She was holding on to his hand tightly and still shaking. “I need to see my car.”
Her vehicle was pretty much totaled, and she didn’t need to see that, not yet. “First, we take care of you, then the car.”
She pulled on his hand, leveraging herself to turn toward him, slipped her feet out and pressed worn suede boots to the rough ground. “Please, I need to see it.”
Before he could argue with her, she was tugging on his hand again, and he finally stood to help ease her to her feet. She was slender, maybe five foot six. Nothing she had on, not even her boots, had avoided being stained by the blood. She slowly glanced to her right, and her hold on him tightened even more. He braced to have her fall into his chest. But with a shuddering sigh, she slowly sank back down onto the car seat and let go of him.
“Just stay put, please,” Seth insisted, very uneasy about her paleness and the continued trembling.
Her blue eyes turned up to him, overly bright with the threat of more tears. “Sorry,” she whispered, and the tears showed up.
His cell vibrated in his jacket pocket, and he answered it quickly. “Yes?”
“Seth, it’s Charlie Hague. We received the dispatch for your accident, and I need to know details.”
Seth filled the EMT in on everything as he watched the woman trying to adjust the pad on her wound. Seth answered Charlie’s questions as clearly as he could while the woman swiped with the sleeve of her hoodie at the tears on her chin. “Anything else, Charlie?” he asked.
“Is she coherent, her pupils normal?”
He’d noticed her blue eyes first thing. “Yes and yes.”
“Okay. We’re a unit short, and there’s been a major accident near Wolf Bridge. We’ve been redirected to it. Someone will be sent to you as soon as a unit’s freed up. So, just keep her comfortable and make sure pressure stays on the wound. Keep that heater going.”
Seth heard someone speaking to Charlie but couldn’t understand the conversation. Then Charlie was back on the line. “Got an option for you. Since your truck is operable, how about you drive her to Boone’s clinic? I don’t see any reason to worry about moving her, and it’s a better option than waiting for transport.”
He was relieved there was a reasonable alternative to just standing here while the lady bled and cried. “Okay, I can get her to the clinic, but you’ll have to contact Boone to fill him in. Also, get Max to send Henry out to pick up her car.”
* * *
QUINN HEARD THE plans the man was making with someone on his phone—plans for her. Even with blood staining her clothes and the car broken, she wasn’t about to drive off with just anyone. She sniffed back tears and opened her eyes. She tried to breathe more easily, to try and forget that horror when the car had been out of her control and headed for the trees. Then the crash. She swallowed hard and tried to not start crying again.
She looked up at the man who must be about six feet tall. Wearing washed jeans, a well-worn leather jacket and Western boots that were definitely not new, he looked like a ranch hand. Unruly dark brown hair framed a strong face shadowed by a couple days of stubble. His hazel eyes never looked away from her.
She knew she was in a horrible spot, but it scared her to think of just going off with a stranger. Maybe just waiting right there was the best idea. “I can wait for them to get here.” She wished her voice sounded stronger.
“I understand,” he said. “You don’t know me, but the guy on the phone is Charlie Hague, an EMT. He’s known me since high school. He’ll vouch for me.”
He took the phone away from his ear and put it on Speaker. “Charlie, you’re on Speaker and the lady wants to talk to you to make sure she’s not heading off with a serial killer.”
“Okay,” a male voice said from the phone.
She frowned at the sound of sirens in the background of the call. “No offense, but how do I know who you are?” she asked the man on the other end of the call.
“Ma’am, we can hang up, and you can call 911 and ask to be connected to Unit 15. Would that work for you?”
“I guess, but who is he?”
“He’s a good guy, and he’ll take you to the clinic in Eclipse. The bonus for you is he’s certified in CPR and critical first aid. Now, who are you?”
His description of the ranch hand seemed too good to be true. “I’m Quinn Lake.”
“Okay, Quinn, go and let Dr. Boone Williams at the clinic in town take care of you. Right now, Seth can get you there quicker than we can get you back to the ER in Cody.”
“Seth?”
“Yes, Seth Reagan—he’s perfectly safe.”
Quinn stared at the man the EMT had just told her was Seth Reagan. The shock of her car being damaged and the blow to her head had to have done more than make her bleed everywhere. The man right there with her didn’t look like a billionaire tech genius and the man she’d come to find. Then he flashed her a crooked smile. “I promise I’m not a serial killer.”
She stared at him, trying to reconcile the few pictures she’d found of him online with this reality less than two feet away from her. The photos had shown a man with short hair, a clean-shaven jaw and wearing casual pants and sports shirts. In every photo, he’d been looking away from the camera or down.
She could feel the cold air around her, the throbbing in her head increasing, and her left arm was aching from holding the pad in place. No, this was all real, and apparently Seth Reagan was right there and very real, too.
“So, will you come with me?” he asked, startling her out of her thoughts.
“Oh, yes.” Her voice sounded as weak as she felt right then.
Charlie spoke quickly. “Call Boone if you need any help on the way.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” Seth said, then he spoke to Quinn as he ended the call. “I’ll bring my truck over. Don’t move.”
