A Hero's Redemption

“Tell me the truth,” he gasped hoarsely, reaching frantically for her hand again. “You’re with them, aren’t you?”

“Them? Who are you talking about?”

“The ones who did this to me.”

“The ones who did what?” she whispered, and his vision reeled backward as if sucked through a vortex, and he could see her, now, backing away, her hand slipping from his. He was scaring her.

But she was scaring him and the spinning of his vision was making him sick.

“The ones who did this to you,” he said, almost blindly, the edges of his vision folding together now, darkness closing in.

“Did what to me?” Panic rose sharp in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“The ones who killed you.”

Then the black swallowed him whole.

The hair lifted at Calla’s nape. She felt cold again suddenly, and more than a little unnerved.

The stranger had passed out now. He’d been half out of it even when he’d had his eyes open. The ones who killed you.

Was he crazy? Or just disoriented? Maybe he didn’t know what he was saying. He hadn’t been able to tell her his name. Did he even remember his name? He had a head injury.

And he was freaking her out.

She picked up his wet clothes and walked out into the front room. The urge to check the locks on the door was suddenly almost unbearable, as if she thought someone was out there, poised to break in. The stranger’s words reverberated in her head. She shook herself. It was snowing so hard, she’d barely been able to see when she’d gone out to the shed to turn on the generator. She’d been almost frightened she wouldn’t be able to get back to the house. Thank God she hadn’t had to go that far.

There was no one lurking outside waiting to kill her, not in this storm, and not ever. There was someone inside, and that was enough to make her uncomfortable. He couldn’t hurt her, not in his condition, she repeated to herself. And she wasn’t that twenty-year-old girl she’d been once, either. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her, not ever again. The old panic deep in her gut didn’t believe her sometimes, but she did, in her heart, in her head. She was older, wiser, tougher. And the stranger was just out of his mind from hypothermia and possibly concussed.

Chuck was stretched out in the middle of the floor, flat on his back, legs splayed out in total abandon.

“This is all your fault,” she said softly as she passed the dog. His tail thumped the floor lightly but he didn’t get up. He was exhausted from his big day of following her around the farm, chasing the new kittens, and finding a stranger in the ditch for her.

Not that Calla could regret finding the man, John Doe for now, tonight, since she didn’t know his name. If she hadn’t found him, he’d have died. And she couldn’t bear that thought, knowing that bringing him in meant she’d saved a life. And it hadn’t really been Chuck’s fault, though he was the one who’d directed her to the ditch.

How had he come to be here? There were only two reasons she would have expected people at Haven Christmas Tree Farm today—to get a tree or to talk to her about a job, and in this weather, she hadn’t expected either, though there was always room for a miracle after losing both her farmhands this week. Pete had done another of his disappearing acts then Jimmy had taken off the next day. Something had scared the bejeebers out of him in the woods. Probably a bear. But there’d been no talking sense to Jimmy, especially with the recent nonsense going around town.

It had all started after a so-called paranormal detective with some cable TV channel had reported earthquakes could release “positive ions” into the atmosphere and trigger supernatural activity. She was pretty sure everything since was the product of the town’s collective overactive imagination. Either that or it was the mayor’s latest attempt at beefing up tourism. She just hoped it meant more people came to Haven to buy Christmas trees.

She flipped the light on in the small utility room off the kitchen and dumped the bundle of clothes on the butcher block counter beside the washer. The shirt was soiled from where he’d lain on the ground and she set it aside. She’d try some stain treatment, but it might be hopeless. She stuck her hands in the pockets of the pants, hoping for something, some identification, some clue to the stranger.

Nothing. No wallet—she’d noticed that as soon as she’d stripped his clothes off, but she’d been hoping—She started to pull her hand out then realized there was something. Small and wet.

She pulled out the folded bit of paper, carefully laid it on the counter and used her fingernail to slowly pull the soggy pieces apart to reveal the printed logo at the top. It was a receipt. A-Plus Cleaners, Haven, WV. There was a hand-scrawled drop-off date. June 7, she thought, but the date was blurred, the ink smeared from moisture. It looked like June 7…of next year? She picked up the wet receipt, too quickly, to hold it up to the bare bulb above the counter and it tore in her hands. She put the two halves back down on the counter, and there was that chill lifting the hair at the back of her neck again. Jeez, what was wrong with her?

