Katie woke up with a start and tried to sit up. She winced with the pain in her ankle and foot. She had not been expecting it, but as she closed her eyes again, she remembered why she was hurting so much. Looking down, she saw that her shoe was off and her pants were rolled up. Her ankle and foot were wrapped in bandages and she tested movement. She could move it, but it hurt. Tempted to look, she started to sit back up, but it hurt too much and she wasn’t that bothered by how bad it was.
Hearing a noise in one of the rooms behind her, Katie tried to remember where she was. The surroundings were not one that she remembered and it made her worry about the sound she had heard. Who was it and where was she? Hearing the sound again, she started to panic, desperately trying to figure out where she was. When the tall, blonde man walked into the room and looked at her smiling, it was clear to her then. She had seen him right before she got light-headed. He must have taken her back to his place.
Katie sat up the best that she could and tried to smile back at him, but winced with the tug on her tender skin. The man moved forward to put a pillow behind her back for comfort when he saw her struggling. “How are you feeling?”
Katie shrugged, not really sure. Her head was hurting, but it was her foot that was really driving her crazy. It was covered in bandages with some red seeping through and she wanted to see how bad it was, at the same time not sure if she should. She could move it, but each time she did, she could see stars behind her eyes.
“Where am I?”
“You are at the Callahan Ranch. The hospital is a ways out and I had a friend of mine look at you.”
“Thank you, but I need to see it.”
Paul didn’t think it was a good idea. It was hard for him to look at it and he knew that there was the real danger of her going into shock or passing out again. “Why don’t we keep it covered for now? It’s not too bad.”
Katie was going to insist, but she saw something in his eyes that told her that maybe she didn’t want to. Maybe it was best that she waited. “Thank you. I think I will. Don’t want to be passing out again like some damsel in distress.”
He kind of chuckled, wondering how she could know what he had been thinking. It was what he had been afraid of and relaxed when he realized that she wasn’t going to make him show her. Paul had never been good with female reactions and he didn’t know what he would do if she started crying or something like that.
“How long was I out?”
He thought for a moment and then looked at the clock. It was already three in the afternoon and it had to have been about ten when he had first seen her. “About five hours or so I would imagine.”
She tried to sit up again and she made a face. She wanted to stand up, do something, but as she tried to swing her foot around and felt the throbbing in it, Katie knew that she wasn’t going anywhere. “Did your friend happen to give you anything for the pain?”
It hurt so much that she thought she was going to be sick. “Yes, let me go get them. Carol told me that you would want one when you got up.”
Katie nodded. It was the best thing that she had heard since she woke up in such a way. “Thank you. I will have to thank this Carol person as well. What city is this?”
It was an odd question, but he told her where she was and she didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. She had started out somewhere else and after walking half of the day and part of the night, it appeared that she had went further than she had thought, though it was becoming clear that she should have been somewhere else. Katie must have gotten turned around somewhere and ended up going the wrong direction.
“I don’t even know how I got here. I got dropped off in Elmer and I haven’t even heard of Crouse before.”
“Dropped off in Elmer? That is almost thirty miles away. Did you walk all that way?”
She nodded that she had and lay back on the couch. “Yes, it didn’t seem like that far, but it was the most desolate walk I had ever had. I kept hoping I would run into somebody, but it was just mile after mile of forest with no one around. I am so glad that you were there when I hit the clearing. I didn’t know how much further I could go. Tell me your name, so I can thank you properly.”
Paul.”
“Paul…?”
“It’s Paul Callahan.”
“So this is your ranch?”
“It is family owned and operated.”
Katie waited for more, but Paul was staring at her with those dark eyes again and he didn’t seem to know what else to say. “Well my name is Katie Reynolds and I owe you big time Paul. I would kiss you if I could get up to you.”
He smiled at her in a way that made her heart patter a little harder in her chest. “I can always come to you if you want.”
Katie was tempted to pull him down for a quick one, but he was walking away towards the back of the house. He finally remembered the pills he was supposed to be getting and came back in there with a bottled water to wash it down. She thanked him again, something she seemed to be doing a lot of lately.
Paul was on edge, both emotionally and literally. He wanted to ask more questions, but as the woman started to nod off, he knew it wasn’t the time. Katie had apparently gotten enough information that she felt safe enough to go back to sleep, so Paul was going to take it as a good sign. Scott was still not back and he went back out to do his own duties.
He spent special attention on his mare that had led him to her. Paul was feeling something that he hadn’t felt before and he knew it was because of the mystery woman. He knew that she could be married, though he saw no ring, she could be anyone and it was the possibilities that made him want to go back home and talk to her some more.
