6

If someone had ever attempted to tell him that Traci had a vulnerable side, Morgan would have laughed him out of the room. But there was no other word that could describe the way she looked lying there on the sofa, her eyes half-closed, the bandage taped to her forehead. He had this overwhelming urge to take care of her. An urge he knew would irritate her if she suspected it.

He’d felt this way about her only once before, he remembered. The time he’d saved her when she was drowning. But all that had happened so fast, he hadn’t had time to dwell on it.

He did now.

A strange, bittersweet feeling drifted through him. He never realized how frail she looked. Morgan took Traci’s hand between his. It felt small and cold. “How do you feel?”

Much too much. It was as if something was opening inside of her. Opening like a flower to the sun after a long rainy period. Opening and being drawn to Morgan. It had to be the result of the trauma to her head, she thought. There was no other explanation for it. She wasn’t going to let there be another explanation for it.

“I’m all right,” she murmured. “A little woozy, but under the circumstances, I guess that’s allowed.”

She felt a great deal more than that, but with luck, it would pass. Her mother liked to brag that the women in the Richardson family were made of stern, pioneer stock. Right now, she felt like a pioneer woman a cow had stepped on.

He wasn’t quite certain he believed her protest. “I tried to call for an ambulance, but the phone isn’t working. The storm must have knocked out the lines.”

All this and heaven, too. “I don’t need an ambulance,” Traci said with the first ounce of feeling he’d heard since she’d opened her eyes. It made him feel a little better about her condition. “I just have to lie here for a few minutes, that’s all.”

He nodded. Right now, that seemed to be the only thing they could do, anyway. Morgan looked down at her. The sofa was turning dark from the water it was leeching from her clothes.

“You’re going to have to get out of those wet things.” Advice he should follow himself, he thought. His own were sticking to him and felt clammy along his body.

“You know, if it was anyone but you saying this, I would have said that you had an ulterior motive.”

The idea had already crossed his mind—more than once—but now wasn’t the time to tell her. Probably never was more like it.

“Well, it is me,” Morgan said a little too briskly, “and I do. I don’t want you to get sick on me. I didn’t carry you all the way back here just to have you come down with pneumonia.”

He’d told her that before, but his words seemed to suddenly fall into place. He had actually carried her back. In the storm. The vision was hopelessly romantic. And yet she refused to accept it as such. She couldn’t be having romantic notions. Not about Morgan. And she engaged, for heaven’s sake. Or almost engaged. She’d made up her mind to tell Daniel yes.

Hadn’t she?

Traci tried to prop herself up on her elbows, but the effort was too much for her. Weakly, she sank down against the sofa.

“You carried me all the way?” It had to be, what, at least a mile from the bridge to the house? Maybe two. She wasn’t any good at gauging distances and she wasn’t very good at gauging what was going on inside her right now, either. She didn’t know what to say.

Morgan maintained a stony expression. “I thought of dragging you by one foot, but then you would have gotten mud in your hair and I would have never heard the end of it.”

The answer made her smile. “I guess a little of me has rubbed off on you over the years.”

He shivered in response, then deadpanned, “Horrible, isn’t it? I’m seeing about having it surgically removed. In the meantime, we’ve got to get you into some dry clothes.”

He’d saved her life once, maybe twice if she stretched it, and they’d known each other forever, but there was a place to draw the line and it was here.

“Not ‘we,’ Morgan. This isn’t a joint project.” This time she managed to get herself into a sitting position. But not without a price. Pins and needles attacked her from all angles, all aimed at the bump on her head. “Ow.” Her hand automatically flew to her forehead. The lump beneath the bandage felt as if it were the size of a melon. “Oh, heck, maybe it is a joint project, after all.” Right now, she didn’t feel as if she could even stand by herself.

“Be still my beating heart.”

His tone was softer than she thought it would be. Traci looked at him, wondering what he was thinking and if what had happened just before she’d left was somehow coloring everything for Morgan. It certainly was for her, even though she was steeped in pain and clutching on to denial with both hands.

Much as the idea of peeling her clothes off for her appealed to him, Morgan knew that in his present state of mind, it was tantamount to playing with fire.

