by Vivian Arend
Let It Ride
Vivian Arend
Let It Ride
He’s her rock in the midst of the storm
When Maggie Ward’s world is torn apart by sudden tragedy, the only thing that makes her days bearable is Clay Thompson’s unwavering presence. He’s protective, caring, and everything she could ask for in a friend. But when she finds herself longing for more than friendship, it will take a little seduction to convince the stubborn mechanic she’s ready to start living again.
She’s his heart, whether he knows it or not
Clay Thompson’s got the taking-care-of-others business down pat, only he’s never faced this particular challenge before—the one woman he’s always wanted is unexpectedly his to care for. Suddenly it’s not just responsibility driving him, but a wild desire to make Maggie truly his. But following his heart might mean sacrificing the family he’s held together for years.
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Thompson & Sons Series
Rocky Ride (Book 1)
Baby, Be Mine (bonus book! Time overlaps with Rocky Ride)
One Sexy Ride (Book 2)
Let It Ride (Book 3)
A Wild Ride (Book 4)
Chapter One
November, Rocky Mountain House
Outside the window, enormous snowflakes were snatched by the rising wind and slammed against the pane, leaving a white barrier clinging to the corners. It was pretty, but prettier still because inside the auto shop where she stood it was warm, the scent of rubber and oil strangely cathartic. Combined with the masculine voices in the background, Maggie was at peace and relaxed.
It was a good way to start her holiday.
She turned from the window as the sound of laughter, deep and familiar, rumbled over her. Her husband Cameron stood next to Clay Thompson, the two of them grinning over some shared joke.
Rocky Mountain House had been home years ago. She had so many good memories of growing up in the small town that when her family had moved to Montana after she graduated, she’d always intended to return some day. Coming back to make a home with Cameron in the foothills of the Alberta Rocky Mountains seemed right.
Clay Thompson had been around back then, although never more than a friend. At one point she’d thought maybe they were ready to head down a different road, but life had changed, and they’d grown apart instead of together. Yet as she admired the two solid examples of manhood before her, there was nothing but contentment in her soul.
Her husband dragged a hand through his blond hair as he spoke, biceps flexing under the sturdy cotton shirt he wore. Clay leaned back on the counter behind him, folding rock-solid arms in front of him as he looked down from his massive height, changing the topic as Maggie approached. “You guys should probably hit the road. The weather’s not getting any better.”
Maggie slipped her hands around Cameron’s arm, smiling up at Clay. “As soon as we’re past Airdrie, the roads should be clear.”
“And there’s no way I’m going to miss my mother-in-law’s cooking. It’s worth however long the drive,” Cameron said.
“You just want a second Thanksgiving dinner,” Clay taunted.
“You know it,” Cameron agreed. “Best thing that ever happened, marrying someone with family in Montana.”
Maggie squeezed his arm before releasing him so he could pull on his thick winter coat. “Clay’s right—we’d better get going.”
“Your car is completely checked over,” Clay assured her.
“He put in extra hours to get us ready on time,” Cameron shared before accepting Clay’s hand and shaking it firmly. “Appreciate it. The next time we play pool, drinks are on me.”
Clay chuckled. “Drinks are always on you since the loser buys.”
The two guys scuffled for a moment, pounding each other on the back the way guys do as Maggie looked on with amusement.
Then Clay offered her a hug, and she stepped into his arms and squeezed him tight. “Tell your sister I’ll be in touch once we get back in a week,” she reminded him.
“Katy will be waiting,” Clay promised. His strong embrace surrounded her briefly before a firm pat on the back directed her straight into Cameron’s arms. “Drive safe, and I’ll see you both when you get home.”
Her husband backed the car out of the Thompson and Son’s garage and into the wild weather. Maggie adjusted her seatbelt, glancing out the window at the driving snow. It was coming down so heavily she couldn’t see more than the closest shop windows on Main Street.
As soon as he was on the road, Cameron grabbed her hand. “I’m glad we moved to Rocky Mountain House. It’s a good place, with good people.”
She smiled at him, catching his eye during the brief moment he glanced away from the road. “After four months, it already feels like home.”
All of his attention returned to the road ahead of him. “You know what feels like home? Having things to look forward to, like getting back to work with the guys at the station, or—”
“Or going out drinking and playing pool with the Thompson boys?” she teased.
He squeezed her fingers. “Only when you can’t play with me. Because you’re always my first choice for favourite thing to do in my spare time.”
Whenever he said things like that, she fell in love all over again. “Sweet talker.”
“Love you, babe.”
“Always and forever,” she answered back automatically, a smile lifting her lips. The ritual begun during their time dating hadn’t lost any of its charm, not even after being together for eight years, and married for four of them. She turned to stare into the whiteness of the blizzard. “I know something else you’re looking forward to. Turkey addict.”
“Yup, I like having two Thanksgivings.” He pressed his lips to her knuckles before releasing her hand. “Besides, it reminds me I’ve got an awful lot to be thankful for.”
They both did.
