you can’t tell how bad you’re hurt right off. It’s good to go to the hospital, let ’em take their pictures and run their tests. Make sure you’re A-OK. Now move your fingers for me. Can you feel that?”
“Yep.” Brody’s relief was tempered by the cervical collar they snapped around his neck. His toes moved, too. Another good sign.
That’s when she moved into his line of sight. His golden haired rescuer leaned against the front quarter panel of the sheriff’s cruiser and crossed her long legs at the ankles.
My, but she was fine. Tall, slim and pure goodness. Her long blond hair shimmered in the sun and danced in the breeze. Her blue eyes were now hidden behind sunglasses, but her rosebud mouth was drawn into a severe frown as she gestured toward the road, as if describing what had happened.
She wore a faded denim jacket over a light pink shirt and stylish jeans. The sleeves were rolled up to reveal the glint of a gold watch on one wrist and a glitter of a gold bracelet on the other. Her voice rose and fell and he was too far away to pick up on her words, but the sound soothed him. Made longing flicker to life in the middle of his chest.
He’d never felt such a zing of awareness over a woman before. He was on duty. He was the youngest senior agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He knew better than to take a personal interest in anyone when he was dedicated to a case, to upholding the laws of this great land.
What he ought to do was put her out of his mind, ignore the sting of longing in his chest and concentrate on his job.
Then she turned in profile to gesture toward the side of the road, and that’s when he recognized her. The perfect slope of a nose, the delicate cut of cheekbone and chin. She was one of the McKaslin girls. Michelle.
The youngest daughter of the family he’d come to investigate.
Chapter Two
In the harsh fluorescent lights of Bozeman General’s waiting room, Michelle stared down at her new toe-thong, wedge sandals that went so perfectly with her favorite bootleg jeans.
It was a perfect sandal. And on sale, too. She’d been wanting a pair of wedge sandals for over two months now, salivating each and every time she saw a model wearing them on the pages of her beloved magazines. So, when she’d saw them in the window display at the mall on her way to the Christian bookstore, she’d bought them on impulse.
An hour ago, she’d felt rad. Better than she’d been in a long time. Tapping across the parking lot to her truck with her shopping bags had given her great satisfaction. As if all her problems in life were solved with six pairs of new shoes.
Until she’d seen the medics working on the motorcycle guy, their faces grim. Their equipment had reflected the sun’s harsh rays in ruthless stabs of light that had hurt her eyes and cut straight to her soul.
She could still see that man wipe out right in front of her. The drag of his body on the pavement, the ricochet of his head hitting the blacktop, the deathly stillness after his big body had skidded to a stop.
She shivered, horrified all over again. It was by God’s grace he’d opened his eyes, she decided. A miracle that he’d survived. She’d never realized before how fragile a human life could be. Flesh and bone meeting concrete and steel…well, she hated to think of all that could have happened.
Or all the catastrophic ways the man the firemen called Brody could still be hurt.
“Go on home,” Sheriff Cameron Durango had told her at the scene.
Go home? She hadn’t caused the accident, but she felt responsible. She couldn’t explain why. She just was. From the moment she saw his big male form sprawled out on the road, the rise and fall of his chest, the ripple of the wind stirring the flaps of his jacket, she’d been involved.
When she’d lifted his visor and saw the hard cut of his high cheekbones, the straight blade of his nose and the tight line of his strong mouth, he looked strong and vulnerable at the same moment.
She’d seen him crash. She’d seen him bleed. She couldn’t just walk away as if it hadn’t happened. As if she didn’t care. As if she didn’t have a heart. She couldn’t have left a wounded bird in the road, let alone a wounded man. Even if she’d been waiting for hours and hours.
Where was he? What was taking so long? Okay, the waiting room was crammed with people coughing and sneezing and one man was holding a cloth to his cut hand—the nurse came out and took him away quickly. They were busy, she got that, but what about Brody? Was he so hurt that he was in surgery or something scary like that? Maybe she ought to go up to the desk and ask.
She grabbed her purse and tucked her cell safely inside. With great relish, she abandoned the hard black plastic chair that was making her back ache. She wove around sick people and some cowboy’s big-booted feet that were sticking way out into the aisle.
The line behind the check-in window was long. She fell into place. But when she looked up, she nearly fell off her wedge-sandals at the sight of Brody limping down the wide hallway toward her.
Alive. Walking on his own steam. He looked bruised but strong, and her spirit lifted at the sight. Relief left her trembling and weak, and wasn’t that really weird because he was like a total stranger?
He was holding his helmet in his left hand and a slip of paper in the right. The white slash of a bandage over his left brow was a shocking contrast to his brown hair and sun-golden skin.
His eyes were dark, shadowed with pain and his mouth a tight unhappy line as he strolled up to her. “I remember you.”
He could have said that with more enthusiasm. Like with a low dip to his voice, the way a movie star did when he was zeroing in on his ladylove for the first time. He’d say, with perfect warmth in the words, “I remember you,” and the heroine would flutter and fall instantly in love.
Yeah, that would be better than the way Brody said it, as if she were a bad luck charm he wanted to avoid. “They’re letting you walk out of here, so that must mean you’re all right.”
“My ankle’s wrapped. I’ve got a few stitches and I’m as good as new.”
“I’m glad. I mean, like, you really crashed hard. I couldn’t go home until I knew for sure that you were all right.”
So, that’s what she was doing here.
Brody stuffed the pain prescription in his pocket and mulled that little piece of information over. According to his research, Michelle McKaslin was the spoiled favorite of the family, the youngest of six girls. The oldest had been killed in a plane crash years ago. She was working two jobs, one at the local hair salon and the other at her sister’s coffee shop, and still living at home. The Intel he had on her was that she loved to shop, talk on the phone with her friends and ride her horse.
“You came here to see a doc, too,” he said, not believing her. Nobody sat in a waiting room for hours without a good reason. Unless she suspected who he was. What had he muttered before he’d come to? Had he given himself away? “I saw your truck skid to a stop. Hit your head on the windshield, didn’t you?”
Her big blue eyes grew wider. “Oh, no, I was wearing my seat belt. It just looked so scary with the way they put the neck collar on you and took you off in the ambulance. I can’t help feeling responsible, you know, since
