Biting her lip, she considered things. Was Lang alone in the bigger house? Or had he gone out, too?
When her phone rang, she jumped so hard it felt like her heart had bounced against her rib cage. Without seeing who it was, she swiped her thumb over the screen and yelled, “Hello?”
There was a second of charged silence, followed by a laugh. “Catch you at a bad time, Hope?”
Her jaw dropped. Lang. “I’m sorry! It’s the storm... I can barely hear with the rain so loud against the roof of my car.”
“You went out in this mess?”
“Um...” She looked through the window where it appeared a pond was forming around her car. “Sort of?”
“Sort of, meaning what?”
“I was going to the store for a flashlight and candles and stuff. Maybe something to eat that didn’t need to be cooked. But... I’m stuck.”
Calm and patience personified, he asked, “Stuck where?”
“In my driveway?”
“You don’t know?”
She narrowed her eyes. “In my driveway.”
“How’d that happen?”
Was he laughing at her? From somewhere usually hidden, her temper popped out. “I’m hanging up now.”
“No, wait.” She could still hear the grin in his voice. “That’s why I called. I was going out to the store, too, and was going to ask if you needed anything, but hey, why don’t I just pick you up and we can go together?”
Several things happened at once. Her heart jumped into overdrive. Heat rushed over her skin. Dread threatened, but it ran neck and neck with eagerness. “I, um...”
“Hope.” His tone sounded incredibly gentle. “We could hit up the store, then grab food and after that I can take a look at your car.”
“It’s stuck in the mud,” she explained, because she wasn’t yet ready to address anything else. “I’m afraid if I keep trying to get it free, I’m only going to tear up the yard.”
“True enough. So what do you say?” He waited. Almost as enticement, he added, “I could be over there in three minutes.”
Before she overthought it, Hope closed her eyes and blurted, “Okay.” Then she clenched all over.
“Awesome.” Still, she didn’t hear any great inflection in his tone. No pressure, but no real excitement, either. “Stay put. I’ll bring a towel.”
As soon as he disconnected, she thought she might hyperventilate. The air inside the car seemed to thicken and grow hot. Deliberately, she slowed her breathing. It helped the tiniest bit. She sat there, frozen, a morass of tingling nerves, until his headlights came up the driveway. He’s safe, she told herself. He understands. It’ll be fine.
Ivey wouldn’t steer me wrong.
That last reassurance did the most to calm her panic. Out of every person she’d ever known, she trusted Ivey the most. Sometimes, Ivey was the only person she trusted.
Pulling up beside her passenger door, Lang put his truck in Park. When he pulled on a hat, she realized he was about to get out, which guaranteed they’d both end up soaked. That got her in gear.
Waving for him to wait, she turned off her car, grabbed her purse and climbed over the console so she could dash straight into his passenger door. With one last withering glare at the angry skies, she pulled up the hood of her coat, opened the door and dashed toward his truck.
The door opened before she reached it, but the truck was high and it took her a second to clamber in.
Sodden, dripping everywhere, she looked up—and caught Lang’s indulgent smile. The roomy cab of his truck seemed to shrink around her until she was too close to him, could see only him, smell him, feel him—
“A little wet out there, huh?”
The ironic words interrupted her building tension, allowing her to work up a smile. “A bit.”
In a very matter-of-fact way, he handed her a big beach towel. “I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to get your car out once this rain lets up. It looks like you went into an existing rut, meaning plenty of other people have ended up in that same spot, too.”
With the edge of the towel held to her dripping face, she peeked over at her car. If others had gone off the driveway in that same spot, she wouldn’t have to feel like such a dolt. “I see.”
“It wouldn’t hurt for Corbin and me to put more gravel there. I’ll ask him about it when I see him again.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Warm enough?”
God, he was so nice and so casual about everything that it just naturally helped her relax. “Yes, thank you.” While drying herself, she tried to think of something to say. Very little came to mind. “I really do appreciate this. I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“Hey.” He started to reach toward her, but pulled back again right away. “Call me anytime, okay?”
She nodded, but that led to another thought. “How long will you be here?”
“With Corbin?” He shrugged. “A while. Long enough to really get to know Justin and to make sure my brother is okay.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“You can’t know, Hope.” He stared out at the storm, then fixed his gaze on her. “A guy finding out he’s a dad, and not of an infant but a kid who’s been around for ten years? That’s a tough one. Like this tsunami of emotion, compounded with guilt and anger. Corbin’s working it out. He’s a great dad already but I can tell he’s still struggling with his thoughts and feelings, like trying to find some footing in the whole single-parent routine.”
As dry as she could get, she folded the towel and put it on her lap. “You two are close.”
“Corbin and me? Yeah, we are.” Some distant memory put a grin on his face. “We always got along, even when he was a pain in the ass, but after Dad died...” The humor faded. “I think we teamed up to make Mom feel better. And since Mom was working to make us feel better, it was like this dysfunctional love fest for a while there, with each of us trying to put a happy face on our situation.”
“I’m sure that had to be difficult.”
“Losing Dad was the pits.” His voice lowered, grew a little rough. “He and my mom... They epitomized the perfect couple in so many ways. Losing him was really hard on her. At fifteen, I felt like I had to be the man of the family.”
“That’s awfully young.”
He snorted. “Especially with my mom. It took her no time at all to realize what I was thinking, and she set me straight real fast.”