by Katie Lane
“Yes, but I really need to follow that ambulance right now.”
“Sorry, sir, but if you were part of the accident, you’ll need to answer some questions first.”
Ryker answered the questions quickly and left out the texting part. He figured Summer had been punished enough for her mistake and doubted she’d ever text and drive again. While he was talking with the officer, a muscle in his neck had a spasm. He cringed and tried to massage it out.
“Is your neck hurting?” the officer asked.
“A little, but it’s not a big—”
Before he could finish, the highway patrolman called over the other paramedic team that was packing up to leave. Within minutes, Ryker found himself collared with a neck brace and strapped to a stretcher.
“This is ridiculous,” he said as they placed him in the back of the ambulance. “I just pulled a muscle.”
“Better to be safe than sorry,” the female paramedic said. “Since you were hit from behind, you could have whiplash.”
“I can’t have whiplash. I need to get back to Dallas. I have a business to run.”
The paramedic moved next to him and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. “I guess it will have to run without you.”
The cellphone in his back pocket rang. There was no way he could answer it with one arm cuffed and the other one strapped down. But he needed to answer in case it was Summer.
“Could you get my cellphone out of my back pocket?” he asked the paramedic.
She seemed exasperated by the request, but when he lifted his hips, she reached under him and pulled out the phone. He was going to ask her to tell him who it was, but before he could, she tapped the screen a couple times, then set it on his chest and went back to taking his blood pressure.
“Hello,” he said.
“Good morning, Sugar Bear.”
Ryker cringed. “Hey, Mom.”
“Is that any way to greet the woman who went through sixteen hours of hard labor to bring you into this world? Not to mention the episiotomy I had to get because you were a big boy.” The paramedic laughed. There was a stretch of silence before his mother spoke. “Well, no wonder you sound a little grumpy. I interrupted you at a bad time. Michael keeps telling me not to call so early, but I keep forgetting about the time difference. I’ll just let you get back to your . . . early morning visitor.”
Ryker scowled at the paramedic who seemed quite amused by the situation. “No need for that. She’s just the barista at the coffee shop who was listening in on our conversation.” The lie would’ve worked if the driver hadn’t decided to turn on the siren at that exact moment.
“What in the world is that?” his mother yelled.
Since there was no way to explain the blaring sound, Ryker was forced to tell her the truth. “Now I don’t want you to freak out, Mom, but I got in a little accident.”
She freaked out. “An accident! What happened? Are you seriously injured? Michael! Ryker got in an accident. Get online and get me the first ticket to Dallas.”
“Mom. You don’t need to come to Dallas. I’m not even in Dallas. And I’m okay.”
But his mother was no longer listening. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Sugar Bear. Mama Bear’s on the way.”
The paramedic finally decided to chime in. “Mrs. Evans, this is the paramedic who is attending to your son.” She leaned up and tapped the driver on the shoulder. When he glanced around, she made a cutting mark across her neck. A second later the siren shut off. “There’s no need to rush to get here. Your son is fine. We’re just taking him to the county hospital to get checked out after the little fender bender he was in.”
“A little fender bender? So my baby’s not going to die?”
Ryker rolled his eyes. “No, Mom. I just pulled a muscle in my neck when I was hit, and they want to do some x-rays.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place instead of lying about a barista? I bet that sweet paramedic doesn’t lie to her mama.”
The paramedic grinned at Ryker. “No, ma’am, I sure don’t.”
With that, Ryker was forced to spend the rest of his trip to the hospital hearing about his mother’s sixteen-hour labor.
He would’ve preferred the siren.
Chapter Six
“You could’ve been killed, Summer Lynn.” Granny Bon sat next to Summer’s hospital bed, her face etched with concern. The same concern was on Autumn and Dirk’s faces. Spring would’ve looked concerned too if she’d been there. But Summer had insisted that she was fine and her sister didn’t need to come home and ruin her honeymoon.