When Paul did get back to the house later that evening Katie was up and talking to Scott at the kitchen table as he walked in. There was a moment, a second that Paul felt jealousy well up inside of him. But then she looked at him and smiled and Paul could no longer feel anything but sheer pleasure. It didn’t matter who was there with them, it felt like they were alone and there was nothing else. It was just her.
“Hi.”
She grinned a bit bigger and said ‘hi’ back. Scott looked between the two of them and it suddenly dawned on him why his brother’s vocabulary had suddenly gone juvenile. Scott hadn’t seen his brother look at a girl like that before and he found himself smiling. While he found Katie pretty, they had spent the last thirty minutes talking and she was far more interested in his brother and asking about Paul. Scott knew that he didn’t have a chance, but his brother was a whole other situation.
Paul looked to Scott with a question in his eyes. “You are just in time Paul. Katie was just about to tell me why she was trouncing around in the woods all alone today.”
Katie looked at Scott. They were not talking about that at all, though she was thankful that he did not say what they were talking about. She had been shamelessly asking questions about the man that was now sitting down with them at the table. He had a coffee cup in his hand when he finally did and she felt her face growing red as he looked up at her over the rim of the cup.
“Yes, please tell us Katie. Your doctor just wants the scoop for her services. While I will admit that Carol is into gossip, I can’t help but wonder as well.” Paul remembered the woman’s comment about her assumed status from her clothing. He wasn’t going to say something like that out loud, but what was a rich woman like her doing out in the middle of the woods with no gear, hunting?
She took a deep breath and then a drink from the cup, trying to figure it all out in her head. How did she explain the last twenty-four hours? Parts of it were still a little fuzzy to her and she wasn’t sure how to verbalize it all. But she had to try and had to start somewhere.
“Well I have always liked to hunt since I was a little girl and me and my father used to go when he was off from work.” Katie paused, wondering if she had started back too far. She decided that it tied in and started again, without looking up at the two men sitting on either side of her.
“Anyways, we always went hunting around here when I was younger. I was raised not far from here until I moved up north. So when dad died, I decided to come back, you know to the first place and it was in that stretch of woods where you found me.”
Paul was dying to ask questions, there was so much left out. That explained why she was there, but there had to be a story of what had happened next to make her look the way she was. She had been in quite a state when he found her and from what Carol had told him, she had went through more than what initially met the eye.
“So what happened when you got there?”
Scott felt more close to the woman after talking with her for some time and he knew that his brother was grateful for him asking. Scott knew Paul and though he didn’t usually seem shy around women, he could see him struggling with Katie. Something was different about her.
Katie smiled at Scott and then sat back a little in her chair. “Well, the helicopter dropped me off around Hannold’s Creek on the map and it was okay at first. But there is someone or something in that stretch of woods and before I knew it, I was the one being hunted, instead of the other way around. I lost my pack almost immediately and then I heard something coming towards me in the woods and I ran. I left it all behind. I had set it down to get a drink.”
She stopped for a moment and it was like she could feel the fear all over again. Paul wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know her well enough to do so. Scott was on the edge of his seat, silently urging her to go on. Katie seemed to pull herself together and after a moment, finished her story.
“I don’t know, it could have been anything and I just got spooked out of the door. It hadn’t been long, but I don’t know, it had just been awhile since I had gone out alone and it just freaked me out.” Scott nodded as if he understood and urged her on, still wondering how she ended up in a trap and covered in dirt.
“So then I am a mile or so away from where I started, no map, no drink, no anything. My gun was laid down on the tree next to my pack and I really had lost my bearings. It’s kind of embarrassing really. I tried to judge which was I was going, to go back to my pack and a night and half a day later, I come out the other side where you and your horse were Paul. I stepped on the trap the night before and got it off, but it was hard to walk, so it really slowed me down.”
Her tale was so incredible that no one said a word when she had finished. Although many of Paul’s questions were not answered, it was starting to make more sense. Paul got up and poured everyone some more coffee to drink. “I don’t know what to say Katie. I never go there. It was actually Colt that found you. It was like he knew you were there, going straight towards the woods.”
“However you found me, I am thankful you had. It had been a long night and when I saw you there, I thought I was imagining you all of a sudden. It was pretty surreal.”
Paul couldn’t imagine such a dainty looking woman doing any of what she had described, but the marks were there to prove it. It made him realize that there was far more to her than what had initially met the eye. Paul was even more intrigued, silently hoping that she would stay a little while and he could get to know her better.