The Mountain Midwife (22 page)

“They stopped and offered me a ride before I got enough cell service.” He removed his hand from his coat pocket and curled his fingers around hers. “So what was up with that black truck?”

“They were in a hurry.”

“You looked scared.”

“Of course I was. They nearly smashed right into us.”

“You looked scared after they passed us. Did you recognize it?”

“No. Well, maybe.” She held his hand too tightly but couldn’t stop herself. “Lots of black trucks around here. Still—”

The engine on the truck roared. The tow strap tightened. For several agonizing moments, nothing happened, then mud began to fly, dark clumps in the taillights. The Tahoe shuddered, seemed to shake itself like a wet dog, and slowly, inch by inch, crept from the ditch and onto the more solid bed of the road. A hoot of triumph rang from the cab of the truck.

Ashley started forward, but Hunter held her back. “Something’s coming around that curve.”

“I didn’t hear it.” She’d been concentrating on her SUV’s progress, but she heard the engine now, roaring around the curve farther on like the driver expected the road to be empty. The headlights flared, too bright, too high. She caught her breath and held it, fully expecting the impact of metal crunching against metal, flying glass.

“Mary Kate,” she cried.

She and the baby were in the cab of the truck.

But the second vehicle slammed on its brakes and slid to a halt yards from the smaller red pickup. A man stuck his head out and shouted, “What’re you doin’?” to their good Samaritans. The response was a friendly, “Hold your horses.” And the driver of the larger vehicle drew back, idling his engine with an occasional revving.

Ashley pressed her hand to her middle, sure she was about to be sick. She took several deep breaths, drinking in clean, cold air to calm herself.

“You all right, Ashley?” Hunter asked.

“I will be.” She stepped off the rock break and headed for her Tahoe. “Can I take it now?”

“Yes ma’am,” one of their rescuers called back to her from the rear, where he unhooked the tow strap. “She oughta be good for ya now.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Should I offer to pay them?” Hunter asked.

“Not unless you want to offend them.” Ashley glanced longingly at the driver’s door, then continued back to help Mary Kate and Boyd.

Hunter stopped her with a light touch on her arm. “I’ll get them. You get in.”

“I’m going to drive.”

“If you like.”

She wanted to get out of there faster than she thought Hunter would feel comfortable driving. She couldn’t outrun the black pickup if it returned, but she knew a couple of side lanes to patients’ houses they wouldn’t dare follow her down.

They won’t want to anyway
, she told herself.

She wished she believed it.

She climbed into the Tahoe and adjusted the driver’s seat for her lesser height. The others got in and settled, Mary Kate coughing again, Boyd sounding nearly as bad.

“Ready?” She glanced at her passengers. “Then hang on.” She stomped on the gas. The Tahoe shot forward, rocketed around the second dogleg curve, and started down the ridge. No lights followed. The red pickup would have to back up and turn around before the black one could continue, giving Ashley precious minutes to get ahead.

You are being paranoid
, she reminded herself.

She wished she were. She still intended to take no chances.

The Tahoe swooped down the ridge a quarter mile, headlights glinting off of gray-white rock breaks, glinting in a swollen stream, absorbed in a patch of foliage. Past the tree stand, a narrow lane dipped down. Without slowing, Ashley swung the wheel and turned onto the track.

“What,” Hunter asked in his calm, deep voice, “are you doing?”

“Not now.” She drew a few yards farther off the main road, then cut the lights.

“Is something wrong?” Mary Kate asked in a small voice.

“I’m letting that monster truck go past us.” The truth. “I don’t like vehicles that big and aggressive behind me going downhill.”

They accepted her explanation and waited with her in silence for a time so short the truck must have been flying well above a sensible speed, let alone the limit of forty-five. Lights blazing on high beams, it roared by the end of the lane. Five more minutes passed according to the dash clock, then Ashley flipped on the lights and backed onto the road. “Let’s get Mary Kate and Boyd to the hospital.”

“After all this,” Mary Kate said, “I think I mighta been better stayin’ home.”