But Summer wasn’t fine. She was badly shaken. She could’ve died. If her car had flipped one more time or if she’d hit a tree or a cow, she could be lying in the morgue instead of in a hospital bed with twenty stitches in her forehead and a sprained ankle. The thought was sobering and terrifying. But she didn’t want to upset her family any more than they already were.
“Stop looking at me with pitiful puppy eyes,” she said. “I know I’m banged up, but it’s not a big deal.” She touched the bandage on her forehead. “I’ve always wanted to be Frankenstein’s bride for Halloween.”
“Not funny,” Dirk said. “Twenty years were taken off my life when Ryker called to tell me you’d been in an accident. Twenty more dropped off when I arrived at the hospital and saw you covered in blood.”
“You heard the doc. Head injuries bleed a lot.”
Dirk slapped his cowboy hat on his knee. “Dammit, Summer! Stop making light of this. Granny Bon is right. You could’ve died, and all because you can’t seem to slow the hell down!”
“I wasn’t going all that fast.”
“Bullshit!”
“Watch your mouth, Dirk Hadley, or I’ll wash it out with soap,” Granny Bon warned.
“I’m sorry, but I refuse to sit here and listen to my sister make excuses for her behavior. Especially when the proof of her reckless driving is staring us in the face.”
“There were cows in the road,” Summer said. “How is that my fault?”
Dirk stared her down. “I read the state trooper’s report. By the length of tire tracks, you were going well over the speed limit. And why didn’t you try to stop sooner? You should’ve been able to see cows crossing the road from a good half a mile away. Unless . . .” his eyes narrowed, “you were screwing around with your phone and not paying attention.”
Summer should’ve fessed up right then and there about texting while driving. But if she said she was texting, Dirk would want to know whom she was texting with. And she didn’t want her brother finding out what she’d done with his best friend. And she especially didn’t want her bible-banging moral grandmother finding out. Thankfully, before she was forced to come up with some other excuse for being distracted, Autumn spoke up.
“It was my fault. I called her to see where she was. I was the one who distracted her.”
“Stop taking the blame for Summer, Autumn,” Dirk said. “She needs to take responsibility for her own actions. She also needs to explain what she was doing on the highway in the first place and in her maid-of-honor dress from the night before.”
Summer scrambled to think of a lie for being in her dress, but she couldn’t come up with even a bad lie. Fortunately, Granny Bon stepped in.
“That’s enough interrogation, Dirk. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past.” Granny Bon patted Summer’s hand. “Right now we need to think of the future. We need to come together as a family and figure out what to do with you.”
Summer turned to her grandmother with surprise. “What to do with me? What are you talking about, Granny? I’m not an old chair you can take to Goodwill. I’m a grown woman who makes my own choices.”
“And all of those choices seem to be wrong. Which is why I think you need a little help.” Granny Bon’s eyes were calculating. When that happened, it usually meant she was planning something. And Summer had never liked plans . . . unless she was the one making them.
> “It was an accident,” she said. “I didn’t choose to run off the road.”
“I do not believe for one second that major things that happen in our lives are accidents. What happened was a wake-up call, Summer Lynn. It was God’s way of telling you that it’s time to slow down.”
Summer really hated it when her grandmother brought in God. It was like her secret weapon. Thor had his hammer and Granny Bon had God. What was worse was that Summer had to wonder if she wasn’t right. The accident did seem a little too freaky to be mere coincidence. It did seem like it was planned by a higher power. But if she believed that, then she’d have to also believe that she had no real control over her life. And the thought of no control made her crazy.
“I thought you said it doesn’t matter what happened in the past,” she said.
“It doesn’t. But if we do not learn from the past, then we will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again in the future. You’ve been given a second chance, Summer. And I refuse to let you ignore the message God sent you.”
“I’m not going to ignore it. I’m going to slow down and start driving the speed limit. And I’m not going to tex—talk on the phone while I’m driving either.”