“Okay,” she said, and he took off jogging back toward the road.
When Quinn had arrived in Eclipse in the early afternoon, she’d set out to get information about the Eclipse Ridge Ranch. Luckily, the first person she asked was a man in the general store who was dressed in a garish Western outfit with fringes everywhere. He’d been a talker and glad to tell her how to get out to the ranch, even describing the entrance for her.
She’d planned to come and find it, get the lay of the land, then go back to town, find a room and work out the part of the plan where she’d manage to actually meet Seth Reagan. It turned out she hadn’t needed a plan at all. A bad move on the road in that horrible wind had brought her face-to-face with the man.
The sound of the truck getting closer drew her attention. She saw it coming, dust billowing behind it, then it pulled up alongside her car to stop a few feet from her.
Seth was out quickly, hurrying around to open the truck’s passenger door before he came over to her. “We’ll take this easy.” He held out his hand. “Just lean on me when you get up,” he said.
She was thankful for his support as she slowly stood, and she was thankful he eased his arm around her shoulders. That was the only thing that made it possible for her to get across the narrow strip of dirt to the truck. But when she tried to climb up into the cab, her legs felt like jelly.
“I’m sorry, I… I can’t,” she whispered.
Seth shifted and turned to her, spanned her waist with his hands and lifted her up onto the hard bench seat with surprising ease. The whole situation was oddly surreal. Now she was sitting in an old truck while Seth Reagan reached around her to do up her seat belt. She felt his heat against her right side and inhaled the scent of leather and freshness before he moved back. He’d said something she hadn’t caught. “I’m… I’m sorry. What?”
“I have to turn off your car. What do you need out of it?”
She swallowed to try to ease the tightness in her throat. “My backpack and leather purse and the picture on the sun viso
r.”
“Got it,” he said and closed her door. Moments later, he was getting in behind the wheel. After he put her bags on the seat between them, he held out her photo. “Here you go.”
She stared at it and couldn’t bear to touch it with her bloodstained hands. “The small side pocket in my backpack. Could you put it in there?”
He reached for the backpack and slipped the picture safely into the pocket where she kept Michael’s small leather box, which she carried with her everywhere. “Thank you,” she whispered when he zipped it shut.
He helped her get positioned so her elbow rested on her backpack while her left hand held the bandage in place. “Does that feel okay?” he asked.
The tension in her neck and shoulders eased right away. “Yes.” She looked down at the mess on her clothes. Then she made the mistake of looking over at her car again and immediately wished she hadn’t. She was crying before she knew it. The pain of what she’d done to the car that she and Michael had shared their whole marriage was so intense it was unreal, and she could barely catch her breath. “Oh, gosh,” she gasped on a sob. “This is horrible.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Seth said in a soothing tone. “I just wish I had some wipes for you.” He turned and quickly got out of the truck, and she watched him heading toward her car again. He grabbed something white off the roof of the VW and came back inside.
He handed her the material, and it took her a moment to realize it was what was left of his T-shirt. “Use this to wipe you face or whatever,” he said.
She swiped at her face. “I’m sorry, I really am,” she whispered unsteadily as she lowered her hand and stared at the rag, now splattered with red. “How can I be bleeding so much?”
“Head wounds are the worst bleeders, and usually not as bad as they look. As for your car, I’ve always heard that Beetles are fixable as long as there are other Beetles to use for replacement parts. But even if your car’s totaled, I’ll make sure you get another one. He put the truck in gear, made a wide turn and headed back to the road. He drove slowly over the uneven ground.
“I can’t get another car,” Quinn said, trying not to cry.
“Don’t worry. I’ll pay for it. I knew about the blind curve and the wind, and I was on the wrong side of the road. My fault completely.”
She didn’t remember a blind curve, just the old truck coming at her. She couldn’t think straight. “I was… I was driving, and this truck was there.” It was like a nightmare she’d had, but it was real. “I think I was driving the wrong way or something.” She tried to focus, to remember, but she couldn’t.
“No, you weren’t, but let’s talk about this after we get you to the clinic.”
Quinn knew she should just keep quiet until she understood everything and could think straight, but she had to ask something. “That man, Henry, he’s not going to forget about my car, will he?”
Seth eased the truck over the shoulder and onto the pavement. “No, he won’t forget, but for now we’ll focus on making sure you’re okay.”
She closed her eyes and rubbed the rag over her chin again. All she’d wanted was to find Seth and talk to him. Worse even than the accident was the obvious fact that she had no control over anything that was happening right now. After she was cleaned up and the wound was fixed, maybe she could think straight and figure out what to do next.
Seth startled her when he spoke after a few miles of silence. “I know you’re upset. But, believe me, you’re going to be okay.”
All she really knew about herself right then was she didn’t want any more loss in her life, not even the loss of the car. She opened her eyes just as Seth glanced at her before he quickly looked back to the road ahead. She knew she had to look awful, but she realized she hadn’t even thought of him being injured. “Did you get hurt?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said on a sigh of real relief. “I’m sorry I never even asked.”
