The Stranger and Tessa Jones. Christine Rimmer

bathroom?—on one side of the dresser, and an open one to a hallway on the other.

      Gray daylight shone weakly in the wide window to the right of the bed. It was snowing hard, the white flakes hurling themselves at the glass.

      A clock on the nightstand said it was 4:15 p.m. Vaguely, he recalled passing out in the snow. It had been sometime after noon then, hadn’t it? That would mean he’d been out for at least a few hours. That is, if it was still the same day.

      He looked around some more. There were lots of framed photographs on the wall and on the dresser beside the dark eye of a small TV. They were, for the most part, pictures of a lot of people he’d never seen before.

      But he did recognize the big blonde, the one who threw dishes and yelled at a guy named Bill. She was in several of the pictures. Laughing, with her head thrown back in one. Smiling broadly in another. And shyly in a third.

      I’m in a bedroom in the blonde’s house. He remembered the house—the tin roof, the chimney pipe with its trail of smoke spiraling into the gray sky…

      When he’d passed out cold in the snow, the blonde must have brought him in here. Somehow. Or maybe someone else was here, someone who’d come out of the house after he was unconscious, someone who had helped her.

      His mouth was dry as a desert ravine. He needed water. There was a white pitcher and an empty glass on the nightstand. He reached out his hand to the pitcher—and then let it drop. He’d have the pitcher’s contents all over him if he tried to fill the glass lying down.

      Okay, then. He would sit up.

      With a groan, he popped to a sitting position. His head spun. So he dropped back flat again.

      After a moment, he dragged himself up more carefully. That time, he managed to stay sitting until the spinning slowed a little. About then, he realized that beyond a wide variety of bruises and welts, his torso was bare. He pushed away the warm blankets.

      She had taken his pants, too, leaving him in his boxers—black ones. Of silk, it appeared. Or was that satin? He felt a pained smile curve his lips as he realized that he didn’t even recognize his own underwear.

      The smile faded to a scowl as he continued the inventory of his battered body. His bare feet and legs were crisscrossed with strange, violent-looking bruises. She’d bandaged his cut-up knees.

      He touched his face, felt gauze over the cut on the left side of his forehead. Weakness claimed him and he knew he didn’t have the energy required to reach over, lift the pitcher and fill the glass.

      Pitiful. Just pitiful. Wincing, flopping back down onto the pillow and dragging the blankets over himself again, he looked around the bedroom for his clothes and his shoes.

      If they were there, he couldn’t see them.

      From somewhere in another part of the house, he heard conversation. A low drone of voices. At first he thought the blonde must be talking to someone, maybe whoever had helped her get him inside and into this bed—but then he heard music, a vaguely familiar commercial jingle, and he figured it out: Someone was watching TV.

      He considered simply lying there until he felt up to trying to drink water again, to getting on his feet. Or until someone entered the room and saw he was awake. But in the end, he needed to know if the blonde was there, to be certain he wasn’t alone in a strange house, with a TV left on in the other room.

      “Hello?” It came out a raspy whisper. As if his voice had stopped working with the rest of him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Hello?”

      A moment later, she appeared, tall and strong and so healthy-looking, in the doorway. She wore a yellow sweater and blue jeans and a shining, hopeful smile. Her blond hair fell, thick and loose, on her shoulders.

      There was a dog, too. A bandy-legged bulldog with a patch over one eye. When she stopped in the doorway, the dog lumbered around in front of her and sat at her feet.

      “You’re awake!” She sounded absolutely thrilled.

      Her excitement at his merely being conscious had the strangest effect on him. It warmed him within. He made his lips form a smile to answer hers.

      “Water?” He croaked the word. “I can’t…manage it.”

      She came to him and sat on the edge of the bed. He watched as she filled the glass from the pitcher. Gently, she slid a cool hand behind his head, lifting him enough that he could sip, and then putting the glass to his lips with care. “Easy,” she whispered. “Take it slow…” The water moistened his dry mouth and soothed his parched throat.

      “More,” he croaked, when she took the glass away.

      “Careful, okay? Not too much, not at first.” She tipped the glass to his mouth again and he drank—less than he wanted. But enough that he no longer felt so dry.

      She lowered his head back to the pillow and smoothed the covers around him. “Better?”

      He breathed in that special, clean scent of hers. “Thank you.”

      “Give it a few minutes, to see if it stays down. Then if you want more—”

      “Wait. No…”

      She tipped her head to the side and the soft waves of her hair swung out. He wanted to touch those curls. They seemed so…vibrant. So full of that special warmth and goodness he had already come to associate with her. Her smile had changed, became a little puzzled. “No?”

      “I mean, I’m not only thanking you for the water. Thank you for…everything. For saving me. Before I saw you, I was starting to think I would die.”

      She did what she’d done out in the snow, pressed her hand to the side of his face. It felt good there. “You did scare me, I have to admit. I thought more than once that I’d lost you. But here you are. Safe. Warm. And conscious. And that’s just…” Her soft mouth bloomed into another sweet smile. “Terrific.”

      He remembered the trucker, his offer of a doctor, and realized he’d been pretty out of it, refusing medical care that way. “I guess you called a doctor, huh?”

      She swallowed, glanced away.

      He untangled an arm from under the covers and touched her—a brushing touch, on the side of her arm. “What? Is something wrong?”

      She looked at him again. He did like her eyes, that light hazel color, green rayed with gold. Between her smooth brows there was a slight frown.

      “Just tell me,” he said. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

      She shrugged. “Well, that depends on what you call bad.” A quivery sigh escaped her. “The phone’s dead. And the snow is really coming down. It’s just the two of us here and we’re not getting out for a day or two, at least. Nobody’s getting in, either. Including a doctor.”

      He took her hand then, and twined their fingers together. Strange, but it seemed the most natural thing, to hold her hand. She thought so, too—at least, she didn’t try to pull away. He asked, “You’ve got plenty of wood for the fire, right?”

      She nodded. “And propane heat, too. The tank out back is full, which is great.”

      “And food.”

      “That’s right.”

      “And water and electricity. I even heard a TV.”

      “Yep. Everything’s working fine. Except the phone.”

      “Tessa—it is Tessa, right?”

      “Yep.”

      “Tessa,” he said again, because he liked the sound of it. “I’ll be okay now. I’m sure I will.”

      “Yes.” She said it in a passionate whisper. “You’ll be fine. Of course you will. Fine…” With the hand not captured in his, she touched his forehead, on the side without the bandage, in the