by Jean Maxwell
Carlin adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. She inhaled the coconut and melon fragrance to alert all her senses and kept steady pressure on the accelerator pedal, not daring to slow or stop on the slippery surface beneath her wheels. After another thirty minutes on the treacherous route, the signs became more difficult to read. Carlin squinted to capture their meaning as the car struggled uphill.
Not far now, she assured herself. Just keep going, stay sharp. The repetitive pattern of snow became hypnotic. She plugged in a Foo Fighters CD, to liven things up. The lyrics shouted at her about a monkey wrench. As much as she loved this song, the more the words repeated, the more they rang true in her head. She’d indeed been someone's monkey wrench; Thatcher Banks’ monkey wrench. The idea made her both angry and heartsick. She spoke the next line aloud with contempt. “…One more indecent accident.”
Suddenly, a diamond-shaped hazard sign with a sharp right turn marker flashed into view. Carlin peered anxiously into the darkness ahead, trying to make out the curving shoulder of the roadway.
Martha began a slow rear skid as Carlin turned the wheel to the right, trying to keep control up the hill through the turn. As the car slid left, she gaped at the steep embankment below, not believing she might slip into the dark abyss beyond. No, no, no!
The shoulder edged nearer, and Carlin applied the brakes. Her wheels found the rough, snowy boundary between road and hillside. Martha listed sideways as she and Carlin bounced over the precipice, lurching downhill in a sickening descent into blackness.
Chapter Seven
A strange warmth radiated from the edges of her body as consciousness neared…so comfortable…wait. Her limbs felt trapped, her eyelids stuck shut.
Carlin tried to raise her hands to her face. Pain wracked her body with the slightest movement…aagh! A hard, bulbous surface beneath her pushed her spine into an arch, her legs and feet seeming to have departed into oblivion. She could hear herself inhaling, exhaling, a rasping sound sending puffs of vapor into the cold air surrounding her. Dear God, what was happening?
Her breathing shortened, quick gasps in and out. Sudden bright light flashed and glowed red beneath her closed eyelids. Sounds became apparent, escalating in volume. Whup-whup-whup. The rhythm grew in intensity, its beat echoing in her chest. Stop it!
The light became a steady, piercing beam. Nothing seemed real, except a voice.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Carlin worked her jaw in an attempt to respond. A muffled, unintelligible grunt escaped her lips. Hands grasped her underarms, pulling her backward. She felt her body sliding over rough ground, pain shooting through her neck and chest. Bile rose in her throat, foaming toward her mouth.
“Dear God. Miss Cates, can you hear me? Say yes, please, say yes.”
Miss Cates? Yes, that was her name. The voice sounded tantalizingly familiar. “Yes,” she said, bits of fluid eking out the corners of her mouth.
Hands framed her face, and the voice came nearer. “Carlin. It’s me, it’s Thatcher. Hold on, baby.”
* * * *
Carlin’s eyes fluttered open. Her vision coalesced on a glass of water, perched on a nearby table. She blinked, the light seeping into her consciousness bit by bit. Her body felt heavy as rock. She wanted to reach for the glass but couldn’t seem to make the effort. Everything hurt. The water beckoned to her, dryness in her throat calling for it, yet she couldn’t reach it. Help me.
She caught motion in her peripheral vision. “Water…” she rasped.
Gentle hands eased her to a sitting position. “Here you go. Just a sip now.” Cool glass touched her chin, and she opened her mouth to accept the liquid. She took in a mouthful, then another, before the glass receded from her reach. A dribble escaped and flowed down her chin.
Carlin licked the drops from her parched lips. “More,” she said.
“In a minute. Look at me.”
With effort, she focused on the sound of that voice. Her heart skipped a beat as her vision cleared. Soulful brown eyes gazed at her in concern, reddish-blond stubble covering the jaw and upper lip of his face. Thatcher Banks sat at her bedside.
“What…?” Carlin asked, her voice weak and scratchy.
“Shhh now. Relax. You were in an accident, do you remember?”
“Yes. We…slid over the edge.” She squinted at him. “What are you doing here?”
Thatcher’s expression grew tense. “We? There was no one with you...are you saying you had a passenger?”
“No. I meant me and Martha…” Her eyes opened wider at this thought. “Is Martha okay? What happened?”
Thatcher looked confused. “Who is Martha? If someone’s out there injured or lost, we’ll need to go back and search. Tell me what you remember.”
Carlin managed a weak chuckle. “Now you relax. Martha is the Mustang. Is she a goner?”
He exhaled in relief. “You named your car Martha? Yes, some broken glass and a few dents, but otherwise not too bad off. For an old girl.” He smiled. “I’m more worried about this girl,” he said, stroking her cheek with his forefinger. “You have a separated shoulder and two cracked ribs. How do you feel?”
