The One

Chapter 2-1

Chapter Two

She’d changed three times, not that her small closet held many clothes. She didn’t even have many outfits, since she had basically lived in scrubs during her residency. Since her encounter with Joe, she had shampooed and used the good conditioner on her hair in the small shower bath, and she’d spent the entire morning arguing with herself and racing around the small two-bedroom house. She’d also found the pieces of her pink and gold mug placed in a neat pile off to the side of the top step—and in a thoughtful way so she wouldn’t cut herself.

It wasn’t as if Joe Wilde had asked her out on a date, and this certainly wasn’t a beauty pageant. She was going to see a dusty and dirty horse, and she’d be traipsing through horse s**t. It wasn’t lost on her that Joe Wilde hadn’t changed one bit. He was still the same arrogant ass she’d gone to school with, always planning and scheming. He’d manipulated her into going over to see the damn horse, and in front of his kid, for God’s sake! He was lower than a skunk. Deep down, she had silently, miserably suffered through her entire adolescence with a major crush on Joe and she was furious that he still had that effect on her.

After moving away, she’d been too busy with medical school to allow Joe to invade her every waking thought, and the crush had faded—sort of. When she returned after her grandfather died, she had seen him at the funeral. After all these years, she still recognized him. Even the devil himself would have had the decency to offer condolences, but not Joe. She had expected more from him, but he was still the same selfish jerk he’d been in school, leaving without saying one word. Even in town a few months back, she had pretended not to see him and hurried the other way, fearing the snake was just waiting to make a joke of her again. When he had driven up this morning with his kid and his devilish charm, she’d frozen.

Now, as she gazed in the mirror, about to apply a hint of makeup, reality hit her like a blast of frigid air. The man had a kid with him, his kid, so of course there had to be a wife. How pitiful. Drooling over a married man—how low had she sunk? To him, this was a game, and he was winding her around his finger. Why, she could just imagine the laugh he was having at her expense now. Joe Wilde: just the name said it all, just an average Joe, a redneck nobody from a small town in the backwoods USA. Hell, she was better than that. She had gone to medical school and worked herself to the bone, spending years surviving on catnaps and bad coffee, just to end up right back here.

She tossed her makeup back in the drawer and yanked a brush through the curls she’d spent the last hour styling into her hair. Short of washing it again, she didn’t have a hope of getting rid of them, and she didn’t have time to redo anything. She glanced at her small bedside clock and the rumpled unmade double bed covered with half the clothes in her closet. It was one forty-five, time to go. Margaret stomped her feet into her comfortable square-toed boots, the old ones that were cracked and faded, and caught a glimpse in the hallway mirror of the pristine crispness of her freshly ironed white shirt and brand-new jeans. She didn’t have time to change again, and the last thing she wanted was for Joe Wilde to think she’d dressed up and primped for him. The excuse that she had done it for the horse sure wouldn’t fly, so she grabbed an old brown sweater and shrugged it on, slung her cloth purse over her shoulder, and set the wide-brimmed hat she always wore on her head before hurrying out the door.

Angel nickered, and Margaret called to her: “I’m sorry! I won’t be long, and then I’ll take you out.” She rubbed the white star just above Angel’s eyes and then peeked over the corral into the red plastic water tub, half full. She took off at a jog around the square house, which her grandfather had built for his bride from the trees on the property. After her residency, when she’d passed the boards, she had bought herself a used black Lexus that now sat in the backyard. She had kept it even after returning to Post Falls, a town where all the residents drove pickups—another one of those damn codes she was breaking.

The five-mile drive to Joe’s farm down the backcountry gravel road added a few more nicks to the midnight black of her sports car. The entire way, her foot trembled on the gas pedal as she argued with herself to turn around, go home and lock the door. She swore and told herself to suck it up and get the meeting over with. Don’t agree to anything he asks, she warned herself.

She slowed and pressed the brake as she rounded a bend in a cloud of dust, stomping the clutch and throwing the gear into neutral when she saw the house number staked at the side of the tree-lined road. Tiny branches and early spring leaves hid a portion of the rotted sign, which seemed to have been painted in red by a two-year-old. The narrow driveway flanked by heavy brush resembled a mud bog similar to those from monster truck shows. She would need a four by four to get through, but where could she leave her car on this narrow gravel road, and how far up was the house? In this part of the country, people had large spreads and mile-long driveways, houses always hidden way out back.

