“Sean, go ahead and help Dylan inspect the vehicle,” Jack said. Dylan Hart, one of the firefighter-EMTs, was already making his way down the ditch to the Bronco. Cody Bradford, the other firefighter, was grabbing medical boxes from the fire truck.
“Sure thing,” Sean said.
As Sean followed after Dylan, Jack studied Elizabeth, whose eyes kept darting off to the side of the highway opposite from where her car was.
“The truck driver said there were two people in the SUV.” He stepped closer to her. “Were there?”
She gave a small shake of her head.
“How much did you have to drink tonight, Elizabeth?” Asking the question, Jack had a flashback to his one year as a cop before his career pivot into the fire service.
“Please.” Tears welled in Elizabeth’s eyes, and he could smell the alcohol now, confirming his suspicion. “It’s not what you think.”
He never could stand to see a woman cry—his long-ago ex-wife, Jolene, had used tears to great effect—and this woman, in particular, got to him for some reason. A bit heavy on the makeup for his tastes, Elizabeth’s black eyeliner was streaked. As she wiped away her tears with her mitten before they could freeze, he could see her embarrassment, her anger at herself for crying, and her shame—and he appreciated the fact that she wasn’t crying only for effect.
“Then tell me what I should think,” he said.
Elizabeth clamped her mouth shut.
“Blood on the steering wheel,” Dylan called up to them, peering through the Bronco’s driver side window. He pulled open the door. “Blood on the window and the seat. She’s gotta be hurt somewhere.”
Jack gave Elizabeth a visual examination. He saw no blood and no visible injuries, major or minor. No scrapes, no contusions. He did, however, notice the softness of her pale skin and the sensual bow shape of her lips. He sternly reminded himself to focus on patient care. “Where are you hurt?”
“I’m not,” she said.
“You might not realize you are, but the blood must have come from somewhere. Here. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
Instead of letting him check her, she pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her, which tried Jack’s patience.
“Are you refusing treatment?” he said. “Would you prefer we wait for the cops to do a breathalyzer instead?”
“No, please!” She gripped his arm. “Please, don’t. The cops won’t be fair to me, I know it for a fact. Could you call them and tell them not to come? Not to bother coming because everything’s all right here?”
“I can’t do that,” Jack said, nor would he if he could. “You’ve been in trouble with the law before?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
“Then tell me what happened. Based on your lack of injuries, I know you weren’t the one driving, and all I can say is that if you’re covering for a boyfriend, don’t.”
“I’m not.”
Her voice trembled, and he didn’t believe her.
“No guy’s worth lying for in a situation like this.”
Fresh tears welled in her eyes.
“He’s not worth it,” he said again quietly, hoping this time it would get through. “No guy is worth losing your job over or going to jail for. It’s obvious someone else was driving, and they ditched you here, and they’re trying to force you to take the blame. Don’t let them. Let us help you. Let me help you.”
As Sean and Dylan started to climb out of the ditch from the vehicle, headlights appeared in the distance. Jack expected it was the police but realized it wasn’t when there were no flashing lights. As the vehicle neared, he saw it was a large pickup truck.
Relief crossed Elizabeth’s face. “That’s my lawyer,” she said, looking at Jack with an apology in her eyes.
He studied her, annoyed now. “You called a lawyer.”
He glanced at the other guys on his crew. After years of working together, they were often able to communicate without words. And it was evident they all agreed—the fact that she’d called a lawyer just about guaranteed she had something to hide.
“I told you, the cops would throw the book at me.”
“She’s right about that,” Dylan said. “Jack, this is Elizabeth Armstrong. She’s Nate Armstrong’s kid. Remember him? Dirty cop. Stole all that money from the evidence room.”
Armstrong.
The name pounded through Jack’s brain. It was a name he tried never to think about.
“I remember,” he said, feeling suddenly lightheaded.
