AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You might have to stay with me one more night.”
“Yay!” Harriet jumped up and began to dance around her brother. “And we can play with Bella and then have breakfast for supper and then we can have popcorn and maybe some sweet-and-sour candies, and watch a movie and…”
“Hold on there, Harriet-bean.” Regan laughed and ruffled the top of the young girl’s head. “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. I’ll get hold of Nana and see if the roads have been plowed.”
She grabbed the phone off her desk and tried her mother’s number, but there was no answer. A glance at the clock told her it was nearly three in the afternoon. She hadn’t seen a patient in the last hour. Most had canceled on account of the weather.
“I’ll be right back.”
Regan headed for the foyer and found her administrative secretary on her hands and knees behind her desk. The lounge was empty, and the doctor she shared the practice with had already called it a day.
“Everything okay, Lynn?”
The woman bumped her head and swore. “Sorry,” she said with a half smile as she sank back onto her haunches and peeked over the desk at Regan. “I dropped my phone.”
“Do I have any more appointments?”
“No. Everyone’s rescheduled, and no one has called in over an hour.”
“Okay. Let’s close up. There’s no point in staying, and the roads are only going to get worse.” She frowned. “Are you okay to get home?”
“I’ll be fine.” Lynn got to her feet. A pleasant woman in her mid-fifties, she was an absolute darling who went above and beyond for Regan. “Teddy will come for me. He’s only five minutes away.”
“Good. I’ll call you in the morning and let you know what’s up. If this weather persists, we might have to remain closed until Friday.”
Regan had the twins get dressed in their winter gear, and once Lynn was gone, she locked up and the three of them trudged through the snow. Her old Civic wasn’t exactly ideal for this kind of weather, but the new winter tires would help.
The kids piled in while she cleaned several inches of snow from the car, and when she finally made it inside, the heat was on and Harriet was singing along to Taylor Swift. Jordan was oblivious, his nose still in his book. The kid had a thing for dinosaurs.
The roads were pretty bad, even the ones that had been plowed, and slowly she made her way across town. Crystal Lake was pretty much deserted save for the snow plow headed in the opposite direction and one truck. With dusk falling, an eerie mist hung over the small town. She shivered as she headed across the bridge and had just made it to the other side when her car hit a patch of ice. The Civic slid to the right, and when she overcorrected, the car went into a tailspin that saw them heading for a large snowbank. Hands tense, she yelled, “Hold on, twinners,” and tried her best to soften the blow.
The car came to an abrupt stop, the front end half-submerged in snow, and Regan slowly exhaled. “You guys all good?”
“That was like riding a rocket ship!” Jordan peeked over his glasses, a huge grin on his face.
Heart thumping a mile a minute, she didn’t exactly think it had been fun, but then again, she wasn’t a five-year-old boy.
“Are we stuck?” Harriet poked her head over the seat.
“I hope not.” Regan put the car in Reverse, and her heart sank as the tires did nothing but spin in the snow. She got out and had a look.
“Shit,” she muttered, glancing around. She pushed her toque back and took a moment to calm her nerves. The car was sitting on sheer ice, and no way was she getting it out.
Just then, a truck pulled up behind her, and she turned with a smile, taking a few steps toward the black F-150.
Her smile slowly faded when she spied the man who stepped out of it. Seriously. She was stuck in the snow, and the only person in all of Crystal Lake to drive by was Wyatt-effing-Blackwell?
He took a few steps toward her, a la
zy smile curling his bottom lip. Dressed in old, faded jeans, Kodiak boots, a blue turtleneck underneath a red-and-blue-plaid thermal button-up, the man looked sexy as hell. The black knit hat gave him a dangerous edge, and, coupled with a few days’ growth of whiskers on his strong chin, she knew most women in her position would be ecstatic to have him come to the rescue.
But not Regan. No way in hell.
“You really got a thing for pink.” His voice was deep and low, the words rolling off his tongue in a way that was intimate. Which was crazy. They were in the middle of a snow storm.
“Excuse me?”
He pointed to her head. “Your hat. It’s pink.”
