located a pair of athletic shorts and held them up, trying to visualize if they’d fit him. Blushing, I realized I was visualizing his bare pelvis, measuring the span of his naked hips, as I’d seen him while undressing him yesterday.
I buried my face in my hands. This was unbearable. My only comfort was that he probably hadn’t seen my terrible scar yet, but I figured it was only a matter of time before he asked me why I was always looking at him sideways.
What was I doing? What was I thinking, bringing him here? I was obviously incapable of being normal around him, and that was because I wasn’t normal. I was a freak of nature and a hermit and just not suited for any of this.
“Anything yet?” The man’s voice carried weakly through two doors, across the hallway in the bedroom. Crap! Of course he was done, waiting for me to stop freaking out and find him something he could conceal his nakedness with. If he ever found out how I’d ogled him, a terribly disfigured, fascinated girl, he’d probably run screaming into the woods, no matter how injured he was.
“Coming!” I hollered back, pawing through the rest of my clothes until I turned up an oversized T-shirt.
I pushed myself to my feet, forcing myself to walk to the door and across the hallway. I raised my fist to knock on the bathroom door, but it cracked opened before I could make contact. Swiftly, I averted my eyes, turning to the right.
“Here you go,” I said, holding the clothes up. “It’s not much, but it’s the best I could find that I thought would fit you. I live alone, so I don’t really have much in terms of menswear.”
“No, I appreciate it,” he said, his voice so warm that I wanted to chance a glance up to see what his lucid face looked like, but kept my eyes firmly focused on the wood floor.
“Well, I’m going to go hang the laundry outside to dry,” I announced. “That way, you’ll have some real clothes to wear. Afterward, I’ll make something for breakfast. Are you hungry?”
The man made a small noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t think I have much of an appetite, I’m afraid,” he said. “My ribs are hurting pretty bad.”
“You need rest,” I said. “I’ll boil some water for tea.”
“All right,” he said, his voice soft. I wanted nothing more than to look at him, but I still refused myself.
“I’m Michelle, by the way,” I said, studying some point on the wall near the front door in the other room. “What’s your name?”
The long silence that followed the question worried me, and I quickly looked at him, forgetting his nakedness and my hesitancy to let him see my scarring.
His handsome face was pinched with concern, his look turned inward, his dark brows drawn together. I realized for the first time that his eyes were a gorgeous shade of blue.
“What’s wrong?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know my name,” he said , almost wonderingly. “I just can’t remember it.”
I bit my lip. He must have hit his head harder than I thought. It was probably a miracle that the gash wasn’t deeper than it was. He reached up and winced as he touched the bandage covering the wound.
“I guess I must’ve hit my head,” he said, apparently bewildered. “You patched me up, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you remember what happened?”
He shook his head, looking even more worried. “No. I have no idea. I just woke up here, and it’s like my life is just starting.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Is there anything you can remember? Can you remember where you’re from? What you were doing in the woods? The storm?”
The man looked more worried with each of my questions, and I fell silent. I didn’t want to cause him any more pain than he was already in.
“How about you lie back down on the couch and rest for a while?” I prompted gently. “That might be the best thing. I think you’ve had a shock of an accident, and you need to regain your strength. Maybe your memory will