Of course the date wasn’t next June. It had to be last June. The stranger must not wear his suits very often for the receipt to still be in his pocket in December. But it didn’t matter and she couldn’t read it now anyway. The receipt had torn right across the year. And she was just still good and freaked out about his earlier comment and that whole positive ions hooey. She focused on what the receipt could mean.

The stranger hadn’t seemed to recognize the name Haven when she’d asked him if he was from here, but clearly he’d had tailoring done on his clothes in town. Calla had never seen him around, but that didn’t mean much. She didn’t know everyone in Haven even though she’d grown up there. She’d been gone for nearly twelve years between college, graduate school and the career she’d thought would be her lifetime work. Then it had all gone very, very wrong, and she’d come home to lick her wounds, start over. Haven hadn’t changed much, though it had certainly grown in population.

Once the phones were back, if the stranger still didn’t remember his name, she’d be able to give the receipt to the authorities. They could call the shop. Maybe they’d have records, be able to track down his ID. Or maybe his confusion tonight was temporary. He’d know his name tomorrow.

Not that that was her problem. Once the roads were clear, he would be someone else’s problem. All she had to do was make sure he lived till then. And if he would just stay in bed, he would probably be fine. His skin had already begun to feel warmer to the touch, and his color had been coming back.

She popped the pants in the dryer and set the stained shirt to soak. And she wondered if she would really forget the stranger as easily as that, as easily as dropping him off at the county hospital or the police station, depending on his condition when she could get him out of here. She checked on the stranger again. He was alive, sleeping. She went to the living room, grabbed the folded quilt off the back of it and stretched out. She tried really hard not to think about the fact that a man was sleeping in the next room. In her bed. A stranger.

Mostly, she tried not to think about the morning.

Chapter 3

Dawn crept through lace at the windows and Dane McGuire stared at the rectangle of light in the shadowed room, his head throbbing, his mind searching through some disembodied sea of broken pieces that slipped and slid on waves of pain. The courthouse, the conviction, the crash—The woman who couldn’t be Calla Jones.

It nearly killed him but he got out of the bed, holding on to the bedpost and his breath. His chest felt like someone had used him for a punching bag. As for his head—He reached up, felt the bandage there. He pulled the sheet with him, wrapping it awkwardly around his waist. He had to get out of here. He had to find his clothes. She’d said something about putting them in the laundry.

He made it to the window on legs that felt like water, pushed the curtains aside and grabbed on to the window frame for support. Outside, a winter world greeted him, winter, not summer. It was June. How could there be snow? The sun broke through the clouded morning, and he blinked against the suddenly bright light on all that white landscape. Snow. There was a barn, snow drifting high against it, right where he knew it would be. The greenhouse and the trees, the mountains scraping sky above. And the snow was still falling, light now, but continuous. He knew this farm. He’d been here before. This really was Haven Christmas Tree Farm. He was back where it all started, last December, when his entire life had been destroyed in one fell swoop.

And the woman who said she was Calla Jones, looked like Calla Jones, had shown him Calla Jones’s identification—He pivoted, ignoring the rush of pain and wave of sickness. The dresser where the woman had gotten the purse with the driver’s license was there. There were photographs all lined up; a little girl, a teenager, an adult, a woman as she grew. A lifetime in a few pictures. There was a framed West Virginia University diploma with Calla Jones’s name. A stack of envelopes, bills, addressed to Calla Jones.

Winter, not summer.

A calendar was tacked to the wall with a stick pin, open to December of the previous year. There was a CD player on the dresser. He fumbled for it, pushed the button. Classic rock poured out. He pushed it off the CD mode, switched to radio. No cord, so it was on battery. Fuzz. He pushed the selector until he found a clear station. More music. Another one with a commercial jingle. He kept pushing the button. Weather for today, December 20, in the Appalachian foothill region—

Something bone-deep and dark rushed him and he felt his knees shaking, hard.

