Heart and Soul (Love Inspired, 251)

by Jillian Hart

  The siren shrilled louder, closer, magnifying the pain in his throbbing head. He gritted his teeth, refusing to give in to the inviting darkness of unconsciousness. He could hold on. He would.

  She laid her hand against his unshaven jaw, and it was as if light filled him from head to toe.

  Who was she? Why did she affect him this way? Maybe it was shock setting in or how hard his head had hit the pavement, but when he looked at her, his soul stirred.

  Boots pounded to a stop. Men dropped equipment and a uniformed man—a local fireman—dropped to his knees.

  “Had a spill, did you?” Kindness and wisdom were written into the lines on the man’s face. “No, don’t try to sit up. Not yet. What’s your name, cowboy?”

  “Brody,” he said before the fog cleared from his brain and he realized he was in big trouble.

  He’d blown his cover. He hadn’t been on the job more than five minutes, and what did he do?

  Blow it all to bits. He’d given his real name instead of the cover name he’d been given. And this was his final mission. When he wanted to go out with a bang, not hanging his head.

  It’s not over yet, he realized, biting his tongue before he could say his first name. He had to think quick.

  “Brody,” he repeated. “Brody Gabriel.”

  It wasn’t the name that matched his false ID and social security card, his insurance information and the registration papers to the bike, but he’d worry about that later.

  This mission could still be salvaged.

  “Don’t worry about your bike,” the fireman reassured him, the name Jason was embroidered in red thread on his shirt, “It’s still in one piece. Sure is a beauty. How’d you wipe out on a straight stretch?”

  “A deer.”

  “Rough, man.” The fireman shook his head and patched in his equipment.

  Brody tried looking around again. Where had his rescuer gone? All he knew was that he couldn’t see her. He tried to sit up and nausea rolled through him. He sank weakly to the pavement and let the medics check his pulse and blood pressure.

  While they did, he took a quick inventory of his pain. His ribs were killing him. But his right ankle hurt worse.

  Lord, Brody prayed, please don’t let my leg be broken. That would be an end to everything. He’d worked hard to prepare for this mission. No one was as primed and prepared as he was. He refused to hand over his hard work to a junior agent. This was supposed to be the mission he’d be remembered for.

  “I’m good,” he told Jason. “I just need to sit up, get my bearings. I hit pretty hard going down.”

  “You’ve got a mild concussion to prove it, is my bet.” The fireman flicked a flashlight and shone it into Brody’s eyes. “Let us take care of you. Sometimes you can’t tell how bad you’re hurt right off. It’s good to go to the hospital, let ’em take their pictures and run their tests. Make sure you’re A-OK. Now move your fingers for me. Can you feel that?”

  “Yep.” Brody’s relief was tempered by the cervical collar they snapped around his neck. His toes moved, too. Another good sign.

  That’s when she moved into his line of sight. His golden haired rescuer leaned against the front quarter panel of the sheriff’s cruiser and crossed her long legs at the ankles.

  My, but she was fine. Tall, slim and pure goodness. Her long blond hair shimmered in the sun and danced in the breeze. Her blue eyes were now hidden behind sunglasses, but her rosebud mouth was drawn into a severe frown as she gestured toward the road, as if describing what had happened.

  She wore a faded denim jacket over a light pink shirt and stylish jeans. The sleeves were rolled up to reveal the glint of a gold watch on one wrist and a glitter of a gold bracelet on the other. Her voice rose and fell and he was too far away to pick up on her words, but the sound soothed him. Made longing flicker to life in the middle of his chest.

  He’d never felt such a zing of awareness over a woman before. He was on duty. He was the youngest senior agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He knew better than to take a personal interest in anyone when he was dedicated to a case, to upholding the laws of this great land.

  What he ought to do was put her out of his mind, ignore the sting of longing in his chest and concentrate on his job.

  Then she turned in profile to gesture toward the side of the road, and that’s when he recognized her. The perfect slope of a nose, the delicate cut of cheekbone and chin. She was one of the McKaslin girls. Michelle.

