She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other until she got to the other man. Looked at him, realizing this would be that teenager’s dream come true—two big, hunky guys saving her.
He’d freed the ripped-off front bumper from the end of the metal cable, and once she had a grip on the cable, helped her free herself from the loop of rope. By then her rescuer was there, and she had to resist the urge to ask him to hold her again. She supposed he got a lot of that if he went around saving people like this often.
Then he almost did just that. He slipped an arm around her, at least, startling her into wondering if she’d asked him without realizing it. Dear God, was she that far gone? Had her grip on reality slipped that much? She shivered, and he tightened his hold.
“Just a little longer,” he said. “We’ll get you up top and on solid ground, and you’ll feel better.”
She didn’t doubt that was true, but it would take a lot more than just solid physical ground to make her feel one hundred percent. There were times when she wondered if she would ever feel whole again, physically or mentally.
He put a foot in a loop that hung off the cable, then guided her to put her foot on top of his.
“I’ll hang on to the cable, and you hang on to me.”
Nothing I’d rather do.
She managed not to say it, thought about saying, “Yes, sir,” but decided another nod was her safest bet. But when she slid her arms around him, and he put his free arm around her to hold her close to him, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from thinking how long it had been since she’d been this close to a man. Especially one who looked like this one.
But when the second man stepped into the other loop on the cable, she couldn’t help asking, “It will hold us all?”
“It’s rated to pull a nine-thousand-pound vehicle,” the man said reassuringly. When he clicked a button on what looked like some kind of control he held, and after an initial jerk as the cable tightened, they rose steadily. Dimly, the moment the cable began to move, she heard a dog barking from above. She clung to Deputy Crenshaw tighter, and his arm tightened around her as if to let her know he had her.
And as they went, she wondered how her quiet, calm life had turned into such never-ending chaos.
* * *
She seemed to be moving all right, Brady thought as they got to the top and he helped her scramble over the edge. As they’d gone up, he’d noticed a little bleeding from a cut on one hand, and a little more that could have come from a cut on her forehead or have been wiped there by that hand. Now he took a better look at her, ignoring the rather nice feminine curves as he stuck to business. He certainly hadn’t seen any indication of broken bones, but if it wasn’t a limb, she might not even be aware yet. When the fear and adrenaline wore off, she might go down like a broken puppet.
“You’d better sit down,” he said, pulling open the door to his SUV. She didn’t argue but sat on the sideboard, so he gave her points for common sense on that front at least. “Any place hurt more than the rest?” It took her a moment, but he was familiar with the confused thoughts after a crisis. Then she shook her head, albeit slowly.
He was aware of the two people approaching, although he didn’t look away from her. The dog that had been in the car was with them; he caught a glimpse of a dark head with alert ears out of the corner of his eye.
Even as he registered it, the dog came forward, not rushing, but clearly intent on getting to her. He almost moved to stop the animal, but his owner arrived beside him and said quietly, “It’s all right. He’ll be good for her.”
He glanced at the man who had, without hesitation or the requirement of duty, risked himself to help. After a moment, he nodded. And watched as the couple’s dog came to a halt a foot away from… Ashley, he remembered. She looked at the dog and, slowly, smiled. He was a beautiful animal with his black head and shoulders turning to a reddish brown from the shoulders back. His coat looked thick and soft, and his tail, up and wagging gently as if to signal no ill intent, was full.
“Hi,” she said, her voice sounding a little steadier. The wag increased, and the dog stepped forward. He sat down close to her and gently lowered his chin to her knee in obvious invitation. She lifted the nonbloody hand and laid it on the dog’s head. Her left, he noticed. She must have hurt the right freeing herself, so he went with right-handed. Not that it mattered, but it was just a matter of course that he observed.
The change that came over her the moment she began to pet the dog was nothing short of remarkable. The confusion left her eyes, she straightened and then she was smiling.
“Wow,” he muttered.
“Our little miracle worker,” the other woman said, and he turned to look at them both.
“Quinn and Hayley Foxworth,” the man said, holding out a hand, adding with a grin, “Better late than never.”
As they shook hands, the man’s grip strong but with nothing to prove, Brady locked down his certainty that this was a man you could trust. “Brady Crenshaw,” he said. His wife’s handshake was gentler, but firm, and he had the feeling that she was a power in her own right, in her own way.
He was used to—and good at—making quick assessments. It was a necessity of the job. And the words that came to him about these two were solid, steady, smart, caring…and together. With a capital T.
He felt a jab of…something. Envy? Maybe. His one try at that kind of relationship had ended badly, on several fronts. He wouldn’t say he’d given up, but he wasn’t looking, either. Because he’d pretty much decided that what the Foxworths had wasn’t in the cards for him.
Which right now, looking at them, made him feel pretty damned gloomy.
CHAPTER 3
“He’s wonderful,” Ashley said, still stroking the dog’s head.
“We think so,” Hayley Foxworth said with a warm smile that made Brady like her even more.
He turned back to Ashley. “Ribs okay?” he asked her. “Collarbone? Sometimes seat belts can do a number on you while they’re saving your life.”
