Page 44 of All in with the Maverick Montana

“I hope not. Cause I really do feel awful.” Amy paled and reached one hand out for the dashboard to brace herself.

Josh pressed on the gas a little, trying to shake the thought that fate was laughing at him. Here he’d found this wonderful woman, and she was ridiculous enough to like him back, and now he’d given her food poisoning or something. Ryder and Noah were never going to let him hear the end of this once they found out how his latest romantic entanglement crashed and burned. He could almost hear them now… Remember that one time the girl literally left your place throwing up? You made her sick to her stomach?

Josh grimaced just as Amy groaned, pressing the back of her hand to her lips.

“Do you need me to…” Josh started, trying to figure out how to best help her. “Should I pull over?”

She shook her head, eyes squinted, and sat back in her seat. “No, keep going. I’m okay. I think it’ll pass.”

“Will it?”

“I don’t know. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay, sure. What?”

“I don’t know. Distract me.”

“Distract you. Right.” He could manage a story. “Did I ever tell you about the weekend when Shane and I almost crashed a truck into the side of Otis and Angela’s barn?”

Amy snorted. “Having met Shane, I’m not even a little surprised.”

“Hey, I was the voice of reason in this situation. Even at nine years old I knew it wasn’t going to end well.”

“You were nine?” she said, her voice rising.

“Yes. You know country kids. You learn to drive almost anything by the time you’re tall enough to reach the pedals.”

“So what happened?”

“Shane was a short little thing and couldn’t quite reach the brakes.” He shot Amy a grin as she laughed.

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. But, you know, once we got going it was too late. I still remember us ripping through the pasture, screaming as Shane blindly tried to slam his foot down on the brake pedal. And I’m like looking over the dash, being our eyes, grabbing the wheel to dodge the cattle, and we go ripping through a hay bale and as that clears, right at the last second I spot the barn, and just yank the wheel and we careen past it, still screaming. It was the closest I’d ever come to living out an action movie.”

Amy shook with laughter. Josh did too, remembering the feeling of the truck slamming to a stop as Shane finally got his foot on the brake.

“Then what?”

“I could hear Angela hollering all the way from the house. Next thing I do is look out the window, and there she is, marching straight across the pasture toward us. To this day I swear there was steam coming out her nostrils.”

“What did you do?”

“The only thing I could do. I bailed out the side of the truck, ditched Shane to deal with his grandmother, and went running home. You would have thought I was a track star.”

Amy laughed again. “You didn’t.”

“That woman put the fear of God in me. I wasn’t about to let her catch me.”

“And so that was it?”

“Oh no. Otis drove over to our place later, talked to my parents about what happened. Or what almost happened. No one was impressed. Shane and I spent many weekends after that mucking out stalls on both properties. Angela made sure we were too busy to have any more time to get up to that kind of fun.”

“She put you on the straight and narrow path.”

“Oh, absolutely. Who knows how many derelict trucks I would have taken for joyrides in my youth without her intervention.”

Amy shook her head and Josh was pleased to see that she didn’t look quite so ashen. He pulled onto Faith’s street and into the driveway, throwing the truck in Park.