  The youngest daughter of the family he’d come to investigate.

  Chapter Two

  In the harsh fluorescent lights of Bozeman General’s waiting room, Michelle stared down at her new toe-thong, wedge sandals that went so perfectly with her favorite bootleg jeans.

  It was a perfect sandal. And on sale, too. She’d been wanting a pair of wedge sandals for over two months now, salivating each and every time she saw a model wearing them on the pages of her beloved magazines. So, when she’d saw them in the window display at the mall on her way to the Christian bookstore, she’d bought them on impulse.

  An hour ago, she’d felt rad. Better than she’d been in a long time. Tapping across the parking lot to her truck with her shopping bags had given her great satisfaction. As if all her problems in life were solved with six pairs of new shoes.

  Until she’d seen the medics working on the motorcycle guy, their faces grim. Their equipment had reflected the sun’s harsh rays in ruthless stabs of light that had hurt her eyes and cut straight to her soul.

  She could still see that man wipe out right in front of her. The drag of his body on the pavement, the ricochet of his head hitting the blacktop, the deathly stillness after his big body had skidded to a stop.

  She shivered, horrified all over again. It was by God’s grace he’d opened his eyes, she decided. A miracle that he’d survived. She’d never realized before how fragile a human life could be. Flesh and bone meeting concrete and steel…well, she hated to think of all that could have happened.

  Or all the catastrophic ways the man the firemen called Brody could still be hurt.

  “Go on home,” Sheriff Cameron Durango had told her at the scene.

  Go home? She hadn’t caused the accident, but she felt responsible. She couldn’t explain why. She just was. From the moment she saw his big male form sprawled out on the road, the rise and fall of his chest, the ripple of the wind stirring the flaps of his jacket, she’d been involved.

  When she’d lifted his visor and saw the hard cut of his high cheekbones, the straight blade of his nose and the tight line of his strong mouth, he looked strong and vulnerable at the same moment.

  She’d seen him crash. She’d seen him bleed. She couldn’t just walk away as if it hadn’t happened. As if she didn’t care. As if she didn’t have a heart. She couldn’t have left a wounded bird in the road, let alone a wounded man. Even if she’d been waiting for hours and hours.

  Where was he? What was taking so long? Okay, the waiting room was crammed with people coughing and sneezing and one man was holding a cloth to his cut hand—the nurse came out and took him away quickly. They were busy, she got that, but what about Brody? Was he so hurt that he was in surgery or something scary like that? Maybe she ought to go up to the desk and ask.

  She grabbed her purse and tucked her cell safely inside. With great relish, she abandoned the hard black plastic chair that was making her back ache. She wove around sick people and some cowboy’s big-booted feet that were sticking way out into the aisle.

  The line behind the check-in window was long. She fell into place. But when she looked up, she nearly fell off her wedge-sandals at the sight of Brody limping down the wide hallway toward her.

  Alive. Walking on his own steam. He looked bruised but strong, and her spirit lifted at the sight. Relief left her trembling and weak, and wasn’t that really weird because he was like a total stranger?

  He was holding his helmet in his left hand and a slip of paper in the right. The white slash of a bandag
e over his left brow was a shocking contrast to his brown hair and sun-golden skin.

  His eyes were dark, shadowed with pain and his mouth a tight unhappy line as he strolled up to her. “I remember you.”

  He could have said that with more enthusiasm. Like with a low dip to his voice, the way a movie star did when he was zeroing in on his ladylove for the first time. He’d say, with perfect warmth in the words, “I remember you,” and the heroine would flutter and fall instantly in love.

  Yeah, that would be better than the way Brody said it, as if she were a bad luck charm he wanted to avoid. “They’re letting you walk out of here, so that must mean you’re all right.”

  “My ankle’s wrapped. I’ve got a few stitches and I’m as good as new.”

  “I’m glad. I mean, like, you really crashed hard. I couldn’t go home until I knew for sure that you were all right.”

  So, that’s what she was doing here.

