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“Yep.” He shifts so he’s leaning over me, blocking the rain as best he can. “Do you want to see my ID?”

“Your what?”

“Proof that I’m a paramedic, and not some stranger about to start poking and prodding you.”

“Oh.” I shake my head. “It’s fine. You obviously know what you’re doing. If you can just check me out, I’ll be on my way.”

“Uh…” His gaze shunts to my car, but he says nothing. “Okay. I’m going to check for other injuries before I look at that shoulder.”

“Sure.”

I think I’m wide awake, but soon my eyelids flag, and he keeps stopping and telling me not to sleep and sometimes taking my chin to wake me. When he gets to my shoulder, he needs to lift me up, and that’s when the pain jolts me wide awake. He checks the wound there, and I don’t hear what he says about it—I’m gritting my teeth, the shock sliding away.

“Can you stand?” he says, and it sounds as if this isn’t the first time he’s said it.

I nod and let him help me to my feet, as he says, “It seems safe to move you, and I need to get you out of the rain so I can bandage that shoulder.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Thunder cracks, and I jump, nearly falling as my leg buckles. Right. My knee cracked against that tree.

“Ellie?” he says as he steadies me. “You can’t drive your car. I can’t drive my truck. I don’t have any phone signal, and I doubt you do, either.”

“I don’t. Didn’t.” I reach for my pocket, but of course my phone’s not there. It was in my hand when his truck hit my car and I went flying. I give myself a shake, which sends pain ripping through me but it also helps clear my head. “Okay. My car’s out of commission, and I lost my phone but it didn’t have a signal either.”

“I need to get you out of this rain. Will you sit in the cab of my truck with me? Your car is totaled—we can’t get in your back seat.”

I frown at him, wondering why he didn’t just carry me into his truck immediately.

Right. He said it was “safe to move me” now. He needed to check me over first, and he needed me lying flat, in case my spine was injured. And now he’s asking because he’s a stranger who wants me getting into his truck with him.

“Your car’s rear seat is crushed,” he says. “I’ll show you if that helps.”

Again, maybe it’s lingering shock, but I want to laugh. Rain is pouring down in torrents, both of us soaked and shivering, and he honestly thinks I’m worried he’ll try to kidnap me? At this point, I might just think, “Well, at least I’m someplace dry.”

“Your truck is fine,” I say as I turn that way.

“May I help you walk?”

I’m torn between wanting to say I can handle it and wanting to tell him he doesn’t need to be so polite. In the end, I only nod, and he puts out his arm for me to brace on as we start toward his vehicle. It’s a pickup truck, an old one, the front end smashed into the rear of my car, and I can see now what he meant about my back seat. No wonder he’d glanced at my car when I’d said, in my brain-numb shock, that I just wanted to get out of here.

We aren’t going anywhere. Not tonight.

“Sorry about your truck,” I say as he opens the driver’s door.

He gives a startled laugh. “That’s the least of my concerns. It’s a piece of shit anyway. Two kids in college.” An eye roll, as if that explains the old truck, which I guess it does. “Anyway, it’s insured. You need help up?”

“Should I crawl over to the passenger side?”

“No, no. Sit in the driver’s seat.” He reaches past me, pulls the keys from the ignition, and holds them out. “Keep these for now.”

“I’m really not worried you’re going to take advantage of a car accident to kidnap me,” I say as I climb in.

“I’m an overprotective dad with two daughters.” He drops the keys onto my lap and shuts the door. A few moments later, he’s tugging on the passenger side. The door sticks, and I’m leaning to help him open it, when he heaves, and it flies open.

He climbs in, and only then do I realize I wasn’t imagining that he’s a big guy. He dwarfs the seat and has to adjust it so his head doesn’t brush the ceiling. Broad shoulders. Massive biceps. He looks more like a football player than a paramedic, which might be why he expected me to hesitate at getting into his truck.

He runs his hands through his hair, water sluicing down. Then he twists and grabs a duffel from behind the driver’s seat. He rifles through it and tosses me a towel.