Following Doctor's Orders

by Caro Carson

  They were hit with a loud thunk, and the back end was shoved downward another foot. The trickle became a stream. Five minutes seemed unlikely.

  Stay or go?

  Movie sequences flashed through her mind, Hollywood images of people gasping for breath, trapped in their car as the water reached the interior roof.

  Go.

  She hit the car window button. It worked. The front half of the car was still above water, so they could get out through the driver’s side window. “You’re doing everything right, Zoe. Keep hanging on to me, tight as you can. Don’t let go for anything.”

  It was a tight squeeze, but they pushed out headfirst. Brooke paused in a sitting position, her rear on the edge of the door, and she lifted Zoe onto the angled roof. “Hold my hand instead of my neck. My hand, take my hand. That’s a good girl.”

  The car was now at a diagonal, its front half higher in the air. The V created by the windshield and the hood of the car was her goal. With a great deal of kicking and more muscle than she’d ever used at once, Brooke leveraged herself out of the door window, onto the roof, and then over the edge onto the windshield. She ended up sitting on the windshield wipers, clutching Zoe in both arms, gasping for breath.

  She couldn’t rest.

  When the back half was full of water, its weight would pull the entire car down, and them with it. They needed to make it to the tree.

  Impossible.

  She pushed the fear away. She could at least get to her feet, stand on the windshield, and push Zoe with all her might to the highest branch she could reach.

  It was impossible. She’d have to throw the child too many feet just to clear the hood of the car.

  There had to be another option. Choking down her fear, she started watching the water, looking for any debris that might be large enough to support their weight, something they could cling to like a raft. As she stared, the surface of the water took on a different look, getting choppier, breaking up into a mist, and Brooke realized a helicopter was overhead, the downward draft from its blades flattening the water surface.

  She looked up to see the blue-and-red helicopter hovering above, lowering a metal basket toward them. A man in an orange flight suit and white helmet stood on the edge of the metal basket, his gloved hand holding on to the cable.

  “Zoe, look. It’s your daddy.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “He’s coming to rescue you.”

  Them. She meant he was coming to rescue them, but as long as he saved Zoe, that was all that mattered. Her innocent life couldn’t end this way, not because Brooke had chosen the wrong road.

  The car was nearly vertical now. The basket clanged against the front bumper and settled against the hood. Brooke wondered why Zach didn’t jump from the basket onto the car to take Zoe from her arms. She couldn’t see his face through the full visor, only his mouth. His lips were in a firm line.

  Take her, save her, please.

  She slid a foot toward him, and the car shifted. Zach gestured for her to stop. She froze in place. The tree must barely be holding the heavy car. If Zach added any of his weight to it, they’d go under. Very carefully, Zach hung on to the cable with one hand and extended his arm.

  “Let go of me now, Zoe. Reach for Daddy. That’s your daddy.”

  “It is not!” Zoe clung to Brooke’s neck, her pink cast choking her air supply.

  The car shifted under Brooke’s feet again. There was no time to explain anything. She shouted over the noise of the chopper blades. “Let go of me. Now.”

  Zach was even more decisive. He lunged for Zoe, grabbed a fistful of her clothing and tugged. Brooke pried Zoe’s arms from around her neck, and within a second, Zach had lifted Zoe and plunked her in the basket. He crouched on the edge of the metal basket railing, buckling her in rapidly with two hands. His crouch seemed like an impossible feat of no-hands balance, until Brooke realized his harness was tethered to the cable.

  With the first click of the Zoe’s seat belt, Brooke’s legs threatened to buckle. Zoe would live.

  Then Zach turned back toward her and held out his hand again. The basket could hold two? She would live. Thrilled, she bent her knees, prepared to leap for Zach’s outstretched hand. In the fraction of a second that it took to gauge the distance for her leap, the car went down. Zach, who’d been so very close, was suddenly unreachable, high above her as she sank below.

  But Zoe is safe.

  The water closed over her head. She fought it, kicking against the downward pull of the car until she broke the surface and took a great, gasping breath. She grabbed on to a branch and looked up in time to see Zach disconnect his safety harness and drop into the water, ankles crossed, a graceful entry.

  The branch didn’t hold her. Zach did.

  Somehow, someway, he was holding her up, riding the current with her until the river pushed him into the side of a bread truck. The current pinned her against him.

  “Perfect,” he said, as if he really meant it.

  The truck wasn’t floating, so they stayed in one place as Zoe and the basket disappeared into the helicopter. The pilot banked the chopper and circled around. The empty basket came down again, blowing more wildly in the rain without a man to weigh it down. It banged against the side of the truck, and the water pinned it in place as well. It was at least six feet away, which looked to Brooke like six acres.

