“We’ll get them out,” Russ said, striding toward the truck, which sat perpendicular to all the other vehicles on the road. A woman and a man were inside, and the woman was clearly crying. Drew could see blood on the side of her face, but it was impossible to tell where it was coming from.
“I’ll take the man,” Russ said, and the two split to flank the truck.
“Ma’am,” Drew said through the glass, which was cracked. “Are you hurt?” The window wouldn’t go down because of the fractures, and Drew saw the blood was coming from her right ear. The situation suddenly more serious, he called over to Russ, “Ear bleed on this side. I’m stabilizing the truck with wheel chocks, and then I’m going to use the hydraulic spreader to get this door off.”
He looked into the woman’s eyes, a freaky sense of calm descending over him. “Ma’am, I need you to remain still and calm. I’m going to get you out of there.”
Her face was paler than Drew would like, but she nodded. He wasn’t sure how he remained so calm amidst so much chaos, but he got the wheel stabilizers in place and stopped next to Russ.
“How is he?”
“The airbag went off,” Russ said, who was administering to the man through an eight-inch gap where the window had come down. “I think it probably burned his forearms. And his leg is stuck in the door. I’ll check him once you get the woman out.”
“What’s her name?” Drew asked the man.
“Felicia,” he said, his voice strained.
Drew hurried around the front and removed the hydraulic spreader from his bag. “All right, Felicia. I’m going to pop this door off the hinges. I need you to stay as far back as you can, all right?”
She scooted over on the seat and Drew positioned a pair of safety goggles on his head and then plugged in the hydraulic tool to his mobile power supply. He inserted the tip of the spreader into the seam between the door and the panel over the front tire and spread his feet to brace himself.
The metal of the truck moved as if it were hot, and he cleared back the center bit so he could see where to insert the tool over the hinges. He closed the spreader, positioned it right above the top hinge and pressed the button. The door popped off only moments later. He repeated the action for the bottom hinge, and set the tool on the ground. With gloved hands, he grabbed onto the top of the door and pulled it back toward the handle. It came free, and he tossed it to the side, the way to the woman inside the truck now unobstructed.
“Clear,” he called to Russ, and he stepped over to the bench seat. “Felicia, stay there.”
He ditched the work gloves for rubber ones, and left the hydraulic tool behind in favor of a neck brace and his stethoscope. Her eyes were dilated, and her heartbeat quick.
“What hurts the most?” he asked, reaching for an otoscope, which would allow him to see if her ear drum was perforated or not. He hoped it was. That would explain the bleeding, though he would make sure she went to the hospital and got an exam from a doctor.
“My ear,” she said. She shook her head. “No, my head.” She seemed confused.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Drew looked in her ear, but he couldn’t see any evidence of a burst ear drum. Not good.
“We came up over the hill, and there were just cars everywhere. We were going to a concert.”
“No, we weren’t,” the man said. “My brother invited us for dinner.”
Drew exchanged a glance with him. “How’s your leg? As soon as I’m done here, Russ there is going to get you out.”
“I’m hanging in,” he said. “Felicia, don’t you remember we went to the concert last weekend?”
She started to cry again, and Drew said, “Don’t worry about it. All right, your ear drum looks fine. We need to get you to the hospital so they can assess your head injury. Did you hit your head in the crash?” She had a spent airbag on her side too, but it didn’t appear that any injuries had resulted from it.
“I…don’t know. Maybe?”
From the bruise purpling on her cheekbone, Drew guessed she had hit her head against the window, and that the bleeding could be from anything. Her symptoms showed she definitely had a concussion too, but he wasn’t a doctor and he couldn’t diagnose.
“Do you think you can slide over here?” Drew asked.
“Pauly?”
“I can’t get out until you do, baby.” He spoke in a gentle tone and squeezed her fingers. Drew watched their exchange as a pang of love made his heart sing.
She started to slide over, but she winced. “My knee hurts,” she complained.
“Russ, the stretcher.”
Russ appeared a moment later, and together, they helped Felicia out of the truck and onto it. Drew covered her with a blanket though the night was still plenty warm while Russ crawled into the truck to check out Pauly’s leg.
“Do we need the jaws on the other door?” Drew asked when Russ crawled out.
“Yep.” He picked them up in one hand and the power supply in the other and went around the truck.
“Felicia, don’t go to sleep,” he commanded when he noticed her eyes fluttering open and closed. “Stay with me. Tell me about Pauly. Is he your boyfriend? Husband?”
Tears leaked out of her eyes. “Boyfriend. I love him.” Her voice could barely be heard above the hydraulic pump as Russ worked the spreader. The loud popping and groaning of metal drowned out everything.
“I haven’t told him,” she said, her eyes popping open. “Why haven’t I told him?” She started to sit up, and Drew used one strong palm against her shoulder to keep her down.
“You’ll have time to tell him. Neither of you are going anywhere.” Drew gave her his calmest smile, infused all the confidence he had into his tone. She settled back against the stretcher, and Drew pushed her around to the other side so he could assist Russ if necessary. He had the door off and was crouched, examining Pauly’s leg. The man wore an expression of agony, and he only seemed to have eyes for Felicia.