“I think you can manage, given time,” he assured her. But what to put on was the problem. “I don’t suppose you brought a change of clothes with you?”

She began to shake her head and then stopped. “No.” She breathed the word out heavily. “Why should I?”

It had only been a shot in the dark. “Good point, but then, you’ve never conformed to the norm. Nothing wearable in the car at all?”

Morgan was thinking along the lines of a castoff sweatshirt or sweatpants Traci might have tossed into the car after a workout at her health club. Traci had always been gung ho for physical fitness and liked exercising with people around. He preferred working out in solitude in his own garage.

Traci sighed. “Not unless I feel like wearing spark plugs and trying out for Ms. Toolbelt of 1997.”

“You wouldn’t win,” he commented. “You don’t have the injectors for it.”

She wondered if that was a veiled comment about her chest. She’d always been small, or, as she preferred thinking of it, “athletically built.” The idea that she was wondering if he was thinking about her bra size at all told her that she’d gotten more shaken up in the accident than she’d thought.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He rose to his feet. What he needed, he thought, was some distance between them so he could sort out these very odd feelings he was having. “It just sounded like some inane thing you’d say to me.” He squared his shoulders. “I’ve got a flannel shirt upstairs. I guess that’ll have to do.”

She didn’t understand. Her mind kept drifting. Had he always been this good looking? “Do? Do for what?”

“For you to change into,” he said patiently, slowly, as if he were speaking to someone whose brain had been dropped in a blender. “Until your clothes dry. I can hang them out here by the fire.” He nodded toward the fireplace.

She stared at the empty, dark hearth. “There isn’t one.”

“I’ll make it.”

In all the years she’d been coming here, they hadn’t once used the fireplace. She’d always wondered what it would look like with a big, roaring fire blazing in it. “Do you know how?”

She really did think of him as inept, didn’t she? “Yes, I know how.” He began to back out of the room. “Now let me go get that shirt for you. You see if you can conserve your energy for a while—by not talking.”

She wanted to get up and show him that she was fine. But her stubborn streak went only so far. Her energy deserted her and she sank back against the sofa. Damp or not, the cushions felt good beneath her. “Knew you were going to say that.”

He laughed. “If you didn’t, then I really would be worried that you hit your head too hard.” Morgan paused, looking at her, then crossed back to the sofa. He looked down into her eyes.

Traci felt as if she were lying on a science lab table, about to be dissected. She tried to look indignant. “What are you doing?”

Very carefully, Morgan looked from one eye to the other. “Checking the size of your pupils.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Traci recalled mismatched pupils were a sign that a person had a concussion. “Why, Morgan, you say the sexiest things.”

He wondered how incapacitated she’d have to be before she stopped talking. “I want to see if they’re both the same size.”

She waved him back. “You’ve been watching too many medical programs.”

“Maybe, but you’d be surprised what you can pick up.” Satisfied, he backed away again. “You’re okay.” Then he grinned. “Or as okay as you can be.”

“Thank you, Dr. Brigham. Does the AMA know you’re practicing without a license?”

“Only on guinea pigs,” he retorted as he left the room.

She opened her mouth to answer his retort and found that she couldn’t think of a damn thing. She was too tired to be irritated by it.

He had rescued her.

That made it twice in her life, she thought absently. Twice that she was indebted to him. Who would have ever thought that her personal Sir Lancelot was a man she was destined to fight with every time they were in the same room together?

Well, maybe not every time, she mused. Ever so slightly, she skimmed her fingertips over her lips.

Bemused and still very much confused, she sighed. The chill, thanks to her wet clothes, was definitely seeping into her bones. Without thinking, she reached for the crochet afghan that had always lain across the top of the sofa.

But her hand came in contact with only upholstery. Traci looked, even as she remembered that the bright blue-and-gold afghan was now in her parents’ den, spread across the sofa there.

She closed her eyes and shivered again. She was just drifting asleep when a hand on her shoulder shook her awake again.

Damn, if she did have a head injury, he couldn’t let her fall asleep. He had to keep her up a few hours. This particular piece of insight came from the same program she’d just ridiculed, but he had no doubt that it was accurate.

