His father’s father had emigrated from Ireland when he was a boy. “Is your mother from there?”
“Why?” Kelsey asked guardedly.
“No reason. I just thought I detected a slight accent.”
Periodically her mother tried to lose her accent, but her father always protested, saying he really loved the slight Irish lilt in her voice.
“The same could be said about you,” Kelsey pointed out. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No,” he deadpanned, “I live in Tustin,” he said, mentioning the name of the city next to Bedford.
She frowned. He was deliberately being obtuse. “That’s not what I meant.”
Morgan dropped the act. “I know what you meant, Ms. Marlowe. I’m from Georgia originally. Now do I get to ask a question?”
“As long as you understand that I don’t have to answer if I don’t want to.” Her eyes met his. The ground rules were accepted. “Go ahead.”
“Is this chip on your shoulder something recent,” he asked amicably, “or is it some congenital thing?”
She opened her mouth to retort that it was none of his business what she had on her shoulder, but then she closed it again. She could almost hear her mother reprimanding her. And she’d be right. She was taking out her tension—and Dan’s behavior—on Donnelly. Because he’d come to her mother’s aid, he didn’t deserve this.
“I’m sorry if I’m coming across a little testy—”
He laughed shortly. “Little being a relative term here,” he interjected.
“Okay,” Kelsey backtracked, “a lot testy,” she admitted. “But nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
He glanced at her thoughtfully. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Ms. Marlowe, but ‘this’ didn’t happen to you. It happened to your mother. She’s the one you should be thinking about, not yourself.”
“I am thinking about her. About how awful it would have been if she’d been hurt.” She drew herself up, taking offense. “And just where do you get off lecturing me, Donnelly?”
“Not lecturing,” he countered mildly, “just pointing the obvious out. Your mother’s okay. A bit shaken up, but okay. That makes her one of the lucky ones.”
Something in his voice caught her attention. Donnelly wasn’t just spouting rhetoric, he was speaking from firsthand experience. Undoubtedly, as a policeman he’d seen things the average person hadn’t, and they’d left a lasting impression. He was right. She had to take a page out of her mother’s book and just focus on the positive.
Kelsey took a deep breath. She stared down at her hands. They were folded and clenched in her lap. She willed herself to relax as she tried to banish the tension gripping her.
“Yes, it does,” she acknowledged. Kelsey knew she owed this policeman a debt for being so nice to her mother. A debt she didn’t take lightly. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t even thank you for taking my mother to the hospital. You could have just called for an ambulance and gone on your way.”
“No, I couldn’t,” he answered too quickly. When he caught the confused expression on her face, he tried to shrug away his near slip. “It’s all part of that protect and serve thing I was telling you about. It’s the job,” he emphasized. Gratitude always made him feel awkward. He didn’t know how to accept it or give it.
“Protect and serve,” she repeated. “And which was this?”
A smile crept over his lips. A smile, she thought, that made him look more approachable. Not to mention sexy. She banished the last part from her mind. Policemen weren’t sexy. If anything, they were trouble.
“A little of both,” he answered.
With that, he turned the squad car onto University Drive. That was when she got her first glimpse of her mother’s vehicle. From the rear, the car looked to be all right. But then they drew closer. And Kelsey saw the front of the vehicle. It definitely wasn’t what she expected to find.
“Oh God,” she cried without fully realizing it as Morgan got closer to the car.
It was not a pretty sight.
Chapter Four
The closer they came, the further Kelsey felt her heart sink. Although the back of her mother’s car was untouched, the front was bruised, scratched and badly dented. If human, it would have easily been deemed the loser in a fight. She could just imagine what it was like under the hood.
Her mother’s car held a very special place in her heart. She’d learned how to drive in it.
Kelsey could remember her mother sitting beside her while she practiced early in the morning in a deserted parking lot. She’d felt as if she was flying when in reality she was only going eleven miles an hour.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?” she cried, staring at the vehicle.
Waiting until the road was clear, Morgan made a U-turn and guided the squad car directly behind the badly battered sedan. Kate’s car had spun out before crashing into the bushes that ran along the perimeter of the college’s athletic field.
By the time he opened his door, Kelsey had already left his squad car and was examining the damage to her mother’s vehicle.
“To be honest, I didn’t focus on the vehicle,” he told her. “I was focused on making sure your mother was all right.”
He had his priorities straight. And she was being waspish, Kelsey upbraided herself. Contrite, she nodded at him.
“Sorry. You’re right. My mother definitely matters more than a mashed-up grill,” she murmured, then circled around again to the front. The hood was pushed in, proving that the bushes were tougher than they looked. It was a miracle that her mother didn’t sustain any bad cuts or bruises.
The driver’s-side door creaked and groaned like an arthritic eighty-year-old man when she opened it. The door made even louder noises when she attempted to shut it again. It resisted complete closure.
Morgan nodded at the door. “Doesn’t sound promising,” he commented.
Sitting behind the wheel, Kelsey put her mother’s key into the ignition and turned. The engine wheezed, then coughed and sputtered before finally giving up the ghost. With an exasperated sigh, Kelsey tried again. This time, the engine remained silent. There wasn’t even a weak sputter. The third attempt was no better. Kelsey got out again.
“I’m going to have to call a tow truck,” she sighed, resigned. She looked at him. “You have any recommendations?”
“Pop the hood.”
He caught her by surprise. “What?”
“Pop the hood.” He nodded toward the driver’s side. “There should be a release right under—”
“I know where the release is,” she told him. His assumption of her ignorance annoyed her. She wasn’t one of those women whose entire knowledge about cars stopped at putting the key into the ignition.
Reaching into the car, Kelsey pulled the lever. The hood made a strange noise in response. It took Morgan a couple of minutes to free it from its latch.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Morgan didn’t answer her right away. He was busy assessing the damage and testing various connections, estimating what might be wrong with the car from the noises it had made—and some it conspicuously hadn’t—when Kelsey had turned the key.
“Checking out the engine,” he finally said just