She leans slightly to the left as she tries to staple the length of lights again.
The ladder shifts.
My breath catches. Worry urges me to open the door.
Angel braces one hand on the side of the house to stabilize herself.
My held breath rushes out.
Then the top half of the ladder drops, collapsing all the way down.
With my door half open, I hear Angel’s frightened shriek.
Startled by the ladder’s unexpected movement, Angel tips backward and loses her grip on the ladder. She pitches back into the snow, and a moment later, the ladder falls on top of her.
“Shit!” I curse as I leap from the car. “Shit!”
Fear beats at me as I race across the lawn towards her. Horrible possibilities come at me from all sides.
Broken bones.
Head injuries.
Internal bleeding.
She didn’t fall far, but I’ve seen enough skiing accidents to know how even the most harmless-looking accident can be devastating.
With all the snow and the ladder on top of her, all I can see of Angel are bits of pink and flashes of blonde.
She isn’t moving.
“Angel,” I call, channeling my decades of experience as a medic in an attempt to sound calm. “Don’t move. It’s Ronan. I’m coming to help.”
When I reach her side, her eyes are closed. She looks so damn small and helpless beneath the metal ladder.
Something deep inside my chest wrenches.
First, I lift the ladder off her and fling it aside. Then I crash to my knees beside her. Yanking my glove off, I carefully touch her cheek. “Angel,” I repeat. “It’s Ronan. Don’t move. Just tell me if you can hear me.”
For several terrible seconds, she doesn’t respond. Then her eyes pop open; wide and startled. She gasps for air, like the wind was knocked out of her. Which it probably was.
“Ronan?” Her forehead pinches in confusion. “What happened? And why are you here?”
CHAPTER 2
ANGEL
“You don’t remember?”Ronan asks, the worry lines across his forehead growing deeper.
“Um.” I feel discombobulated, like I was just yanked from the clothes dryer on the high-spin setting. It’s still an effort to take a full breath. Cold is seeping into my body. The last thing I remember clearly was trying to get that stupid staple gun to work and hoping I wouldn’t have to climb back down to get the staples unstuck again.
But clearly something else happened, or I wouldn’t be lying in the snow with Ronan Davies leaning over me. A very concerned-looking Ronan, with cheeks pink with cold and his hazel eyes more brown than green and a few flakes of snow collecting on his days-old stubble. And his hand wouldn’t be on my cheek, shockingly warm against my skin and?—
Wait. He’s touching my cheek?
Why is Ronan touching my cheek?
And why is his gaze moving across my body like he’s scanning for?—
