She gave him a shy smile, then dashed off to meet Heather. He couldn’t hear what she said, but Heather’s gaze suddenly shot in his direction. So did Angel’s. As had become her habit, Angel broke free of her mother’s grip and ran toward him, oblivious to everything else.
It all happened in the blink of an eye. One instant she was calling out his name with innocent glee and the next there was a squeal of tires and a thump, then a terrible, terrible silence.
For an instant Todd couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He was plunged back into the past. Not again, he pleaded with God. Not again!
Then, heart pounding, he made himself move. He dashed down the steps, reaching Angel at the same time Heather did.
The driver of the car, an elderly woman who was so short she could barely see over the dash, got out and started around the car, then hesitated, all the color draining from her face.
Henrietta, who’d come running from the diner along with several of the customers, cast a frantic look at Angel, then urged the woman back into the car. She sent someone inside to call for help and bring back a glass of water for the driver.
Todd knelt beside Heather, whose complexion had gone ashen. Angel looked so tiny lying there, so fragile, but there was no blood, not even a scratch. He picked up her tiny wrist and felt for a pulse, relieved when he felt the steady beat.
“I’ve sent for the doctor,” Henrietta said, leaning over his shoulder. “How is she?”
“Unconscious,” Heather whispered, her voice choked. “Dear God, my baby…”
Todd pushed aside his own panic to put his arm around Heather. “She’s going to be fine,” he said, forcing a note of conviction into his voice. He’d have her flown to the best medical center in the country, if necessary. “Her pulse is strong and steady.”
Keeping Heather calm, preventing her from scooping Angel into her arms and risking further injury as they waited for the doctor required all his attention. He stroked her cheek, then Angel’s, murmuring reassurances meant for both of them. The part of him that stayed cool in a crisis surfaced, blocking the emotional agony of seeing his little girl lying there so still and silent, blocking out the flood of memories of another little girl, another accident.
Only when the doctor arrived and shooed them both out of the way to examine Angel did the panic and self-recriminations kick in. She had been running to him, he reminded himself with a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach. It was all happening again, proof positive that he couldn’t be trusted with a child’s well-being.
Heather clung to his hand so tightly she was cutting off circulation.
“She’ll be all right,” he soothed, pushing aside his own anxiety and stroking her knuckles until she eased her grip.
“Then why isn’t she awake? What if she has a fractured skull? What if there’s brain damage?”
“Whoa,” Todd said, touching a finger to her lips to silence her. He was quaking enough inside without listening to such wild speculation. “Let’s not leap to any conclusions. It’s probably nothing more than a concussion. The car wasn’t going very fast. It doesn’t look like any bones are broken. She probably just hit her head when she fell.”
“She’s waking up!” Henrietta called.
Heather dashed to the doctor’s side and knelt down. “Hi, baby. How’re you doing?”
Again Todd hunkered down next to Heather, relieved when he saw Angel blink in confusion, then finally focus on him. “Hiya, Todd.”
“Hey, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”
“Head hurts,” she whimpered, as tears suddenly pooled in her eyes. She reached out her arms, not for her mother, but for him.
Todd glanced at the doctor. “Is it okay?”
The man nodded. “I’d like to get her to the hospital in Laramie for a CAT scan, but I think her only problem is a mild concussion. Go ahead and hold her. It’ll keep her calm.”
Todd picked Angel up carefully and cradled her against his chest. His pulse had finally slowed to something approaching normal, but he wasn’t sure he’d feel completely okay until they’d been to Laramie and Angel had been checked out.
“Doc, you want the ambulance to take her to Laramie?” the sheriff asked. “I’ve got Jeter on call. He’ll be here in two minutes if you say the word.”
The doctor glanced at Todd and Heather. “You two want to take her? I can ride along with you in case there’s a problem.”
“We’ll drive,” Heather agreed. “We can take my car. Todd, do you mind holding her? She seems to be doing fine with you.”
Todd regarded Heather intently, saw the too-bright sheen in her eyes, the lack of color in her cheeks. He might still be uneasy behind the wheel himself, but he knew enough to recognize someone who had absolutely no business being there. He shot a look at the doctor.
“Doc, how about you drive, so Heather and I can ride in the back seat with Angel?”
“Sounds good to me. Unless there’s something I missed, we’ll all be back here before nightfall.”
“You call me the minute you know anything,” Henrietta told them as an obviously distraught Sissy clung to her hand.
Todd knew there would be plenty of time spent waiting at the hospital for the CAT scan results for him to wallow in guilt. And maybe it would also be the perfect time to tell Heather all about his past. Combined with today’s accident, it ought to be more than enough to convince her to take Angel and get as far away from him as possible.
Heather had never known the real meaning of fear until she’d seen her baby lying in the middle of the street. She felt as if every ounce of blood had drained straight out of her. With her pulse hammering and her skin cold and clammy, she’d been sure she was going to be the next casualty until Todd had put his arm around her and whispered a repeated litany of reassurances. After a while she had finally begun to believe him.
