Under the Boardwalk (2 page)

He unscrewed the next sprinkler head. "You're surrounded, Kermit," he said. "Come out with your hands up."

A metallic screech interrupted him before he could get to his Kermit the Frog impression. He dropped the pipe wrench. Some idiot was taking the mountain road too fast again.

He heard tires squeal, then the crack of wood breaking.

Kyle was off and running toward the sound before the echo died away.

~*~

The world was silent and gray around the little pink car, except for a lone owl hooting somewhere nearby. Hallie felt cold. She wondered if that was a sign of shock.

She sat very still in the driver's seat and tried to think about what had just happened. Nothing had happened. Last thing she remembered she had been—

"—over there." She looked at the passenger seat next to her. It was empty. Her duffle bag was on the floor. But the seat was empty.

Wait a minute. Had she been driving the car?

She touched her forehead. She felt a stickiness, and when she lowered her hand, she saw blood. Not too much blood. Just a bit, like she'd bumped on the steering wheel.

"Hmmm," she said, trying to make sense of that. So she'd been driving—Windy's car—yeah. This was Windy's Little Guy. The bright pink curve of the Beetle's hood outside the windshield was unmistakable.

She'd been driving the car, she thought, and realized she was repeating herself.

Where was she? This whole thing felt surreal. Hallie briefly considered the possibility that she might be dead, but dismissed the thought when she realized that her hair had come loose from its customary ponytail, and a cloud of dark curls was blocking her vision. She doubted that people on their way to the afterlife had to worry about bad hair days.

She moved—just a little bit—in the seat, holding her breath. She exhaled with relief when she didn't feel any sharp jabs of pain. One by one, she tried her arms, her legs. Getting more brave, she wiggled her fingers, then her toes. Other than what felt like a big bruise where the seat belt gripped her across the chest, and a massive headache, she seemed to be okay. She pushed her hair back behind her ears. Now, where was she?

"Hey!" The driver's side door was jerked open. "Are you okay? Where'd you come from? What happened?" The voice was masculine, and so was the man. He knelt beside the open door, which brought him eye to eye with her. Green eyes, she noticed.

"Um, yeah," said Hallie, answering the first question, since it was the only one she knew the answer to. "I'm all right. Nothing's broken anyway." She moved to unbuckle the seat belt, but he immediately leaned into the car and put his hands on her shoulders to stop her.

"Hold still." It sounded like an order. "You're not going anywhere." The car seemed warmer all of a sudden, with the two of them so close together in that small space.

"I said I was all right," she protested, but she stopped moving. He immediately let go of her and sat back on his heels.

"You could be injured," he said, his voice softer. "Let me check you out before you move around."

"If you're a doctor where's your white coat?"

"I guess I left it back at the office."

He was wearing jeans and a plain white tee-shirt, she noticed. His body was long and lean and fit into those jeans and tee-shirt remarkably well, she also noticed, although that was completely irrelevant.

She tried again to unbuckle her seat belt.

"No," he said. "Seriously, you could have internal injuries or neurological problems or something like that. You shouldn't move."

"Neurological problems? And how would you know if I had internal injuries?"

"I was pre-med at Stanford—never did get to the 'med' part, but I did get my first aid merit badge when I was twelve."

"Impressive credentials."

He laughed. "I think we can rule out brain damage. You're doing a pretty good job of keeping up your half of the conversation.

She had to smile at that. "Then I'm getting out."

"Wait." There was that authoritative tone in his voice again. "Just indulge me for a minute here. My family's already held one wake for you, and that's all you're entitled to as far as I'm concerned."

"Your family?" She
must
have brain damage not to have noticed before. The dark, curly hair, emerald eyes, the quick smile. "You're a Madrigal."

He doffed an imaginary hat. "Kyle Aidan Madrigal, at your service. And you're Windy's divorcée. Glad you could, uh, drop in to see us." He winced. "Sorry. That was really bad." He leaned in closer to her.

"Now hold still." His fingers brushed across her forehead. "That's a bad bruise. Are you sure it doesn't hurt?"

"If you'd stop touching it, it'd stop hurting."

"Sorry," he whispered. His hands continued their inspection of her body.

All of a sudden she became aware of just how thin his cotton tee-shirt was, how the heat from his body seemed to radiate right through it. She felt an urge to put her hands up to his chest, like warming herself in front of a fire.

He looked concerned. "Do you feel dizzy?"

"Huh?"

"Dizzy, light-headed, disoriented in any way?"

She sure hoped he couldn't read her mind. "Nope. I'm okay. I'm sure. Just a headache." If she could get distracted by a man's chest, she must be doing all right.

"And you don't feel any pain anywhere?"

She shook her head.

"No numbness?"

"No. But if I don't get out of this car I'm going to scream."

Silently he reached across her to unbuckle the seat belt. She gave in to the urge and put her hands on his chest. It was warm. Her palms seemed to fit naturally against the hard muscles.

"Don't be scared," he murmured. "I'm not going to hurt you." Gently he lifted her out of the driver's seat until she found herself standing in the mud next to the car, still with her hands resting lightly on his chest. "That didn't hurt, did it?" His voice was soft.

He looked down at her hands and frowned. She had forgotten about her hands. She pulled them away from his body and put them behind her back, trying to ball them into fists, but of course they didn't cooperate, and three of the fingers stayed stiffly pointing at odd angles as if they had a mind of their own.

"Your hands?—"

"They're old scars," she said, closing the subject.

There was an awkward moment of silence, then Kyle's ready smile was back. "So, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? You know, we would've let you in the front gate. You didn't have to crash your way in."