  To Zach, it must have been only six feet, because he crossed it while carrying her. With one last push of muscle, she made it up and over the side of the basket, collapsing in the metal cage that felt as welcoming as a feather bed.

  Zach buckled her in before she could fumble for one end of the seat belt. He hauled himself onto the side, and she was lifted into the safety of the sky with Zach crouched protectively over her the whole way.

  * * *

  Now that he’d saved her life, Brooke knew Zach was going to kill her.

  She’d driven Zoe into a flash flood. He’d nearly lost his daughter because of her. Speech had been impossible in the chopper, but he’d raised the visor of his helmet as if to say something, anyway. Zoe had instantly tackled him once she recognized him, and during the rest of the ride his daughter had clung to his neck and taken all his attention. Fortunately. Brooke was too tired to be murdered just now.

  They touched down in an empty field that had been set up as a loading point, judging by the trucks and ambulances that edged the field in a neat row. Gurneys stood at the ready. Brooke wasn’t injured, so she didn’t need one. She climbed down from the helicopter herself, and an attendant in a Texas Rescue polo shirt began escorting her away from the still-moving blades. Brooke made it about ten feet when her legs gave way.

  A gurney wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Men were pushing one toward her, but she knew Zoe was still in the helicopter, so she gestured for them to go past her as the volunteer helped her back to her feet.

  The gurney abruptly stopped. Brooke turned to see Zach had stopped it with his boot on one wheel. He had Zoe in one arm, his other hand protecting her face from the downdraft of the beating helicopter blades. His own visor was down again, so Brooke could see nothing but the firm set of his mouth as he jerked his head toward her. Put her on the gurney, his body language said, just before he took off running to get Zoe out of the wind and into an ambulance.

  Brooke sat on the gurney, feeling foolish and weak as they rattled over the ground. She dreaded facing Zach after endangering all their lives. He was just as furious as he had a right to be.

  With the push of a few levers and the click of a few latches, she and her bed were lifted into the back of an empty ambulance. The volunteers stood outside the open bay doors, waiting for an all clear. The driver started the engine.

  Zach came sprinting toward her from the ambulance that must be holding Zoe. “Wait! Wait!”r />
  He tore off his helmet as he vaulted into the back of the ambulance with her. “Brooke, thank God—”

  “I know. I’m so sorry—”

  “You were amazing. Amazing.”

  He kissed her, hard. She was too surprised to kiss him back.

  “But I almost got Zoe killed,” she gasped.

  “Baby, you saved her. I saw the whole thing as we were circling into position. I saw you crawling out that window and pushing her onto the roof. Have I told you that you’re the most courageous person I know?”

  His praise made her impatient. “I drove into the path of a flood, Zach. Don’t make me out to be some kind of hero.”

  He backed away a little bit and studied her with a frown. “Fifteen cars are stuck on that road. Nobody had any way to know the water would come down like that. The only thing you did wrong was try to hand me Zoe when I was trying to grab both of you.”

  “Both of us? At once?”

  He smacked his bicep with a shade of that cocky grin. “Iron pythons, remember? The two of you together don’t weigh enough for me to notice.”

  She couldn’t smile. She just couldn’t, not when her heart was still pounding from the brush with rushing water. Or was each beat her heart’s way of begging her to believe, for once, that Zach meant it when he said she was amazing? Zach reached for a blanket and drew it over her shoulders. “I told you this morning, I’m never going to choose between you. That would be hell for me. I could tell you thought you had to get in the basket one at a time, so I grabbed poor Zoe just to get it over with. We only had seconds.”

  He pushed the wet hair from her cheeks and kissed her again, as if it was a great novelty to be able to touch her. “Turns out we didn’t have that long. When you went down with that car, baby, that was the worst moment of my life.”

  The strong hands on her wet hair held just a little bit tighter, and he looked away. Cleared his throat. Exhaled hard.

  Then he looked back at her with blue-green eyes full of raw emotion. “I’m the one who may be having nightmares from now on.”

  She shook her head in denial, just a little tremor of a shake because his hands were holding her steady. “Better me in the water than her. She’s your flesh and blood. I’m just some doc you’ve been dating a few weeks.”

  He hissed in a breath at that. He glowered at her for a long, long moment and then nodded his head as if he’d come to a decision.

  “You’re going to have to marry me, then, Brooke.”

  It was her turn to gasp.

  “I’ve been telling myself to be patient, but more time isn’t what we need. There are words I want to say and you need to hear, the words man and wife, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. I’ll love you forever—until you stop being so damned surprised by it. And if forever isn’t long enough, then I’ll love you a little longer.”

  They were in the back of an ambulance, sopping wet and exhausted. She’d never heard of a proposal like this, but the most handsome man who’d ever asked her out was now asking her to marry him.