Cameron slipped into the slow line of traffic headed toward the main highway that would take them south. Maggie focused on the faintly visible red taillights ahead of them as she fell silent to let him concentrate on the road.
Counting the moments until the weather improved and the trip was over.
Clay closed the door to the shop, cutting off the swirling wind and icy temperatures. But he stared for a moment at the steel-grey barrier, struggling to put into perspective the strange sensation inside him.
He liked Cameron. He’d been ready to hate the man, but from the first time he’d been introduced to Maggie’s husband, there’d been no way to ignore that Cam was more than a decent guy. He was smart, fun to be around and totally head over heels in love with Maggie.
The one woman Clay had always imagined he’d been in love with.
Oh, it had been years ago, and part of Clay’s memories were based less on fact and more on daydreams he’d had while holding the family together. When his mom had died the summer he turned seventeen, his world had changed. Sweet-talking Maggie into going out with him had been abandoned in favour of dealing with other more dire needs like keeping the garage out of the red.
There were times he’d regretted that decision, yet he’d never seen any other way he could have dealt. Not at that age. Not with his father tipping into the bottle and his younger brothers dealing with the loss in their own destructive ways.
Still, he’d never expected to become good friends with her husband. Funny how the world worked.
Something solid thumped into his butt before clattering to the floor. He picked up the wrench then faced the work floor.
“How long are you going to stand there, dumbass?” his brother Mitch snapped. “Come on, you said you’d help me with this
install, and I don’t want to be pulling overtime to finish it. I’ve got places to go and a woman to do.”
“Stop bragging,” their youngest brother complained.
“What’s the matter, Troy? You get shot down?” Mitch taunted as Clay joined him. “I thought the golden boy of the football field never struck out.”
Troy made a rude noise accompanied by a gesture that was hastily hidden when their sister popped open the office door and stepped onto the landing above the main shop workspace. “Coffee run. Who wants what?”
Katy made her way down the stairs, pausing to adjust baby Tanner in the contraption strapped to her chest as final requests were made.
“You can leave the kid with us.” Clay suggested. “It’s too damn cold to be hauling a baby around.”
She raised a brow. “He’s wearing a snowsuit, tucked against my body, and I’ve got a blanket to cover him with. I highly doubt he’ll freeze in the two minutes it takes to walk to the coffee shop. Plus, you’re all busy.”
“We can watch him,” Clay insisted, pointing to the playpen tucked into a safe corner of the shop where Tanner had spent time on occasion. It was one of the great parts of running a family business—all of the siblings worked together with their dad, and no one objected to having their nephew around. Although usually he stayed in the office with Katy when she dropped in to deal with administrative tasks.
Katy’s fiancé, Gage, strolled over, wiping his hands clean on a rag before leaning in to kiss her then drop a second kiss on his son’s forehead. “Stop fussing, Clay. They’re fine.”
She offered Gage a wink before repeating back their drink requests, then scooting outside. A blast of icy wind cut off instantly as the door slammed shut behind her.
Gage landed a solid smack into Clay’s shoulder as he walked past. “Motherhood. I never thought I’d see it on you.”
“Shut up,” he grumbled at his best friend.
“You have no idea how close Katy is to duct-taping your mouth shut sometimes.” Gage rejoined Troy at the car they were working on. “Suggesting she’s screwing up and not watching out for Tanner? Your odds of surviving the next family dinner are dropping rapidly.”
“I just made a comment about it being cold,” Clay muttered as he got back to work.
Beside him, Troy and Mitch were bantering back and forth at each other, the good-natured teasing turned to shared memories of some trip where they’d sweet-talked their way into a hockey game. Clay grinned as he reveled in his family, his dad popping his head in from the front desk where he was booking appointments. The only one of them not around was Len who’d been called out earlier for a towing job.
Thompson and Sons garage was doing all right. People of the community trusted them, and after a few rough years, the family was solid. Heck, his little sister had even ended up with his best friend, Gage, although with how wrapped up in each other those two were, Clay had taken to spending a lot more time with Cameron. He had friends, family—life was good.
Yet as he took a wrench to a particularly stubborn bolt, that waver of discontent returned. Maybe it was seeing everyone else enjoying the one thing so obviously lacking in his life.
It wasn’t that he begrudged Cam and Maggie, or Gage and Katy. But even his quiet brother Len had found someone—Clay gave a mental laugh. Actually, it was more like Len had finally stopped running. Janey had been around forever, and now she was a part of the family as well.
With all of them except Troy settled down, and his father happier than he’d been in years, Clay could afford to expend more energy on his own behalf. Make more of an effort.
The idea of diving into the dating world made his skin crawl like hearing nails on a blackboard, but he didn’t want to be alone forever. He wanted someone who looked at him the way Mitch’s fiancée did. He wanted someone he could keep warm on cold winter nights.
He took a deep breath then let it out slowly.
Stupid, really, the way he was hesitating. Besides, it wasn’t as if dating was going to be all bad. He liked the ladies, and they pretty much liked him.
