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She handed the clipboard to him. Looked around his broad shoulder to see that the driver was now sitting on the back of the ambulance, submitting to Palmer’s belated but thorough examination. She could see Noah behind the wheel talking on the mic. “Hate that paperwork,” she murmured lightly, eyeing her brother.
He grunted. “Be glad neither one of you was hurt. Otherwise there’d be a helluva lot more.”
“I am.” She couldn’t have lived with herself if she’d harmed someone else. Still, she’d never been fond of putting her name on a bunch of legal documents. A trait passed down from her mother.
“Shane—”
“Don’t sweat it, turnip,” he advised after a moment.
She rolled her eyes at the old nickname, but subsided against the seat. The interior was getting cold. She had on a wool jacket and Shane’s heater was blasting. The driver wore only a leather bomber jacket. He’d surely be freezing by now. “Couldn’t Palmer give him a blanket or something?”
Shane glanced over his shoulder. “S’pose so,” he agreed, then turned his attention back to the report he was writing, his gaze sliding over her. “Stu was yakking my ear off on the phone about the way you ran out on him and Wendell when you called.”
“What’d he think you were going to do? Arrest me because I didn’t stick around until he could force me into having dinner with Wendell Pierce as well as lunch? Give me a break.” Stu had manipulated her into going out to his ranch, playing on her sympathies to cook a meal for him since his left hand was currently in a cast, knowing full well that she’d be too polite to walk back out again when she found Wendell there, too.
She peered around Shane again. The driver was watching her and she felt the impact of his striking gaze across the yards. Her skin prickled.
It was a decidedly unusual sensation.
“Stu wants you to be happy and settled.”
“Like the two of you are?” She forced herself to look back at her brother, raising her eyebrows pointedly. “Like Evie is?” She shook her head. Neither of her brothers were married, or currently involved with anyone for that matter. And their sister, Evie, was… well, Evie was another story entirely. “It’s pretty humiliating that my own brothers think I can’t find a man for myself,” she said half under her breath.
Even if it were true.
Not that she intended to admit it. She was already a pathetic marshmallow where her family was concerned. No need to provide them with her more ammunition.
“You’re twenty-seven,” Shane said. “When’s the last time you went on a date?” His pen scratched across the paper. “With someone other than Wendell Pierce.”
One lunch inadvertently shared at the counter of the Luscious Lucius did not really qualify as a date in her opinion, and she hadn’t ever intended to repeat it, not even in the sunny kitchen of Stu’s ranch house. But if she didn’t count that… well then, she really was pathetic.
There was nothing wrong with Wendell, except that she had little in common with the brown-haired, tall, gangly forty-year-old rancher and even less of an attraction for him.
“Maybe I’ve been busy. Watching Evie’s kids. Helping Stu out at the garage whenever Riva’s gone. Doing your filing down at the station.” All when she wasn’t busy with her own responsibilities at Tiff’s, the family’s boardinghouse, and trying to carve out enough time on her own to do what she loved best—writing.
Shane barely gave her a second glance. He finished scratching on his clipboard, and strode across the highway toward her pickup truck, studying the snowy blacktop as he went. A wrecker had pulled up on the shoulder, and Hadley saw Gordon and Freddie Finn get out and slide their way down the embankment.
She closed the door again to preserve the heat and nibbled the inside of her lip as she watched Gordon hook up the wreckage to chains and slowly maneuver it back up the incline. It didn’t seem possible, but the car looked even worse as it peeled away from the tree trunk.
She looked over at the driver again. His expression was unreadable, but a muscle flexed rhythmically in his jaw. She recognized that type of movement, having seen it often enough over the years on Shane’s face.
She sighed a little, hauled in a deep breath and pushed open the truck door. She walked over to him and was grateful when he didn’t just sort of duck and run for cover. He undoubtedly considered her a menace. “I’m sorry about your car,” she offered. It came out more tentative than she’d have liked, but then, so much about her did. What was one more instance to add to a lifetime of them? “Have you had it a long time?”
“Long enough.” His voice was surprisingly neutral, given the circumstances.
“Indiana,” she murmured, spying the license plate on his car. “Where were you heading?”
“Why?” His gaze sliced her way.
She lifted her shoulders, hugging her arms to herself. “Most people come through Lucius on their way to somewhere else. We’re barely a bump in the road.” Maybe that was a slight understatement. Lucius had its own hospital, its own schools and three different churches. There was also a fairly decent crop of restaurants and even a movie theater, complete with four screens. “I, um, have a cell phone if you need to call anyone.” He didn’t wear a wedding ring, but that didn’t have to mean anything.
And why she was noticing his ring finger she had no idea. Hadn’t she spent ten minutes that day already railing at Stu that she was not looking for a husband?
His lips twisted a little. She thought he almost looked amused. Almost. “No, thanks.”
Which didn’t exactly say that he’d had no one to call.
