say to a total stranger—offering to get into his car and drive off into the night. She tried to backtrack a bit. “It might be better if I stay with my car, and you can call a garage to come and pull me out of the mud.”
“You can do that, but I’m afraid this isn’t the city. There’s no garage that would be open now. But if you want to wait here, I’ll call when I get to a phone and maybe you’ll get lucky. If not, lock the doors and someone will be here in the morning.”
Mallory had taken care of herself since she was barely a teenager, and maybe she hadn’t made the best decisions in the world, but she had often survived on her instinct. And right now her instinct for survival told her to take the ride, thank the man, get to Mills’s house and try to salvage the job if she could. “I don’t want to wait here all night,” she admitted. “I’ll take the ride.”
“Then put on your emergency lights and let’s get going.”
Mallory didn’t have to be told twice. She went to her car, opened the door, reached inside, pushed the button for the emergency lights, and they began to flash brilliant yellow into the rain and night. She closed the door, and as she turned, she stumbled on the slippery ground.
The man had her by the upper arm in the next second, his strong fingers pressing through the cotton of her soaked raincoat and steadying her. Mallory felt as if one of the bolts of lightning had shot through her at the contact, then he was urging her toward his car. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, close to her side.
By moving quickly ahead of him, she broke the contact. Keeping her head down to watch her footing on the rain-soaked road, she got to the car and could make out the dark shape of a low sports car with an engine that purred with a throaty idle. An expensive car.
Mallory circled to the passenger side, but before she could open the door, the man was there, reaching around her to pull the handle up. He was so close that Mallory felt his heat, and she inhaled the mingled scent of rain, mellow after-shave and a certain maleness. Then the door was open, and Mallory quickly got into the brown leather interior lit softly by dome and side lights.
She saw a dash that glowed with red-and-green gages, and instruments that would make a jet plane look simple. As the door closed, the interior lights went out. Mallory settled in the bucket seat and pushed the hood from her wet hair and swiped at the hair clinging to her face, then turned as the driver’s door opened.
The interior lights flashed on again as the stranger easily maneuvered his rangy frame behind the leather-covered steering wheel. As he turned to push the umbrella into the area behind the front seats, Mallory got a clear look at him and she felt her breath catch.
The man from the theater, as dark as the night itself, and as disturbing as the storm that crashed around them outside. “You,” she breathed.
He looked right at her as he ran a hand over his damp black hair, slicking it back from his roughly handsome face. “The Ghost of Christmas Past,” he murmured, his dark eyes unblinking and intense in their scrutiny.
“How could…?” She touched her tongue to her lips. She could sense that aura of danger he had exuded last night at the theater, and that sensuality, as well, and she felt uncomfortable in these closed quarters. “How could you be here?”
The wind caught the door and slammed it shut, cutting off the lights inside, but it did nothing to diminish the impact of finding herself in this man’s car. He turned to settle behind the wheel. “I drove and didn’t go into a ditch.”
“I’m not in a ditch,” she said, hating the way her breathing tightened and her heartbeat refused to settle into a normal rhythm. She was totally alone with this man, and every nerve in her body was on edge.
“You’re stuck,” he pointed out as he put the car in gear, the windshield wipers swiping at the sheeting rain. The car moved to the left and headed up the road.
“What were you doing at the theater?” she asked.
“I like live theater.”
She hadn’t had any sense that he belonged at the theater when she’d run into him. “You’re connected with the theater?”
“No, I got lost going to the men’s room.” He maneuvered a sharp corner, then headed uphill. “I hear the play closed, that what I saw was the last performance.”
“Yes, it was.” She stared at him as she nervously fingered the wet fabric of her coat. She could see little of him beyond a blurred profile touched by the low lights from the dash. “It just isn’t a good time for small theater companies right now.”
“Since it’s already closed, I guess the bad publicity about the accident won’t hurt it.”
“Excuse me?”
“The hit-and-run victim outside the theater. I understood that she was a cast member.”
The words were said evenly and without emotion, but they set Mallory’s stomach into knots. “She was.”
“She died?”
“No, she’s still alive.” Mallory closed her eyes for a moment, then exhaled and looked back at the man. “How did you know about all that?”
“The newspaper.”
She hadn’t even thought about the accident making the news. “The car never stopped. It’s so senseless. If she hadn’t gone out just then, or if it hadn’t been raining…”
“Life boils down to chance, doesn’t it?”
“A lot of times it does.” She forced her hands to stop clenching and pressed them on the damp fabric of her coat by her thighs. “What are you doing out here in this storm?”
“Chance,” he said softly. “The same as getting lost on the way to the rest room and meeting a ghost.”
She nibbled on her lip as tension grew in her neck and shoulders. “That’s no answer.”
He ignored her statement and asked, “Is Saxon Mills expecting you?”
“Yes. I’m supposed to be there at six.”
“You’re going to be late.”
She glanced at the digital clock in the dash, surprised to see that it was only five minutes to six. It seemed as if she had been on the road with this man for an eternity, but it had been less than ten minutes.
“If I get there close to six, I think it will be all right,” she said, hoping it was true.
“Seeing him is pretty important to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, and I really appreciate you giving me a ride,” she said, realizing she should have said those words a lot sooner. But surprise had robbed her of logical thinking for a few moments.
Right then, the man turned onto a narrow lane. As Mallory looked ahead of them, a cracking bolt of lightning lit the sky, exposing trees pressing on both sides and rain that ran down the pavement like a river. Then the light was gone, thunder pealed, and the only glow in the blackness came from the headlights of the sports car.
“You’re going
