by Tara Randel
She tried again to get through to the agent. “Please. There must be some car. I don’t care if it’s on its last tire. If it has a million miles on it and was headed for the scrapyard. As long as it gets me where I need to go... Would you just check again?”
She heard impatient sighs behind her in the line, the shuffling of feet, voices muttering on their cell phones, everyone apparently faced with the same problem she had. At least she stood at the front of this line. If she had any chance at all, it was here.
She was about to make a last desperate plea when, out of the corner of her eye, she spied a man nearby, openly staring at her. Kate blinked. Twice. It couldn’t be. She hadn’t seen Noah Bodine in years and didn’t want to see him now. Or, preferably, ever. Too late, though.
“Trouble?” he asked.
She felt the burn of heat—and sudden anger—in her face. She stared up at him, which was never hard to do with any man and many women. Kate stood a mere five feet three inches tall, one of the vertically challenged in this world, and had a slight build, having inherited her mother’s fine bones. Which didn’t mean she was a pushover. She prided herself on being capable in her own right. Ordinarily, she had to be now, but needing assistance always felt to Kate like a failure on her part. Noah was the last man she would ask for help.
She didn’t like anything about her former neighbor from the WB Ranch. Not his dark blond hair, smoky hazel eyes or classically handsome face. Tall, broad-shouldered and wearing an obviously expensive three-piece suit, carrying a black overcoat, he exuded confidence, and she knew all about his high-tech cybersecurity firm. Noah must be here to attend some business meeting or conference in downtown KC, and her problems weren’t his. Yet, while knowing how she must feel about him, he’d paused like some knight in shining armor to see what was wrong. Hardly her savior. Because of him, Kate had lost her husband, and Teddie had lost his dad.
“No cars available,” she told him. And Kate hadn’t made a reservation in advance, not expecting to need one if someone from the ranch came to meet her.
“Where are you headed?” As if Noah couldn’t guess.
“To Barren, of course.”
“That’s where I’m going too,” he said.
After that there was silence, as if they’d stepped into some airlock together, shutting out the increasingly irritated voices around them. The rental agent was still clicking keys on his computer, staring at his screen. Shaking his head.
She’d apparently been wrong about some meeting. But she wasn’t wrong about Noah. Eighteen months ago, his scheme to hire her husband away from Sweetheart Ranch had thrown a wrench into her life and Teddie’s, put a terrible strain on Kate’s marriage—live in Manhattan? No way—and for another long moment, she willed herself to turn away.
“Lady,” someone said, “you’re holding people up. Just take the car you reserved—”
“Hey, man,” Noah chimed in as if it was his job to protect her.
Kate turned her shoulder to him. “I’ll handle this.” More rumblings broke out down the line, and the agent stopped studying his screen. He spoke over Kate’s head, saving her the trouble of making a reply to the person behind her. “Sorry, folks. We have to close.”
She glanced around, but the other agencies were going dark, too, shutting off lights and setting signs on the counters. A fresh pang of alarm ran through her. What could she do now? If she took the shuttle back to the airport, assuming it was still running, that might well be closed too. She hadn’t heard a plane overhead in all the time she’d been here.
His mouth tight, Noah bent down to straighten the frequent-flier tag on his roll-on bag. Platinum level, of course. “I’m going your way,” he pointed out, prompting Kate to face him. “I’ve got a car. I can give you a ride if you want?”
His tone had sounded hesitant. At least he must feel some shame, but she would rather hitch a ride with a stranger than get in a car with Noah Bodine.
Turn your back again. Tell him to go to—
But aching to be home, yearning with all her heart to see Teddie, to hold him in her arms and feel safe again, too, she had no other choice. She needed to get to her ranch, her refuge. Today. For her own safety, she couldn’t actually flag down a stranger or walk all the way home even if she wanted to rather than occupy the same space with Noah for a single minute. The airport shuttle to outlying communities, which only went as far as Farrier, had already stopped running. Kate had checked while still in the airport. The only car available to her, it seemed, was Noah’s.
“I guess I can do that,” she said at last, not caring that she didn’t sound gracious or grateful. I’ll have to. In the past year, she’d learned to do whatever was necessary for her and Teddie, who needed his mother more than Kate needed to save her pride.
She just hoped that this time—unlike her husband—in the company of Noah Bodine, she would get home alive.
Copyright © 2021 by Leigh Riker
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ISBN-13: 9780369714275
Stealing Her Best Friend’s Heart
Copyright © 2021 by Tara Spicer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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