So, with a brand-new car she’d worked hard to buy and a chance for the first vacation she’d taken in years, what else was a girl to do but plan a road trip?
It was all perfect.
In planning, at least.
Reality had turned out to be something entirely different.
The winch was whining again and she realized her car—what was left of it—was being pulled onto the back of the tow truck.
She pushed away from the guardrail and hurried toward the two men standing beside the vehicle. “What about the rest of my stuff? My suitcase is in the trunk.”
“Only thing I could get at was this, miss.” The short man wiped a greasy hand on the front of his overalls before he handed her the small overnighter. “It’ll take more equipment than I’ve got here to get that trunk open. Don’t you worry none, though. Once I do, I’ll get your stuff to you wherever you’re at.”
She clutched the overnighter against her. It held her toiletries and not much more. Except for the yoga gear she’d tossed in it that morning, all of her clothes were inside the suitcase.
She felt shaky all over again.
The sheriff must have noticed because he wrapped his hand around her arm. “You need to sit down again.”
She preferred the weedy highway shoulder than the back of his SUV, but she never had the chance to tell him, because an ambulance pulled up then. The sheriff turned her over to the two people who hopped out of the boxy white vehicle. One male. One female. Both young and harried-looking, though they didn’t act it as they took charge of Georgia and settled her on the wide back bumper. They introduced themselves. Sean and Sarah.
“My mother’s name is Sarah,” she told them faintly and closed her eyes again, resting her head on the vehicle behind her. She answered their questions while they tended to her cuts and scrapes and produced a cold pack that she pressed against her forehead.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she heard a familiar voice calling her name.
She looked up to see her brother Austin jogging toward her. He was the oldest of her siblings and she always teased him that he’d come out of the womb wearing a suit and tie.
But now, he wore a T-shirt and blue jeans, his dark hair looked like it had been combed with a garden rake and even from a distance she could see the concern in his brown eyes.
No amount of willpower kept her tears away then.
She dropped the ice pack and ran into his arms. It was comforting. Familiar. And if she’d never felt that utter sense of security in the sheriff’s embrace, she never would have known it wasn’t there in her own brother’s.
“Damn,” he muttered as he took in the mangled mess of her vehicle. “What the hell happened, Georgia?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Austin. I was driving along, everything was fine and then bam! Everything was out of my control. I couldn’t steer, I couldn’t brake and I was crashing through the guardrail and—” She closed her eyes against the terrifying memory of the engine suddenly screaming, then turning quiet as she soared over brush and through trees, turning in one long, slow somersault—
She realized she was sweating and dug the heels of her palms against her closed eyes until the images faded. “All I could think was that Daddy was right.” She finally dropped her hands and looked up at him. “I should have gone on the family plane with the rest of you. I should have stuck with my old car—it was perfectly good—instead of spending a fortune on a sports car like that—”
He exhaled an oath and kissed her temple. “Stop. You’d been waiting months for that car. Accidents happen. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I want to get away from here.”
“Felicity’s waiting at the campground,” he said. “She’s making sure the travel trailer you’ll be using is all set for you.”
“How did you know what happened?” When she’d set up her emergency account with the car dealer, she’d listed him as the person to contact.
“The sheriff’s office sent someone out to the campground to find me.”
She rubbed her temples. “You didn’t get a text or some automatic notice from R-Haz that my vehicle was in an accident?”
“Nope.”
She looked around her brother at the man in question, only to see that he was heading their way. “Watch out,” she warned Austin. “He might have rescued me from my car, but he’s got a beef against ‘those Fortunes.’” She air-quoted the term.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
She spread her hands wordlessly.
Pax stopped a few feet away. “You’re the brother? Austin?”
“I am.” Austin kept an arm protectively around Georgia’s shoulder but extended his other. “Austin Fortune. I appreciate what you did for my sister. She says you pulled her out of that.” He nodded toward the mangled vehicle now fixed in place atop the flatbed. Charlie had a broom and a bucket and was sweeping up debris where she’d gone through the rail.
The dusty brim of the sheriff’s hat cast most of his face in shadow, but Georgia still felt his gaze roving over her as he briefly shook her brother’s hand. “Sheriff Price. I’m glad she wasn’t hurt more badly than she was. And that nobody else was involved. I’m not issuing a citation, since she didn’t commit any offenses—”
“Big of you.”
He ignored her. “That could change if under the course of investigation new information comes to light.” He was still holding his boxy metal clipboard and he slid a business card free, handing it to Georgia.
She automatically took it, annoyed with the way she shivered when her fingertips brushed his. “There isn’t any new information,” she assured him. She glanced down at the card.
“That’s Charlie’s card,” he said, pointing out what she’d just realized.
Why had she thought he might want her to have his number?
Thankfully unaware of her thoughts, he was continuing. “You’ll want to arrange things with him when it comes to getting the rest of your personal belongings. And you’ll want to keep the accident report when you deal with your auto-insurance folks. If you want Charlie to contact them for you, I can tell him to go ahead. Don’t know if they’ll want to send someone to see the vehicle in person or not. It’s a given it’ll be totaled, though.” He tore off a carbon copy of the report he’d made and folded it in thirds before extending it.
“Since my phone is MIA, I’d appreciate him making that call.” She plucked the report from his grasp. No shivers, no way, no, ma’am.
“She can come with me now?” her brother asked.
“Address of the urgent care in Amber Falls is on the back of the report. Might want to get her checked out for good measure. But as long as she’s got clearance from Sean and Sarah, I’ve got no reason to keep her.”
At the mention of their names, Sean waved a thumbs-up. “She’s good, Sheriff. Lucky as hell, that’s for sure.”
Which was what Georgia needed to remember.
“Let me get the air-conditioning going in the SUV,” Austin told her. “Then we’ll get you out of here.” He squeezed her shoulder gently before jogging across the highway.
She looked toward the sheriff.
No matter how his attitude had changed when he’d learned she was a member of the Fortune family, he had saved her from the car.
She stuck out her own hand. “Thank you