Morgan shook her shoulder again, less gently. “Here, take this.”

She pried her eyes open. This time was a lot easier than the last had been, but it was still annoyingly painful.

Morgan was standing before her, a glass of water in one hand and a couple of aspirins in the palm of his other. A blue-and-white flannel work shirt was slung over one forearm.

“What’s this?” she murmured, bracing herself as she sat up. Though it was cold, she could feel a light sheen of perspiration forming along her forehead and beneath the bandage.

“Aspirin. I figure you probably have one hell of a headache.” He sat down carefully beside Traci and offered the pills to her.

Without thinking, she leaned her shoulder against him as she took the aspirins and then the glass of water. “I do.” She swallowed, then looked at him as she returned the glass. “Thanks. Is it my imagination, or have you gotten more thoughtful?”

He took the glass from her, placing it on the scarred coffee table. Morgan debated putting his arm around her, purely for reasons of comfort, and then decided not to. No sense testing new ground at the moment.

“Neither. I’ve always been thoughtful. You just never noticed.”

“Thoughtful,” Traci repeated slowly. The word evoked scenes in her mind that were completely to the contrary. “Was that when you glued together my sheets with bubble gum, or when you—”

He knew she could go on forever if he let her. “That was only in retaliation for things you did. I never started any of it on my own.” He waited for her to deny it, even though it was true. When she didn’t say anything, he smiled. “Got you, don’t I?”

For the moment, she was forced to concede. “Until I can come back with an answer. That smack to my forehead has made things a little fuzzy.” She saw the look that entered his eyes and it touched her. “Don’t look so concerned, I was just speaking figuratively.” She pointed to the shirt on his arm. “Is that what I’m supposed to wear?”

Morgan nodded, passing the shirt to her. Traci held it up against herself. It looked like an abbreviated nightshirt. She could remember a time when they were almost the same height, but in the past fifteen years, he had outdistanced her by a foot.

Traci laughed, some of her steadiness returning. “How chic. Our mothers would have a heart attack.”

He didn’t know about hers, but his would have probably been overjoyed, and hoping for more. But then, his mom had belonged to a commune or something like that in her late teens and he’d been convinced that there was something a little unorthodox about her.

“Our mothers are highly practical women who know the value of warm clothes and dry feet.” He gestured toward the bathroom. “Get changed.”

“Right.” She rose to her feet and the room followed. At an angle. “Whoa.” Traci felt behind her for the sofa and found Morgan instead. She landed in his lap. “Nice catch.”

He shook his head. Everything was a joke with her. Or an argument. He wondered if there was any middle ground. “I keep in shape. Are you all right? Do you want to lie down some more? I can take you up to your room,” he offered.

She didn’t like being fussed over. “I’m fine.” With renewed determination, she stood again. “Just let me get my sea legs.”

This time, he rose with her. Just in case. “We’re on land, Traci.”

The man was a stickler for precision, she thought. A little like Daniel. Except different. Very different. “Then just let me get my land legs.” Traci exhaled, leaning against him without meaning to. Realizing that she was, she straightened and then took a deep, cleansing breath. “Better. All right, let me change into this little number before my sanity returns.”

He watched her leave the room, knowing that to offer any more help would be leaving himself open to another duel of words.

“Small chance of that,” he commented. “It hasn’t made an appearance in all the years I’ve known you.”

She looked at him over her shoulder, a grin playing along her lips. “Flatterer.”

She was going to be okay, he thought.

When she returned to the living room, Morgan was busy stoking the fire. To her amazement, he had a healthy-sized blaze going in the hearth, just like the one she’d fantasized about in her imagination.

Barefoot, she padded over to Morgan and, standing behind him, she let the warm glow from the fireplace graze her skin. As the only source of warmth in the room, it felt wonderful.

Or almost the only source of warmth in the room, she amended, looking down at the back of Morgan’s head.

He sensed her entrance as soon as she walked into the room. For once, she wasn’t talking, but he knew she was there just the same.

Morgan could feel nerve endings coming to attention all along his body, especially when she carelessly brushed her bare leg against his arm a moment before she crouched down beside him. To keep himself sane, he began mentally cataloging her vices.

