Instant fury filled her. Natalie’s eyes burned as she watched Hawk Winchester stalk toward her, his face a mask of irritation.
“Yeah. I just learned how to drive. I thought, what the hell—I’ll go screaming through this incredibly small town, and then I’ll blow through a stop sign and kill my car on the back of some idiot’s butt-ugly truck!”
Sure, she might regret her quick temper later, but right now, she was ready to throw a kicking, screaming, and gleefully adolescent temper tantrum. Too much had happened in the last fifteen hours, and this was just the icing on a very frozen cake. At least her fury was masking the fact that she was still freezing. There was nothing like an exploding temper to heat the blood.
“Why would you be driving a car without snow chains in this weather?”
“I just moved in last night, as you well know, and I haven’t had time to buy chains, not that it’s any of your business!”
“Well, maybe you should have walked. Of course, that’s another disaster waiting to happen in those absurd shoes you’re wearing.”
Natalie had been mad enough before, but his disdainful look made her want to smack the crap out of the man. She had never, ever had the urge to close her fingers into a fist and slug anyone, but at this moment her mind was urging her to do just that.
Too bad her fingers were freezing and incapable of forming a fist.
“You are the most pompous, self-absorbed man I have ever met in my life.” She’d thought of him as gorgeous the night before, but now he counted as monstrous, like his truck. “Just bill me for the damage.” She spun around and did her best to storm off. Not easy in heels and all that snow, and without a working car. But she was so done with this conversation, done with speaking to this man, and done with a ridiculous town that didn’t even have an open store on a freaking Thursday, for goodness’ sake.
“You can’t just go off like that. We haven’t even exchanged insurance information yet!” he yelled, but she wasn’t listening.
“Call the cops on me, then!”
She was feeling pretty damn good about her exit until her feet decided they weren’t going to cooperate. She didn’t even have a chance to stop the fall.
“Natalie!”
He couldn’t catch her this time. One minute she was walking away. The next, everything went black . . .
chapter 3
Hawk reached Natalie just in time to see her head slam into the ground and her eyes roll back in her head. Damn! Possible concussion. He lifted her in his arms and raced back to his truck, where the heater was still running. “Come on, Natalie. Open your eyes,” he commanded.
She began to stir. “What happened?” Her eyes fluttered open, then widened when she saw him only a few inches from her face.
“You fell down and hit your head,” he said, and then he ran his hands over her ankles and wrists.
“Ouch!”
“That’s what I thought. You bruised your wrist, too.”
Dammit! It was Thanksgiving and he was already running late. His mother was going to kill him.
“I’ll take you to the doc. Give me a minute to move your car out of the road.”
Leaving her on the front seat of his truck, he jogged back to her car. She’d crushed her radiator, and there was no chance that the heap of metal would start now. After he put the car in neutral, it took him a few tries for his feet to gain traction on the ground, but he managed to roll the car to the curb before jogging back to his truck. He found Natalie there huddled in a ball, her entire body shivering.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about the car,” he told her. “But the doc should look at you.” He knew he didn’t sound very reassuring. Normally, it was his job to reassure people who’d been in accidents, as he was a damn fine paramedic as well as being fire chief. So why was he so tongue-tied all of a sudden?
“I’m fine. If you can just drop me off at my house . . .” she said, her voice alarmingly quiet.
“Not gonna happen.”
He didn’t say anything else. He threw his truck into drive and headed out of town. The doc didn’t live far from his parents. Maybe he’d even get a piece of the doc’s wife’s sweet apple pie. That woman had the best pie in the county—hell, maybe the country—though he’d never say such a thing to his mother, or he’d be banned from her table.
Hawk’s gaze strayed repeatedly over to Natalie as he cruised the snow-covered country roads. Forcing his eyes forward, his thoughts strayed to the conversation he’d had with the town meddlers.