Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  Was it too late to suggest the idea?

  Coming down the hall, she busily formed words to get them out of her house and back on track. Rejected her first couple of mental tries. And came to a stop as she reached the archway leading into the family room. Greg—shoes and belt off—was fully supine on the couch, eyes closed.

  His go bag lay zipped under the table where he’d left his wallet, keys and belt.

  He couldn’t possibly be asleep. She’d been gone less than five minutes, and he’d only just started on his sandwich then.

  Hadn’t even, to her knowledge, used the restroom yet.

  Had he fallen ill? Passed out? Was he succumbing to some internal injury from the crash? Heart pounding, she moved quietly closer, noticed his even breathing. “You okay?” she asked.

  “Mmm-hmm.” The response came immediately. Almost slumberously.

  “I’ll wake you in two hours,” she said softly. She grabbed a sandwich for herself from the kitchen and took it and a glass of water down the hall to her bedroom, leaving the bottle of beer she’d have preferred in the refrigerator for a night when she wasn’t on duty.

  No way she was going to lower her inhibitions even a little bit when she had someone in her house to look after.

  She texted her EMT client before she took her first bite. He answered all her questions, reassuring her that as long as Greg woke up for her and wasn’t showing any other symptoms of physical distress, he likely was just fine.

  She spent the next hour sitting up, fully clothed, on her bed, reading up on every cause of, sign of and potential remedies for concussion, anyway. Trying not to think about any muscle, tendon or organ trauma that Greg might have suffered, on her behalf, that night. Reminded herself that they likely had nothing to worry about.

  Focusing on the medical side of things was...well, not comforting, exactly, but it was better than letting her mind wander in other directions. It mostly kept her from focusing on the fact that she had a man who had the power to change her mood, a man to whom she might be drawn, sleeping within her walls. His body, his heat, in direct physical contact with her couch cushions.

  When she started thinking about their microscopic epithelial tissues comingling, she set her alarm, turned out the light and found an old G-rated family movie to stream quietly on her phone. And missed the opening credits, first scene, and probably the second, too, while she ran off in her head with visions of her sofa holding the man she’d have driven hours to rescue. And maybe wouldn’t mind holding, too.

  Just until she knew he was as well as he claimed.

  * * *

  Greg woke up just after ten. Lay in the dark in a room that wasn’t familiar and yet didn’t feel strange to him, either. He had to pee. Wanted to have a shower and brush his teeth.

  On the other hand, he wanted to avoid contact with his hostess. The room, her home, the damned good sandwich...they were all mucking with him...with his vision of the role Wendy Alvarez played in his life. They were friends. Casual friends who could flirt with each other comfortably because they both knew it didn’t mean anything. He couldn’t want more.

  He had no more to offer.

  Sitting up, he took stock of his belongings. His gaze landed on the keys on the scarred wooden table.

  If he had his truck, he’d just leave a note and go. But his truck was miles away. Like it or not, he was here for the night.

  As he sat up and stretched, he winced. His stomach muscles felt a little tender...bracing against seat-belt trauma...and it seemed like he’d wrenched a muscle in his neck.

  He needed a hot shower to loosen his muscles and wash the adrenaline-fueled sweat off of his skin.

  When they’d first come inside, when she’d been fumbling around the kitchen and refusing to look at him, she’d mumbled something about the guest bathroom being the first hallway door on the left. It felt a little strange to help himself to a shower at someone else’s house, but she’d told him to make himself at home. And anyway, maybe the shower was the best place for him to be.

  If she had set her alarm—and he was certain she had—she’d be out in another ten minutes or so, just to make sure he woke up. If he was in the shower, he wouldn’t have to face her when she came out to check on him.

  He didn’t want to see her. Not then. Not the way he was feeling. All cozy and yet...not.

  Comfortable in her space, and not good with that.

  Wide awake and wondering what kind of television she watched when she was home alone at night.

  No, it would definitely be better if he was in the shower. That way, he could avoid seeing her. And she’d be reassured that he could, indeed, wake up. A perfect solution.

  Plan approved, Greg was just turning on the shower when he heard an alarm go off in another room. Clicking the bathroom lock, just to ensure that there’d be no well-meaning head peeking in to check on him, he turned on the overhead exhaust fan, stripped down and let Wendy’s hot water sluice over him.

  * * *

  Wide awake and still dressed, Wendy settled her head against her pillow, reset her alarm, placed the phone right next to her, closed her eyes and listened to the muted sounds of water spray coming from down the hall.

  The man was naked in the shower she cleaned once a month to keep the dust off.

  Was that what her life had become? Keeping the dust off unused parts?

  She swallowed. Willed herself back to sleep. If she was asleep, two hours would pass quickly—and she’d have the rest she needed to deal with a busy day in the morning. She not only had a pile of work at the office, and a new client coming in who’d need full Saturday energy from her, but there was a shelter outside of Hendrix that had just taken in a young golden retriever that they were holding for Wendy.

  And she could still hear the shower. He was taking a long one. Standing still under the spray?

