In a Heartbeat (4 page)

“Maybe, but it sure isn’t sexy.”

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Donna Richards

The brisk chill winds of the workweek gave way to a warm weekend, uncharacteristic of early October. Only a fool would not take advantage of nature’s early gift, and Angela was no fool. After her stress-laden week, a walk in the flame-splashed woods that bordered the reservoir seemed therapeutic. She even knew the perfect spot, a secluded section a short walk from an isolated parking lot. For years this had been her refuge, her sanctuary away from an over-protective family and her own struggle to be normal.

She steered the car into a deserted parking lot. Oreo jumped back and forth over the front car seat in fevered anticipation of a romp through the woods. “I suppose there’s no harm in letting you off the leash.” Angela looked about, verifying there were no strangers around to object. “Looks like we’re all alone.”

She opened the car door, escaping only seconds before twenty pounds of black and white fur. Oreo raced on ahead, stopping a few feet away to sniff at the innocuous ground. Angela retrieved the dog leash from the front seat, just in case, before closing the car door.

They walked together through the woods bordering the reservoir, Angela lost in her thoughts over the past week, Oreo lost in the titillating smells of leaf mold and wild animal. The dog trotted ahead of her, sniffing at rotting logs and upturning piles of brown leaves with her nose before chasing a surprised chipmunk or squirrel. Accustomed to her forays, Angela paid little attention until Oreo’s mad dash through a low clump of bushes generated a very human, and very male, cry of alarm.

She ran after Oreo through the bushes.

“What in the— Oreo!”

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In a Heartbeat

Angela’s foot caught in the low branch of a bush, propelling her forward, head first into a blur of flannel.

She landed face down in a strange man’s crotch.

“Don’t move!” A strained voice, forced and breathless, warned. Taut denim brushed the humiliating heat of her cheeks. She breathed the deep, musky scent of the man’s most intimate parts. Oreo would be proud, she thought with a shudder.

If only her limp body could somehow dissolve into the ground, she wouldn’t have to eventually see this poor man’s face.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, but the words were lost in the stream of obscenities overhead. The man took a deep breath, inadvertently causing her head to sink deeper into the warm nest of his thighs.

“Jesus.” His voice regained some control and depth, and for an instant, seemed vaguely familiar. “Are you all right?”

Soothing fingers gently pulled at her hair, exposing an ear and part of her cheek to the air and the searching thrust of Oreo’s cold, wet nose.

“Shoo.” He pushed the dog away. “Did you hurt anything?”

My pride,
she wanted to scream.

She turned her head, acutely aware that her chin dragged up the inside of a very muscular thigh. Pushing her hand against the ground, she struggled to sit up until a sharp pain slammed up her leg.

“My ankle,” she groaned.

“Don’t move,” he commanded again. She froze as his thighs jostled beneath her. A steady hand cradled her chin briefly. “Here, rest your head on this.” The synthetic lining of a jacket replaced his hand. He slipped out from under her.

First, she saw retreating denim, then the muddy bank of the reservoir, then his shadow stretching over her onto the bank beyond. She gulped. It must be a trick of the light that his shoulders spanned that impressive width. The shadow doubled over, hands on knees.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Catching my breath.” His voice still sounded a bit shaky.

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Donna Richards

He dropped to one knee. “For a little bit of a thing, you sure pack a wallop.” She turned her head from side to side, but he was too far back for her to see.

“Which ankle?”

“The right.” He worked the laces of her hiking boot and gently tugged it free. Oreo pressed her furry body tight against her side, worming her dog head under her arm.

“Stop that,” Angela scolded. “You’re going to be a mess, scooting along the bank like that.” Oreo responded by inching up higher.

“What kind of dog is that?” the man asked, peeling back her sock.

“A mutt,” she answered, trying to keep her lips clear of the advancing dog nose.

“Well, that mutt scared the hell out of me.” Strong fingers gingerly touched her ankle. She stiffened in reflex. “It’s pretty swollen,” he said.

