3
Headlights illuminatedthe interior of the SUV. Relief swept through Grace as she checked the rearview mirror, hoping that she was going to see an emergency vehicle pulling up behind her. She wasn’t picky. She’d take a police cruiser. Firetruck. Ambulance. Tow truck.
The flurry of white made it nearly impossible to know for sure whether or not it was any of those things, but she was crossing her fingers, toes, eyes and legs that it was. The more she squinted, it looked like it was a truck. Just a plain truck. And an old truck at that. A man stepped out of it. She couldn’t make out any of his features, just that he was tall. And huge.
Suddenly a headline popped in her mind.
Woman Found Murdered in Snowstorm
What a tragic ending to what she wanted to be a new beginning. She’d lived her entire life fueled by success and stability, and she’d just experienced an Oprah Aha Moment and realized that those things might not be the most important things. There might be more to life than what was in her bank account or if her last name was on the side of a building.
But if she died now, she’d never find out the answer to that question.
Her heart was pounding in her chest but had also somehow managed to get lodged in her throat as well. She glanced around the vehicle for some sort of weapon. The only thing she had was her pepper spray keychain, which she was pretty sure was expired.
Did pepper spray expire? She’d need to look into that.
She mentally prepared herself as she saw the large figure approaching the driver’s side of her vehicle. She would need to hold the spray extremely close to the murderer’s face if she had any hope of neutralizing him. With this wind there was a very good chance she’d be the one that was blinded.
“Shit,” she whispered under her breath, and she looked back to keep an eye on the stranger.
The headlights on his truck were still shining, lighting him from behind, so all she could make out was that there was a huge form approaching her. She blinked and noticed the print on the bottom of the mirror.
OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
Fuck. This gigantic shadow creature was even closer than it appeared to be. Now her heart was tapping faster than a woodpecker’s beak on a pine tree.
Through the fear that was gripping her, Grace did have a moment of self-reflection that her response to this situation may be an indicator that she watched too much True Crime. It might be time to start incorporating some romantic comedies, or docu-series into her viewing lineup. She was promising her inner terrified self that she would do just that when there was a knock on her window.
Grace knew that ignoring the hopefully rescuer/possibly murderer was not a viable plan. She had to face whichever one it turned out to be. If she was Catholic, she’d make the sign of the cross but since she wasn’t she opted to take a deep breath as she prayed that this beast of a human was here to help not harm and pressed her finger on the button in her door.
A freezing gust of wind whipped through the heated space as the power window lowered. Her face scrunched against the formidable cold as she looked to her side and all the air whooshed from her lungs and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up at attention. It wasn’t the sudden and jarring drop in temperature that stole her ability to breathe and suddenly gave her hair follicles perfect posture. Nope. Her lack of oxygen and tiny hair salute was thanks to what the man standing at the side of her vehicle looked like.
Grace had never seen a man who was equal parts angelically beautiful and ruggedly handsome, but that’s exactly what she saw now. And for, perhaps, the first time in her life she was rendered speechless.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She closed her jaw and then tried again but failed at the second attempt. Her third try was slightly better. She did manage to get some sound out, but it ended up being nothing more than a squeak.
A squeak. Grace Wells had never squeaked in her life.
Her eyes began to sting, and she realized that besides not breathing, she’d also forgotten to blink. She reasoned that somewhere in her subconscious she must have feared that if she shut her eyes this Adonis would vanish. Thankfully, after her lids shut and reopened, he was still there. She was still staring into the most magical deep brown eyes she’d ever seen in her life surrounded by long, thick, dark lashes. Her eyes were still feasting on a jawline so chiseled Michelangelo could not have done a better job himself.
He cleared his throat and asked, “Car trouble?”
The deep, baritone voice came out of a perfect mouth surrounded by stubble which for some reason Grace wanted to reach up and stroke. She had to grip the steering wheel to keep her hands from reaching up and petting this perfect specimen’s face just to make sure it was real.
Wait.
Maybe it wasn’t real.
Maybe this was a dream.
It was totally plausible that Grace had fallen asleep, and this was her imagination playing out some damsel-in-distress fantasy that she didn’t even know she subconsciously had.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
The ma’am snapped her out of her inner debate and gave her her answer. She was definitely not dreaming. She would never be called ma’am in her dreams.
Sure, she understood that it was polite to address her in such a formal manner. And, she hadn’t always had an aversion to it. The dislike developed after she’d turned thirty-five and noticed tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes that were commonly referred to as crow’s feet.