“You might have been.” Ashley kept her eyes peering ahead for taillights and glancing behind for headlights. No eyes glared in the night. The rain ceased, and other than Boyd waking and interspersing his coughing with increasingly louder wails, they drove smoothly into town, to the hospital that was little more than a clinic. She called ahead a few minutes before they reached the emergency room, and an orderly and nurse met them with two wheelchairs. The instant the nurse took Boyd from Mary Kate, his cries grew deafening.

“Can’t you take Boyd for me?” Mary Kate cast Ashley a panicked glance.

Ashley shook her head. “I don’t have hospital privileges. I can’t do anything here but visit or consult with a doctor if he likes.”

“B-but—” Mary Kate resisted sitting in the chair. “Do they know I ain’t got insurance?”

“They know. Don’t worry about it. They have special funds.”

Of course Mary Kate would worry anyway. “Let them take you in, okay?” Ashley rested her hand on Mary Kate’s.

“Should I come with you?”

Mary Kate nodded.

Ashley glanced to Hunter. “I’m so sorry to keep you here. You can always drive my Tahoe back to my house to get your car and I can get a ride home with someone.”

“You may need it to take Mary Kate home.” He strode into the waiting room behind them. “I’ll wait.”

“But—” Ashley gave up protesting so she could follow Mary Kate into one of the exam cubicles.

The advantage of the small town and her call ahead, along with the presence of a sick child and pregnant woman, made their waiting time minimal. The doctor, who didn’t look old enough to shave, let alone be making life-and-death decisions in an emergency room, sent for an obstetrician—Dr. White—for Mary Kate and a pediatrician for Boyd.

“I think we may admit him. His fever is high.” He stopped talking and looked at Ashley.

“You are family?”

“I’m her midwife.”

“Oh yeah? I’ve heard about you. Maybe we can talk sometime. I’m curious about how you work.”

“Sure.” He was rather good-looking with soft blond hair and hazel eyes, a warm smile, and compact build. “Give me a call. We can have coffee or something.”

He grinned, then attended to his patients.

In the end, the physicians pronounced that Mary Kate had a case of bronchitis and elevated blood pressure, and Boyd had a serious case of the flu. Both were dehydrated. Dr. White wanted to keep Mary Kate overnight in the hospital, and the pediatrician wanted the same for Boyd.

“I’m glad you’re cautious enough to bring your patients to the hospital,” Dr. White told Ashley.

She gave him a blank look. “I don’t think birth usually needs a physician’s intervention, but for those that do, of course I call on a doctor.”

She turned her attention to Mary Kate, told her she would check in with her in the morning, and exited to the waiting room. She fully expected to see Hunter gone, having found a ride somehow. But he sat watching a couple of talking heads on the wall-mounted TV.

He rose at her entrance. “How are they?”

“Sick. They’re staying.”

He looked concerned. “That sick, or precautionary?”

“A bit of both.” Ashley rubbed her arms. She was still damp and chilled. So was Hunter. “Let me get you back to your motel so you can get some dry clothes. Or would you prefer to come out and get your car?”

“I think I’d like to get dry first. Perhaps you can pick me up in the morning?”

“Or wait for you and take you on out after that.” She felt oddly reluctant to go back to her house alone.

Or maybe not so oddly considering what she had seen. She hadn’t seen a person, just heard that voice, rough like he’d smoked too many cigarettes.

“If you’ll be all right that long.”

“I’ll be all right.”

The motel was only moments from the hospital. Ashley climbed out with Hunter and entered the lobby. The desk clerk was just starting a fresh pot of coffee. While Hunter took the steps up to his room two at a time, Ashley hovered around the coffeemaker, resisting the urge to warm her hands on the carafe.

“What happened to you?” Jason’s voice rang across the lobby.

Ashley turned. “Just the man I want to see.” Shivering from cold and her odd sense of foreboding, she closed the distance between herself and her old friend. “I saw him tonight.”

“Saw who? That guy from up north you were—”

“No, the guy who assaulted me in my house.”