The Nate Armstrong situation had gone down while his mother was dying of ovarian cancer, about a decade and a half ago. At the age of nineteen, Jack had just finished up at the police academy and was in his rookie year, planning to make a career out of it like his old man and his hero—Bruce Barnes. The man he now couldn’t even be in the same room with, so thick was the animosity.
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said again.
“Don’t apologize.” Jack was reeling with the new knowledge of who she was and what family she came from. “Never apologize, Elizabeth. Especially not to me.”
3
Elizabeth Armstrong believed in angels. And she thought maybe Jack Barnes was one.
She’d been sitting in the well-worn armchair in her living room, keeping watch over Emmett, wondering what to do to keep their lives from falling further apart. Emmett had shown up back at home sometime after five and was now crashed on the couch with his comforter thrown over him, which she’d brought from his bedroom. He was supposed to be at work by ten, and she needed to make sure that happened, in spite of his bruised and battered face. The problem was, Emmett slept like a log and she’d been unable to rouse him. He’d groaned and moaned but had yet to open his eyes and keep them open. She’d cajoled and lectured, but neither had done the trick.
Just when she was starting to worry about Emmett having a concussion, Jack Barnes knocked on the door.
Jack, who’d been such a decent guy at the scene of the accident. Who, when the police arrived, said Elizabeth couldn’t have been the driver. Who’d not put up much resistance when Theresa Harmon, Elizabeth’s wonderful lawyer, insisted that with a clear blood trail and footprints leading away from the Bronco, the real driver must have fled the scene. Jack hadn’t asked further questions after Theresa instructed Elizabeth to say nothing to the police before quickly hauling her out of there.
Jack, who was tall and broad-shouldered and exuded an air of competence and strength.
Jack, who came from a good family of honorable men—unlike her own.
He arrived shortly after eight o’clock and knocked on the door. Perhaps he’d tried the doorbell, but it was broken and had been for years. The house had already been old when Elizabeth’s parents bought it; she and Emmett managed to make the mortgage payments, but years had gone by with little to no maintenance done on the place.
When Elizabeth turned on the porch light and answered the knock, Jack stood there in the morning dark. The beating snow had slowed to a gentle flurry and looked pretty in the street lights.
Looking solemn, Jack held up a white bakery bag. “Cinnamon buns,” he said, handing her a bag from the North Star Café. “I thought you might be hungry.”
She accepted the bag, but she was far more drawn to his earthy brown eyes. Back on the highway, she hadn’t noticed their unique dark amber shade. Or the deep smile lines emanating from them. Or the waves in his dark brown hair that curled at the ends and which she’d like to twirl around her finger.
Jack Barnes was not only an angel, but he was a sexy angel.
“It’s kind of you to think of me,” she said. “But I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to you.”
She was under strict instructions from Theresa Harmon not to talk to anyone about the accident, especially anyone official.
“You don’t have to talk to me.” Jack gestured to an older man coming up the walkway, who gave her a friendly smile. He was short, packed a few more pounds than was good for him, and carr
ied an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. “This is Doc Bauer, from the community health clinic. You can talk to him.”
“Oh! I, uh …” She glanced back at Emmett, lying prone and unconscious on the couch, and the men’s eyes went to the couch, too. An involuntary tightness crossed Jack’s face, and she imagined the thoughts going through his mind, branding her a liar and affirming the apple didn’t fall far from the tree where ethics and morals were concerned. “I don’t know …”
“Jack thought you might have difficulty getting your friend to the clinic, so we decided to bring the clinic to you,” Doc Bauer said. “My services are free and bound by doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“Oh!” That changed things. “I would like you to come in, then.” Doc Bauer slipped into the house and then into the living room, where Emmett finally was stirring. Elizabeth gave Jack a look of apology. “I don’t know if I should let you in, legal-wise.”
“As a paramedic, I’m bound by the same confidentiality,” he said. “But if it makes you more comfortable, pretend I’m not even here. Just let me pet your beautiful dog, and then I’ll be on my way.”