“That’s good.” Granny Bon said. “But I’m not just talking about speeding or talking on the phone. I’m talking about your entire hell-bent-for-leather outlook on life. You’ve been tearing through life at this rapid speed since you were knee high to a grasshopper—jumping into first one thing and then another without any thought to how it will affect you or the people you love. A perfect example is your little dress shop. You dove into that without knowing the first thing about running a business, all because you got jealous of Dirk being so successful.”
Summer really wanted to argue the point, but it was hard to argue with the truth. She had been jealous of her little brother. He always seemed to succeed at whatever he tried, while she had to work her fanny off for success. Even then, she usually fell far short.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if you’d jumped in alone,” Granny continued. “But you had to drag your sisters with you.”
“I didn’t drag them. They wanted to come with me to Houston.” She looked at Autumn. “Isn’t that right, Audie?”
Autumn was suddenly preoccupied with her fingernails. “Of course I wanted to come with you.”
“But is running a retail clothing store your dream, Audie?” Dirk asked.
Autumn cheeks blushed bright pink as she picked at her thumbnail. “Not exactly. But I was happy to help Summer achieve her dream.”
“My dream?” Summer said. “But I thought you wanted the store to succeed too.”
Autumn glanced at her. “I do want it to succeed.” She hesitated. “But I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life working in a clothing store.”
“And you won’t have to. Once my online personal shopper company takes off, we’ll hire people. All you’ll have to do is spend the money we’re making hand over fist.”
Autumn smiled. “I don’t need a lot of money, Summer. I was fine living in Waco and working at the bookstore before we moved to Houston.”
Why did her sisters always dream so small? It was frustrating. “But with the money we make you can buy your own bookstore. And we’re going to make money as soon as I can set up our new website. I even got Ryker to help me.”
Dirk sat up in his chair. “Ryker is going to help?”
Summer sent her brother a hard look. “I pretty much tricked him into it. But how could you ask him not to, Dirk? I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you. Which is exactly why I asked him to stay out of it. Seasons is going bankrupt, Summer. The sooner you figure that out, the better for everyone. If you loved fashion, I might get behind your new idea. But you’ve never cared anything about clothes.” He pinned her with his gray eyes. “Be honest, is there one day that you’ve enjoyed owning a clothing store?”
She was really starting to resent her family—at least Dirk and Granny Bon. “Starting a business isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s hard work. And I’m not going to give up, especially now that I have Ryker’s help.”
Dirk released his breath and shook his head. “I doubt he’ll help you after you rear ended him and gave him whiplash.”
Her eyes widened. “Whiplash? Ryker was injured in the accident?”
“He’s in a room right down the hall.”
Summer glanced at the door. “Is he okay?”
Dirk nodded. “When I checked on him, he was more ticked off about missing some shareholder meetings. But the doctors want to get x-rays before they release him to go back to Dallas.”
“He can’t go back to work with a neck injury,” Granny Bon said. “Nor can we let him go back to Dallas where he doesn’t have a soul to watch out for him. Especially when our family is responsible for his injuries.”
“That’s exactly what I told him,” Dirk said. “But we have a little problem. I don’t have room at the ranch for him with you, Summer, and Autumn staying with me.”
“I can fix that,” Summer said. “As soon as they release me from this hospital, Autumn and I are heading back to Houston. We’ve been away from the store too long as is. Cassie is an okay salesperson, but she’s a horrible store manager.”
Dirk opened his mouth, no doubt to argue, but Granny Bon intervened. “Dirk, why don’t you and Autumn go get me a Dr Pepper from the vending machine?”
Since you didn’t need two people to get a can of soda from a vending machine, Summer figured Granny Bon wanted to have a private talk with her. Or more likely a lecture. But she turned out to be wrong. When Dirk and Autumn left, Granny Bon didn’t start in on her. Instead, she got up and moved over to the window.
