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Chapter 21
Joy hadn’t really thought about how much fun the gold mining tour would be for her when she recommended it. She’d heard it was a lot of fun for families and it wasn’t like these people were her family. Or even her friends.
That didn’t matter though when the kids all started pushing gold pans into her hands and telling her to “shake the gold out.”
It didn’t take much more than a sliver of gold or the dark red of the garnet to get them excited. And pretty soon, they were calling any remotely shiny pebble a diamond and asking to put it into their collection tube. They had cracked her up with that.
She left the group at the water’s edge to go back to the parking area to use the bathroom when she saw it and her blood felt like ice in a single beat.
She heard the shouting at the same time.
“Where is Nicholas?” “Where is he?”
The young boy was running flat out right for the parking lot.
She ran toward him, knowing she was probably about to scare the boy half to death, but not knowing if one of his parents was around or not. She knew Jill and Andrew had his twin brother and an infant to keep their eyes on so maybe he’d slipped away.
When she saw a car backing out of a spot, she didn’t hesitate. She kicked it into high gear and ran full on at the boy.
She was probably too rough, but she just grabbed for him and kept moving, trying to get out of the path of the car. The car slammed to a stop, the driver seemingly having seen the movement of her rushing across its back end.
She tripped then and twisted in the air, one hand going to cover the screaming boy’s head as she tucked him against her body and fell onto her back on the gravel.
It hurt. A lot.
It also knocked the wind completely from her lungs and she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t seem to move her frozen lungs.
Then there were noises around her and someone was taking the boy from her and soothing him. She could hear all the “oh my Gods,” and “thank God she saw hims” and there were people talking to her, but the muscles of her chest were paralyzed.
“Breathe out Joy.” It was Kaeden and he was rubbing his hands down her arms and talking to her through all the noise around them, his voice steady and calm in the din. “I know you want to breathe in. Your body thinks it needs to breathe in to fix this, but you need to push the air out to kickstart your lungs.”
She did what he said even though she didn’t think she had any air in her lungs to push out.
Her breathing started up as soon as she did and she gulped air in, feeling lightheaded. And sore.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yes.” She moved a hand to the back of her head. She was going to have a bump for sure.
Andrew crouched next to her and tugged a leaf from her hair. “I don’t know how to even begin to say thank you for that, Joy. He got away from me and when I saw where he was, I was too far to get to him.”
“We all were,” Kaeden said.
Jill came over next, still holding the little boy, bouncing him in her arms. “Thank you so much Joy. I can’t believe how badly that could have gone.” She was crying and looked well and truly shook up. “Saying thank you doesn’t seem like enough, but my mind is too frantic to think of anything else to say.”
Joy saw Kelly and Jack talking to the people who had been driving the car. They looked pretty shook too. They all were, she guessed, including her.
She met Jill’s eyes. “It’s okay. I’m just glad I was there.”
The whole Sutton group was coming over and she hated being at the center of everyone’s attention. She pushed to her feet, brushing herself off as Kaeden pulled a few more leaves from her hair.
Her heart was still hammering when she turned to him, ducking her head to avoid everyone’s stares. “Can you sit in the van with me while everyone finishes up? I think I need to sit down.”
He nodded and when he’d gotten her to the van he got a cold pack from the first aid kit and handed it to her for her head.
“Let me take a look at your head,” he said, leaning to see the back of her head.
The move brought him close to her. Way too close. She could smell the clean woodsy scent of him and feel the heat coming off his body.
