Gift from the Sea Read Free Page B

hopefully salvaged,” Maggie’s father said as if reading her thoughts. He picked up the pile and opened the door wide. “I’ll have Sean bring you a bucket of snow for massaging his fingers and toes. If you need help, just call out.”
    “He seems harmless,” Maggie said, more to reassure her father than because she had made any observation of the man beyond the fact that he was wearing dry clothing and covered by clean linens.
    Gabe smiled at her. For an instant he looked like a faryounger man, and Maggie saw that he was excited by the events of the evening. When America had finally declared war, she remembered how her father had anguished over his inability to go to the front. She recalled how both he and Sean had seemed to envy Michael and George their youth and the chance to fight for their country. And now perhaps the front had come to him.
    Men.
    She waited until she heard Papa’s footsteps descending the stairs and then took a deep breath and turned to face the enemy.

Chapter Two
    M aggie’s first impression was one she would never have expected. Cleaned up after his obvious battle with the sea and the elements, Stefan Witte was strikingly handsome. His face, relaxed now by the drug the doctor had given him, was pale except for a faint sprinkle of freckles across his nose. His blond beard and mustache highlighted full lips and cheekbones that might have been chiseled out of stone.
    Judging by the way his feet—elevated along with his fingers—pressed against the footboard of the bed, Maggie surmised that he was easily as tall as her father, and possibly an inch or so taller. His forearms were exposed, the sleeves of her father’s pajama top pushed back. She could not resist noticing how they were roped with muscle, tanned and covered by a fine pelt of golden hair. His fingers were long with a yellowish, waxy cast to the skin that had been exposed to the elements. If his frostbite was mild, the skin would eventually turn pink and blisters filled with clear liquid would need to be drained. If the frostbite proved more severe, the blisters would be black and there wasevery possibility that Dr. Williams would need to amputate one or more of the digits.
    Maggie shuddered at the thought and turned her attention to the task of getting him to swallow some of the broth. Papa and Sean had positioned him on a stack of pillows so that he was half sitting up in the large four-poster bed. Maggie pulled the napkin higher under his chin, and in the process her knuckles grazed the softness of his beard—in need of a trim.
    “Nein!” he cried out and Maggie jumped back. As suddenly as he cried out, he settled back into sleep, but his dry, cracked lips under the moustache continued to move as if searching for words.
    She waited to be sure there would be no further outbursts. His deep-set eyes were closed now, the pale lashes and thick brows softening the chiseled planes of his cheeks and forehead. His hair, like his beard, was still matted with debris in spite of the hood of the diving suit and Mama’s attempt to wash him. Maggie suspected that once washed, it would be thick and curly. There wasn’t one thing about him that reminded her of Michael—or even George—and yet as she gazed at him, she could think only of her fiancé and her dear friend.
    Here was the enemy in the flesh. A man like this one had shot George and dispensed the torpedo that had sent Michael to his grave in the sea he had always loved. What could her parents be thinking in taking such a creature into their home?
    “Well, Stefan Witte,” she muttered, “let’s see if we can get some of this broth down—though with you unconscious, I can’t see how.”
    She picked up the bowl and spoon and perched on theside of the bed. She dipped the spoon and then blew on it to cool the broth. “Open,” she commanded as she guided the liquid to his mouth. Without a moment’s thought, she made the transition from horrified civilian to professional nurse.