Dressed in black leather pants, a matching black bomber jacket and knee-high biker boots, the woman who claimed to be a doctor looked anything but. She tugged off her neon blue motorcycle helmet and a spill of hazelnut hair poured out like someone from a shampoo commercial. Her eyes were deep brown, her face tanned and her lips the impossible color of ripe cherries. I knew I was being stupid, but she looked too pretty to be a doctor. Super model sure, but doctor, not so much.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“What’s his name?” she asked. The authority in her voice said that looks could be deceiving.
“Aiden,” I said.
My mouth went cotton dry when I realized how fast the rag that I had been holding against Aiden’s head was getting saturated with blood.
“I’m Juniper, or Dr. Morrisette,” she said, leaning across me to peer down at Aiden who seemed to have fallen asleep. I felt miniature next to her since she must have been over six-feet-tall.
“I can take that for you,” she said. She placed a hand over mine, grabbing the edges of the rag so I could step out of her way. With Trinity watching, Dr. Morrisette went to work on Aiden.
Now on my own, I worked to grasp how just a few minutes before we had been driving down the highway, where my worst problem was that I was hungover and no longer a virgin. It seemed impossible how everything had shifted in the amount of time it had taken to draw in another breath.
As soon as I had stepped away from the car, I was shuttled back to the last accident that had changed my life forever. The concept that Trinity or Aiden could have been killed, and the impermanence of everything in my life hit me hard.
I spun away, unable to look at Aiden for a minute longer.
“This is all my fault,” I whispered.
Once again my selfishness had resulted in people getting hurt. Aiden and Trinity would never have been on the road driving if I hadn’t begged them to take me to see Gabriel Sanders. Yet again I was responsible for screwing up more lives. I stumbled away from the car, not really knowing where I planned to go. I found myself standing behind Ransom, who was busy attending to the elderly lady who had been in the car behind us. Sensing that I was there, he brought his focus to me.
“Are you okay?” he said.
I nodded.
“Why did you leave Aiden?” he asked, an expression of renewed concern marred his face.
“There’s a doctor over there who stopped when she saw the accident. She’s taking care of Aiden,” I said, feeling a little guilty that I hadn’t stuck around for Trinity when the doctor had taken over.
Ransom nodded with understanding. It was then that I took all of him in. His hair was tousled, and a slight breeze made a few strands catch around his sculpted cheek bones. His body was as beautiful as it had been the last time I had seen it. Now crouched with his back toward me and with the light shining on him, I noticed faint white scars and jagged lines cutting across the muscles of his back. If I hadn’t known better I might have thought that he had been whipped until something had cut through his flesh.
“Am I in heaven, are you an angel?” the woman said.
The words seemed to embed in me like tiny darts from the past. All I could think was what were the chances of there being yet another accident, and someone mentioning an angel. I sucked in a stilted breath, not sure what it all meant only that there was something to it. I had never believed in synchronicity, but too many weird things had occurred in the past three days not to have made me ponder what it all meant.
“Are you okay, you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Ransom’s statement pulled me back.
“Maybe an angel,” I said, not really sure where the words had come from. Ransom wore a curious expression. I didn’t really hear what he said next, noting only how the intensity of his stare made me feel self-conscious.
“Is she going to be all right?” I asked, anxious for him to forget my previous senseless comment.
“Yeah, I think so, she’s a lot trashed but seems okay otherwise,” he said, still studying me.
Thankfully a couple of paramedics who were approaching us, shifted Ransom’s focus away from me for a second. He glanced back at the woman who was passed out with her head balanced against the side of the car. I wasn’t sure how, or even why it happened, only that I suddenly felt faint like all the shit that had become my life since Mom had died had landed squarely on my shoulders. I was by no means a fainter, in fact in the past I had ridiculed people who had passed out in school assemblies, but it felt that whatever was going on with me didn’t have an off switch. As the world spiraled around me I had a terrible thought about just how much damage the pavement was going to do to my body when I landed. That was all I remembered before I was tugged into a black swirl.
When I opened my eyes, Ransom’s face was the first thing I saw. I drew in a quick breath, unable to speak because just gazing up into his eyes was mind boggling. And it wasn’t just because he was gorgeous, that was a given, it was something else in his eyes. A kind of boyish innocence that said he wanted to see the best in the world. As if he could love a flower for every bit of it, stem, roots and all the things that made it what it was, not just the parts that made it beautiful. But as quickly as it was there, it was gone.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I pushed up onto my elbows. Ransom, still shirtless, backed out of my way. He remained squatting, so our faces were almost level. This close it was hard not to notice the hard plains of his face, and to remember how very wonderful his body had felt against mine when he…
I shook my head, more than pissed that yet again I was thinking about having sex with Ransom. I purposely let my eyes drift away from his, when I did, I noticed that I was lying on a patch of grass that edged the roadside. Fields of the same tall grass, stretched as far as I could see. Without my permission my gaze wandered back to Ransom’s torso, positioned right in my face, as though daring me to ogle his washboard abs that were ripples of pure muscle. A tug in my pelvis reminded me too much of the night before, and how he had made me feel alive and wanted. I could have quite easily died a happy woman after our encounter, that was if the morning after had never come.
