A Cold Creek Secret, page 2
The bedroom he stayed in when he was here was one of the two on the main floor and from his duffel he quickly grabbed a sweatshirt and a pair of cutoff sweats that would likely probably drown her, then he returned to the family room.
"I'm going to take off your parka so I can get a better look and make sure you don't have any broken bones, okay?"
She didn't answer and he wondered if she was asleep or had slipped away again. He debated calling the Pine Gulch paramedics, but he hated to do that on a vicious night like tonight unless it was absolutely necessary. He had some medic training and could deal with most basic first aid needs. If she required more than that, he would drive her into town himself.
But he needed to assess her injuries first.
He would rather disarm a suicide bomber with his teeth than undress a semiconscious woman, but he didn't have much choice. He was only doing what had to be done, he reminded himself. Feeling huge and awkward, he pulled off what seemed pretty useless pink fur boots first, then moved the tiny dog from the woman's side to the floor. The dog easily relinquished her guard dog duties and started sniffing around the room to investigate a whole new world full of smells.
Brant unzipped the woman's parka, doing his best to ignore the soft swell of curves as he pulled the sleeves free, not an easy task since he hadn't been with a woman since before his last deployment. He was only a rescue worker here, he reminded himself. Detached and impersonal.
Her shirt had remained mostly dry under her parka, he was relieved to discover, but her jeans were soaked through and would have to come off.
"Ma'am, you're going to have to get out of your jeans. Do you need my help or can you manage by yourself?"
"Help," she mumbled.
Naturally. He sighed and reached to unfasten the snap and zipper of her jeans. His hands brushed her waist under her soft, blue silk turtleneck. Whether his fingers were cold or whether she was reacting just to the shock of human contact, he didn't know, but she blinked a few times and scrambled away with a little cry.
The tiny dog yipped and abandoned her investigations of the room to trot over and stand protectively over her mistress, teeth bared at him as if a few pounds of fluff would do the trick to deter him.
"You need to get into dry clothes, that's all," he said, using the same calm tone he did with injured soldiers in the field. "I'm not going to hurt you, I swear. You're completely safe here."
She nodded, eyes still not fully open. As he looked at her in the full light, a memory flashed across his brain of her in some barely-there slinky red dress, tossing her dark curls and giving a sultry bedroom look out of half-closed eyes.
Crazy. He had never met the woman before in his life, he could swear to it.
He pulled her jeans off, despising himself for the little stir of interest when he found her wearing pink lacy high-cut panties.
He swallowed hard. "I'm, uh, going to check for broken bones and then I've got some sweats here we can put on you, okay?"
She nodded and watched him warily from those half-closed eyes as he ran his hands over her legs, trying to pretend she was just another of his teammates. Trouble was, Rangers didn't tend to have silky white skin and luscious curves. Or wear high-cut pink panties.
"Nothing broken that I can tell," he finally said and was relieved when he could pull the faded, voluminous sweats over her legs and hide all that delectable skin.
"Are you a doctor?" she murmured.
"Not even close. I'm in the military, ma'am. Major Brant Western, Company A, 1st Battallion, 75th Ranger Regiment."
She seemed to barely hear him but she still nodded and closed her eyes again when he tucked a blanket from the edge of the sofa around her.
Without his field experience, he might have been alarmed about her state of semiconsciousness, but he'd seen enough soldiers react just this way to a sudden shock—sort of take a little mental vacation—that he wasn't overly concerned. If she was still spacey and out of it when he came back from taking care of Tag, he would get on the horn to Jake Dalton, the only physician in Pine Gulch, and see what he recommended.
He threw a blanket over her. "Ma'am." He spoke loudly and evenly and was rewarded with those eyes opening a little more at him. He was really curious what color they were.
"I need to stable my horse and grab more firewood in case the power goes out. I've got a feeling we're in for a nasty night. Just rest here with your little puffball and work on warming up, okay?"
After a long moment, she nodded and closed her eyes again.
He knew her somehow and it bothered the hell out of him that he couldn't place how, especially since he usually prided himself on his ironclad memory.
He watched the dog circle around and then settle on her feet again like a little fuzzy slipper. Whoever she was, she had about as much a sense as that little dog to go out on a night like tonight. Someone was probably worrying about her. After he took care of Tag, he would try to figure out if she needed to call someone with her whereabouts.
Shoving on his Stetson again, he drew in his last breath of warm air for a while and then headed into the teeth of the storm.
He rushed through taking care of Tag and loaded up as much firewood as he could carry in a load toward the house. He had a feeling he would be back and forth to the woodpile several times during the night and he was grateful his tenant/caretaker Gwen Bianca had been conscientious about making sure enough wood was stockpiled for the winter.
What was he going to do without her? He frowned as one more niggling worry pressed in on him.
Ever since she told him she was buying a house closer to Jackson Hole where she frequently showed her pottery, he had been trying to figure out his options. He was a little preoccupied fighting the Taliban to spend much time worrying about whether a woodpile thousands of miles away had been replenished.
When he returned to the house, he checked on his unexpected guest first thing and found her still sleeping. She wasn't shivering anymore and when he touched her forehead, she didn't seem to be running a fever.