She shifted. Pushed her fingers into the pockets of her jacket. Freddie had climbed up on the back of the tow truck and was guiding the chains in some complicated fashion as her brother controlled a lever. The car creaked and moaned as it was pulled upward onto the slanted ramp. She winced a little and looked up at the man again. “Does your head hurt very badly?”
“Not as much as the car hurts.” As if he couldn’t stand to look at it any longer, he turned his attention to her pickup, where a good portion of candy-apple red from his car was decorating the side of her truck. It was the brightest color on what was otherwise pretty indeterminate.
“Is Palmer going to take you in to the hospital?”
“No.”
She was surprised. “Palmer’s a great EMT. The best. So’s Noah. But you should probably still see a doctor about your head.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Are you sure? I thought head injuries were tricky. What if you have a concussion or something?”
“Then I’ll deal with it.”
He didn’t sound as if he were used to being questioned, and she bit back more comments.
Shane had clearly finished looking at whatever he’d figured needing looking at and was heading toward them again. He held out his clipboard to the driver. “Fill that out. I’ll need to see your license, too.”
The man didn’t take the clipboard. “We can settle this matter without all that.” His voice brooked no disagreement, and Hadley mentally sat back a little, curious to see how her brother, I-am-sheriff-hear-meroar, reacted.
“Some reason you don’t want to file an accident report?” Shane’s voice had turned that silky way it did whenever he was really displeased. He knew where Hadley’s distaste for accident reports came from, she knew. But a stranger wouldn’t be accorded a similar understanding.
Nevertheless, the driver looked unfazed, despite the gauze and tape covering half of his forehead. “Just the time it all takes,” he said. “Neither one of us is hurt and we both agree to pay for our own damages.”
Hadley made an involuntary sound, looking pointedly at his forehead. The truth was, they hadn’t agreed to anything.
“My sister pulls out in front of you, and you’re willing to cover the damages on your own car.” Shane’s gaze shifted to the vehicle in question that was now secured atop the flatbed of the tow truck.
“That’s a ’68 Shelby.”
The driver’s expression didn’t change. “I was going too fast. We’re both culpable.”
Shane sighed a little. Settled his snow-dusted cowboy hat on his head a little more squarely. “I can measure the skid marks,” he said, all conversational-like. “To prove the point. But we both know what I’m gonna find.” His smile was cool. “You weren’t speeding. So that just leaves me a mite curious as to why you’re in a such a hurry to go no place.”
“I have business to attend to.” The driver still seemed unfazed, and Hadley had to admire him for it. Not many people could stand their ground against that particular smile of Shane Golightly’s. Even Stu, Shane’s twin, had been known to back down in the face of it.
If the man wanted to claim a share of responsibility in the accident, who was she to argue? After all, she didn’t particularly want that report filed, either.
Shane appeared to be considering the driver’s smooth explanation. “Well. The registration is in order.” He tapped a folded piece of paper that was still in his possession. “Let’s just look at your license for now. Then we’ll see.”
The driver’s expression didn’t change one whit. “I don’t have it on me.”
Oh, dear. Hadley looked down at her boots, scuffling them a little in the skiff of snow.
“Well, that’s kind of a problem now, isn’t it?” Shane’s voice was pleasant.
She closed her eyes. Shane never sounded that pleasant unless he was completely and totally peeved.
The driver didn’t look like a car thief. Not that she necessarily knew what car thieves looked like. But if she were going to write one into one of her stories, she wouldn’t have given him thick, chestnut-colored hair and vivid blue eyes with a rear end that was world class. She’d have given him piercings and tattoos and slick grease in his hair, and he definitely wouldn’t be the hero—
She jerked her thoughts back to front and center. “Shane,” she said in that dreaded, tentative voice of hers. “You don’t have to give him the third-degree, surely. Mister, um—” she glanced up at the driver and simply lost her train of thought when his gaze found hers and held.
“Wood,” he said.
Dear Lord, please don’t let him be a car thief. He’s just too pretty for that. “Pardon me?”
“Wood,” he said again. “Tolliver. Atwood, actually, but nobody calls me that.” The corner of his lips twisted. “Not if they want me to answer.”
There was a molasses quality in his deep voice, she realized. Faint, but definitely Southern. And it was about as fine to listen to as her dad’s singing every Sunday morning. When she was alive, her mother’s voice had possessed a similar drawl.
With a start she realized she was staring at him.
Again. It was even more of a start to find that he was staring at her right back. Her skin prickled again, and it was not at all unpleasant.
“Well, Atwood Tolliver,” Shane said, still in that dangerously pleasant way. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to bring you in. Just till we verify that you really are who you say you are.”
The driver’s eyes froze over a little, and the hot little prickles underneath the surface of her skin turned as cold as the air seeping through her too-thin jacket.
Of course the man was staring at her. Undoubtedly wishing he’d never had the misfortune to drive anywhere near Lucius, Montana, or her.
The best-looking guy she’d ever seen in her entire life—on television, the movies or in her imagination—and her brother was gearing up to arrest him.
