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“I was born and raised in Red Rock.”
He knew that. He also knew something else. “But you left.”
The reasons for that were complex and plentiful. She wasn’t about to go into it with a pompous know-it-all no matter who his father was.
“That’s a story for another day. Besides—” her tone underscored the word “—I’m back.” They were coming up to a busy intersection. She knew a shortcut that would circumvent what looked like a jam in the making. “Take a left here.” And then she changed her mind. Not about the direction they were going, but about the direction of the day. “No, wait.”
“Wait?” he echoed in disbelief. Did she think he could stop moving in the middle of all this? If he did, in two seconds they’d be surrounded with a cacophony of horns, all blasting at them.
“You can let me out on the corner.” She pointed toward it. “I can walk the rest of the way.”
He made no attempt to pull over. “Are you kicking me off this assignment?”
“No, I’m opening the door and letting you run away from this assignment, no disrespect intended,” she added when he raised one dark eyebrow at the word “run.”
Much as the idea tempted him, he had no intentions of backing out. He’d given his father his word and he was going to see this through. The woman was exhibiting about as much sense as an opossum in the middle of a busy five-lane road.
“Since we’re almost there, I might as well take a look at the location you’ve picked.”
Nope, she definitely didn’t like his attitude. The sooner she was rid of this man, the better she was going to feel. On several levels.
“You make it sound like I’m a kid with a whim. I did a lot of scouting around before I decided on this mall. I also took overhead into account,” she added. “The ideal location for my shop is at the San Antonio Mall, but the leases there are a little pricey. I thought I’d get a foothold here first, then work my way over in about a year or three.”
She had actually thought it out, he realized. “I’m impressed.”
Did he really think that mattered to her? “Oh, good. I can die happy.”
The sarcasm was thick enough to cut with a knife. And his patience was wearing thin. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a smart mouth?”
Was that his best comeback? The man might as well hang up his gloves now, she’d won the match. “Not lately. It goes with the rest of me.”
Making a right at the corner, Jack snorted. “Well, your ego’s alive and well.”
“No thanks to you.” The words had come out before she could stop herself.
He looked at her, surprised. “What do I have to do with it?”
“You’ve done nothing but talk down to me since the elevator encounter.”
“I asked you to press the thirtieth floor.” How could she possibly see that as talking down to her? Was she paranoid?
“No,” she pointed out, her voice steely, “you snapped out the number.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake—” He got hold of his temper. Even so, he snapped the next words out. “I was fighting jet lag.”
It had obviously not been much of a fight from what she’d seen. “Sounds like the jet lag won.” Turning her face forward again, her eyes widened as she saw a maroon Chevy coming from the right, running the light. She braced her feet hard against the floor. “Watch out!”
But it was already too late.
A half second after the warning was out of her mouth, the front of Jack’s silver Jaguar made contact with the side of the car that had flown out of nowhere. The Chevy, at least fifteen years old, dented and its paint peeling in half a dozen places, was the heavier of the two vehicles. The impact sent the silver Jaguar spinning in a full circle, winding up exactly at the original point of contact.
The next moment, a sound like rushing water filled the interior of the car. Jack’s vision was completely blocked by a wall of white fabric.
The air bags had deployed.
Along with what remained of his already frayed patience.
Chapter Six
There was white everywhere.
Panic clawed sharply at Gloria’s throat. She felt as if she had been plunged into the center of a marshmallow.
Claustrophobia, a failing she hadn’t managed to conquer that accompanied her into every elevator, every small space she found herself in since she’d been six years old, rose up on its hoary hind legs to grab her by the throat and threaten to block out the very air into her lungs.
The fact that the air bag had her pressed back against her seat with no room for movement and the seat belt was biting into her shoulder and lap, holding her fast, only added to the tidal wave of panic that was building up inside her.
She couldn’t help her next reaction. It came without thinking, without warning. Gloria started to scream. Not a small gasp or a yelp, but a full-bodied, blood-curdling scream that could have shattered water glasses within a one-mile radius.
Jolted, Jack’s senses alert and at their peak, the scream ripped right through him. Heart pounding, he could only imagine what could have prompted that sort of a reaction from the woman who was completely blocked from his sight. Memories of the car accident with Ann came bursting back into his brain.
Ann screaming.
Just before she died.
