Page 3 of Can't Fight the Moonlight

"I was in a hurry."

"Well, I was going as fast as I could in that old truck. I had a heavy load." She groaned. "And half of it is now on the road." She drew in a breath, squared her shoulders, and forced what had appeared to be a teary look out of her gaze. "But I didn't lose everything. This is going to be fine."

"Fine?" he echoed in disbelief. "Have you looked at my car?"

"Cars can be fixed. People can't. The important thing is you're not injured. We should exchange information. I'll get my bag and my phone. You may not need an ambulance, but you will need a tow truck."

He would definitely need that. As she ran back to the truck, he returned to the car. Pushing the airbag out of the way, he looked for his phone, but it was no longer on the console. And that's when he realized he had an even bigger problem. He'd taken out his laptop when he'd stopped for gas and it had flown off the front seat and was now crushed by the collapsed dashboard. He had a feeling his phone was in the same place.

This was bad—really bad. He needed his phone and his computer. He had work to do today, in the next hour, in fact. He didn't have time to hunt down replacements, and he had a feeling the notes he'd made this morning had not made their way into the cloud. Anger ran through him. This trip was turning out to be a disaster.

"I called Tom's Towing," the woman said, coming back down the road with her phone in her hand. "He's on another call. He can't get out here for about an hour."

"That's not acceptable. I'll get someone else."

"The other service is on the west shore of the lake. It will take them just as long to get here, and they're more expensive."

"Your insurance will have to pay; I need a car."

"My insurance? This was your fault. You were following too close. That's on you. And I only braked fast because of the deer."

She made a good point, which he found annoying as hell. "So, you're not responsible at all?"

"I'm not, but if you want me to call the police, we can do that. My brother is working today. I'm sure he'll come out."

"Your brother is a cop in Whisper Lake? Great." He knew exactly how that accident report would go down.

"Fine, I won't call my brother; I'll call 911 and whoever comes will come."

"And report back to your brother."

"That you were tailgating and ended up driving into the fence?" she snapped. "Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what they'll say."

"I hate small towns," he muttered.

She frowned. "Now you want to blame the town for your accident? Look, you're upset. I get that. Why don't I give you a ride to wherever you were going, and we'll take it from there? If you were just planning to drive through Whisper Lake on the way to somewhere else, there's a rental car service in town; I can drop you there. I'm sure you can get a replacement vehicle. It's all going to be okay."

"You have no idea hownotokay it already is. My computer and phone are smashed. I'm going to need to replace both as quickly as possible."

"Well, our small town does sell phones and computers," she said dryly. "Can I give you a ride?"

Considering he hadn't seen a car since he'd crashed, he wasn't going to say no. And he actually wasn't all that interested in filing a police report because he had a feeling it would go down exactly the way she'd said it would. "Yes," he said.

"You're welcome," she replied.

He tipped his head. "Thank you." He walked to the back of his car and managed to pop the trunk. He took his overnight bag out of the vehicle and then made one last attempt to retrieve his phone and computer, but they were trapped somewhere in the mangled mess that was the front end of the car.

"We'll work this out," she said, as she gathered armfuls of lemons and put them back in the barrel from which they'd come. Then she carried the barrel to the truck.

"Are you a gardener?" he asked, as he put his bag into the truck next to the barrel, hoping it wouldn't end up on the road the next time she stopped.

"Today I am. I wear a lot of hats." She got behind the wheel as he slid into the passenger seat. The cab of the truck smelled like manure, and there were a bunch of empty food wrappers on the floor.

"You like tacos, huh?"

She followed his gaze. "Ramon likes tacos and burgers and anything else that comes fast and hot. This is his truck. My gardener sprained his ankle and couldn't make the pickup, so I had to do it." She paused. "Where can I take you?"

He thought about that. He needed a car, but the first thing he needed to do was call his office. "That depends. Can I borrow your phone?"

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