  Those long legs... She imagined them covered in the dark hair that fell over his ears, the color of his shortly trimmed beard...and imagined other places where that dark hair might be found, too, before quickly moving her mental perusal up to the broad, athletic stomach and chest.

  Fire slid down to her own private places and...

  Stop.

  Who was to say he wanted her that way, regardless? He could have his pick—and there was no reason to believe she’d make the mark.

  The bathroom door clicked open, and Wendy quietly turned on the family movie she’d been streaming and forced herself to focus on the story. Her chances of falling asleep were pretty much nil, but she could at least rest.

  She wasn’t even aware of when she drifted off. But she was very aware of when she woke up.

  “Ahhhg!” Wendy sat straight up. Heart pounding, she slid into awareness, trying to decipher reality from dream. Something had woken her—something startling. But what?

  “Ahhhnnng!” As the agonizing sound rent the house a second time, she flew out of bed and down the hall.

  Rounding the arch into the family room, catching her shoulder on the rounded drywall, she frantically focused through the shadows to the form lying on her couch. He lay there, completely still.

  Oh, God. What if it was a medical emergency? A ruptured kidney, a brain bleed... One awful possibility after another raced through her mind.

  “Ahg!” The animallike noise came again as Greg rolled, throwing an arm onto the back of the couch.

  His pain stifled the air in the room, making breathing difficult. She had to help him.

  To get help.

  Eyeing his phone on the table, she reached for it and jumped when a vise formed around her wrist. The grip was not painfully tight—at least not as long as she wasn’t moving—but definitely steel-like.

  “Greg?”

  The word wasn’t even fully spoken before the fingers snatched away from her wrist, leaving her with an odd realization. Her skin, where he’d touched her, was wet.

  Not moving closer but not leaving, either, she called his name a second time. “Greg?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re in pain.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Was he trying to insult her intelligence? She was filled with a combination of worry, compassion, sympathy...and anger? She pulled on the latter to combat the weakening effects of the other three.

  “You’re not fine, Greg. You’re in pain. Hollering out with it in your sleep...” Growing stronger as she spoke, more determined, she approached the couch, sat on the end by his feet and faced him in the near darkness.

  He’d lifted his head up onto the arm of the couch. He was breathing hard, as though he’d been running. In the moon’s timid light, she could see a sheen of sweat on his face.

  Her wet skin beneath his hand...the man was feverish.

  “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “No!” The volume with which the one word came at her might have given her pause if she was at all afraid of the man from whom it had been wrung. If Greg had meant to hurt her, her wrist would be bruised.

  She glanced at the hand that had grasped her and saw how badly it was shaking.

  “Greg, please. I don’t know why you’re so opposed to medical treatment, but with the amount of pain you seem to be in, you could have a brain bleed. Or internal injury from the seat restraints in the cockpit. Look at you—you’re feverish, shaking...”

  Hoisting himself up farther into the corner of the couch, pulling his feet farther away from her thighs, he sighed, somewhat heavily. “I just... I had a nightmare, okay? I fell asleep too soon after the less-than-stellar landing, and I was just dreaming. It happens. I apologize for waking you.”

  She weighed his words carefully, trying to figure out if he was just being macho. But he didn’t sound like he was wracked with pain. On the contrary, his shaking hand aside, he seemed quite calm.

  Which calmed her.

  Maybe it helped that she’d had some experience with being wrenched from sleep by another’s nightmares. Her brother, Michael, had slept in the room right next to hers.

  Without saying another word, she got up, went to the kitchen, poured a cup of milk, warmed it in the microwave and carried it back to him. “This might help,” she said.

  It had usually helped Michael, but then he’d been a milkaholic.

  “Thank you.” Greg took the glass, emptied it and leaned his head back against the couch.

  “You okay now?”

  “I’m—”

  “Fine...” she finished for him. “I know.”

  “I’m sorry I woke you. Seriously.”

  She nodded. “I’m guessing we probably don’t have to get up again in two hours,” she said, heading for the hall. “We could both use some sleep.” She didn’t expect a response.

  Didn’t need one.

  What she did require was some time to assimilate all of her thoughts. Her realizations that day...that Greg had been the one to help her over the final moments of letting the past go...and that he’d then had a nightmare in her home, waking her as Michael had... It was like fate was having a laugh at her expense. He’d helped her feel free from her past in the morning, and that night had brought it clearly back to her, too—yelling out in pain as Michael had.

  “Wendy?” The soft male voice sent tingles all the way through her.

  And that, too. Her body’s reaction to him, the emotions he was raising in her, all of a sudden. It wasn’t like they’d just met or something...“Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime, Martin, anytime,” she said lightly but, unlike earlier, when she reached her bedroom, she closed the door behind her.

  Like Michael, he’d just lied to her. Telling her he was fine. Shutting her out.

  Didn’t matter if she wanted to help him or not. He wasn’t going to let her.

  And at the moment, she was too weary to fight him.