  Brody stuffed the pain prescription in his pocket and mulled that little piece of information over. According to his research, Michelle McKaslin was the spoiled favorite of the family, the youngest of six girls. The oldest had been killed in a plane crash years ago. She was working two jobs, one at the local hair salon and the other at her sister’s coffee shop, and still living at home. The Intel he had on her was that she loved to shop, talk on the phone with her friends and ride her horse.

  “You came here to see a doc, too,” he said, not believing her. Nobody sat in a waiting room for hours without a good reason. Unless she suspected who he was. What had he muttered before he’d come to? Had he given himself away? “I saw your truck skid to a stop. Hit your head on the windshield, didn’t you?”

  Her big blue eyes grew wider. “Oh, no, I was wearing my seat belt. It just looked so scary with the way they put the neck collar on you and took you off in the ambulance. I can’t help feeling responsible, you know, since I was there. I’m really glad you’re not seriously hurt. I started praying the minute I saw the deer leap onto the road.”

  There wasn’t a flicker of dishonesty in her face. Only honest concern shone in her eyes, and her body language reinforced it. None of the paperwork he had on her had indicated she’d be sincere. That surprised him. He didn’t run into nice people in his line of work.

  Unless the niceness was only a mask, hiding something much worse inside.

  “Let me get this straight. You drove all the way back to the city to sit in a waiting room for two hours just so you knew I was all right?”

  “Yep. This is Montana. We don’t abandon injured strangers on the road.”

  She seemed proud of that, and he had no choice but to take what she said as the truth. He relaxed, but only a fraction.

  “Wait one minute!” the clerk behind the desk shouted at him, forcing him to abandon Michelle and approach the window where intimidating paperwork was pushed at him. “Your insurance isn’t valid.”

  “Not valid?” It figured. None of his ID matched his new name. His cover was supposed to be Brad Donaldson, and that’s what his Virginia driver’s license said, his new insurance card, everything.

  “We can make arrangements if you can’t pay the entire bill right now.” The woman with the big, black rim glasses and the KGB frown could have had a job at the Bureau intimidating difficult people.

  Brody glanced at the total. Blinked. His heart rate skyrocketed. “Are you sure you billed me right? I didn’t have a liver transplant.”

  The woman behind the window turned as cold as a glacier. “Our prices are so high because of people who do not pay their hospital bills.”

  Great. Why did that make him feel like dirt? He paid his bills. Not that he had eight hundred dollars in his wallet to spare.

  The woman, whose badge identified her as Mo, lifted one questioning brow. She glanced at his biker’s scarred bomber jacket, the right shoulder seam torn, and the unshaven jaw as if drawing her own conclusions.

  Michelle stepped discreetly away from the scene to give Brody his privacy. She probably should go home now that she knew he was all right and could go on his way. She’d tell him where his bike was, and hand over his bike’s saddle pack. Yep, that would be the sensible thing to do.

  “Are you able to pay the bill in full?” Mo demanded.

  “Yes, but I need an ATM machine.”

  “Do we look like a bank?”

  The big man sighed in exasperation as he rubbed his brow. His head had to be hurting him.

  Just walk away, Michelle. That’s what her mom would say. Sure, he looks nice and he’s handsome, but he’s still a stranger.

  A stranger stranded in a city without his own transportation, she remembered. The sheriff had called the local towing company to have the bike hauled away.

  What should she do? Maybe the angels could give her a sign, let her know if this man was as safe as she thought he was. He didn’t fit the stereotype of a biker, if there was one. He was youngish, probably in his late twenties. He wore a plain black T-shirt and a pair of Levi’s jeans. But it was his boots that made her wonder.

  They were special order, handmade and cost more than she made in three months. Not just anyone could afford those boots to ride a motorcycle. Just who was this handsome stranger? Maybe he was a software designer on a vacation. Or a vice president of a financial company getting away from the city on an always-longed-for road trip.

  There she was, off on her romantic daydreams again. The question was, did she help him or not?

  As Brody leaned forward to thumb through the contents of his wallet, a gold chain eased out from beneath the collar of his T-shirt. A masculine gold cross, small but distinctive, dangled at the curve of the chain.

