“Bless you. No. I moved there after I graduated from the University of Tennessee.”
“There’s no way,” Chris said.
“No way, what?” Sienna asked.
“That you’re in your forties. Thirty-five, tops.”
She laughed again, and once more, where he was and what was happening faded, and all he could see were her beautiful brown eyes. “Thanks. It’s my size. Being five-two makes me look younger.”
Chris tried to shake his head, but she had too firm a grip on him for him to move even an inch. “No. It’s you. You’re beautiful.”
She blushed, and he had the thought that it was a shame. A woman who looked like Sienna should be used to compliments. Should take them in stride. She had pretty light brown hair with blonde highlights. It was tumbled around her shoulders at the moment and she had a black streak smudged on one cheek. He frowned, wondering if she’d hurt herself climbing into this deathtrap with him.
Just as the thought hit him, he remembered where he was and that he was stuck. He tried to shift in the seat, but his legs were pinned under the steering wheel and dashboard. He felt the pressure of the wheel against his thighs.
Closing his eyes again, Chris felt the terror clawing its way up his throat once again.
“So if you’re from Tennessee, what are you doing in Texas? Are you lost?”
Chris desperately wanted her to be able to distract him with her questions. He was still holding on to her wrist and he could feel the steady pulse under his hand. He forced his eyes open once more and found that she’d shifted until she was practically sitting in his lap. The steering wheel was preventing her from actually doing so, but she’d done her best to put her face directly in his line of vision. He vaguely heard people talking from outside the car, but he concentrated on Sienna. She was the only thing keeping him from losing his mind.
“My son is coming home from deployment today.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Mine is too. Well, it’s my daughter, not my son.”
Chris stared at her in disbelief. The thought crossed his mind that everything she was saying was a lie, just to keep him calm, but he doubted she’d lie about something like having a kid. “What are the odds?” he asked.
“Astrominical,” she replied dryly. “We’ve lived in the same city for years. We have kids who are probably around the same age. They’re both in the Army. They’re probably in the same unit and have been stationed together overseas. Then we were traveling at the same place, at the same time. I’m a paramedic and small and…here we are. It’s a Christmas miracle.”
When she put it like that, it seemed even more improbable, but he liked the thought of her being his Christmas miracle. She was a gift just for him.
It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed a gift as much as he enjoyed the thought of her being his.
“Guess that means when I get out of here, you have no choice but to let me take you out for lunch or coffee or something,” Chris said. His words were teasing and flippant, but he meant them. For some reason, he felt as if they were meant to find each other.
“Deal,” she said softly, a sheen of pink flooding her cheeks.
Someone pounded on the top of the car then, breaking the moment.
Sienna hated how easily she blushed. She blushed when she was embarrassed. She blushed when someone complimented her, when the guys at the station back in Tennessee teased her. She wanted to come off cool and sophisticated with Chris, but of course she probably looked like a blushing virgin or something instead.
She couldn’t believe they both had children in the same unit and they were in Texas for the same reason. It had to be fate…didn’t it?
“You guys okay in there?” a voice from above asked.
Sienna looked up and saw a civilian looking down at her from the open sunroof. She nodded. “We’re good. What’s the ETA on the paramedics?”
“Not sure, but they’re on their way. There’s a group of Army guys out here. They chased down and caught the other driver. They’re keeping him secure until the cops get here.”
“Someone needs to relay that the fire department is gonna need extraction tools to get the vic out. There’s a probable head or neck injury as well,” Sienna told the man, her training kicking in.
Without a word, the man’s head disappeared and it was just her and Chris once again. She could hear more people talking outside, but for the moment, it seemed like her and Chris were the only people in the world.
Shifting and ignoring the way her knees and hips were screaming in pain at the awkward position she was in, Sienna looked back at the man in front of her.
In the time it took for her to relay Chris’s condition to the other man, he’d sank back into his head. He was shaking and sweaty, and Sienna didn’t think it was because of his medical issues. He’d said he was claustrophobic and being pinned in place, with her holding him immobile, couldn’t be fun.
“I remember this one time when we rolled up on a scene and realized a kid had crawled into a sewer pipe after a kitten and gotten stuck. Of course, the guys I work with are all big and brawny, there was no discussion about it, I knew I’d be the one who had to go in after him.”
Chris hadn’t opened his eyes again, but Sienna knew he was listening. Without thought, her thumb began to caress his jawline as she continued. “It was the day after Christmas, and his mom told me he’d been playing with his new handheld game all morning and she’d finally forced him outside for a break. I crawled into that sewer, and I’ve never been claustrophobic, but I struggled with being inside that tube. I reached the boy and, let me tell you, it was hell trying to back out of there while holding on to his leg. He was kicking and screaming and the sound echoed in that small drain pipe. I thought I would be deaf by the time I got him outside.
“Eventually, I made it to the opening and my team pulled me out by my boots, dragging that little boy with me. We were both covered in mud, and things I don’t even want to think about, and instead of thanking me, the boy turned and yelled at me, saying he was playing with the kitty, and I didn’t have the right to touch him. His mom hustled him into the house with barely even a thanks, probably to play that damn game he’d gotten from Santa.”
Chris’s eyes opened at last…and instead of laughing at her final line, he said, “I was working at my job at the maximum-security prison and there was a riot. I locked myself into the observation room, but the prisoners broke in. They busted out the glass, which looked a hell of a lot like the windshield does right now, until it finally broke. They beat the shit out of me then hauled me to solitary confinement and locked me in. It was dark, and I could hear the yelling and screaming of the riot around me. But the scariest thing was the smell of the smoke from the fires they lit. I knew no one knew where I was, and if the fire got out of control, I’d either be burned alive or would suffocate from the smoke. It felt as if I had been buried alive.”
Sienna couldn’t let go of his head, but she wanted to hug him more than she wanted anything else in her life. She settled for leaning forward and laying her forehead against his own.
He continued, his voice amazingly steady. “Eventually, the police and SWAT got everything under control and searched the prison cell by cell to secure it, and found me. I’m told I was in there for three hours. It felt like days. I’ve had issues with small spaces ever since.”