Traci On The Spot

by Marie Ferrarella

  Maybe, but he thought it was. And he did have a point to make. “Okay, but if you do kiss him like that, and he’s still as bland as he sounds, I’d check the man for a pulse—or, barring that, antennae.”

  Now he had really lost her. “What?”

  Morgan hated admitting any more than he already had, but he supposed he had to. “Nothing human could have withstood that and not felt his socks getting short-circuited.”

  Indignation and confusion slowly slipped away, replaced with a glimmer of a satisfied smile. So he had felt something. Hopefully, more than she had, although she wasn’t certain how that was humanly possible. “Is that a compliment?”

  She looked like a cat that had fallen headfirst into a vat of cream. He refused to give her an ounce more. “That’s an observation.”

  She knew it was more than that, but for both their sakes she played along and nodded. A fresh crack of thunder and Jeremiah’s accompanying wail only served as a distant backdrop to the scenario going on before her. Her mouth still felt as if it was throbbing. And the rest of her was vibrating like a tuning fork.

  Traci knew she had to leave. Now, before something unforeseeable happened. Something she would undoubtedly live to regret.

  She nodded again, dumbly, like a windup toy with one trick. That Morgan had managed to disorient her to this extent really annoyed her. “I guess you’re not so bad yourself.”

  The cast-off comment had him smiling. If she admitted to smoke, there most certainly was fire. “Gosh, can you spare that?”

  Traci blew out a breath. It was still far too shaky for her liking. “Just barely. Well, like I said, I’d better be going.”

  She was backing up, away from Morgan. Away from what she’d just experienced, even though a very large part of her wanted to move forward, to explore this new, uncharted region a little more.

  Wanted to feel a little more.

  To feel more. Traci almost mocked herself. She’d been that route and knew the danger that laid therein. All sensation, no substance.

  But that had been Rory and this.

  This was Morgan, for heaven’s sake. She’s seen him naked, albeit years ago, but still, there was no mystery here—except, maybe, that she would have never dreamed in a million years…

  Nope, never.

  She groped for her purse. Time for Cinderella to rush home while she still had a pumpkin to work with. Traci clapped her hands and Jeremiah came at her call. She picked up his leash, wrapping it firmly around her hand. If nothing else, it served as insulation against Morgan.

  Only then did she look at him again. “It’s been an experience, Morgan. One we’ll have to do again—in about another nine or ten years. But right now, I have a storm to beat.” She found she had to force cheeriness into her voice.

  He didn’t want her leaving and he definitely didn’t like the idea of her leaving in this kind of weather. It was particularly nasty outside. “Ordinarily, I’d say my money was on you when it came to beating anything.” He glanced out the window. “But it looks pretty bad out there, Traci.”

  For some reason, she found the serious note in his voice unsettling. She liked it better when they were sparring. She felt equipped to handle that, not this shaky vulnerability he’d managed to uncover.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” As soon as my double vision goes away, she thought, giving her head one more shake.

  She glanced at Morgan over her shoulder as she opened the door. It had to have been a fluke. Maybe she was coming down with something. That had to be it. Otherwise, she’d have to think that she and Morgan…

  No, she didn’t have to think that. Not ever. Besides, it was too late for something like that. She had her commitment before her and it was to Daniel.

  “I’ll see you around,” she told him, raising her voice above the wind. Traci gave the leash a slight tug. “Let’s go, Jeremiah.”

  The dog resisted crossing the threshold. He barked twice at the brooding, darkened sky.

  Morgan wondered what sort of perverse psychology he could use on Traci to make her stay. Nothing came to mind and he knew that asking her to wait out the storm would never work.

  He nodded toward her pet. “He has more sense than you do.”

  Morgan was standing way too close again, she thought. Driving in the storm would be a comfort by comparison. At least that didn’t involve scrambling pulses and confused thoughts.

  “Lovely parting shot, Morgan,” she quipped. “You should put them all in a book and give them out as gifts for Christmas. Well, see you.” Her voice was way too high, but nerves were causing that.

  Thousands of little nerves, scattered throughout her body like ants whose hill had just been demolished by an overeager anteater.

  Traci almost fled to her car.

  She should have parked closer, she thought, annoyed with herself. She should have also left earlier—for a lot of reasons. But that was a moot point now.

  The wind lashed at her hair, whipping it around her head and reducing it to a soggy, springy mass of curls within seconds. Muttering under her breath, Traci opened the car door and herded Jeremiah in, then rounded the hood and got in on the driver’s side. She jammed the key into the ignition, pushing wet bangs out of her eyes.

  She held her breath as she drove. The downpour was pretty intense, but it was too late to turn back. She refused to return with her tail between her legs because of the storm. Not when she would bet her soul that Morgan was standing in the doorway, waiting for her to come back. Waiting to smugly say, “I told you so.”

  Or worse yet, to kiss her again and watch the reaction on her face.

  What had happened back there, anyway? Why the sudden combustion? It was as if something had just been lying in wait all these years, lying in wait for the right moment.

  This wasn’t getting her anywhere.

  A bolt of lightning creased the sky like a crooked javelin hurled by an angry Norse god. It temporarily threw the world into daylight and then back into numbing darkness again.