Elizabeth had to smile at how her friendly little Welsh Corgi, Rugby, had been looking eagerly at Jack ever since she’d opened the door, seeking his attention. She liked how Jack took off his glove, dropped to one knee, and offered his hand for Rugby to sniff and then lick, and she loved how Rugby jumped right into his arms as if he were an adored member of the family.
But she couldn’t possibly pretend Jack wasn’t there. The tall, muscular manliness of his presence was sending disconcerting buzzy feelings through her body.
Jack smiled up at her. “He’s quite the guard dog, I see.”
She laughed. “Hardly. But he reads people really well. I guess Rugby can see you’re one of the good guys.”
“I don’t know about that.” Jack stood. “But I do hope your boyfriend’s okay.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Elizabeth said. For some reason, she couldn’t stand to have him think that. “He’s my brother.”
Elizabeth bit her lip as she watched Jack make his way down the un-shoveled walkway, wishing there was a way to show him how much she appreciated his complete and utter decency. At the same time, she felt stupid for pushing on him the fact that Emmett was her brother and not her boyfriend.
What was she thinking? That Jack Barnes, a captain with the fire department who was established in life and came from one of the best families in town, would magically fall in love with her—an impoverished bartender from the most infamous family in town—when he learned she was not, in fact, dating the loser who’d left her on the highway?
Jack paused at the sight of Elizabeth’s Bronco in the driveway and then walked around it, eyeballing the damage. Chris Flattery, the husband of Elizabeth’s friend April, had towed it for her and deposited it in her driveway. The exterior wasn’t too bad; the left headlight was smashed, the driver’s side mirror was wrecked, and there was a shallow dent running along the length of the passenger side where the vehicle had sideswiped the roadway sign.
Jack looked up and saw her watching.
“Does it start?” he called.
She shook her head. “Hopefully it’s just a frozen battery.”
“More likely, the undercarriage has been damaged.”
“That sounds expensive,” she said.
“It can be.”
She gave a little goodbye wave, closed the door, and turned her attention to her brother and Doc Bauer. The doctor sat on the edge of the sofa and studied Emmett’s visible injuries, mostly gashes and bruises, at the same time he measured his heart rate.
“This is your brother, you said?” Doc Bauer asked.
“My older brother, yes. His name’s Emmett. I’d been trying to wake him, but he’s been pretty out of it. I was getting really worried, to be honest.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Elizabeth did. According to Emmett, once everyone had left the scene, he’d come out of hiding and flagged down the next car that came by. The driver was going in the opposite direction from Golden Falls, back toward the party they’d been at, so Emmett returned there, where the drunken stragglers cleaned him up as best they could. From there, he got a ride back home with a buddy, who hauled Emmett inside the house and left him on the couch, where he’d been ever since. In an abashed tone, she also told the doctor how Emmett had admitted to using drugs at some point before the accident.
Doc Bauer listened as if he’d heard it all before.
“He wasn’t always this way,” she added, looking at her brother’s pale, doughy face. What had happened to his discipline? His drive? His determination to rise above what life had doled out to him? “Emmett took care of me by himself ever since I was thirteen and our mom took off. He got me out the door for school. Made my lunches. Kept the lights on.” She sighed, knowing how hard it must have been for him. “He never got to be an irresponsible teenager because he always had to look out for me.”
Doc Bauer’s smile was kind. “And now he’s making up for lost time?”
“I guess so.”
Elizabeth appreciated that Doc Bauer didn’t ask about her parents. With Nate in prison and Donna off somewhere sowing her drunken oats with whatever barfly would put her up and ply her with booze and cigarettes, her family history was not one of which Elizabeth was proud. Donna, after half-heartedly playing the role of single mother for a few years after Nate went to prison, had abandoned them for a boyfriend who didn’t like kids when Emmett was eighteen and Elizabeth thirteen. Emmett filed for and got legal custody of Elizabeth, but for a few years Donna periodically showed up and made their lives miserable until Emmett changed the locks. Donna’s screaming tirades trying to get back in only ended after Emmett filed a restraining order against her. She’d been banned from the Sled Dog Brewery, too, and as far as Elizabeth knew, she now spent most of her time in the dive bars on the industrial east side of town, where the booze was cheapest.