Over the past couple of hours she had drawn comfort from his strength, but she could tell from the way he’d withdrawn ever since they got to the hospital in Laramie that he wasn’t nearly as calm and collected as he wanted her to believe. He was pacing from one end of the waiting room to the other, until she was sure he was going to wear a hole in the carpet.
“Todd?”
He was at her side in an instant. “Are you okay? You’re not feeling faint, are you? You’ve had a shock, but Angel’s going to be okay. The doc came out after the scan and said everything points to that, right? He’s going to release her in an hour or so and send her back to Whispering Wind with us. We have to believe he knows what’s best. And you have to admit, she was back to chattering a mile a minute by the time we got here.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s not Angel. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Me? Don’t be crazy. I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.” Her gaze sought his, caught it for an instant, but then he looked away. “You’re blaming yourself, aren’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
“The fact that you haven’t looked me in the eye once since we got here.”
His gaze locked with hers now as if to defy her claim. “It was my fault, okay? She came darting across that street to get to me. That’s a fact, Heather,” he said flatly.
“It’s also a fact that I was the one holding her hand. She got away from me. So, is it my fault she got hit?”
“Of course not,” he said fiercely. “You didn’t do anything careless.”
“Any more than you did,” she pointed out mildly. “If I could, I would never let anything bad happen to my baby. But there are going to be accidents that even the best parent in the world can’t prevent, and that’s what this was, Todd, an accident. It happened too quickly for either one of us to do a thing to prevent it.”
“I still say it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t come running to me.”
“And it wouldn’t have happened if I had held on to her hand a little tighter,” she repeated. “So we’re both to blame, okay? For that matter, so is Angel for darting across the street
in the first place.”
Todd looked aghast at the suggestion that Angel was to blame for anything. “She’s just a baby. It’s up to us to protect her. Dammit, I should have realized what she was about to do.”
“So should I,” Heather countered, stubbornly refusing to let him heap all the guilt onto his own shoulders. “I’ve told her a million times in New York that she is not to cross the street unless I say it’s okay. But she is just a baby. Until today, I’m sure she didn’t fully understand the possible consequences. She was just excited to see you, the way she always is. And there wasn’t a thing you could have done from where you were standing to stop her from running across that street.”
He looked more angry than consoled. “Dammit, Heather, we could have lost her.”
She touched his cheek. “But we didn’t,” she reminded him quietly. “Can’t we just be grateful for that?”
He pulled away. “I don’t know. It’s not that simple.”
“It is,” she insisted. “No recriminations, Todd. Angel is going to be fine and that’s all that matters.”
He regarded her as if he didn’t trust her words. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” she confirmed. “I mean it. I won’t have you blaming yourself for another, single second.
“She loves you, Todd, and she doesn’t even know yet you’re her daddy. Nothing that’s happened today changes that. You saw how she instinctively reached for you when she woke up. She trusts you. She’s certainly not blaming you for the accident.”
“She’s too little to understand,” he insisted, stubbornly clinging to his guilt.
Heather stared at him. Why was he so determined to claim guilt? Was this just the excuse he’d been waiting for to try to get rid of them? Or was it something more? Did it go back to that ridiculous claim he’d made that he was a danger to their daughter? Once again she realized how vital it was that she get to the bottom of that. But how, when he refused to talk about it?
“Stop it,” she commanded. “What happened was an accident. Stop dwelling on it and concentrate on Angel.”
She grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the door of the waiting room.
“Where are we going?”
“To the hospital chapel,” she said at once. “We’re going to thank God that our little girl is all right and then we are putting this behind us.”
She waited for him to balk at her plan, but when she glanced up, she saw an unexpected trace of amusement flickering in his eyes.
“I’d forgotten how bossy you are,” he said, his mood lightening ever so slightly.
“Only when it’s called for.”
“I’ll have to remember not to get you riled up too often,” he said, his expression relaxing at last.
He slipped an arm around her waist then. Heather paused just outside the chapel door and turned to face him, slipping her arms around his neck and burying her face against his chest. As if a dam had suddenly burst, sobs shuddered through her as the reality of the past few hours finally sank in.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s this?” He tucked a finger under her chin.
Heather felt more tears welling up, but there was nothing she could do to stop them. “I was so scared,” she whispered brokenly.
His arms tightened around her then and his chin rested atop her head as he waited for the storm to pass. “So was I, darlin’, so was I.”
They stood that way for the longest time, until finally Heather felt the tension ease and the tears begin to ebb.
“You okay?” Todd asked eventually.
“I will be,” she said, her voice stronger now. “As soon as we say that prayer and get our baby home again.”
14
Everybody in town seemed to be hanging around the Starlight Diner for word of Angel’s condition. It was apparent that even in their brief time in town, Angel and Heather had been accepted as part of the community. Todd supposed that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, with her spontaneity and her vivacious demeanor, Heather had always attracted admirers.
Tonight, though, Todd wished she and Angel were a little less popular. He had envisioned getting Angel straight up to bed, then escaping to think long and hard about the negligence that had led to the accident. Despite what Heather said, he knew he bore some responsibility.
But rather than heading upstairs, Heather acceded to Angel’s plea to see ’Retta and have ice cream before bed.
