Oh, God, Beau was going to kill her.
She never should have borrowed it. What in the world had she been thinking? She glanced in the mirror, saw thepickup rushing toward her again. Was he drunk? On drugs? A chill went through her. Or was it something else?
She thought how close she had come to being killed in front of her office. This wasn’t the same vehicle, but if the hit-and-run hadn’t been an accident, this could be another attempt.
Cassidy fought the wheel. Adrenaline poured through her—not the fun kind, the scared kind—and her hands started sweating. If Beau had been driving, the sports car could have handled the speed and the curves, but she wasn’t a race-car driver, and the pavement was wet and slick. She had to go faster, told herself she could do it.
She had two brothers. Brandon had taught her to drive in his souped-up ’66 Chevelle. He and Shawn had goaded her until she’d learned to handle the car to their satisfaction.
As the truck raced up behind her again, she hit the gas and the Lamborghini shot forward as if it had wings. For a moment, she left the pickup behind and satisfaction rolled through her. But there was a sharp curve up ahead that dropped off into a field on one side, and no way could she keep up her speed.
She slowed and the pickup roared up on her tail. He rammed her just as she went into the turn. The rear end fishtailed, she hit the gas to correct the slide, which worked until the car hit a pothole and skidded sideways.
The pickup rammed into the passenger door, sending the Lamborghini careening off the road. The car shot into the air, spun, hit the ground, flipped and rolled, and there was nothing she could do. She clung to the wheel, kept her head down as the sports car landed on its roof and the airbags went off, but the car just kept rolling.
On the third roll, something hit her in the head and she blacked out for a moment, came to as the Lambo righted itself and jarred to a halt. She was dizzy, her mind fuzzy, butthe pickup seemed to be gone. She couldn’t see any headlights in the mirror anywhere behind her, but she’d wrecked Beau’s beautiful car.
Cassidy felt the warm trickle of blood running down her forehead and tears filling her eyes. Then the world went black and she felt nothing at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Beau paced the floor outside the intensive care unit of the Presbyterian Hospital in Kaufman. He thought of the crash and felt sick to his stomach.
He’d driven home from the office, thought Cassidy might get there ahead of him, but when he arrived, the Lambo wasn’t parked in the garage.
He’d tried her cell, but it had gone straight to voicemail. He purposely hadn’t called her earlier, determined to give her some space. He understood what she was going through, figured she’d feel better by the time she got home.
He had just begun to worry when the police called. They said there’d been an accident, that the victim was a woman named Cassidy Maryann Jones. She was in intensive care at the Presbyterian Hospital in Kaufman. That was all they knew.
He’d been frantic. He’d called the hospital but he wasn’t immediate family so they wouldn’t tell him much. He’d driven the Ferrari the forty miles to Kaufman like a madman, phoned Linc on the way—he had no idea why—and told him what had happened.
His friend’s deep baritone had calmed him a little. “Takeit easy,” Linc had said. “You’ll find out what happened when you get there. Carly and I are staying in Dallas this week so we aren’t that far away. We’ll meet you there.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m okay.”
“We’ll see you there.” The line went dead.
Beau’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. He should have known his friends wouldn’t let him handle this alone.
The evening traffic and the heavy rain forced him to slow down. He’d considered taking the helicopter, but making the arrangements, then meeting the chopper, would have taken as much time as driving, and he preferred just getting on the road.
The minutes dragged past. By the time he arrived, his stomach was tied in knots. He pushed through the doors of the two-story brick building, strode up to the reception counter, and asked for a patient named Cassidy Jones who had been in a car accident.
Behind the counter, a gray-haired receptionist with reading glasses perched on her nose checked the name on her computer. “The patient is in intensive care. Take the elevator up to the second floor. Check in at the nursing station. Someone there will tell you where to go.”
He turned and started walking, skipped the elevator, and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. When he arrived, he went straight to the nursing station, spoke to a nurse in green scrubs with short auburn hair.
“I’m here to see a patient named Cassidy Jones. They said she was on this floor.”
“She’s here. The doctor is in with her now. What’s your relationship to the patient?”
“I’m . . .”A frienddidn’t sound right. Cassidy was way more than that. They might not let him see her if he was only a friend, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to pretend tobe her brother. “I’m her fiancé,” he said. “Can you tell me her condition?”
“She’s listed as stable. That’s all I know. As I said, the doctor is in with her now. He’ll talk to you as soon as he comes out. There’s a waiting room down the hall.”
Beau thanked her and headed in that direction. There was no one else in the room when he pushed through the door, but he couldn’t make himself sit down. He swallowed, replaying the day in his head, wishing he hadn’t let her borrow the car. He’d been sure she could handle it. She’d driven the Lamborghini before and hadn’t had any problems.
What if she’d died? What if he’d gotten her killed?
