Her Hero in Hiding. Rachel Lee

can imagine, we’re trying to help folks who got themselves into a passel of trouble by not staying home in this crud.”

      “Sounds to me like you didn’t stay home, either.”

      Velma laughed, a sound similar to a braying donkey. “Honey, I only have to walk a couple of blocks. Gage is out somewhere with a crew, trying to pull a family out of a ditch. Say … Micah’s not too far from you. Want me to have him drop by?”

      Micah Parish was another of the handful of local people that Clint would have trusted with his life. But he looked over at Kay and wondered if she would be able to take it. She was twisting her hands again, and biting her lip, looking ready to jump out of her skin.

      On the other hand, now that he’d recalled that car, he couldn’t forget it.

      “How,” he asked Velma, “can Micah get here?”

      “He’s plowing his way in. You’re on the route.” All the deputies had plows on the fronts of their official vehicles exactly for times like this.

      “Give me a sec, Velma.”

      “Sure.”

      He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Kay? One of those guys I’d trust my life to?”

      “Yes?”

      “He’s going to be driving past here. Talking to him would be better than waiting for the sheriff. Apparently he’s pretty tied up with people who have storm trouble.”

      Her hands tightened around each other until her knuckles turned white. “You’re sure?” she finally asked hesitantly.

      “Well, if he comes here, you can make sure he doesn’t write anything down. Maybe that would make you feel better. And I can’t think of a better person to have my back.”

      Finally she nodded. “Okay. Okay.” But she didn’t sound happy.

      He took his hand from the mouthpiece. “Velma? Yeah, that would be great if Micah would stop by. I really need to talk to him.”

      “Consider it done. I’ll call him now.”

      “Thanks.”

      When he disconnected, Clint put the handset on the table beside him. “It’ll be okay,” he said, feeling once again as if he was trying to calm a frightened horse. He’d calmed frightened men in battle, but this was a whole different thing, calling for a different kind of patience, a kind he wasn’t sure he had enough of.

      He ran through an assortment of cuss words in his head, because he was sure if he said any of them aloud she would shrink away again, and as much as he had tried to harden himself over the years, seeing a woman shrink from him brought back enough memories to fill a dump truck and make him feel like an utter bastard.

      The phone rang. It was Velma. “Micah is plowing his way up your road right now. He said to thank you for those reflector posts you put up last year.”

      Clint gave a rare chuckle. He’d lined his driveway with the things after a blizzard almost as bad as this one, because his drive was long enough, and winding enough, to be impossible to find under heavy snow, and even more impossible to clear. “Tell him thanks for clearing the road for me.”

      “You’ll just have to clear it again later,” Velma advised him. “The snow is going to stop soon, but the wind will keep up until tomorrow. Like holding a flood back with a broom.” On that positive note, she disconnected.

      Clint looked at Kay again. She appeared to have sunk into unhappy recollection. “Micah will be here soon. He’s plowing his way to the door.”

      He watched her eyes widen and fill with fear, and then gave her points for quickly getting a grip on her emotions. “Okay,” she said on a tight breath.

      Nothing he could tell her would reassure her. She was running on an awful lot of trust right now, and as someone who’d learned to trust very few, he could understand that.

      Micah arrived fifteen minutes later. They could hear the engine strain as he approached, pushing heavy snow out of the way. Then he left the vehicle idling. They heard the stomp of boots on the porch as he shook the snow off, and at the sound, Kay shrank visibly.

      Clint stifled a sigh and went to get the door, letting Micah in with a cold blast of air and swirling snow. Micah was every bit as big as Clint, broad and well-muscled, but far more exotic looking thanks to his Cherokee heritage.

      Clint had to force the door closed against the wind, then latched it firmly.

      “Damn,” Micah said. “Somebody moved Antarctica up here.”

      “It’s bad,” Clint agreed as they shook hands. “Coffee?

      “Hot and black.”

      But something else had to come first. “Come meet my guest.”

      Micah’s black-as-night eyes slipped past him and found Kay, who sat up and was looking at him with evident terror.

      “Well, hell,” Micah said. “Who the devil beat her up?”

      * * *

      Kay sat on the very edge of the couch, poised to run even though there was nowhere she could flee. Another man, another dangerous man, this one older but every bit as huge as Clint. She felt like a mouse facing two lions.

      “Kay,” Clint said, “this is Deputy Micah Parish. Micah, Kay Young.”

      “Howdy,” Micah said. Then he pulled off his jacket, revealing a tan deputy’s uniform and badge. He hung the coat on the peg by the door. “First the coffee. Then the talk. I’ve been on the road for three hours now, and the heater in the damn truck is barely working. Too much wind, I think. Engine’s not getting very warm.”

      “Take a seat. I’ll be right back. Kay, you want more coffee?”

      She managed a slight negative shake of her head as she tried to cope with the fact that after running from a man for three years, she was now dependent on two of them, both of them looking as if they could do a lot more damage with their bare hands than Kevin could do with a tire iron.

      Micah stepped farther into the room and settled on the one remaining chair. He seemed to know that the easy chair was Clint’s preferred perch. He held his hands out to the fire for a minute, then turned toward her slowly. She shrank back.