“I love you, baby,” he said though gritted teeth.
“Love you too,” she said before she let her eyes fall closed and she passed out.
“Felicia.” Drew shook her shoulder, but she didn’t even flinch. At least she’d got to tell Pauly she loved him, and all Drew could think about for the rest of the night was Gretchen.
As he and Russ transported the patients to the hospital and filled out the paperwork, Drew’s mind churned around questions. If it were his last night on earth, what would he want her to know? Did he love her? How could he make sure he didn’t make the same mistakes with her as he had with Yvonne? Did he even know what real love felt like?
He finally got home close to midnight, and he bypassed his kitchen in favor of his bed. Sleep came quickly, and his dreams featured a certain auburn-haired beauty and various ways Drew could tell her how he felt about her. You know, as soon as he figured out exactly how he felt.
Chapter Fifteen
Drew didn’t show up at seven-thirty like he had every other morning for the past several weeks. Gretchen didn’t have any special events that day, and she could stand to open the shop a bit later than normal.
But it was so unlike Drew to be late that she worried. When he still hadn’t arrived by eight o’clock, she called him.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked when he answered in a groggy voice.
“What time is it?”
“Eight.”
“Oh my—I completely forgot to set my alarm.” He sounded awake now. “I’m on my way out.”
“It’s fine,” she said quickly. “You don’t need to rush. Dixie doesn’t even have school today. Is everything okay?”
“I got called out on a job last night,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it when I get there.”
She hung up, and let her feet take her over to the farmhouse where she’d spent her summers. At first, she’d come to Hawthorn Harbor with her whole family. They usually came for three weeks, beginning at the end of June and going through the Lavender Festival.
/> Then her father didn’t come one year when she was eleven years old. She didn’t know why. Her mom had brought Gretchen and her brother for another year, maybe two, and then she stopped coming too. The next year, Grandma had died, and Gretchen had cried and cried and cried. She still missed her grandmother with a fierceness she didn’t quite understand.
When it came time to go to Hawthorn Harbor the following summer, no one made plans. Gretchen, thirteen, demanded to go, and Granddad had driven down to California to get her. He’d done that every year since, and Gretchen started staying all summer, not just for three weeks.
She’d wanted to ask her parents why they stopped coming, why they didn’t even speak of her mother’s parents anymore, but she never did. She felt like a stranger in her own house, and when she left after high school, she’d never gone back.
This farm had been the only place where she’d ever felt like she belonged. Though Aaron hadn’t liked it as much as she had, Gretchen had adored everything about the farm. Granddad had labored in the lavender fields, and he’d won the Creation Contest that last summer she’d lived on the farm, before Aaron got his job in Seattle and they moved.
Granddad had developed a new variety of lavender and spent hours arranging it into gorgeous wreaths, earning him the coveted title of Lavender King. Her ideas of cross-pollinating daisies had come from him, as had the belief that she could purchase The Painted Daisy and weave roses into wedding wreaths after taking only one class at a community center on floral arranging. He was the one who’d told her why her parents had stopped coming to Washington too.
She climbed the steps of the old farmhouse where she used to live and tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked, and she entered the house. The air was hot and stale, scented with dust and old wood. There was no furniture in the living room, dining room, or kitchen as she scanned from the front of the house to the back.
Morning light poured in through the wall of windows in the back, and shadows stretched long on the dirty floors. She stepped, leaving evidence of her presence, her fingers trailing along the chair rail she’d installed with Granddad the first summer she’d come alone. She’d almost nailed her fingers to the wall, and a sad chuckle came from her throat.
With two fingers, she pushed in the door to the bathroom and found it exactly as she remembered it. Sink, toilet, bathtub. Granddad used to have purple bath mats and a shower curtain with lavender plants on it. Now everything was just white upon white.
The door next to it led down a hall to three bedrooms, but she didn’t go that way. She wasn’t sure she was ready to see where she’d stayed when she came, nor the master bedroom where Granddad and Grandma had lived for so long.
Instead, she trekked to the back door and turned to go upstairs. With two bedrooms and a bathroom up here, she and Aaron had enjoyed relative privacy in the first few years of their marriage. Gretchen had cooked dinner for her husband and her granddad every evening, and the memories flowed over her, around her, and through her until she couldn’t contain them anymore.
Drew found her in the bedroom where she’d nursed Dixie for those first few months of her life, tears streaming down her face.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, his voice soft yet urgent at the same time. “What’s wrong? What are you doing in here?” He knelt beside her and gathered her close, the scent of him masculine and comforting. She clung to his strong bicep, sure as the sun would rise the following day that she needed to be out here on this farm. Permanently.
He wiped her tears and looked into her face. “Talk to me, love. What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong. I…just miss my granddad. And there are powerful memories here.” She pointed to the corner where her rocking chair had sat. “There used to be a chair there, where I’d sit and rock Dixie to sleep.”
Drew stroked her hair, his jaw tightening. “You’re not hurt?”
