Texas Bride. Kate Thomas

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      So she’d run. And run. And run again.

      She’d planned to wait out the last of the waiting here, then head for a good-size town and use her tiny emergency fund to pay for a midwife and a night or two in a cheap motel. After the due date, she was going to clean houses or baby-sit while she worked out the details of a real career path.

      “So much for plans,” she muttered. The truck breaking down had not been in her scenario. Now what?

      A deep rumbling made her look up. Dark clouds filled the sky, flashing streaks of lightning over the desert like party streamers.

      “Thank you.” Dani addressed the thunderheads with a little laugh. “I was just about to waste my time worrying—as if that ever created a solution.”

      The first, chilly raindrops splattered the dust around her. “I do have a roof to put over us,” Dani told her unborn child, pushing off from the rough limestone and resettling the grocery sack. “And I think I’d better hurry up and do itl”

      As she hustled up the path, making it through the cabin door just before the rain started in earnest, Dani welcomed the distraction of the storm. She tried to think positively for the baby’s sake, but she didn’t honestly know how much longer she could keep up her brave front.

      With no car, no job, no money, alone and a baby coming...

      “Oh, stop whining,” she ordered herself. “Lots of people are worse off than you are.” Smoothing her hand over her baby’s current address comforted Dani, as usual. “I don’t know how we’ll manage, but we will,” she promised the son or daughter who was kicking merrily against her rib cage. “Because no matter what—I won’t give you up.”

      While the storm grew in intensity, Dani kept herself busy mixing up corn bread and doctoring black-eyed peas to make Texas caviar.

      

      Biting back a swearword, Josh fought to keep the car on the road as downdrafts from the thunderstorm buffeted it. Then the rain hit—the fat, individual drops splatting on his windshield quickly became a deluge his wipers could barely handle.

      Josh pressed on the gas pedal, eager to drive out of the storm, find a town and check into a motel. He was tired. He’d had enough of the desert. Enough of being lost.

      When the rain thickened into a solid curtain, he slowed a little.

      An inch or so of water covered the road in a few spots. The car hydroplaned across them, but the tires regained their traction almost immediately. He relaxed against the leather upholstery.

      Suddenly a dark shape loomed in front of him and Josh swerved just in time to avoid sideswiping it. A truck, he realized as it disappeared into the grayness again. Some damn fool hadn’t pulled completely off the pavement.

      Just ahead, another shallow layer of water stretched from one side of the pavement to the other.

      At least he wasn’t the only person ever to drive down this road. Which meant it went somewhere, too. With a sense of relief he refused to acknowledge, Josh increased his speed.

      And drove right into hell.

      The nose of Josh’s car hit the edge of the water, forward momentum carried the rest of the vehicle into the torrent before his foot could hit the brakes. Like a greedy child snatching up a toy, the angry current grabbed the car, pulled it off the side of the road, then spun it—once, twice, three times—slamming Josh’s head against the doorpost with each furious revolution.

      One more shuddering impact with something and the car came to a halt.

      Josh managed to unfasten the seat belt, but the churning torrent held the door shut against his dazed efforts to open it. The electric window controls didn’t work. He tried the passenger door, but it was jammed shut, too.

      Before his head cleared enough to think straight, a large piece of debris smashed into the car. The impact sent Josh bouncing off the steering wheel into the doorpost again, then rammed his head into the dash. Stars exploded behind his eyes.

      Through the haze of pain disorienting him, Josh noted water seeping into the car, filling the floorboards, rising.

      He was going to drown here. In this gritty, muddy water. As consciousness faded despite his efforts to stay alert, Josh tasted real regret. Maybe my life is empty, he thought, but...I don’t want to die!

      

      The oven baking the corn bread threatened to toast Dani, too, so she went out on the porch to breathe some raincooled air.

      She was about to step back inside when an odd sound came thinly through the storm. It took her a moment to recognize... Then she was struggling into a jacket and scrambling for the flashlight and turning back for the length of old rope she wouldn’t trust to hold a cat’s weight. It was all she had.

      “That sounded like metal, baby. Like a car being hit! If someone’s in trouble, we can’t turn our back on them, so hang on,” she said, finding a way, despite her loaded-down arms, to pat her stomach encouragingly. “Hang on!” she yelled into the misty gloom. Thank heaven, the rain seemed to be slowing.

      As carefully but as quickly as possible, Dani slid down the path to the big boulder, then scrambled past it to peer at—Oh, God. It was a car. In the creek. Caught for the moment against her boulder’s twin out in midstream.

      The furious, foaming runoff was trying to pull it away from the rock and drag it downstream. If she was going to rescue the passengers, she’d have to act quickly.

      Maybe there isn’t anyone inside. Dani grasped at the possibility. Maybe they’d gotten out. Maybe the car had broken down—like her truck—and been abandoned. Maybe she didn’t have to risk the baby....

      Biting her lip, Dani aimed the flashlight beam at the vehicle. A dark human shape slumped over the steering wheel.

      “Well, that makes it simple,” she muttered, tucking the flashlight into her windbreaker. She tied one end of the rope around the yucca tree and the other end under her breasts, took a deep breath and waded into the torrent.

      Letting the rough current push her toward and around the rear of the car, Dani grabbed for and found a handhold on the midstream boulder. After crawling awkwardly to its top, she inched along it, wiping the now-occasional raindrop from her eyes. And babbling, she realized as she reached a spot near the front of the car. That idiot pleading and praying aloud was her.

      Okay. God probably has the idea. Now do your part.

      Pulling out the flashlight, Dani pointed it at the still figure in the car. The ray of light showed only a few details clearly: the gleam of dark gold hair, a firm jaw, and broad, unmistakably male shoulders. His eyes were closed, but... Dani steadied the shaking beam and peered through the raindrops beading the windshield. Yes, the man’s chest moved. He was unconscious, but alive.

      Dani’s sigh of thanksgiving became a groan as the flashlight revealed another problem. There was water inside the vehicle, already lapping over the console. Clamping her jaws together, Dani put away the flashlight. The man in the car was going to die unless she did something. Now.

      The top of the boulder was littered with loose rocks. Picking up the biggest СКАЧАТЬ