Читать книгу A Christmas to Remember - Rebecca Moesta - Страница 12

Chapter 8

“Wait a second,” Jennifer muttered, looking around for any kind of road sign. The area didn’t look like she had expected it to. On the other hand, she hadn’t really expected snow during her drive.

Holding the steering wheel with one hand, she picked up her smartphone with the other to consult its map. The phone was fully charged, but the GPS didn’t update to her location. That was disconcerting. “No, this is not where it’s supposed to be.” She traveled often, so she had the best phone on the market and the plan with the best reception nationwide. A few bars of reception flashed at the top of the screen—and disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. The message on her screen said Out of Service Range.

She held her phone higher and tried to cajole it. “Come on! I need reception. Come on, GPS!”

The dark asphalt of her unfamiliar path stood out against the white landscape as the snow accumulated on the surrounding dirt, grass, and trees. But the snow began falling faster than it could melt on the highway, and soon the skirling flakes left a layer of white on the road, obscuring her route. Under other conditions, she might have enjoyed the snow-covered stillness, but at the moment, she was too concerned about finding her way.

She checked her phone again, hoping for directions. Still nothing. By the time she looked up from her phone, it was too late. She was headed straight for a sharp bend in the road. With a gasp, she yanked the wheel and swerved, but missed the turn.

The coupe careened off the edge of the road and down a snowy embankment.

No! Jennifer’s muscles clenched, and she held her breath. Her heart hammered. This couldn’t be happening. For a moment, she could only see the pale flakes whirling past. The coupe bounced and jolted, and then the headlights showed a flash of snow-covered trees rushing up to meet the car. She cried out and held up one arm in an effort to protect herself from the collision. The world went dark.

She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. When she became aware again, it took her several minutes to decide what to do. It was so hard to focus. She couldn’t recall quite how she had gotten here. Or where “here” was. She only knew she was in. And she felt an urgent need to be out.

She pushed the door open and climbed out of the crashed vehicle in a daze. Her feet felt cold and sank into something soft beneath her, but the information barely registered. Impressions flashed through her mind: bright lights stabbing out of the darkness at her eyes, a pale world weaving strangely around her, a feeling of flight that came to an abrupt halt.

She stood still, but the landscape continued to spin around her. Black static danced across her vision. She gasped in a few breaths and tried to focus straight ahead of her: a white slope. Upward. I need to go upward, she thought. She wasn’t quite clear on why, but she began to crawl laboriously up the hill. She felt cold and wet. She panted with the effort. Upward. At last, she came to a broad, flat area at the top of the slope, and she stumbled gratefully onto the level ground.

John drove the pickup truck while Kyle held the apple pie on his lap and pretended to take a bite. John kept a careful eye on the road. He was used to this kind of weather and knew better than to let down his guard.

“How’s that pie?” he asked, breathing in the aroma of baked apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Kyle grinned. “Still warm.”

John tuned the radio to the local weather report to get an update. “…estimate has been raised to three feet in mountain areas, and we’re expecting the storm to last anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” the weather forecaster said.

John chose to be as optimistic as possible in the circumstances. He glanced at his son. “Well, that sounds like good sledding weather to me.”

Suddenly, a figure appeared in the middle of the road in front of the truck.

Adrenaline shot through John. He steered to one side, missing the person. Even as his heart raced, he applied slow, firm pressure on the brake pedal, and brought the truck to an expert stop. His arms were tense, his mouth open. That was close! His attention instantly turned to Kyle.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Kyle answered immediately. He was uninjured, but he looked as surprised as John felt.

John replayed the last thirty seconds in his mind. What had actually happened? He had thought he was being watchful, but that person had seemed to come out of nowhere. Something must be wrong. He put the truck into park. “Hey, you stay right here, okay? Be right back.” John got out of the pickup and ran toward the figure in the road. It was a woman.

“Are you okay? Are you—I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you. What are you doing out here?” Even by the dim glow of his truck’s taillights, he could see that the woman was beautiful and statuesque.

She gave him a curious stare. “I don’t know.”

Not the answer he had expected. How could the woman not know why she was out on a mountain road in a snowstorm? John rapidly switched into problem-solving mode. “What’s going on? Did your car break down? Did you…are you all right?”

“I don’t know.”

He wondered briefly if she had been drinking. Her speech was slurred. His medical training kicked in, and he started assessing her for symptoms of illness, intoxication, or injury.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it, rubbed her eyes, then repeated, “I don’t know,” several more times. She wavered on her feet.

“Oh.” John caught her and steadied her before she could fall. He smelled no alcohol at all on her breath, but he did notice some blood in her hair. Her confusion and dizziness could well be caused by a head injury. It seemed there was more to be concerned about than whether the woman could answer his questions. “All right, you’ve got quite a head laceration. We should take care of that.”

He kept an arm around her as they walked to his truck. On the way, he did a rapid assessment of her state. Her eyes were open. She responded to questions, although she sounded baffled. She was walking. She lifted a hand and made a fist when he asked her to.

He opened the passenger-side door, and the interior light came on.

“Okay, Kyle. Move over, buddy.” Kyle helpfully scooted toward the center and fastened himself into the middle seatbelt.

John helped the woman into the passenger seat. “Up, up, up. All the way…there we go. Watch your feet. Watch your toes.” Good. She was obeying multistep instructions. He looked at her eyes as he fastened her seatbelt. They were open, with no signs of bruising or uneven pupils that he could see. It wasn’t safe to try to get to the hospital or police station in this weather. They were too far away, so he would have to take her to his house where he could perform a better examination. He shut the passenger-side door.

The woman looked at them both in confusion as John climbed back into the driver’s seat. “What is this?”

Kyle giggled. “You just sat on a pie.”

She had a bewildered expression. “A pie?”

John said, “Look, that cut on your head looks pretty bad. We should get you back and take a look at that.”

The woman felt around for the cut on her head and found it.

“Gentle, gentle,” John warned her.

She pulled her hand away and looked at the blood on her fingers. “Oooh.”

“Ew,” Kyle said, looking down and rubbing his eyes.

“It’s really red,” she observed in an oddly distant-sounding voice.

“Yeah,” John said. She was responsive, and her words made sense, more or less. Those were good signs.

“You know what? I’m fine… I’m just going to take a little nap.” She leaned over, put her head on Kyle’s shoulder, and closed her eyes.

“Dad, she fell asleep on me.” Kyle seemed amused and embarrassed that this total stranger had decided to use him as a pillow. “Is she gonna be okay?”

John was pleased by his son’s concern for the stranger, just as Kyle had worried about the mare and the foal earlier. It showed good instincts. “I think she’s going to be fine. The sooner we get her home, keep an eye on her, the better, okay?”

He glanced at the woman, only mildly worried that she’d fallen asleep. They would be home soon, and he would check her again to rule out serious injuries. Until then, they could let her rest.

“So, what are we going to do with her?” Kyle asked.

“I actually have no idea.”

It was a completely new situation for John. He had encountered stray pets, wounded wild animals, and children lost in shopping malls. In all those cases, he’d made sure they made it safely back to where they belonged. But he had never come across a wounded, stray person before. A beautiful woman, no less. All he knew for now was that, like the animals and children he had helped, he would take good care of her.