Terror seized his heart. Struggling, pushing against the deployed air bag, Jack managed to unbuckle his seat belt and get the harness off his shoulder. Adrenaline running high, convinced that Gloria had to be severely hurt, possibly even dying, he groped for the door handle on his side. Locating it seemed to take forever. Finally successful, Jack yanked on it and applied his shoulder to the door, shoving his way out.
“Hang on!” he yelled to Gloria as he rounded the trunk.
Operating on two very distinct planes, he saw the offending driver and glared at him. Jack could just barely make out the man’s face. The other car engine was still running and the driver looked ready to make a break for it. Now.
“Don’t even think it!” Jack barked. Making his way to the passenger side of the Jaguar, he glanced quickly at the other car’s license plate, committing it to memory. A photographic memory allowed him to absorb and retain everything he had ever seen. “I’ve got your plate number and I swear I’ll hunt you down.”
The man behind the wheel of the dented Chevy froze and raised his hands in surrender. He began to babble an apology. His words were just so much noise in the background. Jack barely heard him.
All of his attention was focused on Gloria.
If she could scream like that, at least she was alive, he thought, taking comfort in that. The very hair on the back of his neck was standing on end as the sound skewered its way through his system.
Jack yanked open her door. He groped around the air bag, trying to find Gloria’s hand. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. It’s okay,” he told her over and over again.
The panic wouldn’t leave even as she heard his voice. Her terror was too huge to overcome. In saner times, it bothered her no end, reacting this way, but right now, all she could do was shriek.
“Pull me out,” she pleaded. “Pull me out!”
And then she felt a hand reaching across her waist, brushing against her lap. The next moment, the belt that was holding her prisoner was released and she was being pulled out of her living tomb.
The second she was clear of the car, she began gasping for air, sucking it in as if there wasn’t even an ounce of it within her lungs. Her legs weak, her body a heavy liquid, she clung to the man who had pulled her free.
Shaking, she was still aware of the soft feel of suede against her cheek and the infinite comfort of the arms that had locked around her. She fought to regulate her breathing.
“Where are you hurt?” Jack demanded. Had she hit her head? Broken something in the split second before the air bag had cocooned her?
When Gloria didn’t answer, Jack tried to move her back and hold her at arm’s length to see her injuries for himself. At first she wouldn’t let go of him, her arms locked around his neck in a death grip. Finally he managed to gently but firmly push her from him.
“Where are you hurt?” he asked again. Scanning her face, he saw nothing. There were no scratches, no cuts, no marks at all except for what appeared to be the beginning of a slight bruise along her forehead. That could have come from the air bag itself, he judged. But one thing was abundantly clear. The dark-haired woman he’d been verbally sparring with not a few minutes earlier was clearly shaken.
That made two of them, he thought.
And then, suddenly, there were people crowding all around them in the intersection.
“I saw the whole thing,” one man behind him volunteered.
A woman in a flaming-red scarf that was wrapped around her neck pointed to the other driver. “It was his fault.” The accusation was made in a high-pitched voice.
A businessman craned his neck as he leaned out of his car window. His vehicle was directly behind the bruised Jaguar. “Need a witness?”
Voices were coming from all sides, swelling in volume. Gloria tried to block them all out as she struggled to regain her composure. She was only vaguely aware of Jack leading her to the sidewalk. She followed him like some docile child, hating this role she’d been forced to play. Hating the way she’d reacted. Still unable to do anything else.
She’d completely lost it back there and she was ashamed of that. But it had felt as if she was being buried alive.
Jack was taking her face in his hands, examining it closely. Was he trying to figure out what kind of a lunatic his father was lending money and support to?
Gloria felt like an idiot but her heart refused to stop racing.
“You okay?” he asked gruffly.
The gruff voice helped to center her, pulling her out of crisis mode. But still, she didn’t trust her voice to answer so she merely nodded in response.
“Okay, stay right here,” he instructed her before glancing over his shoulder at the other driver, “while I get some insurance information out of Mario Andretti over there.”
A ring of Good Samaritans and people looking for some excitement had surrounded the offending driver. No one seemed inclined to allow the man to leave. Jack quickly got the necessary information from the driver, who kept babbling his apology, claiming the sun had gotten into his eyes and could they please keep this off the record so his insurance wouldn’t go through the roof?
From the way the other man was talking, Jack got the impression that this wasn’t the man’s first offense.
It made his blood boil. Someone so careless should be kept off the road.
Maybe if you’d kept Ann off the road, she’d still be here today.
