Page 11 of Dangerous Lover

It occurred to Caroline that the instant she’d crossed the threshold, all thoughts had fled her brain—the cold had simply wiped her mind clear. She hadn’t even checked to see that Jack locked up—hadn’t even thought about it. He had—she remembered now hearing the snick of the lock turning behind her, but if she’d been on her own, she’d have simplyslammed the door shut—or not. And the shop would have been open all weekend.

And thank God Jack had gone to get the car. She might easily have missed it, wandering up and down the sidewalk, blinded by the snow until she ended up a dead frozen lump in the street.

It was also a good thing he’d left the car unlocked. It was entirely possible she wouldn’t even have been able to unlock the door on her own.

Her little FIAT was humming under her feet, rocking slightly from the wind. Caroline stared ahead in dismay through the snow-covered window, groping for the stick shift and switching on the windshield wipers. It took a full minute to shift the snow on the windshield. The snow was so heavy she couldn’t see past the hood. There was a lamp-post next to the car, she knew, but she couldn’t see it.

What a nightmare.

Jack was looking at her quietly. “Do you want me to drive?” It was as if he could read her mind.

Oh God, yes!The words were there, waiting to tumble out. Caroline bit her lips to keep them back. She wanted desperately to relinquish the wheel. Bad weather driving scared her. Her Fiat had been designed for the warm climate of Italy and got so temperamental in the cold.

Bad weather led to accidents. Her parents had died in a blizzard just like this one, when their car slid into an intersection, straight into an oncoming truck…don’t think of that.

“Caroline?” he said again. “I don’t mind driving in the snow.”

She was tempted. Oh God, was she tempted. Just dump this terrible trip into those large, capable-looking hands. He’d do a better job of it than her, she was sure.

But this was her car, and it was her responsibility to take her new boarder home. Life had taught her the hard way to face up to her problems herself, without help.

“No,that’s okay.” Bringing the seat forward, she put the car in first gear and pressed on the accelerator. The wheels spun, then bit. So far, so good. “I’m fine,” she lied and eased slowly out into the street. Into what she hoped was the street.

Good thing she knew the way home blindfolded, because that’s the way she was driving. Great white sheets of snow came hurling out of the sky, sometimes driven horizontal by the howling wind, driving the flakes into wild circular flurries. Sometimes it looked as if it were snowingup.

Caroline punched the radio on, an old habit when driving in bad weather. She spent most of her time alone in the car and the radio made her feel connected to the rest of the human race.

“—biggest blizzard since 1957, our weather service is telling us, even worse than the one in 2001 and I, for one, don’t have any trouble believing it.”

Caroline smiled as she heard Roger Stott’s beautifully modulated baritone on the air. He could make even horrific weather sound sexy. She’d dated him for a couple of weeks on the basis of his voice alone, before the problems with Toby drove him away.

Just one more man in a long line of potential suitors who couldn’t face what she had to deal with.

“And now for some international news. UN peacekeeping forces in Sierra Leone have reported that a group of US mercenaries massacred a village of women and children and made off with a fortune in blood diamonds. The perpetrators are in a UN prison awaiting extradition. UN spokeswoman Elfriede Breitweiser said that the men worked for a US securitycontracting company based in North Carolina called?—”

The radio clicked off. Caroline looked over in surprise at her passenger. His dark eyes met hers. “Weather’s too severe for bad news.”

And how. Caroline was battling the wind buffeting her small car, trying desperately to hold the car to the road without sliding. She clutched the steering wheel with white knuckles, bending forward to peer through the windshield. She could barely see the edge of the road and was driving more by instinct and memory than by sight.

This was awful. She was crawling along at ten miles an hour. At this speed, they wouldn’t get home for an hour. Caroline pressed her foot down on the accelerator.

It happened all at once.

Too late, Caroline felt the deadly absence of grip in the road. An instant later, a sharp sound shot above the noise of the howling wind. Instantly the car careened wildly as Caroline lost control, spinning dangerously to the left. Panicked, she braked hard and the car spun horribly, completely out of control.

A dark shape suddenly loomed, two glowing lights visible high up off the ground like the eyes of a giant predator. A desperate squeal of brakes and a blast of horn as deep and as loud as a foghorn…

It took Caroline a full second to realize that she was about to ram head-on into a massive truck. “Oh my God!” she screamed as they slid on the black ice, right into the path of the dark, massive oncoming shape.

“Let go of the wheel and brace yourself,” a deep, calm voicesaid. Two strong brown hands gripped the wheel, turning the car into the slide, and Jack’s left leg reached over hers as he gently tapped the brakes in a slow regular cadence, shifting down the gears.

The slide slowed, became controlled, not that awful, sickening spinning horror. The car made a complete 360° turn. Jack kept it moving left until they came to a stop an inch from a lamp-post on the left shoulder of the road. A second later, the massive truck barreled by, horn blaring angrily. The small car rocked with the wind displacement.

It happened so quickly, one second she was battling the wind and snow and the next they were in free fall. The adrenalin shock of a near accident raced burning through her system. If Jack hadn’t taken the wheel, they’d have died in a crush of steel, in a mangle of broken bones and blood.

They’d been a second from dying.

She had her hands to her mouth, covering a scream that wanted to break out. The tickle of bitter bile trickled down her throat, and she swallowed, hoping she wouldn’t vomit.

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