“I already picked him up.Just a minute and I’ll hand him the phone.”
“Picked up who?”she asked.
“Your brother, Miles.”
“I don’t want to talk to Miles.I want to talk to you.”
Ryder’s frown deepened as her voice suddenly shattered.
“I have a problem.Can you come help me?”
Before he could answer her, the ambulance that had been parked behind her took off for the hospital with sirens running.Startled by the unexpected noises in the background of their conversation, it began to dawn on him that there was more behind her request for help than the obvious.
“Casey, what’s wrong?”
He heard her inhale, and then she spoke, and her voice was so soft he had to strain to hear her answer.
“I had a wreck.”
The car swerved beneath him and Miles began to curse from the back seat.Even though it was broad daylight and Ryder was driving down the highway leading into Ruban Crossing, in his mind, he saw light flash across a dark, storm-filled sky, heard the sharp crack of lightning as it struck the fuselage of his plane, and smelled smoke, even though the air inside the car was cool and clean.
His fingers curled around the steering wheel in reflex, and it took him several seconds to realize what he was experiencing was a flashback, and that everything was safe and under control.He took a deep breath and started over, asking what mattered most.
“Are you hurt?”
“No…at least not much.”
An odd tension settled inside his belly.Her voice was shaking.If she wasn’t hurt, then she’d at least scared herself to death.
“Are you at the hospital?”
He thought he heard a sob in her voice as she answered.“No, I’m still at the scene.”
“Easy, honey.Just tell me where you are and how to get there.”
She told him, and only afterward realized what he’d called her, but by then it didn’t matter.He was already sliding to a stop at the intersection where the accident had occurred, and it would seem from the way the back door was flung open, he’d stopped just in time.
Miles leaned out and threw up on the right rear tire as Ryder jumped out of the front seat.After that, Casey didn’t see anything but the look on her husband’s face.She took a deep breath and started toward him.
Ryder felt sick.He could see a bump on her forehead that was already turning blue, and there was a small trickle of blood at the edge of her lip.
Wrecks.Damn, damn, damn, but he hated the sight of spilled fuel and crumpled metal.It reminded him of things he’d spent months trying to forget.
“Come here,” he said softly, and pulled her close against his chest while he surveyed what was left of her car.The front half had been shifted all the way to the right, compliments of a one-ton truck that had run a red light.“Thank God for air bags,” he said, eyeing the one that had inflated inside her car.
Her voice was shaking as she reached up, tentatively testing the size of the bump on her forehead.“It wasn’t my fault.”
Ryder caught her fingers, then lifted them to his lips in a quiet, easy gesture before cupping her face with his hand.
“It wouldn’t matter if it was.What matters is getting you to a doctor.Why didn’t they send an ambulance for you?”
“I told them I wanted to wait for you.Besides, I didn’t think I needed…”
He missed whatever it was she said next.He kept hearing her say she’d been waiting for him.That did it.Whatever hesitation he’d had about holding her close was gone.He tilted her chin, carefully surveying the burgeoning bruises and angry red scrapes on the tender surface of her skin.
“I don’t care what you think.You’re going and that’s that.”
Casey rested her forehead against his chest.How long had it been since she’d had someone upon whom she could lean?When his grip around her firmed, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt safe… really safe.As she ran her tongue along the lower edge of her lip, tears began to well in her eyes.
