by Dana Marton
“To a point.” Harper laid a hand on her arm. It slid down as she moved, his fingers brushing over hers. “Did those assholes ever… You never told me.”
“I didn’t want you to pity me. I wanted you to love me. I had the biggest stupid crush on you.”
Harper escorted her up the front steps, all the way to the door.
For some reason, as she looked up at him, the words good-night kiss flashed into her mind. Body memory. How many times had they stood in front of her father’s rental like this? How many times had Harper kissed her under the flickering porch light?
The longing that swept through Allie took her by surprise. She cleared her throat. “Thanks for seeing me back.”
He nodded, his gaze fused to hers, burning with warring emotions.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then he finally said, “Have a good night,” and turned away, walked back across the road.
The evening had been nice. He’d come to support her. He’d walked her back to the B and B. The change in him from town bad boy to good guy was real, Allie acknowledged for the first time.
She still liked him.
That was a lot more difficult to accept.
Back in the day, they’d been a train wreck.
They were both different people now, a little voice said in her head.
Because she didn’t want to be pitifully staring after Harper, Allie went inside. But then she stopped instead of going up the stairs. Kennan.
She opened the door, then burst out into the cold again to ask Harper what would be the best time to stop by to see his brother at the pub, what shift he worked.
Harper was already across the street, so she scrambled down the steps as she called after him. “Harper! Hey!”
He turned and began to walk back, just as a black SUV pulled away from the curb.
The superbright LED headlights blinded Allie. She squinted, blinked, silently cursing the driver. She couldn’t see a damn thing, didn’t understand why anyone felt the need to have headlights strong enough to X-ray people.
She turned away.
The engine revved, and the sound was aggressive enough to make her swivel back, just in time to see the SUV jump the curb without slowing.
Flipping idiot. Can’t drive either.
Allie twisted out of the way, or thought she did, until the end of the front fender clipped her. The car hit her hard enough to knock her off-balance, dammit, and then the weight of the buffalo coat finished the job, pulling her to the pavement.
“Allie!” Harper roared in the distance as pain shot through Allie’s ankle, right before her head smashed against the curb.
Chapter Sixteen
“Allie!”
Harper noted the license plate as he sprinted toward her instead of jumping into his pickup to chase after the guy.
She wasn’t getting up, which made Harper’s freaking heart stop.
“Allie?” He ran across the street and dropped to his knees next to her on the sidewalk.
Her eyes were closed. She wasn’t moving. The coat might have cushioned her body, but her head had been unprotected. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
“I’m here. Hang in there.” He dialed 911, identified himself as an off-duty police officer, then he gave the B and B’s address. “I need an ambulance for a hit-and-run. Victim unconscious. Likely head injury,” he said before giving them the SUV’s make, model, and license plate.
“Ambulance is on the way, sir. Would you like me to stay on the line?”
“No, thank you.” He hung up and called the station to relay the SUV’s information so everyone on duty would be on the lookout. Then he brushed Allie’s hair out of her face. “Dammit, Allie. Wake up.”
As if she’d heard him, she blinked, but couldn’t focus on him. Her expression dazed, her voice weak and rough, she had to work to push words past her throat. “What happened?”
“Car hit you. Are you cold?” She was lying on ice-cold concrete.
“No.” She moved to rise.
He held her back. “Stay down. Ambulance is on its way.”
“What car?” She squinted, then groaned. “How did I get here?”
“I walked you home after your performance at the high school. We said goodbye. I walked off, and you ran after me. You wanted to tell me something. Do you remember what it was?”
“Last thing I remember is being up on stage.”
Possible concussion. “Where do you hurt?”
She thought about it for several seconds as if she had trouble making her brain work. “My head and my right ankle.”
Her scalp was bleeding, some of the blood trickling to the pavement, looking more black than red in the low light. Harper ripped off his scarf and folded it, then he carefully cradled her skull and lifted her head so he could slide the scarf under her, cushioning her from the hard surface and the cold.
He lifted her hand and held her palm against the cut on her scalp. “Press here. I’m going to check your foot.” When she flinched, he added, “I’ll be careful.”
He moved over, still on his knees, and loosened her laces, then tugged her mid-calf-length 1800s-style boot off inch by inch, pausing when she hissed.
“Keep going,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I can feel my foot swelling. If you don’t get that boot off now, it’ll have to be cut off.”
As he freed her at last, she hissed again.
“Sorry. It’s done.” He tipped the boot upside down. “It’s all good. See? No blood pouring out,” he joked lamely as he set the boot next to her. He reached under her long skirt and petticoats, lifting them just enough to see what he was doing, then, as gently as if he was trying to relocate a spiderweb, he peeled off her old-fashioned wool stocking. And he didn’t have one sexual thought. That’s how damned worried he was about her.
“No bleeding at all. No bones poking out.” He noted the swelling and discoloration at her ankle. “Might be broken, but at least, it’s not an open break.”