  Chapter Four

  Greg was up, teeth brushed and ready for the day when Wendy came out of her bedroom a few hours later. She’d showered. Not only had he heard the water going, but her hair, already in a tight French braid, was still wet. Wearing another pair of the lightweight cotton pants he always saw her in, paired with a sleeveless white V-neck blouse, she gave him the sense that she was all business and ready to get on with it.

  He gratefully accepted the message. After all, it wasn’t as if he wanted to have a long, emotional talk about his nightmare or what a mess he’d been in its aftermath. All business was definitely the way to go.

  Only later, when he was riding in the cab of the truck he’d hired to tow his plane, did he allow himself to acknowledge that he maybe harbored a bit of regret that he and Wendy hadn’t made some kind of plan to be in contact, or something. Which made no sense. Their paths would cross again soon, as they always did, to transport dogs, but there was no real way of knowing when. And no reason for him to suddenly want to know when.

  Despite her absence, he continued to think about her over the next couple of days.

  It had been years since he’d spent the night with anyone else in the same quarters. Even when he flew out to Arizona to see his parents, who’d retired in the desert to enjoy year-round blue skies, sunshine and warmth, he bunked in a nearby hotel room rather than the spare bedroom in their home.

  It had been almost nice, sharing her space, until the nightmare ruined it. Holy bad timing on that one. Kind of pissed him off. Like his damned consciousness couldn’t let him just have a feel-good moment? She’d thought he’d been in physical pain and he’d just been reliving a hellacious memory in his sleep. Keeping it alive, even subconsciously, so he never forgot the men who’d died. Never forgot that he owed them. In retrospect, it was probably good to have some time before he saw her again.

  There were some things in life that doctors couldn’t fix. Some aches that medicine couldn’t dissipate. No matter how brilliant the doctor or advanced the medical technology. And when it came to those problems, the ones a guy just had to accept, the only way to deal with the situation was to keep himself away from others and keep his defenses strong against letting anyone in.

  And yet, when Birdie and Bunny Whitaker called on Monday, saying they had a couple of home-cooked meals to bring by for him, he didn’t demur.

  Not even a little bit. Word of his emergency landing had gotten out. He’d been touted for his masterful handling of the small aircraft, bringing it down without hitting power lines, homes or busy roads. The locals were grateful for his care and his skill—and they were also concerned about how he was in the aftermath. And if the Whitaker sisters didn’t get eyes on him personally, his mother would, no doubt, catch the next plane out of Phoenix.

  And she’d have his own pair of sisters driving up from Charlotte to sit vigil until she arrived, their professional jobs and personal relationships be damned. He’d be drowning in endlessly doting relatives before he knew it.

  Still, as he heard the bell ring on his oversize front door and made his way across the porcelain floor toward it, he was filled with as much grateful understanding as anything.

  He had family he loved who loved him back.

  And that was, overall, a very good thing. Even if he did get along with them better from afar.

  Besides, the quirky, sixtysomething, never-married Whitaker sisters were entertainment in their own right. Birdie, the older of the two by one year, the taller of the pair and the practical outspoken one, still didn’t eclipse her shorter, plumper dreamer of a younger sister. The duo, one mouthy and one less, back living together for the time being in the rambling old house they’d inherited, had been an unspoken source of good-natured amusement to him as a teen. His mother, with her various volunteer meetings, would fill the house with women, and he’d mostly make himself scarce. Except when the Whitaker sisters were over. He’d liked them.

  Now they marched right in, Birdie first, and headed straight for his kitchen, as though they owned the place. They’d been there before, when his folks had visited from Phoenix and his mother had invited them over. His parents had stayed in the guest wing of the house, one with its own entrance and small living quarters, completely separate from his own wing, and yet his mother had made her presence known all over the house with little touches—a set of curtains here, a new throw rug there.

  “You’ve got baked ziti with salad and a pot roast for your main courses,” Birdie said as she placed them in his well-stocked refrigerator.

  “Heating directions are here on the top,” Bunny added, pointing to the cards taped to the top of the foil-covered pans she carried. “And I made chicken noodle soup, too, because, well, you know, it’s supposed to cure everything.”

  While Birdie was in better physical shape than her younger sister, Bunny was the one who colored all of the gray out of her brown hair. She deposited her goods on the top shelf that Birdie had just cleared and then said, “I need to use the ladies’ room. The drive out here was longer than I remembered,” and off she went.

  “How are you feeling?” Birdie eyed him up and down, right there in the middle of his kitchen.

  “Fine.”

  Eyes narrowing, she gave him another once-over. “You sure about that?”

  “I am.”

  “Look me straight in the eye and tell me that nothing hurts.”

  He looked. “My leg is a little stiff. Nothing else hurts.”

  Lips pursed as she considered that, weighing his words, she nodded. “You still have some of the liniment Bunny made for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You using it?”

  “Actually, I am.”

  “Good. Your mom said your plane is fixable?”

  “Already done,” he told her. “She’s being transported to her hangar this morning.” It had cost him a bit—even with doing part of the work himself—but any price was worth it. The plane, flying, him being in the sky was his life.