  He was a man of faith. It was all the sign she needed. Michelle stepped forward, intending to help.

  “Are you going to pay or not?” Mo demanded.

  “I’ll give you what’s in my wallet, how’s that?” One-hundred-dollar bill after another landed on the counter.

  He had that much cash? Michelle’s jaw dropped. Didn’t he have credit cards? It was a travesty. “I’ll take you to the bank, if you need a ride.”

  Brody shoved the pile of bills at the somewhat mollified Mo and pivoted on the heels of his boots. His dark eyes surveyed her from head to her painted toenails. “You’d help me out, just like that?”

  “Sure. I don’t think you’re dangerous and you are in need. I don’t think you should walk very far being hurt like that.” She reached into her purse and started rummaging around. Where had her phone gone to? She pushed aside her sunglasses and kept digging. “Oh, here it is. Is there someone you should call? To let them know you’re okay?”

  He stared at the cell phone she offered him. “No, thanks. I’ve got my own phone. Besides, there’s no one waiting for me.”

  “Someone has to be concerned about you. A mother? A wife?” Since he wasn’t wearing a gold band, it didn’t hurt to ask. “A girlfriend?”

  He blushed a little and stared at the ground. “No, there’s no girlfriend.”

  “There used to be one?” Okay, call her curious. But she had to know. Maybe he’d had his heart broken. No, wait, maybe he’d been jilted at the altar, and he’d taken off on his bike not knowing where he was headed only that he had to get away and try to lose the pain.

  The shadows in his eyes told her that she was close. The poor man. Anyone could see how kind he was. How noble. It was in the way he stood—straight and strong and in control of himself. A real man.

  She sighed as she stuffed her phone back into her purse. “Which bank do you need to go to?”

  “I don’t care. Nearest cash machine is good enough.” Brody crumpled his receipt and jammed it in his coat pocket.

  “No problem. Do you want to get your prescription filled, too?”

  “No. Where’s my bike? My pack?”

  “The town mechanic towed your bike to his shop in town, but I thought to grab your bag. I told the sheriff I’d look after you. Since I feel responsible.”

&n
bsp; “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know, but I was there. I saw you fall. I’ve got to know that you’re all right.” She had the energy and grace of a young filly, all long-legged elegance as she led the way toward the electronic doors. “You’ve got to be hungry, too. And you’ll need a place to stay. Unless you have reservations nearby?”

  Things couldn’t be working out better if he’d planned it this way. What seemed like a disaster was a godsend. How many times had that happened in his missions over the years? Brody knew, beyond a doubt, that’s what happened when a person followed his calling. The Lord found a way to make everything work out for the good.

  Brody decided to ax his plans and improvise. Go with the flow. “No, I don’t have a place to stay.”

  “Then we’ll find you something.”

  Excellent. He couldn’t ask for more. He didn’t mention the local classifieds he’d pored through on the Internet at his office in Virginia. Or the fact that he’d already chosen a place to stay in town not far from the McKaslin ranch. A dirt-cheap hotel with convenient kitchenettes that rented by the week. What a biker like him would be expected to afford.

  What would Michelle McKaslin suggest? This opportunity was too good to turn down and adrenaline pumped through his blood. He forgot that he was hurt. That pain was shrieking through his ankle and up his leg. With Michelle McKaslin willing to help him, it could only help his mission.

  He fell in stride beside her, only to have her dart away from him in a leggy, easy sprint. Where was she going?

  “Oh, I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder. She trotted down the brightly lit sidewalk in front of the emergency area.

  Away from him. What was going on?

  He watched Michelle dash up to a gray-haired, frail woman. The two spoke for a moment. The elderly woman dressed neatly in a gray pantsuit and a fine black overcoat looked greatly relieved.

  Someone she knew? Brody wondered. From his records he’d already ascertained that Michelle had a grandmother. But the woman Michelle was speaking to didn’t look anything like Helen, whose picture he’d seen in the local paper as a member of the Ladies’ Aid.