Calla woke with a start, her eyes blinking open against the pale dawn shafting through the windows of the front room, nerves strung taut—A bang. That’s what had woken her. A loud bang from the back of the house—

She jerked forward, tossing the blanket, uncurling her legs, remembered the stranger and—She rushed to the next room.

The radio played the day’s news to an empty bed. He was gone.

Her blood pumped hot in the chilly room. Panic at the stranger’s disappearance combined with the realization that there was no heat. The generator must have died.

And the stranger, the stranger who was in no fit state to travel on foot, was gone. He’d die out there.

The forecast airing on the radio was for a bad one, the storm expected to last at least another day, steady snow this morning and increasing again by noon to blizzard-strength. Mountainous roads were already impassable. People were being warned to stay home, even in the towns. Electric and phone service out for thousands of homes. The governor was calling for a state of emergency, requesting federal assistance in clearing roads and restoring basic services.

She rushed out of the room. The sound had come from the back of the house. Grabbing and shoving on shoes, she ran, through the kitchen, through the utility room, blasting out into the icy morning. As she took the first step, she slipped and then slid on the concrete stair. She grappled for the railing, desperate to keep from landing on her ass. Failed. The heels of her bare hands hit the snow-covered steps, barely breaking her fall. The cold impact stunned her for a beat then arms swept her, warm arms in the cold snow.

Blinking, her vision clearing, she saw it was him.

“Get in the house!” Calla barked at him, angry, she realized. Very angry. It was his fault she was out here. Saving his life yet again and mad about that, too. She didn’t want to have to save his life, didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

He stared back at her, snow on his very long, very dark eyelashes that she noticed suddenly, sharply. He didn’t say anything, just pulled her to her feet, set her steady and stepped back. He wasn’t even wearing a shirt, she realized.

“Are you crazy?” she yelled at him. He was wearing only the pants she’d dried last night, and his shoes. His stained shirt was still soaking, she remembered. Then she saw him wincing in pain. His ribs, she remembered that, too. He’d hurt his ribs. And maybe he was crazy.

But he’d die out here.

“Just get back in the house,” she said, lowering her voice, though the words still came out clipped. And shaking. Her teeth were starting to chatter. “You’ll freeze out here. And if you want to kill yourself, that’s fine, but not on my watch.”

She wanted to tell him he deserved to freeze, but that wasn’t true or necessary or kind. It would just be venting. Maybe he did have a head injury. He was still staring back at her through the snow as if in some kind of shock, though he’d been with it enough to come to her aid. What the hell had driven him out into the snow half-dressed?

He didn’t move so she grabbed his arm with one hand, the railing with the other, and dragged him back the few steps to the door, pushed him inside ahead of her. She shoved the door shut with a slam. She was back in her house with a frozen, mysterious stranger.

She stood there, shivering.

“You’re underdressed,” she said into the sharp quiet of the house. She crossed the utility room, grabbing open the cellar door.

The utility room was an add-on to the old building, connecting what used to be a separate cellar to the main house. There were boxes and boxes stacked against one wall of her grandfather’s things and a hanging rack with some of his old clothes. She jerked open a box and grabbed the first shirt on top, a heavy plaid flannel shirt. Another box held folded jeans. She pulled down a jacket from the rack.

“Here,” she said, returning to the stranger. “Put this on.” She handed him the shirt and the jeans, which would be heavier protection than the slacks he’d come with last night. Then she set the jacket on top of the big chest freezer across from the washer and dryer. “And if you take a hankering to go strolling outside again, wear a jacket!”

Her irritation vanished as she watched him slide his arms awkwardly into the flannel shirt and try to use his frozen fingers to connect the buttons. She marched the few steps between them and took matters into her own hands. Her knuckles brushed his solid, very muscular chest. Something she would have been better off avoiding. She was actually turned on. It was ludicrous. Here he was, a stranger, half out of his head for all she knew, and she couldn’t stop noticing that he was extremely attractive.