He didn’t get very far, even though he told himself there was a host to choose from.

Traci tried not to dwell on how romantic it all seemed.

“So, you really do know how to make a fire. And all these years, I thought of you as a klutz.” She spread her hands out before the fire, palms up, letting the heat glaze over them. “It feels better already.”

Morgan rose, moving away from her. Staying too close was only inviting the kind of trouble he wasn’t prepared to deal with.

He looked toward the window. There was nothing to look at. For all intents and purposes, they might as well have been the last two people in the world.

Now there was a sobering thought. He felt her eyes on him and nodded toward the window. “The storm’s getting worse.”

She came to stand beside him, suddenly feeling very isolated. “That means we’re stuck here for the night?”

He thought of the two disabled cars and the phone that didn’t work. “Looks that way.”

She blew out a breath, hoping he wouldn’t notice how nervous the thought made her. “Lovely.”

Something nudged at him. He refused to recognize it as jealousy because then he’d know that he had really gone over the deep end. “Daniel waiting for you?”

“Daniel’s at a convention,” she said absently. It looked like the end of the world out there. Just how isolated were they out here? When she’d spent summers here, the town had been little less than a handful of stores and a garage. She hoped it had built up since then. “He won’t be back until Sunday night.” She turned to look at Morgan. “What are we going to do for food?” Except for a granola bar in the car, she hadn’t eaten since early this morning.

“I brought some up with me this morning.”

She looked at him curiously.

“I was planning to stay the weekend.”

Relieved, Traci followed him to the kitchen and watched as Morgan opened the refrigerator to show her it wasn’t empty. There were several items on the glass racks and there was a bottle of wine on the top shelf.

Traci turned amused eyes toward Morgan. “Were you planning on spending it drunk?”

“No.” He shut the door again, then leaned his back against it, studying her. “I thought of toasting the old place one last time. With you if you wanted to. Alone if you didn’t.”

“Very thoughtful.” She grinned. “There’s that word again.”

Morgan turned to look at her. He was making her feel very uneasy, looking at her that way. She suddenly wished she’d thought to comb her hair or maybe put on a fresh layer of lipstick. She probably looked like something the cat dragged in.

So what? This was Morgan, remember?

That was just the trouble, she did remember. All the way back to the front door and the kiss that had subversively changed her feelings about a lot of things.

She gestured toward the refrigerator. “Well, bring it out.” Traci looked down at the flannel shirt that skimmed the middle of her thighs. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

For what? The question came from nowhere and he knew the sort of answer he wanted to give. He’d never seen his work shirt look so good before, he mused. On her it wasn’t just a comfortable yard of material. It was sensuously enticing. He watched the way the hem moved back and forth along her soft skin and it made him envious of a bolt of cloth.

He shoved his hands into his pockets before he did something stupid, like drag her into his arms and kiss her again. “Don’t you think that you should have something to eat first?”

Eating, right. What was she thinking? She knew exactly what she was thinking—of making love with Morgan. Of seeing if those bells, banjos and whatnots would show up again.

“When did you get this mothering nature?”

Here he was, mentally stripping away the flannel shirt from her body inch by torturous inch, and there she was, calling him maternal. He should have his head examined.

Morgan pulled open the refrigerator door. “Fine, suit yourself—”

She hadn’t meant to insult him. Heaven help her, she actually liked the fact that he worried about her. What was the matter with her?

“Something to eat would be nice,” she answered airily. “What do you have?”

He opened the refrigerator again to show her. “Eggs, bread. Ham.” There was some mayonnaise in the pantry as well as a children’s breakfast cereal that he had never managed to outgrow.

She nodded, hardly hearing. “Sounds good. I’ll do the honors.”

He took out a frying pan and placed it on the stove. “You cook?”

She took the handle of the pan and moved it to another burner. “There is no end to my talents, Morgan.” Taking out the carton of eggs, she shut the door with her hip. The edge of the work shirt hiked up on her thigh. “How do you like them?”

You don’t want to know. It took a moment before he could tear his eyes away from her legs. The last time he’d seen them that exposed, they’d been toothpicks. They certainly weren’t now. “Whatever’s easy.”