C
HAPTER
16

A
SHLEY DIDN
’
T NEED
Jason’s look of exasperation to tell her the spotting of her midnight visitor was useless. She had too few answers to all his questions. She hadn’t gotten the license plate number of the truck. She didn’t know the man’s name. She hadn’t seen him going into any particular location. In truth, she hadn’t seen him at all, just his truck, one not uncommon in the mountains.

“But I recognized his voice, and he went down Gosnoll Holler Road.” It was the best information she had. “Then he returned about an hour and a half later. And he literally ran us off the road.”

“That only leaves about a hundred places he could’ve been.” Jason drained his coffee cup and rose. “Next time, you get the license plate number.”

“I got part of it.” Hunter had walked into the lobby without her noticing him. Devoid of mud, with his hair damp but combed, he looked solid and appealing, a steady force to cling to.

Suddenly Ashley wanted to cling to him. An aching loneliness opened inside her, and she wanted his arms around her to help
alleviate that pain she usually kept at bay with work. Her heart raced at the idea of being held by this quiet man with his nerdy glasses hiding gorgeous blue eyes, with his calm assurance, with a suppressed sadness. Her face warmed. She clamped down on her sudden attraction to him and shrank back a step closer to Jason.

He was fully focused on Hunter. “You got part of the number. Can I hope a city boy like you got the make too?”

Hunter ignored the rudeness. “I did. It was an F-150.”

“You’re sure?” Jason hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his uniform trousers, pushing back his coat to show his service weapon.

Ashley glared at him for such absurd male posturing.

Hunter propped one shoulder against the doorframe, hands relaxed. “We use them on jobs. Jacked-up tires and all. Helps in off-road situations.”

“Jobs? What kind of jobs?” Jason’s jaw looked downright pugnacious.

Ashley poked him in the ribs with a gentle fist. “For goodness’ sake, Jase, he’s a tunnel engineer. He works with heavy equipment all the time. I’ll bet he’s even driven an F-150, and maybe even a Humvee.”

“Once or twice.” Hunter’s smile came and went in a flash.

Long enough to send Ashley’s tummy tumbling despite her efforts to return to being indifferent to him. Afraid her face might show something, she scooped up her and Jason’s cups and headed for the coffeepot. “You want some, Hunter?”

“Yes, thank you.” He straightened from his casual stance and joined her at the carafe. He smelled deliciously of something crisp and clean, citrus and woodsy at the same time. “My business partner needs some information from me right away, so if you want to go on home, I can get my car tomorrow.”

“Will it take long?” Ashley stirred sugar into Jason’s coffee and snapped on the plastic lid.

“Perhaps a quarter hour.”

“I’ll wait.”

“You’re sure? You must be starving.”

She shrugged. “I’m used to going without. Another fifteen minutes won’t make a difference.”

“If you’re certain.”

“You’re wasting time asking.”

“Touché.” He strode from the lobby, already pulling his phone from his pocket, leaving Ashley chilled again, though he hadn’t touched her.

To warm her hands, she picked up the two cups of coffee and returned to Jason. “This should keep you going.”

“So what is he to you?” Jason took the cup from her but didn’t drink.

“Nothing.” She couldn’t really even call them friends.

“Uh-huh. You looked at him like he’s dinner.”

The clerk set down his video game and stared.

Ashley’s face burned. “Don’t be an idiot. I don’t behave that way, and you know it.”

“You might for a city feller like that.”

Ashley considered herself a healer, committed to kindness and grace and mercy. At that moment, she wanted to punch Jason—hard. She’d kept herself pure, though she had lost several boyfriends because of it. Nothing like seeing the struggles of single mothers to remind her of the consequences of going astray, even if she was tempted. And now Heather’s troubles—a disaster—added to that. The implication that she would go astray with someone simply because he was different cut deep for reasons she didn’t understand.
Maybe because of Heather, the last person Ashley expected to go over the line? If it could happen to Heather, then anyone could fall if she let her guard down. Ashley was, after all, heading into the city to advance her medical career. She was nearly thirty. She had delivered hundreds of babies with no prospects of having her own. Temptation could strike.