The dog barked a little yippy greeting at him but didn't move from her spot at the woman's feet.
He took off his hat and coat and hung them in the mudroom, then returned to the family room. His touching her forehead—or perhaps the dog's bark—must have awakened her. She was sitting up and this time her eyes were finally wide open.
They were a soft and luscious green, the kind of color he dreamed about during the harsh and desolate Afghan winters, of spring grasses covering the mountains, of hope and growth and life.
She gave him a hesitant smile and his jaw sagged as he finally placed how he knew her.
Holy Mother of God.
The woman on his couch, the one he had dressed in his most disreputable sweats, the woman who had crashed her vehicle into Cold Creek just outside his gates and whose little pink panties he had taken such guilty pleasure in glimpsing, was none other than Mimi frigging Van Hoyt.
* * *
A man was staring at her.
Not just any man, either. He was tall, perhaps six-one or two, with short dark hair and blue eyes, powerful muscles and a square, determined sort of jaw. He was just the sort of man who made her most nervous, the kind who didn't look as if they could be swayed by a flirty smile and a sidelong look.
He was staring at her as if she had just sprouted horns out of the top of her head. She frowned, uncomfortable with his scrutiny though she couldn't have said exactly why.
Her gaze shifted to her surroundings and she discovered she was on a red plaid sofa in a room she didn't recognize, with rather outdated beige flowered wallpaper and a jumble of mismatched furnishings.
She had no clear memory of arriving here, only a vague sense that something was very wrong in her life, that someone was supposed to help her sort everything out. And then she was driving, driving, with snow flying, and a sharp moment of fear.
She looked at the man again, registering that he was extraordinarily handsome in a clean-cut, all-American sort of way.
Had she been looking for him? She blinked, trying to sort through the jumble of her thoughts.
"How are you feeling?" he finally asked. "I couldn't find any broken bones and I think the air bag probably saved you from a nasty bump on the head when you hit the creek."
Creek. She closed her eyes as a memory returned of her hands gripping a steering wheel and a desperate need to reach someone who could help her.
Baby. The baby.
She clutched her hands over her abdomen and made a low sort of moan.
"Here, take it easy. Do you have a stomachache? That could be from the air bag. It's not unusual to bruise a rib or two when one of those things deploys. Do you want me to take you into the clinic in town to check things out?"
She didn't know. She couldn't think, as if every coherent thought in her head had been squirreled away on a high shelf just out of her reach.
She hugged her arms around herself. She had to trust her instincts, since she didn't know what else to do. "No clinic. I don't want to go to the doctor."
He raised one dark eyebrow at that but then shrugged. "Your call. For now, anyway. If you start babbling and speaking in tongues, I'm calling the doctor in Pine Gulch, no matter what you say."
"Fair enough." The baby was fine, she told herself. She wouldn't accept any other alternative. "Where am I?"
"My ranch. The Western Sky. I told you my name before but I'll do it again. I'm Brant Western."
To her surprise, Simone, who usually distrusted everything with a Y chromosome, jumped down from the sofa to sniff at his boots. He picked the dog up and held her, somehow still managing to look ridiculously masculine with a little powder puff in his arms.
Western Sky. Gwen. That's where she had been running. Gwen would fix everything, she knew it.
No. This problem was too big for even Gwen to fix.
"I'm Maura Howard," she answered instinctively, using the alias she preferred when she traveled, for security reasons.
"Are you?" he said. An odd question, she thought briefly, but she was more concerned with why she was here and not where she wanted to be.
She had visited Gwen's cabin once before but she didn't remember this room. "This isn't Gwen's house."
At once, a certain understanding flashed in blue eyes that reminded her of the ocean near her beach house in Malibu on her favorite stormy afternoons.
"You know Gwen Bianca?"
She nodded. "I need to call her, to let her know I'm here."
"That's not going to do you much good. Gwen's not around."
That set her back and she frowned. "Do you know where she is?"
"Not at the ranch, I'm afraid. Not even in the country, actually. She's at a gallery opening in Milan."
Oh, no. Mimi closed her eyes. How stupid and shortsighted of her, to assume Gwen would be just waiting here to offer help if Mimi ever needed it.
Egocentric, silly, selfish. That was certainly her.
No wonder she preferred being Maura Howard whenever she had the chance.
"Well, Maura." Was it her imagination, or did he stress her name in an unnatural sort of way? "I'm afraid you're not going anywhere tonight. It's too dangerous for you to drive on these snowy roads even if I could manage to go out in the dark and snow to pull your vehicle out of the creek. I'm afraid you're stuck for now."
Oh, what a mess. She wanted to sink back onto the pillows of this comfortable sofa, just close her eyes and slide back into blissful oblivion. But she couldn't very well do that with her host watching her out of those intense blue eyes.
As tough and dangerous as Brant Western looked, she had the strangest assurance that she was safe with him. On the other hand, her instincts hadn't been all that reliable where men where concerned for the past, oh, twenty-six years.
But Simone liked him and that counted for a great deal in her book.
As if sensing the direction of her gaze, he set the dog down. Simone's white furry face looked crestfallen for just a moment, then she jumped back up to Mimi's lap.