Chapter Two
Bring him in?
It wasn’t often that Dane didn’t get what he wanted. But right now, he’d hit the trifecta in that regard. Judging by the sheriff’s implacable expression, Dane was not going to get out of the delightful experience of some Podunk little sheriff’s office. He was not going to be driving the one-of-a-kind Shelby he’d picked up at auction to his friend, Wood, when his task in Montana was done.
Not anytime soon, anyway. The wreck of Wood’s car was even now being hauled away.
And third, the woman—Hadley—might be the prettiest female he’d encountered in a long while, but she looked like she’d jump out of her skin if a rabbit so much as looked at her.
Dane Rutherford was no rabbit. He liked to look and touch.
He’d be doing neither.
“If you’re going to impound the car, there’s not much I can do to stop you,” he told the sheriff. Not much, yet. “But you probably realize that it’s in your sister’s best interest that we each take care of our own damages.” He pulled out his money clip and heard Hadley’s soft inhalation.
The sheriff’s expression didn’t change much, though his gaze focused on the folded bills in Dane’s hand. “Hadley,” he said without looking at her. “Does your truck still run?”
The woman cast a wary look at Dane, her gaze going in a little triangle between the money, the sheriff’s face and Dane. “I don’t know.”
“Try it. If it does, drive it into town,” the sheriff said flatly. “Meet us at the station.”
Her soft lips compressed. Even with her nose all pink from the cold, she had the kind of face a man could look at for a while. A long while. “Shane, come on. You’re not really—”
“Go.”
She looked up at Dane again, her expression seeming apologetic. Rightfully so, he reminded himself, given her terrible driving.
“Hadley.” The sheriff’s voice was warning.
She exhaled abruptly and turned on her heel, stomping across the highway to the decrepit truck, her slender hips swaying beneath the short pink excuse of a jacket she wore. She climbed up in the cab, ground the gears a few times as she disconnected the truck from the mangled mileage marker, and lumbered off down the road, leaving behind a puff of exhaust.
When Dane looked back at the sheriff, he knew the other man was perfectly aware of where Dane’s attention had been.
“Now, then. You want to finish the bribe it looks like you’re gearing up to offer, or do you want to tell me what’s really going on here?”
Hadley grumbled under her breath as she coaxed her ailing pickup truck all the way into town. She pulled into the lot beside Stu’s garage and gathered up all the items that were still strewn across the seat, replacing them in her purse. Then she went into the small office that her brother used when he was in town working at the garage. Some might have thought it odd that Stu Golightly was a rancher and ran the town’s only auto-body and repair shop. Personally, she considered it a great convenience. And the darned man better not have the nerve to bill her for the repairs, either, since it was his own fault she’d been so preoccupied.
The tow truck bearing the crumpled old convertible was parked near the closed bay door, and she carefully looked away from the wreckage and went inside.
It was nearly quitting time, but Riva was still sitting behind the counter painting her fingernails a putrid shade of blue and didn’t even look up until Hadley plopped her keys next to the woman’s splayed fingers.
Riva popped her gum, her penciled-in eyebrows lifting. She was seventy if she was a day, but that didn’t stop Riva from keeping “fashionable,” as she called it.
“Guess you had a little problem today,” she observed. “What’d you hit?”
Hadley told her. “I’m afraid Stu will be busy with that old car there first, though.”
Riva cackled at that and nodded her bright-pink head. “That he will. Your brother’s gonna wet his pants when he gets a chance to work on a piece of heaven like that. You probably oughta just go talk to your insurance agent about the claim now. Won’t be pretty, I expect.”
“Actually, we’re handling our own damages,” Hadley said, mentally crossing her fingers that this would still be the case. Unless her stubborn brother made Wood mad enough to rescind the offer.
Atwood Tolliver. That definitely could not be the name of a car thief, right? It sounded so old-fashioned. So upstanding. And the man himself had seemed so… so—
“You going to stand there and daydream all day?” Riva’s voice finally penetrated, and Hadley flushed a little, marshaling her thoughts. “Heard that you pulled right in front of him out near Stu’s place.”
“Nothing like the Lucius grapevine to get the word spread,” Hadley murmured.
“So why’s he willing to pay his own damages on a car like that?”
Hadley looked over her shoulder, through the somewhat grimy window to the tow truck outside.
“Like what? That car’s even older than my pickup.”
Riva snapped her gum and shook her head. “Honey, it is a mystery to me how you can have a brother who knows cars the way he does, and be as oblivious as you are.” She poked her nail polish brush back into the bottle, drew out a fresh batch of blue and slid it over her half-inch long nails. “That’s a ’68 Shelby GT500 convertible. It won’t be cheap to fix.”
Hadley looked again out the window. Down the street a ways, Shane’s SUV had pulled to a stop in front of the sheriff’s office. “It’s valuable then?” Her voice sounded too weak for her liking, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Besides, she’d known Riva since she was barely out of kindergarten.
