Page 4 of Spellbound
But quiet was good, right?All the better for me to hear the monsters and the serial killers sneaking up behind me. Wait.Maybe not monsters or serial killers—though you never knew about those tricky bastards—but weren’t there actual, realbearsaround here? Of course there were—we were in the mountains, for God’s sake, or the foothills, anyway, so almost certainly there were black bears around. And what about coyotes? I knew that this area was part of the Blue Ridge Mountain chain, so yeah, there had to be bears and coyotes and wildcats and foxes and all kinds of wildlife close by. Just not too close, I hoped. And didn’t Bigfoot hang out around here somewhere? I sent up a little prayer that every damn one of them would stay in the woods where they belonged and leave me the hell alone, and I kept limping on down the road.
I’d been walking about five more minutes or so and beginning to get exhausted, when I saw some headlights coming my way through the fog. I stepped well off onto the shoulder and raised my hand with the flashlight in it to flag down the driver, thinking I could ask whoever it was to call someone to come and give us a tow—assuming I could get his attention in this damn fog.
The driver of the big pickup truck saw me, though, and the truck slowed down and rolled to a stop next to me. The man behind the wheel lowered his window and looked out. Instantly my heart began to beat a frantic tattoo, because I thought I might know who this was.
But before I could say his name or much of anything at all, he informed me in a hard, unfriendly voice, “This is private property. And you’re trespassing.”
“I-I am? I’m sorry, but we were just following the GPS.”
I started blushing. My face was suddenly burning hot, and my fair complexion, always a source of embarrassment to me, usually showed every emotion plainly on my face. I stepped uneasily over to the window of the pickup for a closer look at the man in the driver’s seat. Had I been mistaken about who thiswas? I didn’t think so. That was Ben Jackson in the flesh, the foster son of my great aunt Rosalyn. I’d seen him years ago on the one and only visit I’d had to North Caolina up to now, and I’d seen plenty of pictures of him, too, usually scowling at the camera like he hated getting his picture made. He was driving the pickup, looking at me with absolutely no recognition at all on his handsome face.
Finally, I found my tongue. “Ben Jackson? Is that you? It’s me—Asher MacGregor? Rosalyn is my great aunt. We’ve been trying to find her house, but our car just broke down, and I was walking to try and find a phone. I left my grandma behind while I went for help.”
“Asher MacGregor?” he said, as if testing the name on his tongue. He was staring at me, and I couldn’t tell if he liked what he saw or not, because his eyebrows rose the tiniest bit, and he looked surprised as he stared at me. He had dark hair and piercing, brown eyes, an odd shade of brown—light colored, with a golden tint, and kind of an amber quality. He was unshaven with at least a day's growth of beard, and he was wearing dusty work clothes, like he’d been on a construction job or whatever somewhere and was just coming home from it. He looked dirty and disreputable, and a little bit dangerous. He was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. Just saying.
That remark about trespassing hadn’t sounded very welcoming, though, and considering the fact that his foster mom had to be expecting us, he was apparently being kind of a jerk.
“You’relate,” he said, glancing over at me as he pulled the truck into gear. Okay, maybe I imagined that extra emphasis, but I was cold and wet and had wild animals after me and possibly a Bigfoot or two. Maybe a serial killer. The least he could do was invite me to get in his truck and out of the drizzling rain.
“Oh?” I replied in a frosty tone. “Well…the weather’s not great, as you may have noticed, so traffic was terrible. Since I’m out here walking, and freezing my ass off, you may have surmised that we’ve had car trouble. But if it’s a problem, I suppose we can just sleep in the car tonight. We certainly don’t want to be abotherto anyone.”
He grinned at me, a pirate’s grin that only served to make him look rakish and even more attractive. “Touchy, aren’t you? I didn’t say it was a problem. Get in the truck if you’re cold.”
“Oh. Well, then...okay,” I cleared my throat nervously. "Sorry, but it’s been a really long day.”
He kept staring at me as I limped around the front of the big truck to the passenger side and opened the door. I stood there contemplating how the hell I was going to climb in the damn thing. It was massive. It was one of those big pickups, a Ford F-250, complete with the apparently compulsory oversized tires, so I’d need a stepladder to get in.
I thought maybe I could grab onto something and haul myself in, or maybe I could crawl up on the bed, and I heard a noise behind me. He was suddenly there, putting his hands on my waist and lifting me in the air to deposit me on the seat, like a sack of potatoes. I felt my cheeks burning again, but I managed to choke out, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said and went back around to get back behind the wheel.
I got myself settled inside, put my seatbelt on, and I tried out a nervous smile as he watched me do it. I could see the rest of him now, and the long, lean, muscular lines of his body only made me more nervous.
“Is your cell phone not working? Why didn’t you call somebody?”
Stifling my first response, which would have been—Oh snap, why didn’t we think of that?—I simply replied, “We couldn’t geta signal.” Then I bit down my lip to stifle any more sarcasm slipping out and added, “I was wondering if maybe you could call a tow truck for us once you get back home. I’d really appreciate it.”
He continued to stare at me, his eyes roving up and down. Suddenly, I felt really uncomfortable, and it was getting to be kind of a struggle to get a full breath.
“Maybe you won’t need a tow truck. I know a little about cars. I’ll take a look at it.”
“Oh. Well, thanks. That’d be great. Anyway, our car is just up the road there. I left my grandma to wait for me while I found help.” I realized I’d already said that, so I said again—for emphasis, “Just up the road there.”
“Got it. What happened to your leg?”
“I, uh, had a climbing accident and then surgery.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Climbing, huh? As in mountain climbing?”
“Not exactly. It’s kind of a long story.”
He just kept looking at me, waiting for me to tell it. “Okay, I did something pretty dumb. I was climbing around a waterfall and slipped on some rocks. And I fell.”
“Thatwaspretty dumb. And where was this?”
Blushing, I gave him a chilly look. “In a park called Tallulah Gorge. It’s in Georgia. Where we live.”
“Yes, I know where you live, Ash.”
