Page 12 of Mistletoe Love Match
“I don’t think it’s a bloody woodland badger,” she cried. “It’s enormous!”
The man cut the wheel sharply. They swerved to the right and then to the left, dodging the beast. But before she could take a breath, the Jeep hit a patch of ice. The car spun like a drunken ballerina. It careened off the road, wheels grating as they skidded along. Her heart hammered, and the roar of blood whooshing in her ears melded with the crunch of snow and gravel grinding beneath the wheels. Just when she thought her heart might explode, they jolted to a jarring stop.
She blinked, then surveyed the scene. The headlamps’ light burrowed into a white wall where the snow had packed into an embankment. They’d landed in a shallow ditch. Her hands trembled. Her mouth went dry. She sat there dumbstruck as the click of a seat belt disengaging came from somewhere in the car.
“Calliope, Calliope!”
Somebody was calling to her, but her hammering heart muted the sound.
“Calliope Cress, I need you to say something. Talk to me.”
Little by little, she returned to herself, and a dreamy awareness dawned. She turned toward the source of the sound. “Dr. Wanker? I mean, hi, Alec.”
He leaned over the console and got in her face. “Are you hurt? Did you bump your head? Wiggle your toes. Can you move them?” he barked like a drill sergeant.
Still groggy, she complied, then cocked her head to the side as irritation edged out confusion. She wasn’t wearing any knickers. She could not perish pantyless in the middle of Nowhere, Colorado, like some common Christmas harlot.
She inched forward, and the tip of her nose brushed his. “Alec Lamb, I cannot bloody die with knickers in my pocket. What the hell kind of driving was that?”
“It wasn’t my fault. Whatever that animal was, it came out of nowhere. Let me look you over,” he said, unbuckling her seat belt. He grabbed something from inside the console and blasted a beam of light into her left eye.
She reared back. “Are you trying to blind me?”
“I’m checking your pupil reactivity.”
She waved him off. “I don’t need looking over, Dr. W—”
Before she could complete the insult, he dropped the penlight and cupped her face in his hands. “I get it. I’m a bloody wanker,” he said, doing a piss-poor job of speaking with a British accent. She was about to tell him he sounded as British as Yankee Doodle, but he tightened his hold. “I’m relieved you’re okay. That could have been bad. There’s nothing for miles. If you’d gotten hurt, I . . .”
There was panic in his voice. Sure, the guy could come off like a know-it-all, but that was his pragmatic side. At this moment, stranded on the side of the road, he was well and truly concerned about her.
“I’m okay, Alec,” she said, retracting her verbal claws. Her chest heaved, and her fingertips tingled. In a state of shock, adrenaline coursed through her veins.
Maybe he was right to be worried about her.
“I want you to take three slow breaths, Calliope. I’ll do it with you.” Cast in the visor’s dim light, his expression softened.
She stared into his eyes, inhaling and exhaling in time with him. Forget the near-brush-with-death business. This quasi-tantric breathing exercise was quite erotic. She touched his cheek. “Are you all right?”
He swallowed hard. The man was clearly still shaken. “That spin couldn’t have lasted more than two or three seconds, but all I could think about was . . .”
The dim light warmed his chiseled features, and the man radiated an intensity that captivated her. He was a beautiful man. There was no getting around that. He drank her in with his amber eyes, and she released a shaky breath that had nothing to do with almost plowing into a buffalo or nearly taking out an over-sized woodland badger—or whatever the hell roamed the snowy mountainous terrain. Now, the rush surging through her veins had nothing to do with almost meeting her maker. She bit her lip, attempting to quell her arousal.
“Calliope,” he breathed, and never had four syllables contained so much raw emotion.
Her body ached for his touch. “Yes?” she barely got out.
“We’re not close to the edge of a cliff, are we?”
Good question.It was worth double-checking.
She flipped the visor closed and surveyed the dark terrain. “It appears we’re wedged in a ditch.”
“A ditch?”
“I don’t see a cliff.” She squinted. “There might be a structure back in the forest, but it’s so dark, it’s hard to tell.”
He lowered the visor. The glow of light returned, and in the slip of time it took for her to look out the window, his gaze had grown positively carnal. “I know you said you didn’t want to hook up anymore, but I’ve got to do this. I can’t stop myself.”