She drew a shuddering breath. “I’m wiggling my toes. Are they wiggling?”
“They are.” He covered her up as best he could to keep her warm. “Looks like everything works. How’s your head?”
“Pounding.”
“You hit it pretty hard.” He brushed a lock of bloodstained hair from her face and made himself smile when what he wanted to do was punch someone.
“What kind of car?” she asked.
“A black SUV.” He rattled off the license plate number as he took her hand. “Familiar? Do you know anyone who drives a black SUV?”
“Zane?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Ex-boyfriend. But I don’t know his license plate number.”
“Full name?”
“Zane Griffin.”
Harper made a mental note so he could run the guy through the system once he was at the station. “Has he ever stalked you before?”
“Yes.”
Harper’s fingers tightened around Allie’s before he caught himself and relaxed them. “Has he ever hurt you?”
“Not like this. Not physically. Just your basic gaslighting.”
“Where does he live?”
“Harrisburg.”
About eighty or so miles away. Not an insurmountable drive.
“Could have been an accident,” she said. “Somebody not paying attention.”
“Yeah.” But it sure as hell hadn’t looked like it.
She shivered, a common side effect of shock after physical injury.
“Are you cold?” He tugged the buffalo coat closer around her, glad that she’d brought it.
“Just my foot.”
He moved over and sat on the sidewalk with his legs stretched in front of him, then he took her swollen foot onto his lap and laid his hands over it to keep it warm. “How is that?”
“Better. Thanks.”
Jose Gonzales’s pickup rolled down the street. He pulled over when he spotted them and inched down the window. “Everything all right? Can I do anyt
hing to help?”
“Ambulance is on the way. Hit-and-run. Black SUV.” Harper rattled off the license plate number.
“I’ll call it in if I see it.”
“Thanks, Jose.”
“All right. If you’re sure I can’t do anything else.” The man looked at Allie. “You take care.” Then he pulled away.
A couple walking on the other side of the road also offered assistance. Harper told them everything was under control.
For additional reassurance, Allie lifted her hand and gave a thumbs-up. “I’d forgotten the good things about this town, how some people are really nice. I only remembered people being judgmental. I used to think everyone wished my father and I would just disappear.”
“I didn’t.”
Another car stopped. Then another. Harper thanked each person, but there wasn’t much to do. Finally, about half an hour after he’d called 911, the sound of a siren reached them, and then the ambulance turned the corner, pulling over in the same spot as Jose had.
That woke up those who’d slept through the excitement up to that point. Lights went up behind dark windows. Heads popped out of front doors.
Even Shannon ran out, blinking sleepily, lost in the giant brown robe she’d wrapped around herself. “Oh dear. What happened? Are you all right, Allie?”
While Allie assured her that she wasn’t too badly injured, the EMTs took over.
Harper knew them both from various accident scenes. Had even bought them beers a time or two at Finnegan’s. “Darius. Booker.”
“Harper.” They nodded at him, but their focus was on their patient.
Darius was a big guy, got his medic training courtesy of the US Army. Booker was a shrimp compared to him. Used to be a jockey at various tracks in Jersey until he had a bad accident. Medics saved his life, so he’d decided that was what he wanted to do next.
They were an odd couple but, from what Harper had seen in the past, damn good together.
He moved out of their way.
“What happened?” Shannon asked, in her house slippers, her teeth chattering already.
“Let me walk you back inside.” Harper offered his arm and escorted her to the front door to make sure she didn’t slip. The cold was beginning to freeze some of the snowmelt onto the front steps. “A car jumped the curb. Hit Allie as we came home from her performance. I think it’s just her ankle, but I’m going to go to the hospital with her.”
“You’re a good boy. You do that.” Shannon patted his hand. “I’m so disappointed I didn’t make her show. My blood pressure shot up again. Damn old age. I was too dizzy for the walk.”
“Are you all right now?”
“Popped my pills. I’ll be fine.”
“I would have driven you over,” Harper told her as he opened the door for her. “You know, if you ever need help, you can give me a call.”
“I’m not going to call the police for high blood pressure.”
“Then call me as a friend.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “What’s your number?”
She told him.
He dialed it, could hear the ringing on the hall table inside, so he hung up. “Save that. It’s my personal number. You can call any time.”
Shannon nodded with approval. “Rose raised her boys right.”
“No wooden spoons were spared,” Harper deadpanned, then glanced back over his shoulder.
The EMTs had Allie on a gurney and were about to load her into the back of the ambulance.
“I’d better go. You take care, Mrs. O’Brian.”
Shannon grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Allie’s grown up to be a fine young woman. You take good care of her, Harper Finnegan. You bring her back here all fixed up.”
“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” he promised, and then hurried back down the steps to talk to the EMTs. “How does it look?”
“She’ll be fine.” Darius lifted the front end of the gurney at the same time as Booker lifted the back.
“At first glance,” Booker said, “badly twisted ankle and a concussion.”
“She’s a friend of mine.”