"I didn't crash."

He looked at her blankly. "You have to admit you came to an abrupt stop."

"Not funny."

"No, it isn't," he agreed. "You're lucky to be all right." He leaned against the hood of the car. "Maybe you oughta tell me what did happen. You missed a turn in the fog, right?"

"No... Maybe?" She tried to figure it out, but she couldn't seem to remember anything after they'd left the main street. Had she been driving? "I needed to pray at Paco's Bluff," she mumbled.

"Paco's Bluff?" Kyle shuddered, as if he were shaking off a bad thought. "You didn't go off Paco's Bluff. That's a good half-mile from here,
gracias a Dios
."

"So where am I?" she asked, now knowing why people who woke up from amnesia on TV shows always asked that.

"This is part of the Madrigal Rancho. Listen," he said, apparently noticing the tears in her eyes, "are you sure you're not hurt at all?"

"I'm sure," she said firmly. She looked at the car. "But Windy's gonna kill me for wrecking her car."

"Yeah. I'm surprised she let you drive her Little Guy."

Windy had let her drive the car? Why couldn't she remember that part? The part between them leaving main street and landing here. The part that explained what was going on....

She must have looked upset, because he smiled at her. "Now, don't worry about it! Luckily for us, you chose an unplanted part of this field, or we'd be picking berry thorns out of the Little Guy's suspension for a week. Oh, and sorry about the muck."

She looked down, realizing she had mud all over her sneakers.

"We've been having a little plumbing problem today. I imagine your steering probably would feel a little sluggish if you tried to drive a Volkswagen through this adobe mud."

She sighed. "Yeah, I guess."

"All in all, I'd have to say we're lucky. If you'd gone over Paco's Bluff, Windy would've been crushed. We'd never have been able to put the Little Guy back together." He winked at her, and she couldn't help smiling. Somehow the whole thing didn't seem so bad with him here.

He straightened up, as if he'd reached a decision. "Will you be all right alone here for a minute?"

She nodded. "Why?"

"I'm going up to the road. Don't worry," he said when he saw her expression. "I just want to take a look around and see exactly where you went off the road." He touched her lightly on the shoulder. "Hold on. I'll be right back."

He headed off into the fog as if he knew exactly where he was going, which Hallie supposed he did. Even if the skies were clear Hallie wouldn't have known where she was, but with Kyle here she hadn't felt lost. Standing in the mist next to the car she started to get scared again.

"Please come back, Kyle," she whispered.
Don't be an idiot. You're not going to die standing in the fog for a few minutes. Get a grip.

He was back before she'd finished chastising herself. "Nothing," he answered. "Nothing except tire marks where you slammed on the brakes, and the broken railing beside the road. No sign of what caused you to swerve off the road."

"I'm sorry."

He looked surprised. "There's no reason to be sorry. You were in an accident." He bent down to look her in the eyes closely. "Are you positive you're all right? You look a little-well, 'off' around the eyes."

She shrugged. "I just—can't figure out what happened."

"You mean how you lost control of the car?"

"I—guess."

He shrugged. "Don't worry about it right now. There isn't much more we can do here at the moment. So we've got three choices."

"Choices?"

"We've got to get you home. We've got a couple hours until it gets dark, so you could wait here while I go get my truck."

"Alone?" Her voice quavered.

"Or we can walk—but it's about half a mile uphill to the house from here. Or I can carry you."

"All the way?"

"It's not my first choice. But you are a little thing." He towered over her. She only came up to his chest—that wondrous expanse of hard muscles. He probably could carry her up a mountain, she thought. But there was no need for that.

"I can walk," she said firmly. "I don't need anybody to carry me. I can make it on my own."

Kyle smiled. "I believe that, too." He looked down at her sneakers. "I love a woman in sensible shoes."

He gestured into the fog. "This way, milady."

The way he led her sloped gently uphill through what seemed to Hallie to be endless rows of raspberries. The fog seemed to thin out a bit as they climbed, until she could see for quite a way in all directions, but the air was still damp and misty around them. They didn't mention the accident again, but instead Kyle kept up a running monologue about the ranch and farming, and the antics of his three siblings.

She trudged along beside him, feeling almost like she was in a dream. It seemed like her memory of the day was a bunch of disconnected images, with nothing adding up, nothing making sense.

She tried to focus on what he was saying, tried to stay grounded in the moment.

He was talking about the day he'd taken over the rancho.

"Twenty?" said Hallie, walking a little faster to keep up with his long strides. "I guess I hadn't realized how young you were—Windy always described you as being 'grown up'."

Kyle laughed. "I guess twenty probably seemed pretty grown up to a six-year-old." He waited until she'd caught up with him, then started walking again, more slowly.

"Then Zac and Chris would've been only—"

"—Two and a half. Yup," he said, in response to her raised eyebrows, "I had no clue what I was doing. But somebody had to take care of things after our parents died. Anyway, I got the twins potty-trained in record time. I don't know how we would've survived otherwise."

"It must've been tough." Hallie wondered how on earth a boy barely out of his teens could've handled parenthood and running a ranch all by himself.

"I grew into the role as I went along."

Hallie glanced sideways at him while they walked. She tried to picture this tall, confident man as an overwhelmed boy, trying to cope with the death of his parents, and the care and feeding of three little kids.

"I've managed to do all right. I think I've done the best I could with the kids, and they've turned out amazingly well, in spite of my mistakes." A smile touched his lips at the mention of the children. Then he frowned. "But I'll be glad when it's over."