“Could be broken, or maybe a bad sprain. Can you wiggle your toes?”

She complied, but hissed as pain radiated though her ankle.

“I think I’d better take you to have this checked.” He laid the injured foot back down. “The problem is I’m new in town. You’ll have to tell me where to take you.”

The voice clicked. She rolled to her back and pushed up on her elbows, ignoring the throbbing pain. The friendly gray eyes, the dimple in the right cheek. She gasped.

“Heavens no, not you!” Her head dropped back onto his jacket. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”

“Angela?” The name stumbled out. Recognition drained the warmth from his smile. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” She pushed Oreo away from doing a happy dance on her chest. “I should ask what you’re doing here. You shouldn’t even know this place exists.”

“Fishing.” He stood and walked toward the water’s edge. “At least I was until your dog jumped me.” Bending, he picked up the remnants of a fishing pole from the bank.

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“In October?” she asked, bewildered.

“It helps me think,” he snarled, examining the broken halves of his pole. Slapping the two skinny sticks against his open palm, he marched back to her. “Look, is someone paying you to make my life miserable, or am I just lucky where you’re concerned?”

Angela rolled to her knees, wincing from the pain in her ankle. “If you’ll just hand me Oreo’s leash, I think it flew out of my hand over there.” She pointed with her chin. “We’ll leave you to think in peace.”

“I doubt that,” he muttered, stooping to collect the leash. “How are you going to walk with your ankle swollen?”

She retrieved her boot from the ground and pushed herself up, balancing awkwardly on her left foot. “Perhaps you could find me a stout stick?” she asked hopefully.

He mumbled something she couldn’t quite catch, but the damning tilt of his brows translated for her. Tossing his broken pole under a tree, he marched toward her. Her breath caught, her pulse pounding in time to the throbbing of her ankle.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?” With alarming ease, he swooped her off the ground and into his arms. “You need a stick to finish me off?”

“I didn’t mean—” She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands. At first they fluttered up to his shoulders by instinct, her boot almost whacking him in the head in the process. She opted to keep very still.

He continued down the bank, the dog trotting merrily behind. “I said I’d take you someplace to have that ankle checked and I meant it.”

“But we’re going the wrong way,” she protested. “My car is in the lot on the other side of the woods.”

“My car is closer. You can have someone come back later to get your car.”

“I can’t.” She pushed away from him slightly to make her point. “My purse is in the car. My medicine—”

“You’re sick?” He stopped and studied her face. “You don’t look sick.”

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Donna Richards

“It’s personal.” She buried her head back in his shoulder so he couldn’t see her face. “I have to keep my medicine with me. It’s important.”

“All right. We’ll drive over to your car and collect your purse and your medicine before going to have that ankle x-rayed. Any more objections?”

She shook her head, relieved to see a car parked nearby. Perhaps with a little distance between them, she could regain some semblance of control.

* * *

Severe sprain, the doctor said. Keep it elevated, put ice on the swelling, and don’t walk on it for at least 24 hours. On Monday, after the swelling went down, she was to see an orthopedic doctor. With those words of wisdom, a pair of crutches and an elastic stocking to control the swelling, she was discharged from the clinic.

Renard had only raised an eyebrow when the nurses had recognized her on sight. And if he thought it strange that they had listened to her chest and took her blood pressure before looking at her foot, he didn’t comment. He chuckled with the rest of them when the doctor pronounced this “a common injury”. His absence of questions made the ride home a bit awkward but now as they sat in his car across from her house, the silence became downright annoying.

“You live here all alone?” he asked, assessing the old two-story brick building.

“I live with my mother.” She reached behind the bucket seat, trying to grasp the crutches in the back, but Oreo kept interfering. “But she’s in Florida right now with my sick aunt.” She pushed the furry head back,

“Stop that.”

“And your father?”

The question drew her up short. She stopped fishing for the crutches and glanced up into Renard’s eyes. “He died about ten years ago. Heart failure.”