She had to get past this sizzling feeling in her veins, Traci told herself. This was Morgan. Morgan, not a hunk centerfold of the month.

But it might have been. He certainly looked good enough to be one.

“Easy it is.”

Expertly, she cracked four eggs against the side of the skillet and deposited them one at a time into the pan. Eggs were her specialty. Actually, eggs were the only thing she could make with confidence, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

When she popped four slices of toast into a very dusty looking toaster, the fluorescent lights overhead began to wink.

“Uh-oh, something tells me I’d better make this quick.” The thought of being stranded here in the dark was less than pleasing. “You have candles?”

Morgan was already opening the drawers housed beneath the counter. There were three in a row. The first two were empty, except for a few dead insects. “That’s what I’m looking for.”

The last drawer yielded only one candle. A further search of the kitchen didn’t add to the booty. Morgan laid the candlestick on the table. “I’ve got a flashlight in my car. You stay here, I’ll go get it.”

The idea of being left behind didn’t appeal to her. Neither did the idea of having Morgan go off alone. Not when the weather resembled something Noah must have experienced as he loaded two of everything onto the ark. What if Morgan couldn’t find his way back?

“How long will you be gone?”

He detected a nervous note in her voice and interpreted it his own way. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to hitchhike into town and leave you.” He wondered if there was any sense in putting his jacket on. It was still soaked. “I doubt that anyone is going to be out in this.”

She frowned. Was it her, or had the wind gotten louder? “I wasn’t thinking of your leaving me. I was worried that you might get lost.” She thought of calling him a few choice things for even thinking of going out in this, but knew it was futile. He was as stubborn as she was when it came to taking advice. “Take the dog with you,” she added suddenly.

Morgan walked into the living room. Jeremiah was stretched out before the hearth, a living throw rug. “Why, so he can bite me? I’d rather do this alone, thanks.”

She sighed, her fears multiplying. Well, if he wanted to go out in this, that was his choice.

Traci turned on her heel and returned to the kitchen. “You’re as stubborn as you ever were.”

“Thanks.” His voice drifted back to her.

In the kitchen, she braced her shoulders as she heard the front door slam shut. It took her precisely two seconds to make up her mind. Shoving the skillet onto the side of the stove, she raced to the door, unmindful of the fact that, except for the nightshirt, she was barefoot up to the neck. Throwing open the door, she was all set to run after him.

Her body slammed into his. Morgan was still standing on the front porch.

Amusement whispered over his features as his eyes washed over her. “You always run out barefoot into a storm like that?”

The creep. He knew why she’d gone running out like this. Words tumbled out after one another without thought. “Only when I’m running after an idiot. You’re not going to find the car. It’s pitch-black out and you’ll get lost. You’ve got the sense of direction of a dead frog.”

He placed a hand over his heart. “I’m touched.” And he was, although he wasn’t about to say it. Not yet. Not until he understood what was happening here.

“I don’t want to have to explain this to your mother,” she muttered, utilizing the excuse he’d given her earlier. “Hard as it is to believe, she’s attached to you.” As was she, Traci added silently.

He glanced back at the inclement weather. His sense of direction was a good deal keener than she speculated, but he didn’t think he could find the cars easily.

“Hard as it is to believe,” Morgan echoed, “you actually make sense. I might lose my way in this.” He sighed, ushering her back inside. “I guess we’re just going to have to stay around the fireplace if the lights go out.”

Just as the door closed behind them, the lights went out. She turned, her head brushing against his chest. “You were saying?”

“Fireplace it is.” Taking her arm, he guided her back into the living room. “What about the eggs?”

“Fortunately, they’re ready. I’ll go get them.” Leaving his side, she shivered.

He thought of putting his arm around her, then decided against it. In her present condition, she might just bite it off.

“I think there are still a couple of blankets in the hall closet,” he remembered. “I’ll get them.”

“Thanks.”

He paused, watching as she walked off to the kitchen. The light from the fireplace wrapped itself around her silhouette and did very strange things to the condition of his gut.

Morgan blinked and forced himself to fetch the blankets.