  Jeremiah was not happy about it.

  “Hush,” she chided. “We’ll be home in time to watch reruns of ‘Lassie.’ They have to be playing on some channel.” The thought of curling up on her sofa, basking in the warm glow cast from the television set, comforted her.

  It was a hell of a lot more comforting than attempting to drive through the English Channel, which was what this was beginning to feel like, she thought. She pressed her lips together, concentrating.

  Visibility went from poor to almost nonexistent in an alarming few minutes, even though the windshield wipers were doing double time. They no sooner pushed the rain aside than another deluge fell to take up the space, completely blotting out her view of the road. And no matter what she did with the heater and the defrost switches, her windows insisted on fogging up. The situation was almost impossible.

  Desperate, Traci rolled down the window on the driver’s side, cracking the other for balance. Rain came into the car, lashing at her face. But at least she could see. What there was to see.

  Craning her neck, Traci peered through the open window. She squinted, trying to make out the road that rain and encroaching darkness were bent on obscuring.

  Holding her breath, Traci drove slower than she’d ever driven in her life. The wind continued to pick up, howling. Jeremiah joined in the competition.

  It got on her nerves. “I hope you don’t intend to do that all the way home. I’m fresh out of aspirin.” And patience, she added silently.

  She should have remained in the house with Morgan, she told herself. She realized that her jaw was clenched, as clenched as her fingers were on the steering wheel. Focusing, she tried to ease up on both. But the tension in her shoulders persisted.

  And there was something more. The wind had initially masked it, but now the sound grew louder. Water. Rushing water. It took her a second to make the connection. The gully beneath the bridge had filled with water. That meant she had to be getting close to it.

>   Damn it, where was the bridge? Why couldn’t she see it? It had to be here somewhere.

  Traci craned her neck farther, searching for the small wooden structure. Crossing it earlier, she’d thought that time had made the bridge almost rickety. Not that it had ever been all that strong to begin with. And in this weather it would have to be—

  Gone.

  Fear seemed to manually force her heart into her throat where it remained, stuck, as Traci realized that she was now directly over where the bridge should have been.

  And there was nothing there.

  The edges of her front tires were touching nothing. The headache that had been threatening to engulf her ever since she left the house made an appearance, full bodied and strong. It pounded over her temples and forehead like a scorned, irate lover as Traci frantically threw the car into reverse, trying to keep the car from plunging straight into the gully.

  She overcompensated, turning the steering wheel too far to the left, and the car went speeding backward, making contact with a tree.

  Shrieking, Traci slammed on her brakes, but it was after the fact. The collision was already in motion. Metal against wood.

  It felt as if something vital had been jarred loose in her body as she hit her forehead against the steering wheel. The last thing she heard was Jeremiah’s mournful cry.

  And then there was an inky blackness dropping over her, too heavy to resist.

  Her eyelids weighed a ton. Each one. It took her several vain attempts to pry open her eyes. Each time she tried, she found she couldn’t lift them. It was as if they were nailed down.

  Traci thought she heard a voice. Someone was talking to her, but she couldn’t place who it was or what was being said. And there were shadows moving, drifting here and there. Some belonged to the voice. Others didn’t.

  Each time she was sure she’d opened her eyes and looked, she discovered that she hadn’t.

  It was frustrating as hell.

  Traci moaned, trying to turn, to sit up, confident that if she did, her eyes would open.

  She began to make things out more clearly. There were hands holding her down. Gentle hands. Strong hands. She struggled against them and lost that fight, too. There seemed to be no energy flowing through her. Nothing. No blood.

  Blood.

  Jeremiah.

  Oh, God, she’d killed Jeremiah. She’d heard his pitiful moan just before she—what?

  Where was she? Traci twisted again, but the same two hands were holding her down. They were pressing on her arms. She fought, struggled, tried to speak, and still her eyes refused to budge.

  Was it a dream? Was she dead?

  It was a lot drier where she was.

  Heaven?

  In the distance somewhere, she heard the crackle of something. Fire?

  Was she in hell? She groaned in fear.

  “Damn it, even when you’re unconscious, you’re a problem.”

  Morgan, that was Morgan’s voice. Was he dead, too? No, she’d left him in the house. Him and his lips.

  With supreme effort, Traci concentrated on the sound of his voice, on surfacing out of this cottony netherworld she was trapped in.

  Inch by inch, she made it to the top. Her eyes finally flew open and focused on Morgan. He was looming over her, almost larger than life. And he was holding her down. Touching her. Never mind that it was only her arms. She could feel it all along her body.

  This had to stop.

  “Get your hands off me,” she breathed.

  Grasping at indignation and hoping it would give her the shot of adrenaline she needed, Traci bolted upright. A second later, she became one with the pain that rushed up to greet her. Her head felt like an egg that had been cracked open against the side of a pan.

  Instinctively, her hand went to her head. There was a bandage there.

  “What the—?”

  Morgan grabbed her wrist and firmly held on to it. “Leave that alone,” he ordered. “You hit your head on the steering wheel and cut your forehead.” When he saw that she was actually going to listen to him, he released her wrist. “Although I didn’t think anything as hard as that could be cut by anything less than the sharp edge of a diamond.”

