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time he’d finished, the cramps had started again in his muscles, and it was all he could do to keep from gasping aloud. He clenched his jaw as he felt the blood drain from his face.
    “You should take it easy for a while,” Hallie Greer said. “You’ve got a lot of bruises. Especially around your belly--” She stopped.
    Jacob shot her a sidelong glance. Her face had gone even pinker. She’d embarrassed herself by almost mentioning a body part. If he’d had the strength, he’d have smiled. If he’d had the inclination. But he hadn’t smiled for a long time. He wasn’t sure he remembered how. A memory played around the edges of his mind, the memory of Hallie smiling at him. A memory of lightness and longing creeping inside him as her green eyes shone with warmth and she chatted on and on about the weather, new kittens, or the latest novel she had read. She’d talked to him like he was an old acquaintance. She’d always been kind to him. She was kind to everyone. He knew, because he’d watched her. As he stared at her, his thoughts wandering, her gaze dropped to her hands.
    Hallie looked down in confusion and embarrassment. She’d almost said belly, a word no respectable woman would ever say to a man. Her face burned. It was one thing to care for her own father, to see things and do things a woman wouldn’t normally be called upon to do for her blood kin. But to care for a man — a total stranger, and then to be talking about things like his belly, why the shame of it didn’t bear thinking on.
    The dark liquid in the cup rippled with each tremor of her hands. She bent her concentration to holding the mug still. Jacob’s scraped, bruised hand reached around hers. The warmth of his fingers, combined with the sight of his scraped knuckles filled her insides with confusion, sympathy, fear, and that strange tingling she was beginning to associate with being near him.
    Fiercely dismissing the odd feelings, she spoke. “You want the tea? Good. You need to drink lots of liquids. I’m cooking some potato soup, too. I should have made you a broth, but I didn’t have a lot of time and I didn’t find any meat.”
    He tugged on the mug and she let it slip from her fingers into his. She watched him as he lifted it to his lips. His gaze never left her face, and his expression stayed hostile and cold. As soon as the cup touched his mouth he jerked it away, and his tongue flicked out to touch the cut that split his lower lip.
    “Oh, it’s too hot. I’m sorry.”
    He closed his eyes and drank the tea, his brow furrowed.
    “You needed something hot. The rain is turning the air cold outside. Oh, and I put some of your whiskey in there, too. Maybe it’ll help ease your pain. Jacob, I am sorry they beat you up. I tried to tell them it wasn’t you who attacked me.”
    With an obvious effort, Jacob finished the tea and handed the cup back to her. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes as if that small task had exhausted him.
    Hallie couldn’t help herself. She had to stare at him. Even while her face burned with shame, she gazed at his bare neck and chest. He looked so vulnerable, with no shirt on, purple bruises marring the perfection of his body. Her gaze touched the graceful line of his throat and came to rest on the long, red scar.
    They slit his throat but he lived . That's what the doctor had told her. A wrenching pain hit Hallie under her breastbone. A hollow, helpless pain, so deep it took her breath away. He had lain there on the ground, his life's blood flowing out of him, while his wife lay dead beside him.
    “Oh, Jacob,” she whispered. “How have you borne it?”
    He glanced at her sharply, seeing where her gaze had strayed. He lifted a hand and ran the backs of his fingers across the scar, a graceful, unconscious gesture he’d probably made a hundred times. Her eyes followed his hand.
    He frowned and reached for the cup.
    A lump grew in her throat and she swallowed against it. “You want more tea?