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As he worked out his ego problems in the front seat, Anne glanced over… at… the…
All of her thoughts stopped, and not like a train that gradually slowed down: Her cognition slammed into a brick wall. Talk about better-looking than. The man sitting on the other side of the bench seat was worthy of the cover on a Johanna Lindsey novel. Dressed in black clothes, with a broad chest and shoulders, his body seemed to fill the whole car, and his face transfixed her. Classically handsome, with dark hair that was trimmed tightly, he would have drawn anybody’s eyes.
But he was not any happier than the driver, and the reason was obvious. He had both palms pressed into his crotch, and a wince carved into his striking features—and just as putting your hands up to your throat meant you were choking in any language, he was making the universal signal for holy-hell-you-just-nailed-me-in-the-nuts.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
She reached out, but wasn’t sure where to touch him. And boy, that fuzzy feeling in her head was totally gone now.
Nothing like corking a stranger in the hey-nannies to perk a girl up—
“You’re sorry,” the driver snapped. “I’m sorry I got two strangers in my backseat, no frickin’ clue why I’m going to the hospital, and a headache like I been on a bender to the Poconos.”
Anne lowered her voice. “I really am sorry.”
The man with the proverbial privacy issues opened his eyes. As the peachy glow from a sodium streetlight flared through the windows, his irises were a resonant blue, like a clear autumn sky. He also had dark lashes that were long and brows that she was willing to bet had a natural arch when they weren’t in a grimace.
“It’s okay,” he grunted with his accent. “Now I can sing the Leo Sayer parts.”
His smile wasn’t a big one, but the lift to his lips was endearing, taking all that manly-man and giving it a hint of the boy he had once been.
“What happened—” She glanced around. “I mean, what’s happening?”
“You don’t remember?” He rearranged himself on the seat and swiveled his hips a little, like he was trying to assess whether things were still attached. “You were hit by a car—”
All at once, the flood of memories returned again and the pain in her body exploded, as if her recollection was a second impact.
“We’re almost to the emergency room,” the man next to her said.
“And then I’m out,” Danny DeVito-esque announced from up front. “I don’t know how in the hell I got involved in—Jesus, this headache. Either one a’ ya moochers gotta aspirin?”
Anne focused on those beautiful blue eyes. “You were driving the BMW. I saw through the windshield right before I was hit… it was you.”
The man nodded. “I didn’t see you coming. And when I finally did, I swerved but it was too late.”
Searching his face, she wondered what she’d said to him at the scene. Whether she’d told him why she’d been running across the road.
“I can’t go to the hospital,” she said quietly.
“Does he work there?”
She closed her eyes and tried on some denials. Then lost what little energy she had for putting up a brave front. “No, but he has my purse, so I have no money on me.”
“I’ll cover the costs of your care.”
“No, you won’t—”
“You need to be checked out. And the accident was my fault.”
“It was not. I bolted into the street in the dark.” She pounded on her sternum with what was, admittedly, a weak fist. “Besides, I’m breathing and I have a heartbeat. The rest I can walk off—”
“Look, lady,” the driver cut in as he glared into the rearview, “you’re gettin’ out at the hospital. I ain’t goin’ this way because I wanna. What ya do once ya there, I don’t give a crap, but that’s where ya road ends.”
On that note, there wasn’t any more conversation. Then again, they didn’t have much farther to go. St. Francis Hospital appeared on the right, its blocky building surrounded by a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree parking lot. The ER was around to the far side, and Not-Danny DeVito cut off a station wagon to get onto the lane that went right up to its covered entrance.
“Now get outta my car,” he said as he hit the brakes.
Anne opened her mouth to argue, but not with him. Her problem was with her fellow backseater. Here was not the place, however—not that any debate was going to go much better out on the curb, but at least she could hope for a less hostile peanut gallery there.
Reaching for the door handle, she popped the thing and extended a bare foot. With a frown, she tried to remember…
“I’m missing a shoe.”
“Let’s just get you looked at.” The man next to her opened his side. “We’ll worry about shoes afterward.”
