The scooter was in my lane. I registered the woman’s terrified eyes locking with mine when it became apparent that she wouldn’t be able to correct the scooter’s trajectory in time to miss me.
I did the only thing I could do. I jerked the wheel to the right and careened toward the ditch.
Then everything was a blur. The cart flipped onto its side. Then it kept flipping as it rolled down the embankment.
3
THREE
Riding a scooter wasn’t anywhere near as dangerous as people believed. I could count on one hand—literally—the times I’d been in danger of getting hit. The roads at the Landings weren’t what I expected, though. There were speed limits posted, but I figured they were low because golf carts could only go so fast, not because there were tight curves to worry about.
Apparently, I was wrong. I didn’t see the golf cart exiting the restaurant parking lot until I was directly in front of it. Behind me, Hayley gripped my stomach so tightly I thought she was going to pop a kidney out of an unexpected orifice.
The driver of the cart was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I couldn’t correct what I’d already done. If I tried, I would dump the scooter onto the pavement, and that would be … well, ugly. Seriously, there was nothing worse than road rash.
The driver was the one to save us. He directed his cart to the side of the road, where he proceeded to slide over the embankment that led down to a slow-moving creek. Then, to make matters worse, the cart rolled. I didn’t even know golf carts could roll. It wasn’t as if they were top-heavy. His rolled. Yes, twice.
I managed to come to a stop by the time he finished rolling. I froze in the middle of the road, gripping the handlebars of the Vespa, and stared in the wake of the cart. Hayley was the one who snapped to action.
“Oh, my goodness gracious!” she exclaimed.
Then she was off. She was already at the edge of the embankment when I registered her movements. That broke my out of my reverie. I left the Vespa at the side of the road and followed her. The embankment was steep. Seeing it, I could understand how the cart had rolled—there was no way it could remain flat with such a short wheelbase. Despite the steep decline, I was hopeful that nobody had been seriously hurt.
It’s a golf cart. People don’t get hurt in golf carts.That was what kept going through my head. I wanted to believe it. I just didn’t know if I could. All I could picture was body parts being crushed as the golf cart careened end over end.
Hayley reached the bottom of the hill before me. She crouched next to a guy who had been thrown clear of the cart. He had dark hair, and I didn’t see any blood. He might have been a little dazed, but I could deal with dazed.
“Check the driver!” Hayley barked.
She was good in a crisis, probably because she’d grown up on a ranch. She’d seen actual catastrophes and the way her parents and the ranch hands reacted. She knew to keep calm. I rarely kept calm.
I followed her orders and moved to check the driver. He was still in the cart somehow. I didn’t see a seatbelt, but he was in his spot, his white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel as if he was still driving. His skin was pale—the color of death—but he didn’t look as if he was bleeding. I was relieved when I cataloged his features. He was strong, fit, and obviously freaked. I could deal with all those things.
“Congratulations,” I announced, going for levity. Maybe if I turned this into a fun story, he wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. “You just survived the sort of thing that is going to be an icebreaker story at boring cocktail parties for years.”
Slowly, so slowly it reminded me of a scene from a scary movie—it could have been any horror movie really—the man shifted his gaze to me. He blinked in shock when our gazes snagged, and it was only then that I recognized him.
“Wait,” I said as things started shifting in my mind.
His reaction told me I was right. This was the man I remembered—the man I’d stalked online after what I referred to as the incident and Hayley called the catastrophe. My assistant Paisley called it Satan’s hemorrhoid, but that was a visual I couldn’t dwell on too long.
“You,” I said.
“You,” he gritted out. He sounded a lot angrier than I was. I really couldn’t blame him.
“Big Butt Bates.”
That wasn’t his name—it was B. B. Bates. After his meltdown following the conference panel, where he accused me of any number of things including stealing his thunder, trying to eclipse his sun, and being determined to get him put on Amy Ryan’s personal assassination list—and I thought I was dramatic—he’d knocked over a tray of cocktails and run from the room. I hadn’t seen him since. In the aftermath, I’d started referring to him as Big Butt Bates because, well, I’m apparently a toddler. It made me feel better. Painting him as the problem allowed me to gloss over my culpability.
The plan had been to track him down at the next conference and apologize. The only thing was, he didn’t show up at the next conference … or the next … or even the one after that. He’d just disappeared from the writing circuit. That wasn’t unheard of—writers were theatrical little things—but the timing didn’t sit well with me.
“What did you call me?” he demanded, drawing me back to the here and now.
“Buddy,” I replied, not missing a beat. “I called you Buddy.”
“Why would you call me Buddy?” He was practically seething.
“It’s your name. What else would I call you?”