She finished with the buttons. She felt his eyes following her every nervous movement and she blamed the cold that her own hands were shaking, almost as useless as his.

“Come on,” she said abruptly, stepping back from him. He was still watching her. Just watching her. Like she was some unknown specimen. Well, she felt the same about him, so she supposed that was fair. “I’ll fix some coffee. You need to get something warm inside you. There’s a bathroom there—” She pointed it out on the way to the kitchen. “You can change your pants in there.”

She headed for the kitchen, wondering if he’d come after her or go back outside. If he kept acting crazy, she’d have to let him go. She couldn’t call for help at this point, and what else could she do? Tie him up? If he wanted to leave, he was free to go. She’d done everything she could.

Acting as if she didn’t care when, for some stupid reason, she did, she flipped on the light over the deep farmhouse sink and set about filling the coffeemaker with water and grounds. The water was still running, but for how long?

Tension tightened her shoulders. The enormity of this storm was hitting her.

“Can I help?”

Calla felt him behind her and turned, found him standing there, in her kitchen, still watching her with those curiously daunting eyes. He was pale, but under that bloodless cold, he was a strong, fit man. She knew that. There were fine etchings of pain in his expression, but determination revealed itself in the hard line of his mouth. He looked effortlessly sexy in the flannel shirt and jeans she’d given him. They fit perfectly.

His voice…It was deep and Southern. Very typically West Virginian. Maybe that was why it had sounded so familiar somehow. She knew she had never met him before.

She would have remembered him. Oh boy, would she have remembered him.

“No. I’m fine. I’ve got it all set.” She gestured at the coffeemaker. “You should sit down. You should probably lie down.” For sure, he shouldn’t be out tramping in the snow. Her heart thumped when she saw him blink rapidly. “Are you going to pass out?”

“No.”

Yep, very determined.

She closed the distance between them, pressed her hands down on his shoulders and guided him back toward the kitchen table. It was nicked, nearly as old as the house itself, surrounded by six cane-back chairs. A carved walnut baby chair sat, long-unused, in the corner. The room, like the house, was rustic, with scarred wood floors, shelves lined with beautiful, antique canning jars she used to store dry goods, a pie safe for a cabinet. Old-fashioned ceramic jars and jugs crowded the mantel of an old stone fireplace.

She’d brought in a supply of wood the day before, and laid in extra in the utility room to keep it from getting wet. The rest lay under a tarp behind the barn, but with the way the wind had been howling all night, she wondered if that had stayed dry.

“Sit down anyway,” she insisted. “I’ve got enough problems as it is.”

He cooperated, which said something.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

Guilt pricked her. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I can’t pick you up off the floor, that’s all.”

His gaze was flat, direct. “You saved my life.”

“Can you tell me what happened, now? What is your name?” Did he know who he was? She’d heard of amnesia, but she’d never encountered it outside the soap operas she used to watch in college. Wasn’t this a soap opera scenario? Trapped in a blizzard with a stranger who couldn’t remember his name.

She might have laughed but for the lump of fear in her throat. You’re with them, aren’t you? His bizarre words from the night before rang again in her mind.

The ones who killed you.

It was all too creepy. She didn’t like it.

She wanted the soap opera scenario where she got stranded on a deserted island and magically had makeup and sexy clothes to wear every day. They’d feast on bananas and speared fish and drink coconut milk till the ship found them. Yeah, she liked that one better…Except for the part where she’d have to have anything to do with a man at all.

He still hadn’t answered.

She hadn’t turned the lantern-style fixture on over the table. The gauzy morning sun filtering through the snow outside didn’t do much to illuminate the room. The single bulb from the light over the sink created shadows across his face, revealing the cut of his jawline, the straight line of his nose, the unsettling darkness of his eyes.

Suddenly she wasn’t thinking how sexy he was, how some wild, bad side of her would like it if she could just spread him on a cracker and eat him up. She was thinking instead about how she wanted to run. Far. And fast.

Even before he spoke, dread thumped, almost painful, in her veins. This wasn’t the fun soap opera storyline. It was the nightmarish one.