And that was the truth of it. Ransom wasn’t interested in me, so there was no point in lusting after a memory that was just that, a memory. I cut my eyes away from him. I felt the back of my head, looking for evidence of my fall. There was nothing other than the small lump from hitting the alleyway wall the night before.
“Your noggins fine. Well maybe not perfect, but there’s nothing more there than what you had before,” Ransom said with a wry grin. That smile alone minus his rock hard body would have made any girl’s heart speed up in response. Of course it did that exact thing to me.
“I guess I’m better at fainting than I thought,” I said with a lift of my eyebrows.
Amusement played in his brown eyes. “More like I’m a good catcher…”
“Damn, you are fast…” I had to concede.
He nodded, then unexpected pain flickered across his face.
“I only wish I had been faster, then maybe Gab would have been…”
His voice quivered and his face went hostile. There was so much hurt in his gaze that it was difficult to witness it and not say something to comfort him.
“Shoot, how’s Aiden?” I said, shifting gears again. Ransom’s face relaxed. “He’s fine, just needs a couple of stitches. They told him that he needs to stay in the hospital overnight…for observation…”
“Where’s Trinity?” I asked, feeling guilty that I hadn’t been there for her when she needed it the most.
“She’s gone to the hospital with him…”
I opened my mouth, but Ransom put his hand up to stop the next question I had poised on my tongue.
“Trinity’s fine, just a bit shaken up, but not hurt. She went in the ambulance with Aiden about ten minutes ago. She told me to tell you that she’s going to spend the night in the hospital with him.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved.
“What about the car? Can it be fixed?”
Ransom shook his head. “Despite giving a valiant effort the bug has made its final run. As far as I can see the engine is finished. Another car probably would have survived, but because the engine is in the area that’s normally the trunk, it was damaged quite badly.”
“Well that sucks, we had some fun times in that car,” I said with a long sigh. Though I was bummed that Trinity’s car was totaled, I had to look at the upside, everyone was going to be fine. No one knew as much as I did that car accidents could be deadly. A shiver ran through me and my stomach lurched. I fumbled in my pocket out of habit for my phone, needing to play Mom’s final message one more time. It seemed the stupidest thing to do, to be reminded once more that I had been responsible for her death, but I couldn’t stop myself. No matter how horrible it might have sounded, hearing Mom’s last words before she had died gave me a twisted kind of solace.
“You need to call someone?” Ransom asked.
Intent on getting to my phone, I had all but forgotten that he was still there. He probably thought I was nuts, something that was more true than I wanted to admit.
“No…I need to…” I shifted on the grass.
I hadn’t notice that it was damp, my jeans felt wet against my butt. I shot to standing, needing to have some alone time, so I could perform my ritual. Hearing Mom’s voice had become so much a part of my life that I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t listened to the message at least ten times in the run of a day. Now I needed it more than ever.
Still woozy from fainting, I wobbled. Ransom was on his feet, banding me in his strong arms. For a big guy he was surprisingly gentle. I leaned into his bulk, my face was pressed against his bare flesh. He smelled a little heady, of sweat and cut grass, a bit like the migrant workers that helped Trinity’s father harvest his crops. Where some people might have considered their odor unpleasant, it had never bothered me, because in my opinion it was the smell of an honest days work.
It wasn’t just his unique scent, or the fact that he was probably one of the most gorgeous guys I had ever laid eyes on; it was everything together. There was aggression that simmered just below the surface, but also tenderness that made him protect the things he loved. I had no way to prove that any of what I was feeling was true, since it was more of a hunch than a proven fact. But there was one thing I knew for sure, being so close to Ransom stirred something in me that made me imagine that life could be so much better than I had thought.
Reality hit me moments later. Nothing good was ever going to come from pining over a guy who would disappear from my life as rapidly as he had entered it. I wiggled out of his arms then tilted my face up to his.
“Thanks for saving me yet again.” I gave him a one shoulder shrug. “This is getting to be way too much of a bad habit.”
Ransom mirrored my shrug. “It’s the least I can do after you saved my bacon at the hospital…”
My eyebrows hiked up at the reminder.
“Yeah, about that. Why exactly did you need to get out of there so fast?” I finally had the courage to ask the question I had wanted to pose from the moment we had spun away in the car.
All levity left Ransom’s face.
“I can’t talk about that,” he said with a note of finality.
The nosy part of me wanted to know exactly what he had been running from, but even I knew it was wrong to get all up in his business. I wasn’t sure if I should ask the next question that I had queued up in my mind, but I took the chance anyway.
“How’s your brother Gabriel doing?” I asked.
Ransom shook his head viciously. “I can’t go there now,” he said in a low rumble. Clearly I had touched on yet another subject that wasn’t up for discussion.
I blew out a puff of air.
“Moving on,” I said with a toss of my hair. “We can’t stay here forever, I wonder if there’s a hotel or motel close by that we can stay at for the night.”
I hadn’t planned to say we, it had just come out that way. Now that I had said it there was nothing to do but go with the flow, and try not to overthink how it had come across.
The thunder that had darkened Ransom’s face, smoothed away.
