Rescued By A Perfect Stranger: A Single Dad, Age Gap Romance (Bearberry Bay - Rescue Series Book 4)

Chapter 3

~~ Lorelai ~~

My eyes feel like they’re glued shut. I lift a hand to rub at them. The slide down the rocks comes back to me and I wonder for a second if Scott had gotten help to take me to a hospital. But no. Hospitals don’t have fireplaces. I can hear the popping of the flames. And snoring?

I blink until my vision clears a little. Not a hospital. Roughhewn planks line the walls, and there’s a recliner and a love seat a couple yards away. A small table with two chairs is shoved up against the farthest wall.

I push myself to a sitting position, and my head spins. I close my eyes. The snoring has stopped and there’s shuffling. Footsteps coming my way. The familiar panic starts inside me, and I squeeze my lids tighter for a second. I know I must look. I know I must assess. I know I must act. I’m frozen in the same breathless state. I hate this inability to fight or flee.

A warm wetness touches my hand and I gasp. I snatch my hand to my chest, and my eyes fly open. A black nose attached to a muzzle of reddish fur lifts from the blanket, and two pools of melty chocolate stare into me. Eyes that speak. There is no fear in those eyes, no aggression. They say it’s ok. They say I”m safe.

I breathe out loudly. One paw appears on the edge of the bed, then another, and the dog stands on its back paws. I put my hand back down for sniffing and I’m rewarded with a light scrape of tongue across my fingers.

I feel stiff and sore, like my whole body is a huge bruise, and my head is killing me. I stretch my limbs. I remember falling on my side and my knee twisting. I stretch my leg, and I can feel pain in my knee, but I can”t seem to shift it much. It must be swollen. At least it isn’t that mind-bending pain I felt when Sam tried to help me stand. I try moving the ankle on the opposite side. It hurts, but it also doesn’t bend enough to give me a sense of how bad it is.

“There’s a—”

I let out a shriek at the voice, and I feel my body flinch back into freeze mode.

“I’m sorry to startle you,” the voice speaks again. “You’re safe.”

I force open my eyes that had again betrayed me and search the shadows where the voice was coming from. It was a low, gruff voice. A man’s voice. I can barely make out the shape of him leaning against a doorway. A big man.

Before I can panic again, the dog sinks back down to all fours and pads over to the man, nudging his leg and then leaning into him. The man gives the dog’s head a scratch. “You’re a good boy, Rusty.” It’s so low, I almost don’t hear it.

“There’s a sweater on the table,” the man says. I look beside the bed, and there’s a nightstand that’s more a side table. There is a worn olive-green sweater folded there. It isn’t until I lean over to pick it up that I realize the blanket has slid down to my waist, and all I’m wearing is the heather gray t-shirt bra I’d worn for the last three days. It isn’t even my one nice black satin one.

The sound of my grandmother’s voice when I let her buy it for me saying I should always wear nice underwear in case there’s an accident rings in my memory. Ugh. I shake my head slightly at the sadness that descends, but that brings the dizziness back.

I shrug into the sweater, being more cautious with my movements this time. It’s soft, but when it pulls over my face it feels like gravel scraping me. My hand flies up to my cheek, but I have to pull the sleeve back with my other hand to get my fingers free. There’s a bandage there, and when I feel around it, I wince. My cheek is swollen, and just touching the bandage brings tears.

“It’s a pretty bad cut.” The man hasn’t moved from the doorway. “It’s almost as bad as the one on your forehead.”

I move my hand up, and there’s another bandage right at my hairline. I rub it with the tip of my finger to gauge the severity, and the small tap echoes through my head like the sound of bullets. I close my eyes until it stops bouncing about.

“There’s also water and some extra-strength pain reliever.” The growl in his voice sends long, languid vibrations through me. Ones that don’t hurt my head.

I hadn”t noticed before, but there is a mug and some pills on a plate on the table. And my phone. It’s plugged in, charging, but I snatch it up and hold it to me before I reach for the pills.

“Figured I’d charge that for you in case we lose power in the storm later.”

It makes me feel better to hold my phone, even though I know exactly how false that small feeling of security is.

I don’t bother checking for messages. I know there won’t be any.

“My pack?” My throat is scratchy, so I sip the water then feed the two pills into my mouth one at a time.

“It’s hanging by the door with your coat.”

My whole life is in that pack.

The man takes a step closer, but the bedside lamp’s light and the light from the fireplace don’t reach his features. I wonder if he’s trying not to scare me by staying back. Well, the opposite is happening, and I need to tell him.

“You know…” I’m still raspy, and I take another sip of water. “You hovering over there is freaking me out. I can’t even see your face.”

He takes a step back and reaches behind the doorway to flip on a light in the other room, which only makes it harder to see him. I’m about to tell him, but he steps closer, reaches to the other side of the recliner, and turns on another lamp. “I’m James,” he says.

He turns back to me, and I’m stunned. I don’t know what I expected in this mountain man who had clearly carried me however far, undressed me, and bound my injuries. Maybe flannel, a beer belly, and a lot of facial hair. It wasn’t this, this perfectly sculpted being...

His thermal clings to his body, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows showing an inky tribal pattern covering both thick forearms. My eyes drink in the bulging shoulders, defined chest, trim waist that leads to the sweats riding his hips like a lover. I blink fast, trying to wrap my head around it. My luck is never this good; he must be a freaking serial killer. I still want to run my hands under his shirt to see if his abs are as cut as the rest of him.

“What’s your name?” he asks softly.

My gaze jumps up to his face. Dark hair is finger-combed back from his face with a sprinkling of silver on the sides. His dark eyes seem curious not angry, and I can’t quite tell what color they are. There’s a small bit of dark stubble on a strong jawline that is relaxed, unclenched. His full mouth with its cupid bow is set into a slight smile. His skin is a toasty tan, and I wonder if he’s that yummy all over or if I’d find tan lines to trace with my fingers. My mouth is freaking watering.

“Do you remember?” he asks.

I clear my throat. “Remember what?” I take another sip of water.

“Your name?”

“Oh.” I do have a head injury, so I guess he has to ask. ”Of course. Lai.”

“There’s no need to lie about your name. I’m not a stalker.”

“No, L-A-I. For Lorelai.”

“Ah, Lorelai. That’s pretty.”

“Really, it’s just Lai.”

He nods. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Yeah, I slid down a bunch of rocks trying to climb to the road. More like I bounced to the bottom. Then I couldn’t get up.”

“There was a road there? When Rusty found you, the snow was too thick to see. Did you have car trouble?”

The dog looks up at his name and snuffs at James’s hand. “Aw, buddy,” James talks to the dog like there’s an understanding between them. “I’ll go look for some treats in a minute.”

“No car. I was riding with someone. He went to get help.”

“Well, he’s going to be snowed in the same as us. Are you hungry? I heated some soup.”

“I could eat. I don’t know how long I was out, but it feels like it”s been a while since breakfast at the diner.”

“Just a few hours,” James assures me. Then he disappears back into the doorway he’d appeared from.

I eye the hanging coats that obscure the door in the direction he’d gestured. I ease one leg off the bed and wonder if I dare to try to reach my pack to see what survived the fall. When I try to shift my other leg, I feel the strain on my knee and I know if I put pressure on it, it’s going to hurt. A lot. Damn it.

It also appears I’m not wearing any pants. It seems logical he would’ve had to take off the jeans to wrap my knee, but I’d feel a lot less uncomfortable not sitting around in just my thong.