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Christian, who’d been staring at the hood, looked up and nodded. “Me neither. She’s usually reliable.”
“Doesn’t seem reliable right now,” she scoffed. Her head ached. A firefly drifted past her face.
The hood creaked as Christian tried to open it up, wincing and shaking the heat from his fingers as he did. Olivia paced back and forth, rubbing her arms as she tried to remain calm.A warm bed would be nice right now, she thought and remembered her old apartment—not the mansion.
“It’s an easy fix,” he announced as he stared into the hood. Then he shook his head.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Olivia said. “And it’s not reassuring when you keep shaking your head that way.”
Something crawled over her foot and she squealed and jumped forward—right into Christian, who caught her before she could fall over. She instantly felt the warmth of his touch around her waist and arm, could smell his scent of fresh soap.
“Easy, ma’am. I’ll be in much bigger trouble if something worse happens to you.”
Breathing in short gasps, Olivia pushed away and tumbled back a step. “I’m fine. I think a snake just crawled over my foot.”
“I don’t think a snake would crawl over your foot right now, with all the noise—”
“Can you fix it?”
“Well . . .” He looked at her with regret.
“You just said it’s an easy fix.”
“Oh, yeah. And it is.” Christian sucked in his breath. Olivia felt a tightness in her chest. “It’s an easy fix . . . if I can get the parts.”
Olivia’s looked at the back end of the van.
“No, I don’t have the parts inside.”
Shivering from the cold, she rolled her eyes and threw her hands up.Perfect. She was stranded in the middle of nowhere in a creepy forest with a dead van and a total stranger—except, there was something about this total stranger that made her feel not so terrified. In fact, somehow, she felt safe with him.Maybe it’s his pretty smile.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Christian said, staring at her.
She looked away and sighed. “So now what? Do we call for help?”
He looked down the road. “Towing services are closed at this hour, but the closest town is only an hour away, on foot. Would have been faster in my van.”
Olivia was tempted to make a saucy remark, but she was far too terrified of the creepy sounds around her—the insistent croaking and groaning of whatever exotic bugs or worse were hiding in the bushes. Olivia took a step closer to the road, away from the pitch-black shadows of the trees. Farther down the road, she thought she could see lights.
“I wouldn’t call it a town, actually; it’s more like a small village—not that I can really tell you the difference,” Christian was saying.
The lights were growing brighter. It was definitely a car. She started waving her hands in the air like flags.
“Oh well, so if we . . .” Christian stopped and looked at her, a puzzled frown on his face. “What are you doing?”
Olivia kept waving her hands in the air. She felt a twinge of hope as Christian turned toward the two dots in the distance.
“Oh!” he said. The car drew closer and, as if they were a couple of invisible ghosts, drove past without even a honk.
Christian shook his head.
Olivia threw up her arms in frustration. “What the . . . Why didn’t he stop?”
“Well, for a start, you’re driving down a dark lonely road and you see two strangers by an old van, and one of them waving like a lunatic.”
She flashed him a quick look and he winked before continuing.
“Would you stop?”