Jack blocked out the thought even as it echoed in his brain. He couldn’t go there yet. He suspected that he probably never fully could.
Jack looked at the other man coldly, feeling not even an ounce of pity. He hated recklessness and the man had clearly run the light. “My insurance agent will be in touch.”
Flipping open his phone, he called for roadside assistance. He wasn’t about to go anywhere with the air bags deployed, even if they were now in the process of deflating. Besides, who knew the kind of damage his car had sustained? There was no way he was about to take the road with an unsafe vehicle.
Pocketing the cell phone, he took a few names from the bystanders in case the insurance adjuster would require the testimony of witnesses. He’d learned a long time ago to cover as many bases as was humanly possible. The other driver was sitting moodily in his vehicle, muttering something about hard-nosed businessmen who thought they owned the road. Jack could feel his temper flaring, but he ignored him. There was nothing to be gained by stooping to the driver’s level.
What counted was that no one was hurt.
Gloria had given him one hell of a scare, he thought, looking over at her. Finished taking information, he tucked his Palm Pilot into his pocket and crossed back to the woman standing on the curb.
She looked calmer now. That wild look he’d seen in her eyes was gone. Still, he wasn’t completely at ease about her. The sound of a siren began to cut through the din. Someone had either called the paramedics or the police. Probably both.
“You want to go to the hospital?” he asked Gloria. Funny, he hadn’t thought of her as fragile until now. Like fine china about to crack.
She shook her head, trying to regain her self-esteem. It was at times like this, when everything felt so out of control, that she reverted back to who and what she’d been just two years ago. A woman too weak-willed to make it from one end of the day to the other without help.
You’re a whole new person since then. Remember that.
She shook her head as she squared her shoulders. “No, I’m all right.”
He appeared not to believe her as his eyes seemed to bore holes right through her. “Are you sure? You were screaming back there as if you were being filleted.”
That was a pretty apt description of it, she thought. Not that she had any control over her reaction. Lord knew, she wished she had.
Gloria took a deep breath and looked away, avoiding his probing eyes. She supposed she owed him some kind of an explanation. She kept it at a minimum. Her voice was hardly above a whisper as she said, “I have claustrophobia.”
Jack cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard her. “What?”
Frustrated, Gloria pressed her lips together. She’d managed to put everything else in her life in order, but this was a failing, a shortcoming from her childhood, and she hated it because there was no way she had ever managed to exercise any control over it. For the most part, she tried to think of other things when she couldn’t avoid a situation such as riding up in elevators to floors that were too high up to walk to.
But with this accident there had been no time to prepare. It had stripped her of all her little mind-diverting tricks and left her naked and vulnerable.
“I have claustrophobia,” she repeated more clearly. Her teeth were clenched as she strained the admission through them.
He passed his hands lightly along her arms and shoulders, as if her word was not enough. “So nothing’s damaged or broken,” he pressed.
“Nothing’s damaged or broken,” Gloria confirmed. And then she added in a less audible voice, “Except maybe my self-esteem.”
He surprised her by shrugging away her admission. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said he was being kind.
“Hey, everyone’s got something.” The crowd around them was dispersing. The siren grew louder. This was going to take a while. “If you won’t go to the hospital, want me to call a cab to take you home?”
She was getting her wind back. And with it, her determination. “No, I still have to show you the store location.”
He looked at her, surprised that she could think of that after what had just happened. She could have been killed. She needed time to process that. And he needed time to put it out of his mind. “We can postpone the trip.”
She squared her shoulders again, reminding him of a soldier on the battlefield determined to face his fears. And his enemy. He wondered if he fell under that category and why that seemed to bother him.
“I don’t want to,” she informed him crisply.
There were several strands of hair hanging in her face. Jack had no idea what possessed him to gently brush them back. Or why the simple gesture brought a wave of heat surging through him, beginning with his loins and radiating out. The day was inordinately cold.
Maybe he was suffering from shock and didn’t realize it. The scenario that had just transpired was chillingly similar to the one that had taken place nearly twenty years ago.
Except that then it had been Ann who was driving. Ann who had insisted on taking a joyride while still feeling the effects of an afternoon’s worth of partying. He’d gone with her when he hadn’t been able to get her to surrender her car keys. Maybe it had been the brashness of youth, the brashness that convinced every one of them that they were immortal, that nothing could happen to them because they were young and full of promise. Whatever it was, he felt she’d be safe if he went with her.
A lot he knew.
