”
She rolled her eyes. “If that’s what it’s going to take, okay. But you’d better not be bringing that up again and again on purpose.”
“Are you really worried about me?” he asked in surprise.
“No,” she said, but with the way she was clinging to his hand, she was pretty sure he knew it was a lie.
Talulah paced at the foot of the bed while Dr. Gregor took Brant’s blood pressure, listened to his heart and checked the dilation of his pupils with a penlight. Since Brant had asked her the same questions over and over, despite the number of times she’d answered him, she knew something was wrong with his brain and hoped he was going to be okay. She also hoped he had the presence of mind not to mention why he hit his head. He liked talking about it, but that was more information than she wanted circulating in Coyote Canyon.
So far, Brant had let her handle the conversation with the doctor, except when Dr. Gregor posed a direct question to him.
“Brant, can you tell me what month it is?” the doctor asked.
Brant took a moment to reflect on it. Then he said, “June?”
The doctor glanced at Talulah; it was August 11.
“What do you think?” she murmured as he put his instruments away.
“He’s got a concussion, all right,” he replied. “But from what I can tell it’s a mild one. His pupils are reacting as they should, and the cut on his forehead isn’t deep. I’m guessing he’ll be fine tomorrow, but you’ll have to watch him during the night.”
“How do I do that?” she asked. “Do I need to keep him awake?”
“No. They’ve proven there’s no benefit to that. He can sleep, but if he gets nauseous, acts uncoordinated or throws up, take him to the hospital right away.”
The prospect of a middle-of-the-night trek to the emergency room because his brain was bleeding or swelling was more than a little daunting. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. “Before you got here, he was saying he’d been on the roof of a barn in the hot sun,” she said. “Could he also have heatstroke?”
“It’s possible. But his temperature, pulse and breathing are normal, so I think it’s a plain old concussion. Just keep a cool cloth on his forehead and make sure he gets plenty of liquids. He should be okay.”
A gentle breeze was coming through the windows. That, together with the shade provided by the box elder trees now that the sun had migrated into the west, was bringing down the temperature. But it was still too hot for comfort in the small, cramped room. “Should I take him home, where it’s got to be cooler?”
The doctor frowned as he looked over at Brant, who’d already drifted off to sleep. Then he checked his watch. “There’s no guarantee he has air-conditioning. A lot of people in this area don’t. And I doubt it’d be worth waking him, not when it’s already starting to cool off here. Once the sun goes down, it’ll be temperate enough.”
Getting both Brant and his truck home would mean she’d have to involve someone else, and she preferred not to do that, anyway. Jane was the person she’d call if she needed help, but her childhood friend was with her cousins at Glacier National Park until Tuesday night. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you. How much do I owe you for coming out?”
“There’s no charge,” he said. “It wasn’t a far drive, and my exam only took a few minutes.”
“Are you sure? I feel I owe you something—”
He lifted his hand to stop her when she reached for her purse, which was sitting on the dresser. “No, please. I want to do this in memory of your great aunt—for all the times she accompanied me when I sang. And she used to bring us pickled beets whenever she canned them. The least I can do to repay her kindness is be of some service to you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“She was a fixture in this town,” he said. “Such a strong, determined woman.”
Talulah smiled, somewhat surprised to find he genuinely seemed to admire Phoebe. “There are beets in the cellar. Let me get you some.”
She ran downstairs, grabbed as many jars as she could carry and brought them to Dr. Gregor as he stood waiting on the porch, dabbing his sweat-dampened forehead with a handkerchief.
“Well, will you look at this,” he said, sliding his thick-rimmed glasses higher on his nose. “I’ll really enjoy them. And I’ll think of Phoebe every time I open a jar.”
“Thank you for coming.”
Talulah watched him get into his Suburban before she went back inside, retrieved the fan she’d been using in the basement and carried it to the bedroom.
Brant seemed to be sleeping deeply as she plugged it in and turned it on. He moved when she refreshed the rag on his forehead, but he didn’t wake up, so she sat at her aunt’s desk in the corner and read a suspense novel, some news and surfed the internet on her phone for a couple of hours. She had so much to do, but if she went very far from the room, she wouldn’t be able to hear if Brant needed her, especially with the fan on.
It was only eight when she grew bored. While refreshing the rag on his forehead yet again, she felt his cheeks with the back of her hand to judge his temperature. He seemed to be cooling off. She wondered if she should remove his shirt and possibly his jeans. She had no doubt he’d be more comfortable. But she wasn’t convinced that getting his clothes off would be worth waking him.
She was just trying to think of something else she could do to entertain herself when she saw that his eyes were open and tracking her.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Like someone’s taking a sledgehammer to my head,” he muttered.