“Ice cream make me feel better, Mama,” Angel said.
“I’m not sure I buy the medicinal powers of ice cream,” Heather replied. “But you do deserve a treat for being so brave today.”
The instant they entered, the customers immediately clustered around Angel, until Henrietta scolded them and told them to back off.
“Give the child some breathing room,” she blustered. “You’d think she was some sort of sideshow at the circus the way you’re behaving.”
Todd couldn’t have agreed more, especially since one of those most concerned seemed to be Joe Stevens, the cowboy who spent an awful lot of time flirting with Heather. Lately he’d taken to paying a lot of attention to Angel, as well.
“You two come right on over here and sit with me,” Stevens said, coaxing the pair of them toward the booth he’d abandoned at their entrance. He ignored Todd altogether.
Since the place was packed, Heather sent a regretful glance in Todd’s direction, then slid into the booth. Todd just barely restrained himself from shoving in after them. More disgruntled than he wanted to admit, he headed for the last available stool at the counter, instead.
“You okay?” Henrietta asked, pouring him a cup of coffee.
“I’ve had better days,” he confessed. “But Angel’s okay. That’s what counts. How’s the driver? She looked pretty shaken earlier.”
Henrietta shook her head. “Josie Warren has no business being behind the wheel of a car. She’s been told that by just about everyone, but the fool still has a license, so she insists on driving. ‘Just to the store,’ she says. Obviously, she’d be a menace just backing out of her own driveway.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Todd said. “Thanks to me, Angel darted right in front of her.”
“Thanks to you? What is that supposed to mean? The child got away from Heather, the way kids do. Josie should have anticipated it, but the woman’s so short I doubt she could even see the child.” She scowled at the judge, who was seated at the other end of the counter. “I told Harry time and again he ought to yank her license. Maybe now he will.”
Despite his glum mood, Todd chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Henrietta demanded.
“The way you’ve managed to make this the fault of a man who was two blocks away in the courthouse.”
Henrietta looked vaguely flustered by the amused accusation. “Yes, well, most things come down to being his fault sooner or later.”
“Is that so?”
She gave Todd one of her sassy grins. “It’s certainly best if he thinks so, anyway. Keeps him on his toes.”
Todd swiveled slightly to see how Angel was holding up, but his gaze landed on Heather, instead. She seemed to be basking in the attention of that poster boy for the rugged West.
“Jealous?” Henrietta inquired, now regarding him with tolerant amusement.
Todd gave a start. “Me? Jealous? Don’t be ridiculous. Heather’s a free woman. If she wants to make time with that rancher, it’s up to her.”
“Is it really,” Henrietta said, her tone skeptical. “And it wouldn’t bother you in the slightest?”
“Not a bit,” he said, hoping God wouldn’t strike him dead on the spot for the bald-faced lie.
Henrietta shook her head. “Men!” she muttered, and went off to pour coffee for her other, presumably more sensible customers.
After another survey—or two—Todd deliberately turned his back on Heather and Angel and concentrated on his coffee and the piece of apple pie he’d managed to snag on Henrietta’s last huffy pass-by. But ev
en as he did his best to ignore Heather, he could hear the tinkling sound of those blasted bracelets, the uninhibited sound of her laughter, which seemed to be counterpointed by Angel’s giggles. The whole jolly trio were clearly having the time of their lives not hours after Angel had almost gotten herself killed.
Angel should be upstairs, in her bed, getting some much-needed rest, he thought darkly. What was wrong with Heather, anyway? Had she forgotten all about the trauma the child had been through? Her tears and the prayer of thanks they’d given in the hospital chapel? Was this Stevens guy so fascinating that she couldn’t tear herself away? Maybe it was up to him, Todd, to remind her what was important. That wasn’t jealousy talking, he assured himself. It was concern for the child’s well-being, plain and simple.
Scowling, he was about to stalk over and explain a few facts of parenting when the absurdity of his plan struck him. Who was he to be giving advice to anyone about taking care of a child? Just then, Flo slid onto the vacant stool next to his. He noticed the glance she gave to the scene in that booth; she didn’t look one bit happier about it than he was.
Her gaze sought his in the mirror opposite the counter. “I’m real glad Angel’s okay,” she said sympathetically. “It must have been rough on you seeing her lying in the road like that. I know my heart leaped into my throat when I looked out the window of Jake’s office and realized what had happened.”
“It was. It was a close call.”
She snuck another glance at Stevens. “Joe seems like he really cares about her and Heather.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Todd said tightly, then something in Flo’s tone made him realize that her feelings for the rancher were deeper than he’d realized. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said unconvincingly.
By Todd’s assessment, Flo had changed a lot in the months since she’d come bursting into Megan and Jake’s life. After abandoning Tess with Megan’s grandfather, Tex O’Rourke, Flo had wanted Tess back once she realized that her daughter stood to inherit a big chunk of Tex’s wealth. Jake and Megan had put a quick stop to those ideas, but then, in her usual take-command way, Megan had set out to reform the woman. Jake hadn’t exactly been overjoyed, either with having Flo around Tess or in his office, but he’d indulged Megan.
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