LITMIR.BIZ

       Three

      Frankie kept her word, and over the next few hours checked on him frequently—partly out of concern that one of the animals might sneak into the back room and add to the few gray hairs he already had. But she also stayed close because of the man himself; aware that she was dealing with something unique here, something more complicated than anything she’d ever dealt with before.

      If she was smart, she would have used the time he slept to dash over to Mr. Miller’s and ask him to call the sheriff’s office for her. The old man had become like a surrogate grandfather to her, allowing her to have her mail delivered to his place, and even taking calls from her family, because she refused to be bothered with a telephone. He wouldn’t have minded the ungodly hour, not once he recognized Petunia’s coughy-cranky engine.

      She could have put an end to this, before it got out of hand. Before she let the dreamer in her get too much control of her imagination. But she didn’t.

      Every half hour or so, she returned to the bedroom to gently rouse him, give him a drink of water, get him to say a few words. Afterward, she would brush his ash brown hair from his bandaged forehead, and softly encourage him to close his eyes and go back to sleep. He responded so well. Like a child. How could she leave him?

      He finalized her decision the last time she checked on him. No sooner did she set the cup back on the nightstand, than he took hold of her hand and wouldn’t let go.

      “I opened my eyes before,” he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. “You weren’t here.”

      “You only had to call me, and I would have come right away.”

      That wasn’t good enough for him. He refused to release her.

      She told him about how it was now past her bedtime. Fatigue was beginning to set in and she yearned for the length of the couch, old and lumpy though it was, not to mention hot due to its foam cushions and her lack of air-conditioning. “If I don’t lie down for a bit, I’m going to fall flat on my face come morning when you and everyone else around here will be wanting breakfast,” she told him, stifling a yawn.

      To her surprise, he patted the vacant side of the bed. “I’ll share,” he told her for the second time tonight.

      If he had been anyone else, she would have laughed in his face. As much as she loved people and tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, that didn’t mean she had the naiveté of a just-hatched chick. Yet instinctively she knew that despite their earlier reaction to each other, there was only one thing the stranger wanted from her right now.

      Without another moment’s hesitation, she circled to the far side of the bed. “Keep it up and I’ll nominate you for sainthood,” she said, gratefully stretching out beside him.

      “Want some of the sheet?”

      Although she’d changed into a dry sleeper T-shirt, which was anything but suggestive, the thought of being under the same sheet with his stunning, naked body threatened to wipe the thought of sleep completely out of her mind. “That’s all right,” she murmured, curling into a fetal position with her back to him. “I’m fine. Sweet dreams.”

      She must have fallen asleep quickly, because the next thing she knew the room was bathed in sunlight and a hand—a large, male hand—had a manacle grip on her thigh. Her heart thudded in sudden panic as she remembered. Everything.

      What was he doing? Had she been wrong after all?

      Not sure what to expect, she rolled over, startled to find her bedmate looking as if he was facing a firing squad himself. For good reason, she realized, once she followed his gaze.

      While he attempted to push the bed’s headboard through the trailer’s wall, a boa constrictor inched up between his legs. It looked particularly ominous when it flicked out its forked tongue.

      With a sigh, Frankie rose onto one elbow, snatched the snake, and brought it up to her face. “Stretch, you terrorist. I told you no funny stuff until you were properly introduced.” She scooped him up in both hands and carried him down the hall to his bed beneath the couch. “Bad snake. You’re lucky our company’s last name isn’t Robespierre. Now stay there until I apologize on your behalf.”

      Since she was already close, she detoured to the kitchen to switch on the coffeemaker. On the way back to the bedroom, she let Dr. J. outside, patted Bugsy and uncovered Honey’s cage.

      “I’m sorry,” she said to the man who remained frozen where she’d left him. “That was Stretch. He’s usually much friendlier. Most of the time you can use him as a pillow and he won’t care.” She did, however, keep her fingers crossed behind her back as she made that claim, for as well as she and Stretch got along, he liked to toy with Honey’s cage and Dr. J.’s mind, whenever the opportunity presented itself.

      “You live with a snake?”

      “A baby one. Barely more than three feet.” When her guest’s expression remained glazed, she added, “It’s not as though he’s a cobra or a rattler.”

      “You mean he’ll get bigger?”

      “He’s a boa,” she said, as if that explained everything. It certainly did to her. “But I won’t have him much longer. I took him in when a friend at the club found him in her bathroom after work one night. She lives in a pretty wild apartment complex, so there’s no telling how he got in there. At any rate, as much as I love him, I do have a problem with his dietary needs.”

      “What does he eat? No, never mind,” her guest replied with a feeble gesture. “I don’t want to know.”

      “Mmm. Not wise before breakfast. The zoo in Houston said they’d be happy to take him. I just have to wait for them to tell me that they have his new home ready. It will be good knowing he’ll have friends, because he does enjoy company.”

      The stranger closed his eyes.

      Frankie used the opportunity to study him. He looked both better and worse this morning; his coloring was better, but his injuries appeared angrier in the light of day. Unable to harness all of her caretaker instincts, she crossed over to him, settled on the edge of the bed and touched his forehead. Her fingers were twice as tanned as his pale, broad forehead.

      “Your fever’s gone,” she murmured, sensitive to how strong his pull was when she got this close.

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