Pieces of Sky by Kaki Warner Page B

across a lean waist. His shoulders outspanned the width of the chair in which he slouched. He slept, his head tipped back, his jaw slack beneath the thick black mustache.
    He needed tending. His dark hair was overlong and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days. A disreputable, formidable-looking man. One who should have frightened her, but didn’t.
    She frowned, realizing she knew that face, those work-worn hands. But how? And why was he in her room? She studied him, this stranger who was not a stranger, while half-formed memories drifted through her sluggish mind. When no answers came, she scanned the room, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
    It was a man’s room, unadorned and filled with masculine clutter—a fleece-lined jacket hooked over one bedpost, a dusty black hat on the other. Leather leggings hung from a peg behind the door. Propped in one corner stood a well-oiled rifle, and on the floor beside it sat a pair of stained boots that had been cut open along the inside seam. On the dark, heavily carved bureau stood a half-empty bottle of amber liquid—whisky, no doubt—and a china bowl bearing an inch-wide chip on the rim. A straight razor and shaving mug rested beside it, and on the wall above it hung a tarnished mirror in an ornate, equally tarnished silver frame. The walls were bare adobe with intricate tile work at the floor and crown. The deep-set window boasted neither drape nor shutter.
    His room. It might not have been designed by the man dozing at the foot of her bed, but she was certain this was where he slept. Alone. No woman resided here. If one ever had, it had been so long ago or of such short duration, she had left no feminine mark behind.
    Then why did the scent of roses hang so thick and sweet in the still air?
    She glanced back to the man at her feet. “Who are you?” she asked, her throat so dry her voice was little more than a whisper.
    He jerked. His head came up, gaze wide and searching. The instant those turquoise eyes met hers, storm gates opened and memories flooded her mind. “It’s you.”
    He pulled himself upright, wincing as he lowered his feet to the floor. “Thirsty?” he asked, rising to retrieve a dented metal pitcher and tin cup from a chest at the end of the bed.
    At the thought of water, her throat constricted. “Please.”
    He poured, then shuffled toward her. But rather than give her the filled cup when she reached for it, he leaned over and slid one thick arm under her shoulders to support her in a half-sitting position. Even that small movement sent waves of dizziness surging through her head.
    As he pressed the rim of the cup against her lips, she caught the scent of smoke and leather and cotton cloth dried in the sun. “Go slow,” he said.
    Placing her hands over his, she gulped greedily until he pulled the cup away. After he lowered her back to the pillows, he set the cup on the table beside the pitcher, then returned to the chair. He sat back, watching her. His stillness was complete, yet the air around him seemed to hum with an energy she couldn’t define. He made her uneasy in a wholly unfamiliar way.
    And yet here she was in his room, in his bed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
    “You came back,” she said, feeling so faint she could scarce keep open her eyes.
    “I said I would.”
    She smiled sleepily. A man who actually kept his word. She should write to the archbishop. “It took you long enough.”
    “I had problems.”
    She tried to smirk. It made her lips sting. When she touched them with her tongue, she felt cracked skin and greasy ointment. “I thought I was dying.” Just the memory of it made her heart pound. Blinking hard, she watched lacy cobwebs flutter along the overhead beams and tried not to think about that long hideous night when the smell of death was so thick it coated her throat, and she lay in shivering terror, listening to the crunch and growl of feasting scavengers and wondering when they