“Elizabeth, would you get me a glass of water?” Doc Bauer asked.
“Sure.”
While filling a glass from the tap, she looked out the kitchen window and caught sight of Jack shoveling the sidewalk in front of her house. Her heart swelled and her throat constricted, and suddenly she very much wanted to cry. Witnessing kindness did that to her sometimes. Outside it was still dark and bitterly cold, and she knew Jack had just gotten off an overnight shift … and yet he was shoveling her sidewalk so she wouldn’t have to.
While Emmett slept his life away on the couch, leaving other people to clean up his messes.
“Enough,” she whispered.
She’d had it with her brother. She filled a second glass of water, went back to the living room, handed one to the doctor, and without saying a word poured the other glass of water on Emmett’s head. He jolted upright and glared at her, but she glared right back.
“I see his reflexes are all in order,” Doc Bauer said, amused.
“The doctor’s here to see you.” Elizabeth kept calm only because of the doctor’s presence. Otherwise, she would have yelled. “And you need to be to work by ten, so get up and shower once he’s done.”
Emmett worked in an entry-level position at CoCo’s Emporium, the trendy downtown grocery store. He’d only been hired by the store manager, a regular at the Sled Dog, as a favor to Elizabeth.
“I can’t work today, Lizzie Bean,” Emmett said as if the very suggestion was ridiculous. “I don’t think I can even move.”
“There’s a man out there shoveling our walkway,” she said, her finger shaking as she pointed in the direction of the front door. “I hope that embarrasses you as much as it embarrasses me. I’m done taking care of you, Emmett. I know I owe you for all the years you looked after me, but if you lose this job, you’re on your own. I must be enabling you, and I can’t do it anymore because it’s not doing either one of us any good.”
Something’s got to change, she thought. And that something is
going to be me.
She turned and went back to the kitchen. She’d made a pot of coffee a couple of hours ago, half of which was still left, although tepid since the keep-hot plate had turned itself off. Deciding hardly-fresh coffee was better than no coffee, she asked Doc Bauer if he wanted some. He declined, saying he’d already had his fill, so she filled a sole mug and microwaved it, then added cream to mask the staleness.
She put her coat on and took her meager offering out to Jack.
4
It was damn cold out, and Jack was grateful when he saw Elizabeth heading over to him with an insulated mug that had tendrils of steam rising from it.
“Coffee?” she said.
“Definitely.”
Something about her pale skin, reddened from the windburn she’d suffered the previous night, made his heart positively ache. He leaned on the shovel and watched her make her precarious way over as she tried to sidestep patches of ice. The delicacy of her movements made him want to pick her up and hold her close, carry her wherever she wanted to go. When she got to him, her smile was personal, and one of victory. Make no mistake, it seemed to say. I am a survivor.
It was something he already knew.
“I can’t believe you’re shoveling my sidewalk,” she said, handing him the mug. “I swear, you’re like this vision from heaven. You’ve been thoroughly decent, and I’ve been perfectly awful to you.”
“You haven’t been awful,” Jack said, mesmerized by her expressive blue eyes.
“Refusing to answer your questions? Not letting you into my house when you were kind enough to check up on me?” Jack’s heart fluttered at the way she wrinkled her nose in self-deprecation. “I’d say that’s pretty awful behavior on my part.”
“You’re looking out for your family,” he said. “No one can fault you for that.”
Jack had some experience in that area, and he knew it could take a toll.
“Here.” Elizabeth reached and took the shovel before he could stop her. “I’ll shovel while you relax for a minute.”
From The Ashes (Golden Falls Fire Book 3) Page 2
