LITMIR.BIZ

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island’s doctor was down with the flu, as he’d found out yesterday when he’d driven an elderly neighbor to his office for a routine checkup.

      “Who’s your contact at the restaurant?” From the look she gave him, he might as well have been speaking Mandarin. “I mean, who hired you? Are they expecting you? I can give ’em a call.”

      She was hoarse. What he’d taken as a soft, sexy drawl sounded painful to him now that he’d had time to size her up better. She had one hell of a cold, if that’s all it was.

      He’d better hope that’s all it was. He’d put off having a flu shot this year until he figured it was too late to do any good. The last thing he needed now was one more hitch in his plans.

      She pulled an address book from her purse and read off a number. He punched it in his cell phone, and they both heard the message on the other end. “Sorry, we’re closed for the season. See you in April.”

      “Oh,” she said plaintively, and he resisted the urge to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. These days, a man couldn’t be too careful. She thumbed through her book. “Could you try this number?”

      He tried it, only to be rewarded with another recording. An irritatingly cheerful woman’s voice came on with, “Leave a message, hon—I’ll get back to you sooner or later. Surf’s up.”

      Yeah, sure it was. God, he hated flippant messages.

      By then they’d entered Buxton village and were within a quarter of a mile of his house. The last thing he wanted was to take her home with him. His house wasn’t even finished, much less furnished. He’d been more or less camping out there while he put up paneling in what would be Matthew’s room once he could get his ex-wife to let the boy come east.

      The lady was shivering again. He had his heater cranked up to the max. He’d already shed his coat, and sweat was trickling down his throat, but he’d figured she’d be chilled—what with the wet clothes and all. No telling how long she’d been standing out in the rain, beating a dead horse.

      Or in this case, a dead sedan.

      “Look, I’m going to take you to my house until we can track down your friend, okay? By the way, my name’s Travis Holiday.” She looked at him dully, so he tacked on a few credentials, figuring it might reassure her. “Lieutenant Commander, retired, U.S. Coast Guard. Uh...I could call somebody to stay with you if it would make you feel more comfortable ”

      Right His nearest neighbor was Miss Cal, who was arthritic, pushing ninety and had a tongue like a whipsaw. Except for a stone-deaf sheepdog named Skye and a few yard chickens, she lived alone.

      He didn’t think either Skye or his mistress were going to be much help in this situation.

      “Do you have any aspirin?” the woman croaked.

      Aspirin. He had a feeling she needed more than that. Like maybe a full brain transplant. “Yeah, sure—at home. I’ll make you something hot to drink when we get there, and then we’ll try again to contact your friend ”

      

      Ruanna had probably felt worse, but at the moment she couldn’t remember when. She’d been driving since yesterday, feeling sicker with every mile. If she could have afforded a longer stay in the cheap motel where she’d spent last night, she’d have slept until she either recovered—or didn’t. The alternative had been to get to Moselle’s place before she collapsed, only her car had collapsed first.

      Once she’d crossed Oregon Inlet, traffic had all but disappeared. Even before that she’d begun to suspect that whatever bug she’d picked up, her car had caught it, too, but by then there was nothing to do but keep going, hoping they’d both last a few more miles.

      She’d filled up the tank in Manteo. Not even her old guzzler could guzzle that fast, but when it had started to cough in a way that suggested it wasn’t getting enough fuel, she’d slowed down and watched for a service station. The first two stations she’d passed had been closed, and she’d foolishly gambled on making it to the next village.

      And then her car had coughed twice and died, right there in the middle of the highway. With the wind howling and the mixture of rain and sand beating against her, she hadn’t even heard the truck approach. By the time Sir Galahad of the gray hair and the granite jaw had loomed up beside her, it was all she could do not to hurl herself into his arms and bawl her eyes out.

      Which was so totally out of character she knew she must be even sicker than she’d thought. Every bone in her body ached, including her head. Her throat was so sore she could hardly swallow, and her legs felt about as sturdy as wet linguini. All that on top of a whole mountain range of stress and desperation, and it was no wonder she was irrational. A rational woman would have given up long ago.

      He was taking her home with him. She didn’t know him from Adam, yet she’d meekly crawled up onto his horse and galloped off into the sunset, bound for heaven only knew where. Or what.

      Ru, even more than most people, had reason to be wary of strangers. By tomorrow her sense of survival would probably have resurfaced, but at the moment she was simply too tired, too discouraged and too utterly miserable to care.

      They turned off the highway and followed a crooked sand road. Headlights picked out moss-hung live oaks and ghostly dead pines and glints of water. The house, when they finally reached it, was no more inspired than the landscaping. Of the shoebox school of architecture, it sat on a row of naked posts along a low ridge. There was no welcoming light in the window, no smoke from a chimney. The place looked bleak and deserted.

      Oh, Lordy, what have I got myself into now?

      Ru thought fleetingly of the house where she’d spent half her life. Two sprawling stories of whitewashed brick, set off with magnolias, camellias and banks of azaleas. There was a paved circular drive where Colley, the butler, had taught her to rollerskate and nde a bicycle.

      The apartment she’d left the day before yesterday consisted of two furnished rooms, complete with mice and cockroaches. Come to think of it, a shoebox perched on a row of naked pilings looked pretty good, even without a lamp in the window and a roaring fire on the hearth. As long as there was a spare bed inside.

      “I’ll bring in your suitcase so you can change into dry clothes.”

      Her suitcase. She had three more, plus several boxes, a few framed pictures and two file drawers she’d as soon see consigned to the bottom of the ocean. They were all in the trunk of her car.

      “Thank you,” she rasped, trying to remember what was in her carry-on bag besides shoes. Nothing of value. She’d become so paranoid she wouldn’t dream of leaving anything valuable where it could be seen and stolen, which was why she’d crammed all but the smallest bag into the trunk of her car. And forgotten it.

      “I’ll deal with your car later, but right now we’d better get you into something warm and dry. I’ll make us a pot of coffee—I think I might even have a can or two of soup. Bathroom’s through there. Help yourself to anything you need.”

      She nodded. Even that small exertion was too much. Aspirin, a bed and a dozen blankets, that was what she needed. That and a functioning brain.

      “I didn’t catch your name.” Her host glanced at her expectantly.

      It didn’t matter, Ru told herself. He couldn’t be the one. She’d left all that business behind. Once when Ruanna’s father, an ardent sports fisherman, had wanted to buy a place out here on the Outer Banks, her mother had described it as the ends of the earth.

      The ends of the earth had sounded like Heaven. Or at least a haven.

      “It’s Ru,” she said, sounding more like a bullfrog than ever.

      “Beg pardon?”

      “Ru. Short for Ruanna.” She’d been named for her two grandmothers, Ruth and Anna, but the less he knew about her, the safer she would feel.

      “Ru. Right. Well, Ru, like

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