  Her heart dared to beat harder. If they married, there would be no inevitable fall, no dreaded valley of grief, because their relationship would never be over. She could choose a new life as his wife, as a mother—well, a stepmother, but who knew what else the future might hold?

  If it held Zach, it would hold all kinds of happiness. She loved him so much that she’d always worry about him, and Zoe, too, but she also loved him so much that she could never say no and walk away. Never.

  But never wasn’t the word he was waiting to hear. In a moment of confusion, as the helicopter’s blades sped up and sirens sounded nearby, she realized Zach’s handsome face was blurry because she was crying, although she’d never felt so happy inside.

  She lifted up her hands, laughing through her tears at her own loss of composure. “I don’t know what to say.”

  His smile came slowly, the smile of a confident man. “Just say yes.”

  “Oh, Zach.”

  “That’ll do.”

  He kissed her again, the first kiss of their forever.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from DO YOU TAKE THIS MAVERICK? by Marie Ferrarella.

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  Do You Take This Maverick

  Marie Ferrarella

  Prologue

  “I don’t see what you’re so mad about.”

  Levi Wyatt stared at his wife of two years in absolute confusion. The second he had opened the door and walked into their room, Claire had lit into him, reading him the riot act.

  Granted, it was almost dawn and he had never stayed out anywhere near this late before, but that was no reason for Claire to be so upset.

  This was definitely a side of his wife he had never seen before.

  Industrious, ambitious and hardworking, Levi rarely, if ever, took any time off from his job at the furniture store. As the recently promoted store manager, most of the time he even worked on the weekends, but this weekend—the Fourth of July—he’d taken off to escort Claire to a wedding in Rust Creek Falls. He could have skipped it, personally, but it seemed to be really important to Claire that he attend, too. Her grandparents were putting them up for the weekend at the boarding house that they ran.

  The wedding was held in the town’s park, and it was a great afternoon. The ceremony was crowded and joyous, the reception even more so. A few of the attendees had decided to get up a little friendly game of poker. Levi wasn’t quite sure why, but he was really tempted by the game, so he’d joined in.

  Since he, Claire and their eight-month-old daughter, Bekka, were all spending the weekend at the boarding house, he felt that Claire wouldn’t lack for company while he was gone. Especially since Melba Strickland, Claire’s grandma, had graciously offered to babysit so the couple could enjoy the wedding together. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity for him to knock off a little steam.

  Besides, he noticed that Claire was busy talking to a woman she knew at the reception when he’d allowed himself to be lured away by the promise of a little harmless diversion.

  It was only supposed to be for an hour—two tops.

  It had run over.

  Way over.

  But that still wasn’t any reason for Claire to explode this way.

  “Oh, you don’t, do you?” Claire cried heatedly. Up until this point she had managed to keep her ever-growing discontent under control. She’d never allowed Levi to even catch a glimpse of it, just as she wouldn’t dream of letting him see her without her makeup on or with her hair looking anything but perfect. For Claire, it was all about maintaining the illusion of perfection. It always had been.

  But tonight, for some reason, she was feeling rather light-headed, although all she’d had to drink at the reception was some of the wedding punch. Despite her petite frame, punch wouldn’t affect her like this, she reasoned.

  Still, because of her light-headedness, her discontent had slipped out of its usual restraints, and before she knew it, the second Levi had walked into t
heir room at the boarding house, she was giving it to her husband with both barrels.

  “No,” Levi answered, standing his ground and waiting for Claire to say something that made sense to him, “I don’t. I’ve been working really hard lately, putting in some really long hours. I came to the wedding because you wanted to come and when this poker game came up, I didn’t see the harm in taking a little time off—”

  “Didn’t see the harm?” Claire echoed incredulously. Her eyes narrowed into angry, accusing slits. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Well, I’ll tell you what the harm is. The harm is that you just walked off and left me—again.” Not wanting to wake up anyone at the boarding house, she struggled to keep from shouting at him, but it wasn’t easy.

  “Again? What again?” he demanded, stunned. “Claire, what are you talking about? When did I leave you?”

  Was he serious? He couldn’t possibly be as clueless as he was pretending to be, could he?

  “When didn’t you leave me?” Claire countered, her anger all but running over like a boiling pot of water. “You’re always going off out of town to some sales meetings or other. And if it’s not a meeting, then it’s a seminar.” She said the word as if it was a lie that he fed her. “I never get to see you anymore,” she complained.

  Levi felt his own temper surging, something that almost never happened. Ordinarily, he could put up with his wife’s fluctuating moods, but right now he felt as if he’d had more than he could stand.

  “You’re seeing me now.” Levi spread his hands wide, as if to highlight his presence. “I’m standing right here,” he pointed out.

  Was he mocking her? His attitude just kept fueling her anger. “You know what I mean.”