Now that we’re inside, under clear and plain light, I’m able to get my first decent look at her. I have to clamp my teeth together to stop my jaw from dropping.
I’ve never seen a woman as stunning as the one now sitting in my father’s old chair. Maybe on the big screen, but never in person.
Large eyes and wanton lips dominate a face of delicate lines and high cheekbones. Her brows are elegantly sculpted, arcing over the fans of her lashes, and her chin is feminine but strong. Her body is as spectacular as her face. She could wear a bag on her head and still stop traffic. Lean and shapely, with legs that seemed to spill out over my floor and go on forever…
Her hair is tied into a knot on the back of her head, there are streaks of dirt plastered on her face, and her clothes are disheveled and stained with green. She’s caked in mud to her knees. And she could still grace a red carpet.
Damn.
“What? What are you looking at?” she breaks the silence with a look of suspicion. One hand rises to touch her face with uncertainty, spreading the dust on her cheek all the way to a freckle just by her ear.
I try to focus on that freckle. A single point of blemish on her perfection.
Dammit, but maybe dear old Ma had been right. It’s been too long since I’ve been with someone. Too long since I’ve taken a woman to bed.
Maybe this one isn’t as beautiful as I’m imagining. Maybe it’s because it’s been such a long time, and now that I suddenly have a woman in my house, the situation is twisting an average-looking woman into a beauty.
Yeah, and perhaps tomorrow my truck will have magically turned into a Ferrari and I’ll start shitting diamonds.
“Stay there,” I order again, pleased at the normalcy of my voice. “I’ll be back in a second.”
I speed to the bathroom, and raid the medicine cabinet for supplies. I grab antiseptic, a box of band-aids, and an ankle support. With full hands, I use my elbow to close the cabinet.
The mirror on its door is eager to bring me back to reality. I frown at my reflection.
Dark eyes, sun-exposed skin. Aside from my hair, I’m a mottled variety of browns.
I snort. The difference between me and my unwanted houseguest is practically comical.
Not that it matters, I repeat to myself. She is not staying.
When I get back to the beauty, she doesn’t appear to have moved. She’s sitting faithfully where I’d left her, but with a look on her face that I don’t trust for a second. My eyes sweep the room, and I notice mud dusting the floor, and that one of the pictures on the mantelpiece is an inch too far to the left.
I choose to ignore the rebellion. If she wants to hop about and damage her ankle then that’s her problem.
“Give me your foot,” I say, hunkering down in front of the chair.
There’s a moment of hesitation before she yields, offering me her shoe.
I almost roll my eyes again when I take the boot in hand. They are completely ridiculous. Fashionable city shoes that have no place in the country. No one can hike in heels for God’s sake.
This is why I hate city-folk. They take trips out to the Great Smokies, thinking they’ll play in the wilderness for a weekend. That they’ll ‘get back to nature’. What none of them ever seem to realize is that nature has always been there. It hasn’t sat still and waited. It’s grown, morphed, and evolved. Nature forms its own rules.
Which means that even those who’d known the area years ago could easily get lost now.
And this woman certainly hadn’t been to East River Forge before. I’d have remembered someone who looks like her.
“Lizzie.”
I glance up from the laces I’ve been working free of the mud.
“What?”
“My name is Lizzie. Lizzie Lucas—Ah!” She gasps as I yank off her boot.
I’m about to click my tongue, thinking her over-sensitive, until I see her sock. It was once white but is now stained along the top with brown, and the underside is pockmarked with crimson.
Burst blisters. And a lot of them.