“Of all my grandkids, you remind me most of myself. I used to be as single-minded and driven as you are. That was the only way I could’ve survived growing up in the orphanage. I was determined to prove that no matter the obstacles, I was strong enough to make it through. I became tough. Maybe a little too tough.” She turned around and looked at Summer. “I know your childhood wasn’t easy. You were only eleven when your mama died. Because you were so strong, I knew I could rely on you to help me. But maybe I relied on you too much. Put too much responsibility on you. Expected too much of you.”
“I didn’t mind, Granny. I wanted to help.”
“I know you did. Like me, you’ve always been an overachiever. You like proving that you’re tough enough to take on anything. But sometimes we overachievers get so wrapped up in achieving we forget to enjoy life. After I married your grandfather, I worked as a waitress, went to trade school, took care of our baby girl, and kept house. I was so busy trying to prove my worth that I forgot to enjoy what I had. I forgot to enjoy my precious baby girl and my wonderful loving husband. I didn’t let them know how much I loved them and how much they meant to me. And then it was too late.”
Her voice quavered on the last words, and Summer sat up in bed. “Don’t cry, Granny. Mama knew you loved her, and all us kids know how much you love us too. I’m sorry I upset you. I promise I’ll be more careful in the future.”
Granny Bon smiled sadly. “This isn’t about the accident, Summer Lynn. This is about me not wanting you to make the same mistakes I did. Now I know you don’t like to be told what to do. You have always preferred to be the one doing the telling. And you don’t have to listen to me. You can run right back to Houston and try to save your business with your newest idea. And maybe you’ll succeed, but at what cost? And will that cost be worth it? These are the questions you need to answer yourself.”
She walked over to the bed and took Summer’s hand. “All I’m asking you to do is take a few weeks off and catch your breath. Take a little time to regroup and reassess what you want out of life. That’s all.”
“Okay. I promise when I get back to Houston, I’ll take some time off.”
Granny shook her head. “If you go back to Houston, you and I both know that you’ll go right back to w
ork. It would be better if you stayed here in Bliss. Joanna Daily and Maybelline Marble volunteered to take care of Waylon and Spring’s pets while they’re on their honeymoon. But Joanna is busy planning the very first Fourth of July parade and Maybelline has been working day and night to fill orders for her baked goods. Which is why I thought you could stay at Waylon and Spring’s house and watch Sherlock and Watson for them while they’re away. It would certainly be a nice wedding gift…and a nice sisterly gesture. And by the time they get back from their honeymoon, if you still want to start that newfangled personal shopping business, I’ll invest in it. Unlike you and Spring, I didn’t squander away the advance from Lucy Arrington’s final book.”
“I didn’t squander it away either. I put it back in my business.” When Granny Bon raised an eyebrow, Summer scowled. “That was not squandering.”
Granny patted her hand. “Just a few weeks, Summer. That’s all I’m asking for. Just a few weeks of taking time to recover from your accident and enjoy life rather than trying to beat it to death.”
A few weeks seemed like forever to Summer. Especially in Bliss. What would she do in a small town for that long? She’d die of boredom. She was already feeling antsy. Still, how could she deny a grandmother who had sacrificed so much for her and her siblings?
“Fine. But I’m not staying more than two weeks.”
“That’s all I can ask for.” Granny Bon leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek just as Summer’s cellphone pinged. Before Summer could make a grab for it, Granny Bon picked it up and glanced at the screen. Her eyebrows shot up.
“It seems that Ryker Evans would like to know what kind of panties you have on.” Her grandmother paused. “Or if you’re wearing any.”
Chapter Seven
Ryker started to get a little worried when Summer didn’t answer his text. He had talked with one of the nurses and she’d said that Summer had to have stitches but was going to be released soon. He, on the other hand, had to stay the night and get an MRI. Of course, he could’ve refused the test and demanded to be released. But his neck did hurt like a sonofabitch, and he did have a bad headache—which could be due to a hangover. Still, just to be on the safe side, he’d gone along with the doctor’s recommendations.