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“I’m sorry,” he said, a bit awkwardly. He glanced about, at everything but her. Eventually, his gaze found the house.

“How do you plan to get up the porch steps?” He turned back toward her, one brow raised.

“I’ll manage,” she answered tersely, though in truth, she wondered the same thing.

“Isn’t there someone who could help you, a neighbor, a significant other?”

She laughed at the suggestion of a boyfriend. “No, just Oreo and me.”

She scratched between the dog’s floppy ears. “Right, girl?”

“And the dog?” He petted the furry white head as it extended further and further between the seats. Oreo’s tail thumped out a rhythm against the back seat. “You’ll be able to manage this terror on paws all alone while on crutches?”

That one stumped her for a moment. She supposed she could call Stephen. He should be back by now, but she dreaded the smothering attention that plea would bring. Wasn’t she the one who had demanded independence? The one who had asked her family to stop interfering in her life as if she were still an invalid, too weak to do anything but ask for help?

“Is she housebroken?”

Indignity on behalf of her pet flooded her. “Of course she is,” she snapped, “not that it should matter to—”

“Give me your keys.”

“Excuse me?” Indignity on her own behalf made her twist sideways so she could face him. She scooted her back to the door to maintain distance. “Why do you want my keys?”

“The company provided me with a fully furnished ranch-style house to use until I find a place of my own.” He spoke more to the windshield than to her face. “There are four bedrooms, no stairs to hobble up and down, and plenty of room for Fido here.”

“Oreo,” she corrected, “and the answer is no.”

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Donna Richards

“Look, I’m not interested in anything but giving you an alternative to doing permanent damage to your ankle.” He turned toward her. “The house is too big for one person.” His lips turned up in a faint smile. “We wouldn’t even have to see each other, if you like.”

“Mr. Renard…”

“Hank,” he interjected. She glanced up. “My friends call me Hank.

And after our chance meeting this afternoon, you know parts of me better than my best friend.”

She lowered her gaze, her memory of that meeting burning bright on her cheeks. “Okay, Hank. It’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer, but I can’t afford to lose my job.”

“Who said anything about losing your job?”

She looked up at him askance. “You did. Twice.”

He dismissed her response with a wave of his hand. “I wasn’t serious.

You just…managed to catch me at a bad time.”

Skeptical, she wondered if he ever had a
good
time. She took a breath. “If Falstaff and Watterson found out I was staying at your house, they’d fire me for certain.”

“We’re not meeting for some clandestine affair.” He looked incredulous, as if the thought of her as a sexual partner was beneath consideration. The dismissal stabbed at her. “I’m only offering a spare bedroom. Why should that jeopardize your job?”

“Because of appearances.” She fumbled with a button on her coat, afraid he might recognize her disappointment if he saw her face. “Even if it appears that we’re not involved, then Falstaff and Watterson could question my objectivity. They might not trust my judgment when auditing your books.”

“Let me get this straight.” She heard laughter in his voice. “If you exercise some common sense and accept my offer, you get fired. But practically emasculating me, that’s okay?” He hesitated. “And I pay you for this?”

She yanked on the door handle, wanting to run from his laughter.

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“Wait.” His hand grasped her thigh, stopping her exit. She froze. The heavy denim of her jeans felt almost sheer beneath his touch, especially as his fingers drew tiny circles on her leg.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” His voice, so gentle and apologetic, lured her acceptance, but she kept her face turned to the window so he couldn’t see her hurt. “The truth is,” he said, “the house I’m in is extremely private. More people have probably seen you sitting in my car here than will see you at my place.”

That pulled her around. She hadn’t considered how this innocent discussion might appear to someone driving by.

“I guarantee I won’t say anything to Falstaff and Watterson.” He raised his hand as if taking an oath. “Unless you tell them, I don’t think your job is in jeopardy.” His dimple deepened as his lips lifted in a smile.

“After all, we both know your objectivity is uncompromised, at least as far as I’m concerned.”