stay focused on the road—not on the baby field-green salad she still had to make or the tricky vodka blush sauce she still hadn’t perfected for the penne.
But she had just been in such a big darn hurry to make everything just right for this party. It was her biggest event yet, and the one she hoped would make her the go-to person for catering in this area.
None of which would happen if she didn’t manage to extricate herself from this blasted snowdrift.
She shoved the van into Reverse again. If she could just get a little traction, the front-wheel drive on her van might be able to do the job. But try as she might, shifting between Reverse and Drive to try rocking out of the snow, the wheels just spun, kicking up snow and mud and gravel behind her.
Blast it all. She wanted to cry at the delay but she just didn’t have the time.
She looked in the rearview mirror to the backseat, where Jolie was babbling quietly to herself in her car seat and playing with her favorite stuffed dog, bouncing him on her lap then twirling him in dizzying circles.
“Well, bug, it looks like we’re walking home. We’ll go get your daddy’s big, bad pickup truck with the four-wheel drive and come back for the food.”
No big deal, she assured herself. She only had to walk a quarter mile from here down the driveway to the house. If she hurried, she could make it in ten minutes and be back here in fifteen.
She pulled Jolie out of her car seat. Her daughter beamed at her. “Walk, Mommy?”
“Looks like.”
She settled her daughter on her hip, grateful she had at least had the foresight to wear her boots that morning, even though it hadn’t been snowing when she left home.
She had just crossed her slide tracks and started up her long driveway that followed the river when she heard a pickup truck coming down the hill from Raven’s Nest.
She only had time to whisper a prayer that it would be Neil or Melina Parker, McRaven’s ranch foreman and his wife who served as caretaker when Carson wasn’t there, before the pickup pulled up next to her.
Apparently nobody was listening to her prayers today. She sighed as Carson rolled down the passenger-side window.
“You look like you could use a hand.”
Her pulse did that stupid little jumpy thing at his deep voice and she could feel her face heat up. She could only hope he didn’t notice, probably too busy thinking what an idiot she was for driving into a snowbank like that.
“I was just planning to walk to my house for my pickup. I’ve got groceries in the back I need to take care of quickly.”
“Put your baby back in the van, where it’s warm and out of the snow. I should have a tow rope in the pickup truck somewhere. I’ll have you out in a second.”
She wanted to balk at his commanding tone and tell him to go to Hades but for the first time in her life she understood the old saying about pride being a luxury she simply couldn’t afford right now.
She should just be grateful for his help, she reminded herself, even if she found it both humiliating and annoying to be obligated to him once more.
“I’m sorry to trouble you. That’s two days in a row now that you’ve had to come to our rescue.”
He made a kind of rueful grimace that plainly told her he wasn’t any more thrilled than she was about the situation, while he fished around behind the seat of the pickup and pulled out a thick braided red tow rope. “Here we go.”
Before she quite knew how it happened, he was crouched in the snow, attaching the tow to her rear bumper. McRaven probably had more money in loose change than she would see in any lifetime but he didn’t seem to have any qualms about dirtying his hands a little. It was an unexpected facet of a man who she was beginning to believe just may be more complicated than she might have guessed. He hitched the other end of the tow around his own pickup’s bumper, then came to her window again.
“Okay, now start it up and just steer out when you feel your van pull free of the snowbank. You should be on your way in a minute or two.”
She nodded and waited while he climbed back into the truck. Over her shoulder, she watched him engage the four-wheel drive of his truck. He appeared to barely ease forward but just that tiny extra bit of help was enough to accomplish what ten minutes of spinning her tires in the ice and snow hadn’t been able to do.
Another life lesson for her, maybe? she wondered ruefully. Accepting a little help in the short-term might be humiliating but could save much heartache and struggle.
She didn’t have time to wax philosophical this morning, not when her to-do list felt longer than her driveway and just as slickly treacherous.
“Thank you,” she said through her open window when Carson returned to her vehicle to unhook the tow rope.
“No problem. You’re going to want to take things slow until that access road gets plowed. I slid about four times coming down the hill from my place.”
“I know. I was just in too big of a hurry and wasn’t paying attention to how fast I was going. I’ll be sure to concentrate better now. Thanks again.”
He studied her for a moment, then she saw his blue eyes shift to Jolie in the backseat, who beamed at him and waved.
“Hi, mister,” she chirped, which was what she called every adult male of her acquaintance, from her Uncle Paul to the pastor at church to the bagger at the grocery store.
“Hi,” he said, his voice a little more gruff than usual, then he stepped back and waved her on.
With her wipers on high, Jenna slowly put the van in gear and inched through the swirling snow that seemed to have increased dramatically in just the few moments since Carson arrived. She was so busy paying attention to the road—and trying to keep from sliding into the icy Cold Creek that paralleled her driveway—that she didn’t notice the headlights behind her until she was nearly home.
What was Carson doing? She frowned as his pickup continued to tail her along the winding drive. Maybe something had fallen out of her van when she was stopped and he was returning it. Or maybe he decided she needed more of a lecture on her winter driving skills, or lack thereof.
She wouldn’t put it past him. The man seemed to want to give her plenty of advice on child rearing. Judging by past comments, he apparently put her abilities as a mother somewhere between incompetent and negligible and seemed to think she let her boys run wild and free through the countryside with no supervision.
And now he probably thought she was just as inept at driving. She pulled into her garage and stepped out of her driver’s seat to walk back outside, already squaring her shoulders for another confrontation.
“Is something wrong?” she asked coolly when he rolled down his window.
“I just wanted to make sure you made it home safely. I’ll send one of my guys over with the tractor to plow the driveway in case you need to get out soon.”
She blinked at him as hard, wind-whipped snowflakes stung her cheeks. Her first reaction was astonishment and a quick spurt of gratitude, both that he