  Everything felt as if it were submerged in her mind, mired in thick chicken soup. She looked around. She was back in the house. On the sofa. Before the fireplace. But that was impossible.

  “How did I get here?”

  The color was returning to her cheeks. That was a good sign. She’d given him one hell of a scare back there. When he had found her slumped over the steering wheel, he’d thought she was dead. It had taken him a moment to quell and manage the panic that had shot through him. “I brought you back here.”

  She drew her brows together and found that it hurt. “You?”

  He lifted a shoulder and then let it drop carelessly. “Sir Lancelot was busy.”

  It still didn’t make any sense to her. She’d left him in the house. How could he have known she was in an accident? And why was he all wet?

  “Why—? How—?”

  Since neither one of them was going anywhere, Morgan sat down on the edge of the sofa beside her.

  “The ‘why’ is because I didn’t think leaving you out in the rain was such a good idea. And the ‘how’ is that I carried you.” His mouth curved. Now that she was conscious, he could allow himself that luxury. “You weigh less than I thought.”

  Traci tried to assimilate what he was telling her, feeding it into her brain above the pounding pain. She held her head, afraid that if she didn’t, it would fall off.

  “But I left you in here,” she began, hoping that saying the words aloud would somehow help her make sense out of her scattered thoughts. It didn’t. She couldn’t seem to get them in order.

  Watching her car disappear into the rain had given him a very uneasy feeling. Morgan had waited five minutes, maybe six, before finally getting into his own car and following her. He’d arrived just in time to watch her car travel backward into the tree. Racing from his car to hers had been the longest and worst minute of his life.

  “I’m ambulatory in case you haven’t noticed.” He might as well tell her the whole truth. “I was worried and decided to go out looking for you. Lucky thing for you I did. We’re marooned out here, at least for the duration of the storm. My distributor cap decided to play dead just as I got to the lovely mess that used to be your car.”

  The reason for the car’s sudden shuddering and then sputtering halt had registered in his mind only after the fact. Nothing had registered at the time except that her car was crashing right before his eyes. And that she was in it.

  Traci winced as the memory returned. “My car—it’s bad?”

  “Only if you want to drive it. As an accordion it still has possibilities.” He became serious. It could have very well gone a different way. “You’re damn lucky to be alive.”

  She was almost afraid to ask. But she had to know. “Jeremiah—?”

  He’d dragged the dumb mutt along with him in his wake. It hadn’t been easy but he wasn’t about to abandon the mangy animal in the storm.

  “Smells like hell wet,” he informed her gently. “Can’t you smell him?”

  She took a deep breath and then visibly calmed down. “Now I can.” Her eyes turned to his and she mustered a smile, despite the pain that was splitting her head in half. “Thanks.”

  Morgan made light of her gratitude. Accepting it was more difficult than he thought.

  “Don’t mention it. It was selfish, anyway.” He saw her brows draw together. “Your mother would have killed me if I let anything happen to you.”

  “Can’t have that happening,” she murmured. She was vaguely aware that Jeremiah had moved closer to her. Hand dangling over the side of the sofa, Traci managed to lightly run her fingers over his wet coat. It was a comforting gesture.

  Almost as comforting as having Morgan sitting beside her.

  6

  If someone had ever attempted to tell him that
Traci had a vulnerable side, Morgan would have laughed him out of the room. But there was no other word that could describe the way she looked lying there on the sofa, her eyes half-closed, the bandage taped to her forehead. He had this overwhelming urge to take care of her. An urge he knew would irritate her if she suspected it.

  He’d felt this way about her only once before, he remembered. The time he’d saved her when she was drowning. But all that had happened so fast, he hadn’t had time to dwell on it.

  He did now.

  A strange, bittersweet feeling drifted through him. He never realized how frail she looked. Morgan took Traci’s hand between his. It felt small and cold. “How do you feel?”

  Much too much. It was as if something was opening inside of her. Opening like a flower to the sun after a long rainy period. Opening and being drawn to Morgan. It had to be the result of the trauma to her head, she thought. There was no other explanation for it. She wasn’t going to let there be another explanation for it.

  “I’m all right,” she murmured. “A little woozy, but under the circumstances, I guess that’s allowed.”

  She felt a great deal more than that, but with luck, it would pass. Her mother liked to brag that the women in the Richardson family were made of stern, pioneer stock. Right now, she felt like a pioneer woman a cow had stepped on.

  He wasn’t quite certain he believed her protest. “I tried to call for an ambulance, but the phone isn’t working. The storm must have knocked out the lines.”

  All this and heaven, too. “I don’t need an ambulance,” Traci said with the first ounce of feeling he’d heard since she’d opened her eyes. It made him feel a little better about her condition. “I just have to lie here for a few minutes, that’s all.”

  He nodded. Right now, that seemed to be the only thing they could do, anyway. Morgan looked down at her. The sofa was turning dark from the water it was leeching from her clothes.

  “You’re going to have to get out of those wet things.” Advice he should follow himself, he thought. His own were sticking to him and felt clammy along his body.