The men secured her before Darius turned his attention to Harper again. “Want to ride with her in the back?”
“I’ll drive. That way I can bring her back when she’s released.”
However long that took. He didn’t know who hit her, or why, or how bad her injuries really were, but he knew one thing for certain: he wasn’t going to leave her.
He stepped as close to her as he could, putting a hand on her leg to alert her that he was there. “I’ll be right behind you, all right?”
She lifted her head and looked at him with a confused squint.
The guys picked up the pace. Booker stayed in the back with her, while Darius closed the door.
“Okay,” he told Harper. “I’m going to go fast. If you can’t keep up, you’ll catch us at the hospital.”
* * *
Allie wished someone would turn off the overhead light and that Dr. Jefferson, a sixty-something woman, would talk a little quieter. A lot quieter would have been even better. Allie was on the verge of begging the woman to whisper.
“That’s a good ankle sprain, so we’re going to put you in a brace. Try to stay off your feet as much as possible for the next couple of days.” The doctor patted Allie’s hand with sympathy. “As far as your head goes, you shouldn’t need much more beyond those stitches. The MRI didn’t show anything I’d be worried about. No crack in your skull, no bleeding inside. I think you got away with just a concussion. I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”
Not if Allie could help it. “Is it absolutely necessary?”
The doctor smiled. “Don’t like hospitals, huh?”
“It’s not that.” Allie closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again, telling herself she had nothing to be embarrassed about. “I’m self-employed. I have crap insurance. Sky-high deductible. The ambulance ride and the ER visit are going to kill me already. Overnight observations are for millionaires, not people like me.”
“All right,” the doctor said without a hint of judgment in her brown eyes. “As long as somebody can keep you under observation for the next few hours, at least. Do you have someone to take care of you?”
“She does.” Harper spoke from his chair in the corner of the exam room before Allie could speak.
“You know the drill?” the doctor asked him.
“Bed rest, fluids, mild pain reliever.”
Dr. Jefferson nodded. “If you see her pupils dilate or if she develops any trouble with walking, you bring her right back.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The doctor turned back to Allie with a smile. “Sounds like he means it. I think you’ll be in good hands.” She offered another encouraging pat on Allie’s arm before saying, “The nurse will be in shortly with your ankle brace.”
As Dr. Jefferson left, Allie caught Harper’s gaze. “You don’t have to stay with me at the B and B.” For one, the room only had one bed. No way was she getting in bed with Harper. The biggest nope of all the nopes that ever lived. “I’m fine.”
“You’ll be staying with me. I have a guest bedroom.”
“I’d rather not. Thank you,” she said, in a tone that was grateful but firm.
“Then you can stay at the farmhouse with my parents and my brother.” His tone said he was an officer of the law, laying down that law.
Kind of sexy.
She put down the thought to her medically documented concussion.
“You will not spend the rest of the night alone.” He doubled down. “That’s nonnegotiable.”
Allie’s head was pounding too hard to argue. She was pretty sure Calamity Jane would have told her to pick her battles. There were only a few hours left of the night. She’d go back to her room in the morning. “Fine.”
Harper rose from the chair and walked over to her, mischief glinting in his eyes. “The farmhouse, then?”
Definitely not that. “I’ve had en
ough excitement for one night. I think I’ll leave being smothered with a pillow for another day.” She was not staying under the same roof with Rose Finnegan. “I’ll take my chances at your place.”
The slow smile that conquered his face affected her breathing that had been less than steady already. Not fair to have Harper Finnegan smile at her like that when she wasn’t at full strength. She closed her eyes. So there. She might be down, but she wasn’t entire defenseless.
“I know that car barely touched me,” she said when she regained her equilibrium a few seconds later and opened her eyes again. “But I feel like I’ve been run over by a steamroller. Everything aches.”
“The acetaminophen they gave you should kick in soon.”
She smiled her sweetest smile. “I bet you have stronger drugs at the station in evidence.”
“What’s stashed in evidence, stays in evidence.”
“Remind me again what the advantages of having a detective for a friend are?”
“Superior mind, superior strength, incorruptible morals…”
“All right. Calm down. If your ego gets any bigger, the hospital is going to charge me for a second room.” She shook her head. The bed spun with her. She groaned. “I can’t believe I’ve been hit twice in the same week. Saved by my buffalo coat both times.”
Harper raised an eyebrow. “My plow never touched you. You fainted.”
“You knocked me down.”
“You must mean my manly charm. It can be a lot to take.”
“Yeah, that’s what it was.” She struggled with a grin. “You’re a menace on the roads with that plow,” she told him. But she appreciated the lightness his joking had brought to the room. Maybe the pills were kicking in, because she was beginning to feel better.
The nurse, who’d introduced herself as Alejandra earlier, bustled in with a brace and a wheelchair. Harper moved away so the petite forty-something woman would have enough room to fasten the brace on Allie’s foot. Then Alejandra helped her stand, helped her walk her first few steps, and find her balance.