Riding the storm - By Julie Miller Page 0,20
Not to mention drenched to the skin. “We don’t have a cell phone or I would have called for help. We blew the right rear tire and spun out. I tried to fix it, but it’s too muddy for the jack to work. We tried to drive out, but obviously, that didn’t work, either.”
Cindy was on a roll. “Obviously. If you’d listened to me, we’d—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Nate held up his hands in a T for time-out. “We’re on an emergency call.” But half of the we had already circled around the car to inspect the flat tire. “Jolene?” Hell. This just got better and better. Nate resisted the urge to shake his fist at these crazy fools. Somebody needed to be the sensible grown-up here. “I’ve got a woman in labor on the Rock-a-Bye ranch, so we can only spare a few minutes. If we can get you up and running in that time, we’ll do it. If not, we call it in and you stay put until that tow truck can get here.”
“But that could be—”
He cut off Cindy’s whine in his most decisive, do-not-mess-with-me voice. “You go sit in the truck. Warm yourself up for a few minutes while I see what I can do. Wes, you’re with me.”
Cindy wanted to speak, but closed her mouth, wisely thinking better of it. With a huffy sigh, she marched around to open the truck’s door while Wes shyly held out the tire iron. “You’ll need this, sir.”
“Don’t call…” Oh, hell. Let the kid be a little intimidated. Maybe it’d knock some sense into him. Nate took the tire iron and winked a bit of reassurance. “Come on.”
With the pouting bride safely tucked away inside the truck, Nate tipped his face to the sky, searching for a break among the clouds, challenging the warm rain to cleanse his skin and deeper inside. He needed to rid himself of his frustrations, stay calm and in charge.
Now he had more than Jolene and her baby to take care of.
Swiping the moisture from his face, Nate hiked around the car and found Jolene kneeling in the mud, her red boot already heel-deep in ditch water. She had her shoulder wedged up against the wheel well of the car as she tried to pry the jack free.
“Are you crazy?” Nate dashed the last few feet. He grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her away from the potential danger. He raised his voice to be heard over the sound of raindrops slapping against the earth. “That whole thing could come crashing down on you. Get back in the truck. Wes and I will handle this.”
Jolene jerked her arm from his grip, but not before his fingers memorized the sensations of delicate bone structure and sinewed muscle beneath her baggy sleeve. Not before his pulse leaped in response to the appealing combination of softness and strength.
“I know how to change a tire,” she insisted, slicking her hair behind her ear and leaving a blemish of mud on her cheek. “The car’s resting on the ground, not the jack. Once we get the jack unstuck, we could put some grass or gravel underneath it to keep it from sinking in again. Then we could lift the car, change the flat and get those two underway.”
“That’s your plan?” Actually it wasn’t a half bad one, given the circumstances. Nate tamped down his sarcasm. Time was a factor, and Jolene’s idea was as good as any. But he didn’t want her messing with the tire. The danger of the car shifting might be minimal, but it was a danger, all the same.
“All right,” he conceded. “Grab the hubcap while you’re at it. We can use it under the jack to get firmer footing, too.”
Hope or excitement or some other wonderful thing blazed in her eyes, making Nate feel like a prince for half a moment. Basking in the fleeting glory, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from reaching out and flicking the smear of mud from her velvety cheek. A startled oh rounded her lips when he touched her, but she didn’t pull away. Still, he didn’t allow himself to linger. He was determined to be the prince of practicality. “I’ll work on the tire. You gather whatever you can find to give us traction.”
Jolene ran to the truck and came back with a hatchet and shovel. She handed the shovel to Wes and asked him to dig up gravel while she started hacking down handfuls of