She quickly touched the clavicle on both sides of her slender throat. His fingers curled oddly, and he had to stomp down the wish that he’d checked her himself. Then she tentatively reached down and ran a hand—her right, so it wasn’t incapacitated—over one side of her rib cage, then the other.
“Fine,” she said. “It’ll bruise, I imagine, but I don’t think anything’s cracked and definitely not broken.”
“Where were you headed?”
“Over to Snowridge. To pick something up for my mother.”
Perfectly coherent. And it fit; the crash had happened just a quarter mile from the turnoff to the ski town. Another good sign. He pulled his small flashlight off his belt.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did, and he saw the stark white of her face was giving way to more normal coloring. She was pulling out of it, both quickly and relatively soon, considering. Her eyes were genuinely amazing. In fact, she was pretty darn lovely all around. But he’d better shove that right on out of his head. Back to business.
He checked her pupils, found them equal and reactive. She tracked his finger when he asked, up, down and sideways, and gave him her name again, her age—twenty-eight, four years younger than he was—and the date, and she knew where they were. It was enough that anything more could wait for the paramedics, anyway.
“Help is on the way,” he said. “Medics can look you over and be sure there’s nothing hiding. What about your hand?”
She looked at it. “I scraped it on something, I think, getting out.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“Sorry?” she said, staring up at him. “What on earth for? If you hadn’t done what you did, risked your life like that, I’d be down there with the car, and I doubt I’d be walking away.”
The impassioned words took him by surprise, but he couldn’t deny
they pleased him. Also embarrassed him a little. He didn’t do this job for accolades, although when they came, he didn’t belittle the person’s experience by saying it was nothing, either.
“And the übercalm demeanor was just what I needed,” she added, with a smile that made him smile back. “You’ve got that down, Deputy Crenshaw. Thank you.”
He supposed this wasn’t the time to mention how he’d wondered what would happen if the car went before they got clear or if the cable snapped and took them out like a blunt broadsword.
“Can’t argue with her assessment,” Quinn Foxworth said. “That was some nice work.”
“It wouldn’t have gone so well without your help,” Brady said, meaning it.
Hayley walked over and sat beside Ashley, putting a gentle hand on her arm and smiling reassuringly. Brady took the chance to walk back to the edge and look down. He could still see the car, upside down now, at the bottom of the slope. He shook his head at the near escape, then walked back over to the woman who had taken that hair-raising ride.
“Where do you live?” he asked her.
“In Hemlock,” she said. “With my mother, temporarily. Nan Alexander.”
Brady blinked, then groaned inwardly. This was a headache he didn’t need.
“What happened?” he asked, rather bluntly.
“The back end just slid on the curve. I didn’t see any ice, but there was a layer of fresh snow. Not much, though.”
That matched what he’d seen. And it was a front-wheel-drive car, so if it was going to lose traction, it made sense that it would be the rear.
“I don’t understand,” Ashley said, still stroking the Foxworth dog—Cutter, Quinn had said. “I checked the road reports between home and Snowridge. They said snow tires would be enough.”
“They would be, if you had them,” Brady said, trying to keep his tone neutral. She might be very attractive, but he’d been at this long enough to find lack of common sense unappealing.
“But…the car does have them. They were put on yesterday.”
Brady frowned. Remembered the tire he’d seen and was nearly certain. In the same moment, he sensed Quinn go still. Glanced at the other man, who gave a slight shake of his head. So he hadn’t seen snow tires, either.
“I think your other help is approaching,” Hayley said, looking down the road.
Instinctively Brady glanced at his watch. “Only twenty-three minutes. That’s light speed around here.” He shifted his gaze back to Ashley. “They’ll take good care of you.”
He reached into the front seat for his binoculars, then walked back over to the edge again. He focused them on the car just as Quinn came up beside him. He could see the tires clearly, and there was not only no sign of studs marking them as snow tires or the distinctively more aggressive tread pattern of an unstudded snow tire—in fact they were getting a little short on actual tread.
Silently, he handed the binoculars to Quinn. He took a look, lowered them and with a glance at Brady shook his head.
“‘Put on yesterday’ is pretty specific,” he said.
“Yes.” Brady used the binoculars again, this time tracing the marks in the snow the car had left on its way down.
“Ideas?” Quinn asked.
“Wondering if somebody in Hemlock ripped her off. Which would tick me off something fierce. She could have died. But…that makes no sense. Nobody would.”
“No town’s perfect,” Quinn said, his tone neutral.
Brady held the other man’s gaze and answered what he hadn’t said. “Not saying it is. And although we service Hemlock, I don’t live there. But…” He hesitated, then decided after what he’d done today the man could be trusted with the truth. “I realized who she is.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Realized? Meaning you know of her, but not her?”
“Exactly.” He let out a compressed breath. “She’s the mayor’s daughter.”
Quinn went oddly still for a moment before he asked, very quietly, “Connection, you think?”