Biggest trouble was he already knew every available woman in Rocky Mountain House and wasn’t interested in anything long term with any of them. The thought of it made him cringe, but he probably needed to look at one of those online dating sites. Find some fresh blood, as it were.
The door swung open, and Katy returned, snow driven into her toque, the blanket over the baby white with it. Keith Thompson, the family patriarch, popped out of the front room to help carry the coffee down to the floor, pausing to speak quietly with Clay.
“Just took a call from the RCMP. They said there’s some major trouble out there. They need an extra tow truck.”
Clay grabbed his winter coat and slipped on his oversized outdoor boots. He stole his coffee from the tray, offering Katy a nod of thanks as he answered his father. “No problem. Did they already contact Len?”
“He’s working on four cars in the ditch out Shunda Creek way. He’ll join you on the main highway when he’s done.” Keith Thompson’s expression grew serious. “Sounds like a pretty horrendous accident.”
The warning was well taken.
With the added height of the truck cab, Clay got a prime view of the mess as he rounded the bend to where a dozen sets of flashing lights turned the white sky into a light show. More than one ambulance and more than one police car were out, with dozens of cars slid off the road on either side of the highway.
But it was the site directly in the center of the T-intersection that turned his gut to sheer ice. A southbound semi had slid through the traffic and T-boned a car heading out of Rocky Mountain House.
The Civic was a mess. The driver’s side was crumpled beyond belief, the door crushed toward the middle of the car—a far too familiar car.
Clay hurried to place the tow truck in position, following the RCMP’s swinging glow sticks, while the only thought going through his mind was he had just finished working on a car exactly like that one. He swore it was Cam and Maggie’s.
As soon as he could, Clay jumped from the cab, adjusting his coat as he hurried toward the back of the truck to meet the RCMP. The sirens from all but one of the emergency vehicles had paused, but the red and white warning lights continued to flash off and on, lighting the scene like some sick disco ball.
The chill in his stomach changed to outright nausea as he confirmed the crushed vehicle was the one his friends had recently left the shop in.
“Where are the passengers?” he shouted over the wind at the RCMP assisting him.
“First ambulance took the driver. Passenger got loaded into the one that just left.” Constable Shacklee shook his head as he helped Clay attach chains to winch the vehicle into position. “We’ll be cleaning this up for a while.”
Clay went into autodrive, hooking up the vehicle and climbing back into the cab, the storm ringing in his ears even after the doors were closed. He turned on his own warning lights and followed the RCMP back onto the road, but the entire time his brain was fixated on one thing.
He grabbed the walkie-talkie from the dashboard, opening the shop channel. “Clay to home base, come in.”
It took a moment before static buzzed briefly. “What’s up?” Troy demanded.
“I’m bringing in a car then I need you to take over for me.”
Something of his desperation must have come through because his youngest brother failed to tease, a fact for which Clay would be grateful once he was functioning again.
“I’ll be ready.” Troy promised. “You okay?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer that. The urge to drop everything and ambulance chase drove him so frantically he was past the point of making a judgment call. He didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to reason—all he knew was he had to get to the hospital as fast as possible.
The hard plastic waiting-room chair under her hips was cold through her jeans. The bright lights of the hospital hallway shone with a strange hazy glow, breaking into a million
rainbows as her gaze bounced from one to the next. Yet there were no rainbows around her right now—only noise and confusion, people bustling past from the emergency room, rolling beds flying by the side hallway as a collection of mothers with snotty-nosed children looked on with wide eyes.
And her. Shuffled out of the examining room after being declared miraculously uninjured but for a few aches and pains from being slapped by the airbag, and a bruise across her chest from the seatbelt. Beyond that, nothing.
Nothing but the ringing in her ears that refused to die, the shrill sound of metal compressing, bright lights blinding her and a low moaning noise that refused to fade.
“Mrs. Ward. Maggie.”
A pair of pristine white runners appeared before her. Above them, cotton nurse’s scrubs covered with tiny dancing dinosaurs. Maggie lifted her head and gazed into a pair of concerned blue eyes, vaguely familiar ones. She struggled to recall the woman’s name. “Yes?”
“Did you want to wait closer to surgery? Where your husband is?” the nurse asked.
Maggie glanced around, confused. “I thought I was waiting in the right place. Is there any word—?”
“No. Not yet, but when you didn’t come back from the washroom, I wondered if you’d gotten lost.” The nurse helped her to her feet. “Do you remember what happened, Maggie?”
Obviously just because there was nothing physically wrong with her, it didn’t mean she was fine. Maggie took the nurse’s arm and tried to remember how she’d gotten turned around. “Cameron. Is he okay?”
“He’s still in surgery, but we’ll check when we get upstairs.” The nurse glanced at her. “Did you have a cup of tea yet? Or something to eat?”
Maggie shook her head. Her limbs trembled as they walked slowly down the hallway toward the elevator.
“Maggie.”
The call came from behind them, heavy footsteps sounding from the emergency area, and she turned to discover Clay Thompson barreling down on them like an oversized bull.