She quieted her emotions and swiped at her face. “No, I’m not hurt.” She’d never felt so safe as she did within the circle of his arms. “I don’t feel like going into the shop today.”
“Really? It’s Saturday. One your busiest days.”
Her reality set in, and she knew he was right. “Yeah, I should go.”
“I’ll come with you until this afternoon. I don’t have to be to work until two.”
“That would be nice.”
He helped her stand, and she took him over to the window where she’d stood so many times, overlooking the farm and wondering how she could follow Aaron to Seattle. She told Drew about it, and he kept her close to his side, his arm strong and secure on her shoulder.
“But I did,” Gretchen said. “We left Hawthorn Harbor, and though I only lived a couple of hours away, I only came back to visit a few times.” She looked at him, fresh tears pricking her eyes. “Granddad must’ve been so lonely.”
“I’m sure he was okay,” Drew said.
But there was no way for him to know that. Gretchen sniffled and watched the lavender wave in the perpetual breeze on the cape of Washington. “My parents stopped coming up here because Granddad and my father got in a fight. It was too hard for my mother to come alone, so she stopped coming too. My brother stayed away. Only I kept coming, year after year. And then I stopped too.” She shook her head, the regret she’d harbored for so long finally surfacing.
“What was the fight about?”
“Money. Granddad had a lot of money, and my parents didn’t. They never did, and it became a real source of contention between them.” An inkling of an idea started in her head. Maybe her granddad would loan her the money to buy back the farm. Maybe she could get him to come live with her this time.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured close to her ear.
She drew in a deep breath to infuse strength into her soul. “Tell me about the job last night.”
“Big pileup on the highway leading out of Bell Hill. I had to use the hydraulic spreader to get the door off to get this woman out of her truck.”
Gretchen peered up at him. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.” Drew gave her half a smile and resumed gazing out the window. “You know, I’ve always felt a little unsettled here in Hawthorn Harbor. Don’t get me wrong, I love this town, and I’ve learned I don’t belong anywhere but here. But I’ve often wished there were a few more emergencies.” He chuckled, but the sound was dark. “Ridiculous, right? I’m wishing for bad luck for the people of this town.”
Gretchen wasn’t quite sure what to say to soothe him. It simply seemed like a morning of reflection. “Was everyone okay in the end?” she asked.
“Yes, no casualties.”
“Well, that’s something. And you saved another woman.” She nudged him with her hip. “You seem to be good at that.”
That elicited a chuckle from him, and he kneaded her closer. “I learned something last night too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
But he didn’t continue. She twisted to look at him, the handsome lines of his face, his eyes a bit brighter for some reason. “Are you going to tell me what you learned?”
He finally tore his eyes from the lavender fields and looked at her. “The woman, she was with her boyfriend in the truck. She told me she wished she would’ve expressed her feelings for him earlier. And right there, while she was strapped to the stretcher and his leg was bleeding, she told him she loved him.”
Gretchen’s heart skipped a beat, and then another, then rushed forward at triple speed. “Oh,” she managed. “Wow.”
Drew leaned down, his lips touching her cheek. “And it made me realize I haven’t been very forthcoming with how I feel about you.”
Gretchen’s eyes drifted closed, and she couldn’t form any coherent words. She gripped his upper arm and was extremely glad she did when his lips finally touched hers. A sigh waved through her whole body, and the next touch of his mouth to hers became a real kiss. Gretchen had forgotten what it felt like to be kissed so completely, by someo
ne who could convey how much he cherished her with such a simple gesture.
When the kiss ended, she pressed her cheek to his chest and listened to the strong, steady beat of his heart, hoping with every cell in her body that they could be together for a long, long time.
They spent an hour in the flower garden, where he kissed her one more time before driving her into town so she could open the shop.
“How will you get home from work?” she asked.
“I’ll call my brother or something.” He didn’t seem too concerned about it as he took the extra barstool at her workbench.
“So.” She set several yellow roses on the bench. “Should we talk about Dixie?”
“What about Dixie?”
She busied her hands with clipping stems and stretching floral tape. “She’s the main reason I haven’t dated since Aaron’s death.”
“Ah, I see. And now you’re worried about how she’ll take…us.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not really.”
She glanced up at him, surprised. “No?”
“She’s a great kid, and I think she already likes me, so no. I’m not too worried about her.” He abandoned the box of floral pins he’d been spinning. “Are you?”
“Yeah, a little.” Her voice squeaked a bit too much to be casual. “I’ve never dated anyone, and I don’t want her to think I’m replacing her dad.”
“Do you want to talk to her together?”
Relief washed through her. “Yes, I think we should.”
“When?”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“Sunday is usually super slow or complete chaos, depending on who decides to roast or fry something they haven’t before. I’m on the morning shift.”
Gretchen giggled at his assessment of how people came to need emergency help. “How about tomorrow night then, before your mom’s Sunday dinner with everyone from town?”
Drew laughed, the sound so wonderful it bathed Gretchen in happiness. “She does invite a lot of people to Sunday dinner, doesn’t she?”