"I'm assuming Gwen didn't know you were coming."
"No. I should have called her." Her voice trembled on the words and she fought down the panic and the fear and the whole tangled mess of emotions she'd been fighting since that stark moment in her ob-gyn's office the day before.
Gwen had been her logical refuge as she faced this latest disaster in her life. Mimi's favorite of her father's ex-wives, Gwen had always offered comfort and support through boarding schools and breakups and scandals.
For twenty-four hours, all she had been able to think about was escaping to Gwen, in desperate need of her calm good sense and her unfailing confidence in Mimi. But Gwen wasn't here. She was in Milan right now, just when Mimi needed her most and she felt, ridiculously, as if all the underpinnings of her world were shaking loose.
First driving her car into a creek and now this. It was all too much. She sniffled and made a valiant effort to fight back the tears, but it was too late. The panic swallowed her whole and she started to cry.
Simone licked at her tears and Mimi held the dog closer, burying her face in her fur.
Through her tears, she thought she saw utter horror in her host's eyes. He was an officer in the military, she remembered Gwen telling her. A major, if Mimi wasn't mistaken, in some Special Forces unit.
She had a vague memory of him telling her that. Major Brant Western, Company A, 1st Battallion, 75th Ranger Regiment.
She would have thought a man would have to be a fairly confident, take-charge sort of guy to reach that rank, but Major Western looked completely panicked by her tears. "Hey, come on. Don't cry, um, Maura. It's okay. You'll see. Things will seem better in the morning, I promise. It's not the end of the world. You're safe and dry now and I've even got a guest room you can stay in tonight. We'll get that cut on your eye cleaned up and bandaged."
She swiped at her tears with her sleeve and a moment later he thrust a tissue in her face, which she seized on gratefully. "I can't stay here," she said after she'd calmed a little. "I don't even know you. I passed a guest ranch a few miles back. Hope Springs or something like that. I'll see if they've got availability."
"How are you going to get there?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Your SUV is toast for now and Pine Gulch isn't exactly flush with cab companies. Beside that, the way that wind is blowing and drifting, it's not safe for anybody to be out on the roads. That storm has already piled up seven inches and forecasters are predicting two or three times that before we're done. I promise, you're completely safe staying here. The guest room's even got a lock on the door."
She had a feeling a locked door wouldn't stop him if he set his mind to breaking in somewhere. No doubt this man, with his serious blue eyes and solid strength, could work his way through just about anything—whether a locked door or a woman's good sense.
"Have you eaten?"
"I'm not hungry."
That was certainly true enough. Just the idea of food made her stomach churn. Ironic that she'd been pregnant for more than ten weeks and hadn't exhibited a single symptom, not the tiniest sign that might have tipped her off. Then the day after she found out she was pregnant, she started with the morning sickness, along with a bone-deep exhaustion. If she had the chance, she thought she could sleep for a week.
"I can't impose on you this way."
He shrugged. "Once you've made a guy wade through a frozen creek twice, what's a little further inconvenience for him? Let me go grab some clean sheets for the bed and we'll get that cut cleaned up and you settled for the night."
She wiped at the tears drying on her features. What choice did she have? She had nowhere else to go. After he left the room, she leaned into the sofa, holding Simone close and soaking in the fire's delicious heat.
Now that she thought of it, this just might be the perfect solution, at least while she tried to wrap her head around the terrifying future.
No one would know where she was. Not her father—as if he'd care. Not Marco, who would care even less. Certainly not the bane of her existence, the paparazzi, who cared only for ratings and circulation numbers.
The world outside that window was a terrifying place. For now she had shelter from that storm out there, and a man who looked more than capable of protecting her from anything that might come along.
She only needed a little breathing space to figure things out and she could find that here as easily as anywhere else.
Only one possible complication occurred to her. She would have to do her best to keep him from calling for a tow when the snow cleared. She knew from experience that people like tow-truck drivers and gas station attendants and restaurant servers were usually the first ones to pick up a phone and call in the tabloids.
She could see the headlines now. Mimi's Ditch-scapade with Sexy Rancher.
She couldn't afford that right now. She only needed a few days of quiet and rest. Like that blizzard out there, the media storm that was her life and this latest—and worst—potential scandal would hopefully pass without ever seeing the light of day.
She only needed to figure out a way to stay safe and warm until it did.
Chapter Two
When Brant returned to his living room, he found Maura Howard—aka Mimi Van Hoyt, tabloid princess du jour—gazing into the fire, her features pale and her wide, mobile mouth set into a tense frown.
A few years ago during one of his Iraq deployments, he'd had the misfortune of seeing her one miserable attempt at moviemaking at a showing in the rec hall in Tikrit. He was pretty sure the apparent turmoil she was showing now must be genuine, since her acting skills had been roughly on par with the howler monkey that had enjoyed a bit in the movie.
As long as she didn't cry again, he could handle things. He was ashamed to admit that he could handle a dozen armed insurgents better than a crying woman.
"Everything will seem better in the morning," he promised her. "Once the storm passes over, I can call a tow for your car. I'm sure they can fix it right up in town and send you on your way."
