The accident never should have happened. And it wouldn’t have happened if Alyssa Santangelo hadn’t let herself get distracted by thoughts of the past.
With a long stay in her hometown ahead of her, Aly had promised herself that this time, she would not try to keep a low profile. This time, she wouldn’t be slinking around town like a heartsick fool, trying to avoid any chance she might run into the guy who’d lied and broken her heart and had her served with divorce papers after making zero effort to work things out.
And there. She’d just done it. Let her mind stray into dangerous territory. She wasn’t going to do that. She would not think about him.
And she wasn’t thinking about him. Not really.
She was only reassuring herself as to how this visit would go, only bolstering her resolution to stand tall and be strong. With a deep breath and a determined smile, she focused on the road ahead of her.
The drive from Portland International to Valentine Bay was a beautiful one. They called this section of US Route 26 the Sunset Highway. It wound in and out of the national forest, working its way west toward the setting sun.
It was just twilight on a warm Saturday evening in July. Aly had the windows down in her rental car and the air smelled of spruce and fir. Of Oregon.
Of home.
And her thoughts...
Her thoughts just wouldn’t behave. They kept drifting, wandering, pretending to stay in the present, and then circling back again.
To her ex, to Connor Bravo.
Really, she hardly thought of the guy anymore—or if she did, she reminded herself firmly to stop thinking of him, to count her blessings instead.
And her blessings were many. She had a job she loved at Strategic Image. The ad agency had hired her as an assistant to an assistant straight out of the University of Oregon. She’d started at the bottom of the ladder, but she’d moved up fast. She’d made friends, good friends, the kind a woman can count on. Her current apartment in Tribeca was perfect, a small space, but with a huge closet for her fabulous wardrobe. She was living her dream in New York, New York.
Only one thing was missing—the right man to share her life with.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t tried to find him. She put herself out there, dating guys her friends had introduced her to and guys she met via Match and Coffee Meets Bagel. Somehow, though, that special something was always missing. Her relationships never lasted that long. The most recent of those had ended a couple weeks ago. Kyle Santos was a great guy. He just wasn’t the right guy. It had seemed wrong to drag things out, so she’d broken it off with him.
And seriously, what was she brooding about? She was only twenty-nine and mostly focused on her job. She would find the man for her, eventually. And she would get it right the second time around.
Coming home, though...
Well, it was tough. The memories were everywhere she turned. She and Connor used to drive this stretch of highway together several times a year, going back and forth from OU in Eugene. They would stop at rustic, logging-themed Camp 18 for burgers and to give their phones a workout snapping pictures of each other, mugging it up with the chainsaw sculpture of Big Foot at the entrance to the gift shop.
Those were the good times. The best times.
Too bad Connor had screwed everything up, lying to keep her and then refusing to even try the life he’d sworn he was eager to live with her.
She blinked and refocused and reminded herself yet again to cut it out.
Didn’t work.
Seven years since he’d divorced her, and still it took only an hour on the Sunset Highway for the memories to come flooding back.
Did he ever think of her?
Oh, I don’t think so...
During one brief visit home five years ago, she’d seen him down on Beach Street with a blonde. They’d looked like a Ralph Lauren ad, Connor and the blonde, both of them all tawny, tanned and fit. Aly had ducked into a leather goods store before he could spot her, but the damage was done. The sight of him with another woman had cut her to the quick.
Aly clutched the steering wheel more tightly. She swallowed hard and blinked against the hot pressure of rising tears.
Seriously. What was the matter with her?
Seven years since her marriage ended. She hadn’t spoken to the man once in all that time and she never would. She really was over him, definitely.
“You’re doing it. Again,” she whispered at the windshield, her voice disgustingly breathy, weighted with despair. She flexed her fingers to relax them. It was years ago. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t coming home for him.
“Woman up,” she muttered to the empty car.
If she saw him, she saw him. Get over it. He has.
Up ahead, headlights gleamed. It was weird, in the fading light. The oncoming vehicle almost looked as though it had swerved into her lane.
Scant seconds later she realized the horrible truth. The headlights were in her lane.
With a sharp cry, she jerked the wheel hard to the right to avoid impact—too hard, she realized too late. The thick trunk of a Douglas fir reared up beyond the windshield.
A split second later, the world went black.
Voices.
They seemed to come from all around her. Voices and sirens and strange sounds—air escaping, metal creaking. Her chest felt like someone had whacked it with a hammer. And the skin of her face, which was buried in something that smelled like singed baby powder, burned as though she’d face-planted on asphalt.
She heard a groaning sound. It came from her own mouth.
A man’s voice near her left ear said, “She’s coming around.”
Another groan escaped her. Gritting her teeth, she willed her body into action and somehow managed to flop back away from the smelly thing that covered her face—an air bag! The smelly thing was an air bag.
With yet another groan, she put it together. Somehow, she’d been in an accident, and it looked pretty bad...
Carefully, she turned her head to meet the worried eyes of the state trooper staring at her through the wide-open driver’s-door window. Red light from a light bar reflected on his face in strobe-like flashes.
“It’s okay,” the trooper promised, in that tone people use when it really isn’t, but what else can you say? “We’re going to get you out of there. Can you talk to me?”
“I...yes. Of course.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Uh.” She tried to decide. “I think I’m all in one piece, at least.”
“Good girl. What else?”
“There’s...some pain. My chest aches. And my face...” It really did feel as though someone had taken a cheese grater to her cheeks and forehead.
“That’s from the air bag,” the trooper said.
Aly shut her eyes and dropped her head to the seat rest again. “Everything hurts, but I don’t think anything is broken...” Or maybe she was just in shock and didn’t even realize she was almost dead.
“Hold tight,” the trooper said. “I promise we’re going to get you out of there as quickly as we can...”
It took a while. They brought out the Jaws