“Yes, ma’am…Amy,” he corrected himself.
“Do you like the job?”
“Yes.”
Amy smiled, unfazed. She was used to difficult patients. Some would even say she relished the challenge. “What do you like about it?”
He breathed in as if suppressing a sigh. “These are good people in Turning Point. I like helping them. How ’bout you? You like being a doctor?”
Counterstrike, she thought. “It’s all I ever wanted to do.” She’d been born with an innate need to help others, a need reinforced fourteen years ago when she’d discovered it was safer to care for others than to let someone care for you.
His gaze shifted to her. There was something undefinable in his features. “Is being a doctor everything you dreamed it would be?” he asked quietly.
It was not the usual question asked by someone she had known only five minutes. She didn’t answer right away, as if considering the question for the first time herself. She was competent and not without compassion, but she was cautious with her emotions. Many of her colleagues envied her detachment, a skill necessary not only for success but for survival in the medical world. Amy feared she would never love again.
She looked at the man beside her, thought of the boy she’d loved as she studied this man who bore the same name. As if her thoughts compelled him, he looked her way. Their gazes locked.
“Lots of things don’t turn out the way you expect them.”
Something shifted in his eyes. The blue stone splintered. She glimpsed a longing, ageless and deep. A longing she herself had known.
Could it be?
He turned away, taking whatever she’d imagined with him. She turned back to the contours of the land, the ground hard from the August sun, the heat in the air as thick as fog.
And told herself no.
She had not acted the fool since she was eighteen. At thirty-two, she had no intention of doing so again.
JESSE HAD FEARED he could not break the gaze. He’d seen the confusion, the plea in her expression as she’d searched his face. God help him, for a second he’d prayed. See me.
He dragged his gaze away, saw the fresh skid marks farther up, careening from the left to the right side where the road pitched down. He slowed, saw the mid-sized car upside-down, tilted against a tree trunk. He called the accident in as he veered to the shoulder and slammed the engine into Park. Before the Bronco came to a complete stop, Jesse and Amy leapt out of the vehicle and were scrambling down the ditch’s steep slope. They heard the scream as they reached the vehicle.
“Mommy!”
A blond-haired girl not more than three, strapped in a safety seat, hung upside-down in the back of the car. The vehicle must have rolled over several times. The front half of the roof was creased in, and the driver’s door was crumpled. The child, seated on the opposite side, was trapped in a pocket formed between the front seat and the side of the car crushed against the tree. The child writhed against the seat constraints, terrified but appearing unharmed. An unconscious young woman was slumped half on the front seat, half on the floor, wedged in beneath the dashboard. Fluid leaking from the front of the vehicle formed a slick puddle across the ground. A thin rise of smoke snaked from the hood.
The child screamed again.
The car was a two-door. Jesse wrestled with the driver’s door but the mangled metal wouldn’t budge. The smoke was thickening.
He looked around. Grabbing a large rock, he slammed it against the side window until the glass shattered. “The mother is blocking the way to the girl. We’ll get her out,” Jesse said as he crawled through the window. “Then the child.”
Smoking engine…gas leaking from the vehicle.
The child screamed again.
Amy saw several small flames shoot out from beneath the front hood as Jesse pushed his way into the car. He slipped his arm beneath the woman’s arms and pulled. The woman moaned, semi-conscious, incoherent. She fought against Jesse’s grasp. Suddenly an anguished cry came from her lips. Her struggling movements stopped. The woman was injured. Fortunately her twisting and writhing indicated her spine was intact.
“Don’t fight me. Help me,” Jesse told the woman as he pulled her from the wreckage. Small flames flared from beneath the car’s hood. He felt a resistance, saw her leg was pinned beneath the dashboard. He pulled harder but he needed more leverage to free the limb. The woman’s body, in response to the pain, had gone limp again. He released her and eased himself out of the car. He heard the child crying in the back.
“Her leg is pinned,” he told Amy. Bracing his weight against the vehicle, he leaned as far into the car as he could and gripped the woman again under the arms. He pulled. The body resisted. He widened his stance, took a deep breath of hot air and smoke, and with an animal howl, he yanked on the woman with all his might. The body broke free. Jesse dragged the woman until he could take her into his arms and carry her several yards away. As he laid her on the hard ground, he saw her leg was twisted at an odd angle, the bone popped out of the flesh.
“Amy,” he yelled. He turned back to the car and saw Amy crawl into it.
The child screamed for its mother as Amy approached her. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be fine.” Amy continued the reassurances even though the child could not hear her, knowing they were as much for her as the girl. Behind her, she heard Jesse ordering her out of there, swearing as she ignored him. She could hear the flames licking beneath the hood. She pushed herself up. Pain shot up her thigh as her knee pressed into something sharp. She pushed herself into the narrow opening in the back, twisting her body to shield the child. She unclasped the safety belt, the child kicking against the restraints and Amy. She pulled the girl toward her, clasping her against her chest as she slid out of the tight space. The inside of the car was radiating heat. Strange pop-ping noises came from beneath the hood. She twisted, pressing the splinter of glass deeper into her knee. She passed the child to Jesse. He hugged the child to his chest and held her with one arm. His other arm reached for Amy.
“Take my hand.”
“Go,” she screamed.
He reached in, gripped her arm and yanked her toward him. Her foot had slipped and was caught between the console and the passenger seat. She heard a loud whoosh. Flames leaped from the engine skyward, receded.
“Go,” she screamed.
Jesse turned away. Someone else must have arrived at the scene, because when he turned back, the child was gone from his arms. “I’m not leaving you.” Both his hands reached in, grabbed her upper arms. The heat was like a living thing now. Amy felt her head going light. Fresh flames surged, higher, closer. Jesse crawled into the car, the sweat streaking his face.
“Get out!” she screamed.
He moved toward her, his hands reaching until they slid around her. She heard him expel a breath, then inhale sharply as he jerked her toward him. Her body lurched forward an inch, then resisted. He twisted her torso toward him and yanked again. She gasped for oxygen, black spots dancing in front of her eyes. She blinked, struggling against the blackness. Jesse’s face came into focus. His hat was gone, she realized. She would buy him a new one. A white one.
Then the world exploded.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE LANDED on top of Jesse, their bodies hitting the earth with a thud, a scream dying on her lips. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight against his chest. For several moments, they did not move, but lay there like two lovers. Amy lifted her head, looked down at the man beneath her. The tip of her tongue moistened her dry lips. The muscles in the man’s throat rippled as he swallowed. Men’s terse voices sounded at the edges of her consciousness. They were not alone.
“Thank you,”