“I’ll get you some more painkillers.” She was no longer worried about the bottle of ibuprofen being past its expiration date. While she was on her phone, she’d learned that most tablet medications remain effective years after opening them.
She hurried to the kitchen and returned with two more tablets and a glass of cold lemonade. “Are you hungry?” she asked as she helped him sit up so he could take the pills.
“No,” he said. “But I do need to go to the bathroom.”
He managed to swing his legs over the side and sit up straight, but she stopped him there. “You’ll be cooler if we can get some of these clothes off you,” she said, and he held up his arms as she tugged off his T-shirt.
She tried not to admire his chest and shoulders, but they were a work of art—even with such a marked farmer’s tan. “Now for the bathroom,” she said as she pulled him to his feet.
“You okay?” she asked, quickly steadying him when he swayed.
“I think so.”
She guided him to the bathroom, which was out in the hall.
“I’m guessing you can manage now,” she said, once he grabbed onto the sink.
“Yeah. I got it.”
She waited in the hall until she heard the toilet flush and the taps go on as he washed his hands.
When he came out, she saw that he hadn’t bothered to zip or button the fly of his jeans. “We might as well get rid of these, too,” she said. “You’ll be a lot more comfortable.”
He didn’t argue. He just leaned against the wall as she removed his socks and peeled off his jeans, which she tossed aside.
“All set?” she asked when he was wearing nothing but his boxers.
“That feels a lot better,” he admitted. “It’s fucking hot in here.”
“No kidding,” she agreed as they moved back to the bed. “But it’s cooling down.”
“Where are you going?” he mumbled when she turned to leave the room.
“I’ll be downstairs for a bit.”
He grimaced as he fingered the dried blood in his hair. “I’m sorry that you’re having to take care of me.”
“I don’t mind.” She certainly couldn’t complain about the view, especially now that he was almost naked.
“What time is it?” he asked. “Aren’t you tired? Why don’t you come sleep with me?”
There were two other bedrooms in the house, so she had options, but she planned on staying much closer to him than that. “Maybe I will later, if you don’t take up the whole bed,” she joked.
“Just push me over.”
“We’ll see. Are you sure you’re not hungry?”
“I don’t feel like eating.”
Renewed concern made her hesitate at the door. “That isn’t because you’re nauseous, is it?”
“I don’t think so. All I want to do is sleep,” he said and a few minutes later, he’d drifted off again.
Talulah went to the kitchen and tossed herself a salad. Then she decided to bake homemade croissants stuffed with ham and Gruyère cheese, using the dough she’d made and chilled last night. They didn’t sell croissants at the dessert diner, so it’d been ages since she’d attempted them and was in the mood for a challenge. They could be tricky. The secret was adding a little brown sugar to the recipe, which tasted wonderful with all those buttery layers.
As she worked, she checked on Brant periodically. Fortunately, he seemed fine.
The croissants filled the house with the yeasty smell of fresh bread as they baked. Once they were done, Talulah put one on a plate and took it upstairs to see if she could tempt Brant to eat.
He stirred as she pressed a hand to his forehead.
“What’s that incredible smell?” he muttered.
“I made ham and cheese croissants.”
“You made them? No one makes croissants. I don’t know where they come from. Heaven, maybe.”
She had to admit he was cute when he was at a disadvantage. “Are you hungry? Because you might feel better if you eat a few bites.”
“In the morning.”
“You don’t want anything tonight?”
His eyes latched onto her. “Does what I want matter?”
She could tell he was setting her up. “Maybe... Why?”
“I want you to come to bed with me.”
When she hesitated, he said, “I’m harmless. What could I do? Look at me.”
She had been looking at him. That was part of the problem. He looked pretty damn good to her, and she didn’t want to fall into the same trap so many other women had fallen into, wanting Brant when he was unobtainable.
But she had such a hard time falling in love she couldn’t believe that would be a serious concern—not for her—so she shrugged off her reservations. Sleeping in the same bed would be better than waking up every hour or two to cross the hall and check on him.
“Okay. I’ll be up soon.”
She went down to the kitchen to eat and take care of the mess, and when she returned, he was asleep again.
Grabbing the tank top she normally wore to bed, and a pair of pajama shorts she usually didn’t bother with, she changed in the bathroom before creeping back into the room and lying next to him.
She’d been careful not to jiggle the mattress when she crawled in, and she was being mindful about staying on her side. So she was surprised when he reached over and pulled her into the curve of his body. “There you are,” he mumbled into her hair.
Thankfully, it’d cooled off enough that she didn’t mind being so close. She held her breath, waiting to see what he’d do next. But he didn’t do anything. Within seconds, she could hear his breathing deepen and feel the steady rise and fall of his chest. And before she knew it, she found herself relaxing into the comfort of his body.