“I don’t know what happened to me,” he finally said. “I don’t know how I got here.”

Chapter 4

S he looked scared. Dane didn’t blame her. He was a little scared himself, and that was a little bit of an understatement.

But it was growing more and more impossible for him to ignore what appeared to be the fantastical truth. He’d gone back in time six months, to the week of Calla Jones’s murder. How? Why?

Reality stung him from every direction, and yet how could this be reality? He’d considered, for a few blind, mind-boggling moments, running away. Just…running away. He’d gone outside, in the snow. Half-dressed. Out of his head.

He had to start thinking clearly even while the world around him had rocked completely off its foundation. There was a freaking blizzard out there, and Calla Jones in here. His choices were limited, but heading for certain death in the frozen world gone mad outside this old farmhouse wasn’t the best one. He needed time. Time to make a plan.

In the meantime, he wasn’t sharing his secret with Calla Jones. Or his name. Not until he’d had time to think.

He had no idea what was going on. Yet.

Neither did he have much idea how he was going to figure it out, but it all centered around Calla Jones, didn’t it? That realization shot home suddenly, nearly sucking the breath out of his chest. His life had been destroyed the day he’d come out to her farm. She’d been murdered. He’d been blamed. Now he’d somehow ended up right back here on Calla Jones’s farm, six months earlier, where it all started.

And if whatever Twilight Zone craziness was going on rotated around Calla Jones…His nape prickled and he took a sharp breath, felt the pain. His ribs were bruised, at the very least. He was shaky, and not just from his injuries.

“You…You really don’t know who you are? No idea? Nothing?”

She was staring at him like she wanted to back up, maybe scream. Her hair, auburn-streaked, he realized now in the pale light framing her, not mere brown, was tousled—she’d been sleeping on the couch when he’d left the farmhouse. She’d slept in her clothes, he guessed. She wouldn’t have had time to change before she’d come tearing out after him.

The beat stretched between them. The gurgle of the coffeemaker and wind creaking against the farmhouse filled the space.

He avoided a direct response. “I was in an accident,” he said, remembering now that he’d told her that last night. “I don’t know what happened.” That much was true.

“I didn’t see anything out there. I didn’t see a car or anything.”

“Maybe the accident didn’t happen on the road outside your farm. Maybe I was trying to walk back to town.” Really, he didn’t know whether that was true or not. For all he remembered, it could be.

“You need to be looked at by a doctor. I can’t get you to town, and I can’t call for help. The phone’s dead in the farmhouse, and cell phones don’t work out here. Even if I could call, I doubt anyone could get up here right now. The roads are impassable when we have this kind of storm.”

Now she did back up, as if it was hitting her, again, that she was stuck with this stranger. She had to have realized that before, and yet she’d saved him last night and had rushed out again this morning after him. She was “good people,” this Calla Jones he’d been convicted of murdering. Of course, he’d known that. He’d heard her friends extol her virtues at the sentencing hearing.

“I can try to walk back to town,” he said. He didn’t want to leave, not now, not yet. He’d been thrown back in time, back to the very scene of the crime, for a reason. There had to be a reason. Nothing made sense, but that was why he had to stay.

He had to make sense of it. As much as he’d been ready to, crazily, run away in the storm moments before, now he knew he had to stay. Calla Jones was the key.

But Calla Jones was scared. He had to gamble that, bighearted person that she was, she wasn’t going to think his tromping off in the storm was a good idea.

“No, you can’t do that,” she said finally. “It’s snowing, and it’s supposed to snow harder later. It’s miles into town. You’re already suffering from exposure. You’d never make it.”

She chewed her lip, watched him worriedly from wary eyes. “I couldn’t find any identification on you,” she went on. “I did find a receipt from a dry cleaner’s in town.”

The suit he’d worn at the sentencing, right before he’d been loaded into the transport van, had been cleaned in Haven for his court appearance. The high-priced attorney that Carter Sloane, the Ledger CEO, had hired had taken care of it. Unfortunately Edward Jeffries hadn’t taken care of much else he’d needed. Like getting him off.