Beckett's Convenient Bride. Dixie Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ Carson thought tiredly. She clutched his hand and gave a few experimental tugs. If he had a lick of sense he’d have crawled on his knees, climbed back in his car and hightailed it out of here the minute he realized she was criminally insane.

      If I had a grain of sense, Kit thought, I’d have left him where he fell and got hold of the sheriff, and let him send for an ambulance. And while she was at it, she could have mentioned that they might want to bring along handcuffs, because the man sprawled out beside the road was probably a murderer, never mind that he had a badge inside his jacket.

      Or she could call nine-one-one again, report a man down at the intersection of Landing and Waterlily Roads and then drive up to Chesapeake. Her grandparents might not approve of her, but they wouldn’t want anything awful to happen to her.

      Oh, it would make the papers, all right. The churchyard murderer hit by a car driven by the only witness to the crime.

      On the other hand, if she left him here, he might lose consciousness and slide down the ditch bank and drown.

      “What am I going to do about you?” she whispered. “I’m tempted to—”

      He opened his eyes then, and Kit found herself staring down into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. More cobalt than cerulean, she thought fleetingly, but darker now with what could be pain.

      “Are you…all right?” she asked hesitantly. Merciful saints, the man was on a mission to shut her up permanently, and she was worried about his health?

      She studied him carefully. His eyes were closed again. He was breathing heavily, as if he were in pain. She didn’t know if he’d lost consciousness or not, but she needed another look at that badge, and this might be her last chance. The thing could have come from a toy store, for all she knew. Probably had.

      But not his gun. There was nothing wrong with her ears; toy guns didn’t make the same sound as what she’d heard in the churchyard.

      Her hand moved toward his jacket. He opened his eyes, focusing on her face, not the hand that hovered over the flap of his coat.

      “It’s real,” he said as if he’d read her mind. With a smile that looked as if it hurt and disappeared almost instantly, he said, “I’m a few miles out of my territory, but—” He covered his mouth, sneezed, and then groaned.

      “Bless you,” Kit murmured automatically. “What are you—that is, are you looking for someone in particular?” Like me, for instance? She added silently.

      If he was from the sheriff’s department, he’d probably traced her through one of those gizmos people hooked onto their phones. Nine-one-one probably had it for people like her; people who didn’t want to get involved.

      Well, crud. No matter how tempting it was, she couldn’t leave the man lying there. Any minute now a car could come peeling in off Waterlily and crash into his car or run over his legs. Probably cream Ladybug in the process. There wasn’t much room for maneuvering.

      “Look, I’ll help you get up and into your car, but I really don’t know anything more than what I told you over the phone. Told your dispatcher, at least. I heard voices— I couldn’t even tell what they were arguing about. Then I heard a shot, only I thought it was a backfire, and then—”

      There was barely room, but she managed to position herself behind him. Reaching down, she hooked her arms under his. Lordy, what a waste, she thought before she could stop herself. He was a big man. A big, beautifully constructed man, she couldn’t help but notice. With uncombed black hair that was overdue for a trim, a lean, pale face that hadn’t recently seen a razor, he wore western boots, jeans that were worn in all the right places, a black shirt and a buckskin jacket that looked as if it had been through a few battles.

      Get your mind on what you’re doing, you ditz!

      “I’m going to sit you up,” she said, bracing to use herself as a counterweight. “Help me out here, you weigh a ton.”

      “Give me a minute, okay? I’m just winded.”

      “More than that, if you ask me. Well, you didn’t, but I’ll get you back inside your car, anyway. The rest is up to you. If you’re a real policeman, you can call one of your deputies or something. If you’re not—well, like I said, I didn’t see anything. Honestly.”

      By the time they managed to get him on his feet again, Kit had touched him in places she hadn’t touched any man in years. Her palms tingled from the heat of his body. If it turned out he really was a sheriff or a policeman, she would simply repeat what she’d said over the phone—which wasn’t all that much, come to think of it. But this time she would answer any questions he asked to the best of her ability. Then, if he insisted on taking her in to make a statement, she could do that, too, because no crook was going to come near her as long as she was under police protection.

      At least, that was the way it worked in suspense novels.

      Except when the cop turned out to be the villain.

      Well, she wouldn’t think about that. Besides, this one looked more like a hero. Not that he was classically handsome by any means. He had one of those crinkly mouths that looked as if he smiled a lot when he hadn’t just been run off the road. That aggressive jaw that was badly in need of a shave, and a pair of dark eyebrows arched perfectly over beautiful blue eyes. On a woman, she might have suspected tinted contacts, but this man, whoever he was, was too rugged. He looked as if he didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought of his looks.

      Correction: at the moment, he looked as if he were about to collapse.

      “Are you hurting anywhere in particular?” she asked cautiously. The last thing she needed was a lawsuit. That would be all her grandfather needed to reel her back into the family fold.

      He inhaled deeply, shook his head and winced. “Nowhere in particular. My grandmother would have called it feeling all-overish.”

      She didn’t want to hear about his family, she had enough problems with her own. She glanced at her car and then at his larger SUV. “Can you drive? That is, maybe I could drive you home and then come back for my car.”

      “Long walk,” he rasped. She’d been right about his mouth. It crinkled into a quick grin that melted the last of her resistance. If he was one of the bad guys, she could easily outrun him. She doubted if he’d shoot her right in plain sight of the wharf and any passerby.

      “Well, maybe I could follow you to make sure you get home safely. I mean, if you really are a policeman, I guess it would be all right.”

      “Ms. Dixon?”

      Astonished, she said, “You know my name?”

      “Katherine Chandler Dixon?”

      “Who are you?” She edged away. “Did my grandfather send you?”

      “No, mine did,” he said, and then bent double in a fit of coughing that made her throat hurt just to hear it.

      “You’re sick,” she said flatly. “There’s a hospital in Elizabeth City and one on the beach. I think there are some other medical facilities, too. Take your pick.”

      Recovering, he shook his head. Under the dark shadow of beard, his face looked the color of raw plaster. “Don’t need a СКАЧАТЬ