A horn sounded and a large white pickup truck, with a green sheriff logo on its door and a light bar on the roof, drove up beside them. A uniformed man behind the wheel pointed ahead, then he proceeded to speed up and cut in front of them. “The sheriff sent an escort,” Seth said.
If it had been possible for Quinn to laugh at that moment, she might have. A police escort. As far as she could see, the road ahead was totally empty of other cars.
As Seth sped up to keep pace with the large truck, he asked, “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“No,” she said.
“First, how can your family be contacted. They need to know about the accident.”
As he spoke, the air in the cab became thinner, and Quinn shivered as the tears threatened to come back. She hated having no control, not even over crying. “Is it cold in here?” she asked, partly to deflect his question and partly because she felt a deep chill all of a sudden.
He reached to turn the heater up a notch. “Is that better?”
“Yes,” she said and closed her eyes. If Michael were still alive, she would’ve called him before she’d even gotten out of the car. But she couldn’t do that, and she didn’t want her parents or sisters to know because they’d only worry. She was on her own, the way she’d been for the past seventeen months. She couldn’t think about Michael, not now, not after everything that had happened. It just hurt too much.
But Seth wasn’t sidetracked. “An emergency number would be a good idea.”
“I’ll give one to the doctor,” she said.
He let that go and asked a second question. “Why didn’t you stop or steer away before you hit the tree?”
Did he seriously think she’d crashed on purpose? “I tried to stop, but the brakes didn’t work and the steering wheel froze. I couldn’t move it.”
“There’s probably damage underneath your car from the fencing you ran through or the rocks you went over.”
“I guess,” she said. “I was going to downshift, but the transmission’s touchy…” Then she’d hit the tree and downshifting hadn’t been her worry.
Another horn blared as a black-and-white tow truck zoomed past them, going in the opposite direction. “That’s Henry Lodge, the best car doctor in the state,” Seth said.
“Is he really expensive?” She had to ask, because her available money was skimpy, and her insurance was even skimpier.
“Whatever it takes, repairs or another car, I’ll cover it.”
She wouldn’t argue about him paying since he seemed to feel he was responsible, but she had to make one thing clear. “I don’t want another car. I just want her back.” It annoyed her that her voice broke as she added, “She’s special.”
“You’re sure it’s a she?” Seth asked with a touch of skepticism in his tone.
Quinn spoke without thinking, “Yes, she is. We actually considered painting her pink for one hot second.” She exhaled, wishing she hadn’t said that and given him any further reason to think she’d been knocked senseless. “I know how bad she looks, but I don’t want some stranger totaling her.”
He spoke slowly, obviously trying to make sure she stayed calm. “Henry won’t do a thing until he talks to you, and he’s never met a car he couldn’t do something with.”
She knew that was as much as she could ask for right then. “Okay, I just want her back like she was before.” She added the only explanation that he might understand. “She’s a 1962 VW Beetle with custom factory extras and…other…other special things.” She didn’t include the top reason she was special—Michael had been driving her when they first met, and she’d been theirs until seventeen months ago. Even now, when she was at home and missed Michael, she’d go driving just to be in that car. It was her comfort.
“If that’s the case, I’ll have it restored for you.”
She figured, with money being no obstacle for him, he would have it gold-plated if
she agreed to it and stayed calm. But she didn’t want some strangely new/old car. “Thank you, but no.” She was relieved her voice was stronger now. “I just want the brakes and steering working, and her looking like she did.”
Quinn didn’t miss his sigh of relief to finally get a direct response from her. “If that’s what you want, working okay is fine by me, along with whatever else it takes to get it to look like it did.”
“Thank you,” she said. “She was good the way she was. I just wish I hadn’t hit that fence.”
“I told you, it’s all my fault.” She heard him take a breath. “Things do happen.”
They certainly did. She’d found Seth Reagan and her car had crashed. A blessing and a curse. Maybe the price she’d have to pay for meeting this man would be losing the car she’d had with Michael… She couldn’t think about that now. No matter what, she wouldn’t have a car for days, if not a week or two.
She was stranded in a strange town with no car and little money. She couldn’t think straight enough to tell Seth why she’d been on that road, let alone convince him to take Michael’s work and get it out on the market. She didn’t want to even think about trying and having him reject it out of hand. If that happened right now, she’d have no hope at all.
CHAPTER TWO
SETH TRIED TO concentrate on his driving, still not totally convinced that Quinn Lake wasn’t going to slip into shock. Maybe that was why she was so sure her car was a female. He’d almost laughed at her anthropomorphizing of the old VW. But he could tell she was serious, so he’d take it seriously for now. He’d make sure she got her car fixed to look old but running well. He owed her a lot more than that for forcing her off the road, but he’d settle for making sure she got the best medical attention available and her car back the way she wanted it to be.
He glanced over at her before turning back to the road ahead of them. His stomach clenched at the blood starting to seep through the white of the bandage. Her hand holding the rag was shaking, and he felt uneasy. “Do you know where you are?” Seth asked.
Harlequin Heartwarming March 21 Box Set Page 69