She motioned at the water glass with her chin. “More, please.” He held the glass as she drank. After a few gulps, she laid her head back. “Like shit, thank you. Hurts like hell. Where are we, and what are you doing here?”
“We’re at the cabin you rented. Just a little further up that hill you went over. I found the rental agreement on your passenger seat. It was closer than flying back to Hazelwood. They allowed it as long as I agreed to stay with you. Won’t be getting out for a while now, though. The storm has us snowed in pretty good.” He brushed strands of hair from her forehead.
“They? I don’t understand…what’s going on?”
“They. FRIAR. I’m one of their pilots…that’s why I got called to the scene. I had no idea it would be you…scared the shit out of me.”
“Scared you…why?” Carlin turned her face away from him. “What do I matter to you? You disappeared without so much as a…thank-you ma’am.”
“Baby, shhh. I really am sorry about that. There was a horrific incident at a mine site up north, I had to go.” He continued to stroke her forehead. “There’s no cell network in the places I fly, and our communications are restricted to emergency frequencies during missions. You think I wanted to leave you that day? Believe me, I didn’t. You were doing such a fine job,” he said with a soft laugh.
Carlin’s eyes narrowed as she turned to look at him again. “You’re a pilot? I thought you were a project manager…what the fuck’s going on?” Her voice strengthened as her anger began to rise.
“Yes, I’m a project manager by trade...have all the credentials. And I’ve seen first-hand the kinds of conditions and remote areas people in this industry have to work in.” He took a deep breath. “And I witnessed workers who didn’t make it…for lack of a way to get them to treatment fast enough. So I learned to fly a helicopter and started working with FRIAR.”
“Why did Paragon hire you then, if you can just fly off anytime?” Carlin asked.
“We made an arrangement. I had the skills they needed for the expansion projects and FRIAR is one of Paragon’s pet charities. I accepted only if I could continue being on call.”
This made some weird sense in Carlin’s mind. But not the answers she really wanted. “And my other question?” she said in a quiet tone. “Do I matter to you at all?”
Thatcher took her hand and rubbed his thumb over the back of it for a moment before speaking. “You matter to me more than you know. I realize we’ve only just met, and what we did wasn’t exactly professional. But one thing this business has taught me is how fleeting life can be…and to not waste a moment of it. I was attracted to you from the beginning.” He looked up to meet her eyes. “I didn’t expect anything in return. But when you started blushing after we shook hands…I took a chance. Life’s too short. You have to go for what you want.”
; “And what is it you want? Someone to fuck in the back room?” Her eyes started to fill with tears. “Because if that’s all I am…”
Thatcher shook his head. “No, Carlin, why would you think that? You have to be a bit more grown up about this. We’re not teenagers. We wanted each other, I could feel it, and so could you. If we want to screw in the back room, why shouldn’t we? Who’s to stop us?”
Carlin rolled her eyes. “Gee, I don’t know, our bosses? We could both have been dismissed on the spot if they’d caught us. We could have gone to a hotel, or my place…hell, any number of locations. A little romance never hurts…you never even asked me to lunch,” she finished with a sniff. Her nose had started dripping during her tirade, and she withdrew her hand from his to wipe at it. Ouch. Every movement ached. Romance, ha. She felt about as desirable as an alley cat right now, bruised and scarred with unnamed fluids oozing from her body.
Thatcher’s thousand-watt grin powered up. She’d never be able to resist the full spectrum of that smile.
“Lunch?” He chuckled in recollection. “Sorry. Just so happened I had my monthly pre-flight physical booked over lunch. I guess I owe you a lot of apologies for one day.”
He looked around the cozy room outfitted in pine paneling and Nordic style linens. “Well. We’re at a…location right now. Nice place.” He gestured to the window where falling snow gathered on the mullioned panes. “It appears we have plenty of time. I seem to have made a habit of rescuing you…perhaps you’ll partake of my remedies on this occasion?” He began to stroke her arm, which Carlin realized for the first time lay bound in a sling, keeping her shoulder immobile. She wore only her bra underneath, and had a pretty good idea of who might have undressed her.
The situation did seem oddly romantic all of a sudden. “What are you prescribing?” she asked, her voice lowering to a purr. His hand moved from her arm and began to trace across her collarbone before gliding over the mounds of her breasts, covered only by the sheer lace of her brassiere.
“I propose mad, passionate sex. Produces endorphins, you know, to block any pain.” He leaned forward to plant another of his warm, wet kisses on her lips.
Carlin sighed, and ignoring the pain, raised her free hand to run her fingers through his hair. It glowed with red-gold highlights in the snowy light pouring in from the window.
“Another indecent proposal, Mr. Banks? How dare you.”
The End
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Other Books by Jean Maxwell:
www.evernightpublishing.com/jean-maxwell
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Evernight Publishing
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