Jennifer Greene: Her Holiday Secret

He wasn’t wearing any sheriff’s uniform, dressed more like he’d been called from home and had to hustle out into the night. A beat-up leather jacket showcased linebacker shoulders, and both his charcoal sweatshirt and jeans looked like old, worn friends. His hair was cut short, starling-black, but it was thick and rumpled and still had a glisten from the damp snowy night. She thought he must have some Indian blood from the ruddy warmth of his skin tone and the sharp high cheekbones.

He was striking—so striking he could give any woman that nice, edgy aware feeling—but the eyes looked like trouble to her. Deep, dark, spicy. If he was the law, he sure wasn’t looking her over in any lawful way. Those dark, exotic eyes prowled her face with more blunt masculine interest than she’d been treated to in quite a while.

Maggie mentally sighed. Obviously she was crazy, unhinged by the accident, imagining things. He surely wasn’t really communicating interest, and she had serious stuff on her mind—nothing related to hormones. Yet the first thing that blurted out of her mouth was an inane “Cripes, I have to look like something a cat dragged home from an alley.”

He didn’t miss a beat, but she caught just the edge of a sneaky grin. “Yeah, I see some bumps and bruises, but let’s put it this way. If my cat’d dragged you home, he’d be in tuna for the rest of his life.” He patted his inside pocket. “Hell. I’ve lost my pen again. I swear, if I buy a dozen, I lose twenty-four.” He vaulted out of the chair, wagged a long finger in front of her nose. “Just stay here, okay? No leaping tall buildings in a single bound until I get back. I’ll just go steal another pen from Gert—she’s used to it.”

He was only gone a minute, came back, and stretched out again with his notebook. “Okay, first thing I need to ask you is who you want me to contact? We got your basic stats and medical insurance information from your wallet, but there was nothing in there about next of kin, and I didn’t find any other Fletchers in the phone book...”

“I have a sister living here. Joanna Marks. We don’t have the same last name because she was married—widowed now.” Even mentioning her sister’s name brought shadowed, troubling memories tumbling into her mind. “But I don’t want you to contact her. I’ll call her. She’d just panic if a policeman called, and I’m fine—”

“So the doc said—and that he wasn’t letting you out until tomorrow, earliest—but you’re going to need someone to drive you home then. And some clothes. And I think she’d probably want to know something like this had happened to you—?”

“She would, but I just don’t want to upset her.” Her sister was fragile right now, but trying to explain Joanna’s circumstances was none of the stranger’s business and just took too much energy to even try. Maggie left it.

“Well, maybe there’s someone else? Husband, boyfriend—?” There was just a spark of the devil in his eyes again, making Maggie feel like the question implied more than a fill-in-the-blank on his police form.

“No. Friends, of course...but it’s the middle of the night. I can’t see waking someone up and scaring them for no reason. And I’ll call my sister in the morning.” She swallowed hard. “As far as the accident, I keep trying to remember what happened, but it just won’t come. I have this terrible feeling that I was to blame. The nurse—Gert—didn’t think so, but I don’t know if she was telling me the truth. Oh, God. Please tell me there wasn’t a child involved—”

“Hey, take it easy there.” Andy leaned forward, his notebook form forgotten. “A drunk driver swerved in your lane. Hit you head-on. There was no way you could have avoided him.”

“You’re sure?”

“I didn’t actually see it, didn’t get there until about ten minutes after it happened. But it was right on Main Street, and four witnesses saw the accident. They all gave me the same story, and the skid marks, condition of the cars—all the evidence—pointed in the same direction. In fact, my coming in here at all was just policy, to complete the report. But there was no doubt about how the accident occurred. You were not responsible.”

Maggie searched his face. People fibbed for so many reasons—some of them well-meaning, like the doc and nurse who could have shaded the truth to reassure her. Yet she saw the character lines etched on his brow, the way Andy met her gaze like an unflinching straight shooter. She just sensed a man who’d never soft-soap the truth. And that was great. She believed him. Except that if she hadn’t caused the accident, she felt even more confused why that anxious, guilty feeling was still haunting her conscience. “The man who smashed into me, the drunk driver—is he all right?”

“He won’t be, after I get finished slapping charges on him and he sees Judge Farley,” Andy said dryly. “But as far as injuries—he’s less beat-up than you are. And you haven’t asked, but there’s no way to pretty up the news about your car. I’m afraid it’s totalled. Not that I have a mechanic’s judgment, but the front end was crushed like an accordion—when I first saw it, I was afraid we weren’t getting you out in one piece.”

“I don’t care about the stupid car.” She backpedalled swiftly. “Well, of course I care. I’d rather eat clams than go car shopping, and I’m allergic to clams. But the car’s insured. And it just doesn’t matter, not compared to somebody being seriously injured. Just tell me one more time, okay? That no one else was hurt?”

“You were not responsible. And no one else was hurt.” When she still studied his face suspiciously, he scratched his chin. “Still having a hard time believing it, huh? Didn’t anyone ever tell you it was okay to trust the law?”

Well, he made her smile. “You think I should trust a guy I don’t know from Adam?”

“Hell, no. Just me. Honest to Pete, I’m trustworthy as a Boy Scout.”

“Uh-huh. Well, the truth is, sheriff...” Maggie hesitated. “Did I hear that ‘sheriff’ right? Or was it supposed to be lieutenant or deputy? Not that I haven’t had tons and tons of run-ins with the law, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to call you—”

“Andy will do fine.”

She saw the dance of humor in his eyes—he didn’t seem too worried by her vast claims of previous run-ins with the law. And she told herself there was no reason not to skip the formalities and move to first names...his job pinned him as a good guy, and his face was darn near an atlas of integrity lines. Even without knowing him, Maggie instinctively sensed he was hard-core honest. It was just that other factor.

The man-woman thing. Any man who could arouse a rapscallion set of female hormones in a battered woman defined dangerous to Maggie. Interestingly dangerous. Maybe darn-near fascinatingly dangerous—especially since she hadn’t felt that tug for a guy in a blue moon. But she was all too aware that her judgment was temporarily and annoyingly goofy. To assume he meant something by that eye connection and those slow, lazy smiles seemed foolish.

Cripes, she was just trying to sit up and a dozen aches screamed distractingly at her, and her head pounded like hammers at a carpenters’ convention. Embarrassing her no end, her hands were even shaky. “Well, what I started to stay... Andy,... is that I bumped a fender when I was sixteen, but that’s the closest I’ve ever been to a real accident until tonight. This not being able to remember is driving me crazy. I just want to go home. I’m positive it’d all come back if I were just home, around my own stuff...”

He seemed to sense where she was leading, because he shook his head. “The way I heard it, Ms. Fletcher, there isn’t a chance in hell they’re letting you out before tomorrow morning.”