He nodded.
“That’s exactly what I was wondering too. We can’t just stand here all day…”
A quiet thrill made my stomach somersault at his mention of we too. I wanted to chalk up my enthusiasm to forming a bond with Ransom, so I could get a meeting with Gabriel, but even I knew there was more to it than that.
His voice drifted off, as he did another sweep of the accident scene. My gaze followed his, to the police cars, flashing lights, paramedics and the two cars that were smashed in a way that they looked as if they were attached permanently. It was difficult to believe that we had mostly walked away from the accident unharmed. Orange traffic cones cordoned off the area where the cars sat. The lady that had hit us was gone, and the lines of backed up traffic were so long that I couldn’t see an end to it. Though a uniformed police officer was directing cars ahead, the congestion moved extremely slow, a single car at a time.
With the vehicles at a standstill it was easy to spot the navy and black tow truck, driving along the curb, bypassing the cars as it moved down the highway toward us.
“Was the woman that hit us okay too?” I asked.
Ransom nodded. “Drunk as a skunk, but other than a couple of minor cuts and bruises she was fine. I think they took her to the hospital too, though I’m not sure because I left her as soon as you passed out.”
I didn’t want to be elated that he had dropped everything to take care of me, but I was. It wasn’t everyday that a guy that looked like Ransom watched over you like you actually mattered.
I tugged out my phone, checking my GPS app for the closest town. We had actually gone farther than I had expected, and were now two and a half hours away from Apern. The next town over was about twenty minutes away and unlike Apern was much smaller. There was another place called Trenton along the way we had come, but that was a forty minute drive back.
“I need to find out what hospital Trinity and Aiden are staying at. Hopefully I can get a hotel room close by.”
Ransom nodded. “I’ll go ask around,” he said.
He moved away from me. There was purpose and power in his stride that said he had the confidence of someone who knew exactly what he needed and how he would get it too. How he did that in just a pair of pants that had seen better days, baffled me. They said the clothes made the man, but I was quite sure that Ransom would have been a force, with or without clothes.
Another wave of warmth raced through me. I didn’t appreciate that I couldn’t stop remembering the night before. I was sure that the fact that he was naked from the waist up, helped to get my mind traveling to sensual places. I shivered as I recalled the feel of his hands on my body, in places that no one other than me had ever touched before. Another pull in my lower belly had me feeling grateful that no one could read my mind.
I lost sight of Ransom in the tangle of people, busy doing their jobs. A few minutes later he jogged back toward me. I was dismayed to see that he had a woolen blanket draped across his shoulders that covered his luxurious physique. It looked quite insubstantial, like one of the blankets that came in the emergency kits you kept in your car. As flimsy as it was it managed to cover the stunning chest that I was growing to appreciate a little too much.
“Aiden was brought to a small hospital in a place called Brimsby…”
“That’s the place I found on my GPS, its just twenty minutes away,” I cut in. Ransom nodded. “I asked the tow truck driver who’s taking the bug into town to give us a lift, and he agreed,” he said.
I couldn’t help but notice the word us. Once again me had become us. I didn’t want to feel excited by the statement, but I was human; a sense of needing to belong was hardwired into my nature. I felt like a duck that had imprinted on the first animal that had shown them kindness. In my c
ase it was the first guy that had made me feel like I was actually a sexual being with something to offer. Even if he had been stupid drunk and had regretted what he had done, it didn’t mean that it hadn’t happened.
Ransom clasped my hand with his. I had to suppress the sigh of glee that almost slipped from my lips. I was without a doubt acting like a romantic fool, something I had never been before. Somehow he had awakened a part of me that wanted to believe in love and all the things that seemed to go with it. Whether he liked it or not, he had been the catalyst that had started what felt like a transformation in my whole being. And oddly in that moment with our hands clasped together, I didn’t need Mom’s voice to comfort me.
23. RANSOM
I hadn’t planned on sharing a hotel room with Lexie, but it had ended up working out that way. The truth was, that she was still shaken up about the accident and I didn’t think it was fair to leave her alone, especially since it had been my fault. Even one hundred miles away, Pa still had dominion over my emotions. I loathed that he could have that effect on me without fail. Lexie hadn’t asked how or why the car accident had happened, something I was grateful for because I was so filled with shame over my actions.
As far as I could see, she had probably assumed, like the police had, that the woman had been driving drunk and had been following too closely. While part of that might have been true, I could take full blame for the projectile phone incident that had resulted in Aiden’s attention being diverted.
I waited patiently as Lexie slid the card into the door lock of the hotel room. I couldn’t wait to drop the load I was just managing to keep hold of. Between Lexie and Trinity’s suitcases, Aiden’s duffle bag, and a blue and white plastic cooler, filled with warm cold packs and empty containers of food, I was maxed out. Lexie had offered to help, but if there was one thing Pa had always taught me, it was that ladies weren’t supposed to carry luggage and heavy stuff, that was a man’s work. It always stunned me how someone who didn’t seemed to have any redeeming characteristics had odd little beliefs on how women were supposed to be treated. None of his ideals had ever seemed to apply to my mother though.
Ransom (Holding Ransom # 1) Page 23