jaw set as hard as stone, he’d nodded as if he understood, but then he’d left. Without a word. Without a backward glance.
That had been almost a year ago.
During the endless fall and winter, through storms that brought floods to much of the southwest, she’d waited, sure he would write. But he hadn’t contacted her, not even when she’d sent a note that explained more fully. She’d given up hope. Then out of the blue came an invitation to visit the ranch. That had to mean something.
She put the shaky elation and haunting doubts aside to concentrate on finding the right road. She didn’t want to make another wrong turn.
“I see a trail of dust,” she said, peering through her driving glasses at this welcome indication of another vehicle. It was on a side road off to the right of the county road they traveled, which was also a gravel surface. The other driver had probably seen her dust, too.
The earlier concern eased a bit. “We can stop the driver and get directions.”
“He’s coming awfully fast. Be careful. He may be a rustler or something.”
Lyric cast her aunt a partly amused, partly exasperated glance at this bit of advice.
Rustlers? Ask her if she cared.
She slowed in anticipation of flagging the oncoming vehicle at the intersection of the two roads. “At present, I’d face down the devil himself if he would help get us to our destination.”
Her aunt laughed at the quip. The older woman was like a grandmother to Lyric and her two younger brothers. Aunt Fay had never married, but she’d taken in her nephew, Lyric’s father, years ago when his parents had died in a traffic accident. She’d always treated the family as if they were her children.
“Oh!” the spinster gasped.
Lyric swung the steering wheel hard to the right as a truck tore out of the gravel side road at breakneck speed and nearly hit them. She felt the compact station wagon graze a large rock as they careened into a shallow ditch at the side of the road.
The back tires slid sideways. She turned into the skid and took her foot off the brake. The rear skittered back and forth on the loose gravel. As the tires regained traction and she had the car under control once more, a pile of stones encased in a section of fence to form a corner post loomed before them.
“Oh, no,” she said.
They hit the stones with a resounding thud.
Air bags blossomed on each side of the front seat. Lyric spared a worry for her relative as the bag hit her face, smothering her for a few seconds and pressing her glasses painfully onto her nose.
Dizzy and frightened, Lyric remembered to turn the engine off, then she thrashed her way free of the collapsing air bag and turned to her aunt. After pushing the plastic aside, Lyric searched the older woman’s face for damage.
“Aunt Fay?” she said.
The other woman didn’t answer, didn’t move.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” a male voice asked.
“My aunt,” Lyric said. “I think she’s hurt.” She snapped open the seat belt and reached for her aunt’s wrist to check her pulse.
“Don’t move her,” the man ordered.
He went around the station wagon and opened the door. With a competence that was reassuring, he checked the unconscious woman after removing her glasses, which by some miracle weren’t broken, and sticking them in his pocket.
Lyric watched his hands run gently over Aunt Fay’s head, down her neck, where he paused to check her pulse, then continue over her shoulders and along her arms. His fingers were long and slender, the skin evenly tanned to where the white shirtsleeves were rolled up on his forearms. A hat hid most of his face. He bent farther into the car and examined her aunt’s knees and legs.
Lyric looked, too, and saw red marks indicating the bruises that would be forming soon.
He raised his head. “Ms. Gibson?” he said. “Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”
Lyric’s heart stopped, then pounded with a fierce, staccato beat. She gasped like a heroine in a melodrama as she studied the man in disbelief.
“Trevor?”
He faced her then, his eyes, which she knew to be as blue as the summer sky, appearing dark as midnight in the fading glow of the sunset. “Yeah, it’s me.”
They stared at each other in silence, a thousand questions and memories wrapping around their frozen forms. One thing for sure—there was no welcome in his gaze.
Aunt Fay opened her eyes and focused on one, then the other of them. “Where are my glasses?”
“Here,” Trevor said. He slipped the thin gold frames gently onto the older woman’s face.
“Are you all right?” Lyric asked, searching her beloved relative’s face for signs of pain.
“I’ve felt better,” her aunt said, then gave the man a smile. “Hello, Trevor. How are you?”
“I’m okay…other than feeling like a heel. There isn’t usually much traffic out this way.”
“I’m sure,” her aunt agreed with dry humor.
“Let me check the damage to your car, then we’ll see if it’ll run. It’s only a couple of miles to the ranch.” He paused and looked at Lyric. “How did you get on this back road, anyway?”
“A seriously wrong turn, I think.”
He nodded, his face grim but otherwise without expression. After getting a flashlight from his truck, he looked over the front end of the station wagon. “A badly dinged bumper and a slightly crumpled nose, but otherwise it looks okay. The radiator seems intact. I don’t see any fluid leaking out. Crank it up and let’s see if she’ll run.”
Lyric turned on the key. The engine purred to life at once. Trevor returned to the front of the vehicle. He nodded in her direction, indicating everything looked fine.
“Back up,” he said, coming to her window. “Keep the wheels straight.”
She cautiously backed onto the road. Trevor gave the car a push when one tire slipped on the gravel and dirt in the shallow ditch.
“Okay,” he called when she was clear. “Follow me.”
After he turned his truck around, she fell into place behind him, far enough back that his dust didn’t choke them. In less than five minutes they pulled up before a horse rail in front of a sprawling ranch house, its center portion made of massive logs, the wings on either side more modern structures of stone and wood.
Trevor honked his horn, then climbed out of the truck and came to the passenger side of the station wagon. “Watch your step now,” he said to Aunt Fay. “Careful. Lean on me while we see if your legs are okay. You have pain anywhere?”
“I’m not sure,” the