Brady liked the way he asked it, as if without even really knowing him he would accept the answer as valid. Truth be told, he simply liked this guy. “All I know for sure is her mother’s a…politician. And,” he added sourly, “she’s fairly tight with my boss.”
Quinn held his gaze steadily. “And is your boss a cop first or a politician?”
Yes, he liked the guy. “That you know to ask that means I don’t really have to answer, right?”
“My sympathies, Deputy Crenshaw. But it could be worse. At least you don’t have to go into town and tell the mayor her daughter’s dead.”
“There is that,” Brady agreed.
“Maybe she’ll hang a medal on you.”
“No, thanks,” he said. “On general principle, I’m much happier when she doesn’t even recognize me.”
Quinn laughed, and it was full of such understanding that Brady found himself wondering who, exactly, this guy was and what he did.
* * *
The lead paramedic finished bandaging Ashley’s right hand just as Quinn Foxworth’s laugh drew her gaze, and for a moment Ashley just looked at the two men. Something about the sight of them, the sound of that laugh and the deputy’s smile, did something odd to her.
“He’s got a great laugh, my Quinn does,” Hayley said softly.
“He does,” she agreed.
“And your rescuer has a great smile.”
“He does,” she repeated, but although the words were the same, they felt different; there was a little catch in her throat as she said them. Two men cut from the same cloth, there was no question.
“Two of a kind,” Hayley said, agreeing with what Ashley hadn’t even spoken aloud. “And that’s not something I say lightly.”
“Deputy Crenshaw,” the woman in the county EMS uniform said, “is a peach. The best kind of cop, and a good man besides. If I wasn’t madly in love with my husband, he’d be at the top of my list.”
Ashley smothered a sigh. It wasn’t that she couldn’t look at Deputy Crenshaw and see and sense all of that was true, it was the way the woman spoke of her husband that made her ache a little inside. Just as Hayley simply saying that about “her” Quinn’s laugh had.
Once, her life was on track to reach that treasured goal, a connection with a man she adored. But now she was in chaos, and Alan had abandoned her for someone closer to his ideal. Which was certainly not a woman who woke up screaming practically every night.
And so here she was, at twenty-eight, broken, broke and living with her mother.
“There you go,” said the medic. “I think you’ll be fine, but remember what I said about any headaches, dizziness, change in vision or numbness.” Ashley nodded. “We’ll transport you to the clinic—”
“No!” It came out a bit high-pitched, and she sucked in a breath. “I mean, I don’t need to go there, do I?”
“Afraid it’s policy. Normally Brady could just take you home, but once we’ve treated you… I mean, you can refuse, but it turns into a big deal, paperwork-wise, if you do. Not that I blame you. If I were you, I’d rather ride with Brady, too,” the woman added with a wide smile. “By the way, he has a weakness for brownies, if you decide you want to personally thank him for saving your life.”
Ashley tried to match the smile but knew she failed. As if her mother would turn her loose in her kitchen. Once upon a time, she’d been a very good baker, but a kitchen fire that had almost gotten out of control had gotten her banned.
The Foxworth dog, Cutter, leaned into her again, as if he’d sensed the despair that threatened. She’d never thought of herself as a stupid or weak person, but in the last six months, her self-perception had been shaken to the core. And she couldn’t blame her mother for not wanting to take any chances, not when she continued to do such brainless things.
She reached out to once
more stroke the soft, dark fur. And once more, an odd sense of calm crept over her. Looking into the animal’s amber-flecked dark eyes, she had the oddest feeling that somehow, some way, everything would turn out all right.
Which was far too much to ask of a dog.
As the medics packed away their gear, her rescuer—“her hero” sounded too much like bad dialogue—came back and crouched in front of her. He reached out to pet the dog, instinctively, it seemed. There was a dog, he should be petted. The thought made her smile inwardly. A peach indeed.
Hayley stood up and walked over to slip an arm around her husband as he came back from wherever he and the deputy had gone. But Ashley was focused on the man before her. Which was far from a hardship.
“You said there were snow tires on the car,” he said quietly. She nodded. “Did you look at them?”
Her brow furrowed. “No. I mean, I knew they’d been installed, so I didn’t bother.”
“But…you heard the sound of them?”
“I…didn’t really. I was playing music and didn’t notice.”
“Ashley,” he began, and she was too busy realizing how much she liked the sound of her name when he said it for it to register immediately that he was uncomfortable with what he was about to say.
“What?”
When he answered his voice was exquisitely gentle. “There are no snow tires.”
She blinked. “What?”
He gestured at the binoculars he’d set down at his side. “Quinn and I both looked. Not only are they not snow tires, but even as regular tires, they aren’t in the best shape.”
She stared at him. For all their gentleness, his words hit her like a bludgeon.
She’d been having a rough time, she knew that. Ever since the nightmares had started months ago, she’d been off balance. Then they had gotten so bad she was afraid to sleep and spent most nights sitting up in a chair. She had chalked up her lapses in memory to exhaustion, but they had steadily worsened until her mother had insisted she move in with her so she could look out for her. The dreams hadn’t improved, but at least she’d felt safer.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense December 2020 Box Set Page 50