She pressed her head back against the headrest. If she turned around and went home, Joe would just show up again and catch her off guard, and she didn’t want that. No, she needed to get rid of him once and for all, set him straight. She didn’t work with horses. She couldn’t and wouldn’t help him, and she planned to say just that, telling him to leave her the hell alone. Margaret stomped the clutch and backed up, the wheels scraping the gravel. She gave herself a quick pep talk, because she would need to get enough speed to sail through the mud. She was determined not to think of the worst-case scenario: If she took it slow and easy, she’d sink faster than a rock in water and would be spinning her wheels to the end of time. The thought of being stuck anywhere in Joe Wilde’s clutches was enough of an incentive for her to rev the engine a couple of times, her foot hitting the accelerator as if she were at the starting line of the Kootenai County stock-car races, with testosterone pulsing all around her.

“Well, here goes,” she muttered. She stomped the clutch, slipped the gear into second, and pressed the gas. The car jolted forward, the wheels grinding into the slick muck. It skidded sideways and, in a panic, Margaret cranked the wheel hard to the right and slid the other way. The radials spewed clumps of mud onto the windshield. Out of nowhere flashed a metal post, and she screamed, twisting the wheel, giving the car more gas. The car whipped around like a Tilt-A-Whirl, the front dipping down as the back end hit the post with the sound of grinding metal, jolting the car to a standstill. The shoulder strap dug into her shoulder, and Margaret gripped the leather steering wheel, sitting in a daze, her ears still ringing from the sharp sound of bent metal. The engine sputtered before her foot slipped off the clutch, and the car jerked forward and stalled.

“Well, that’s just great.” She yanked the handle and pushed open the door before thinking twice about stepping into the mud, which was now level with the floorboards. She crawled over the center console to the passenger side and slid down the window. The metal post was surrounded by the back panel of her car. Thick mud splattered the sides, and more paint had chipped away. She had almost made it another few feet to where the mud ended and the rest of the driveway began.

Margaret scooted back in her seat and slammed her door shut. She thought she could make it, so she cranked the engine and shifted into first, but the tires spun. She reversed and the same thing happened, the wheels spinning her sideways and deeper into the mud. Just the thought of being found here had her jamming the stick shift again into first, then second, giving it plenty of gas. Mud splattered her face and inside the car from the open passenger window, and she stopped again. “No!” she cried, taking in the mud everywhere, over the seat and the places on her white shirt where her brown sweater hung open.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” a man shouted.

Her driver’s door was jerked open, and she glanced over all the mud and up into the questioning blue eyes of Joe Wilde. She didn’t know how she did it, but her foot somehow slipped on the clutch, and the car jerked forward, knocking Joe on the shoulder. All six feet of solid muscle landed on top of her.

* * * *

Joe couldn’t believe what he’d found. He’d heard a car spinning its tires, and when he jumped into his big blue truck and stopped at the end of the driveway, he realized his mistake. He watched the black sports car spinning its wheels, the back end skidding from side to side, the driver crazed and wide eyed. What the hell was the matter with the woman? It was springtime, and the winter runoff created mud at every low point. His driveway, like most around here, wouldn’t dry out until summer.

Her car had collided with the metal post and stalled. Joe thought she was absolutely nuts. He started to call out to her when she popped her head out the rolled-down passenger window, but she closed her door and started the car again. Mud flew everywhere, and he waved his arms but could do nothing but watch in horror as the car sank deeper and deeper into the sticky mud. She skidded and spun, and then she shrieked and the car stopped.

Joe raced over as quickly as he could in knee-high gumboots and slogged through the thick mud, yanking open her door. “Jesus, lady. What the hell are you doing?” he barked, staring in disbelief at the mud clumped and splattered everywhere on her face, her shirt and hair, and the interior of the car. She turned those cinnamon-brown eyes on him, seeming dazed and helpless before the car jerked forward, knocking him off balance. He landed on top of her, those lush, perfect breasts pressing into his chest. His groin tightened, and he wondered for a moment if she had planned that. His mind raced over how easy it would be to peel back her shirt and run his tongue over that lacy white bra and the creamy plumpness underneath, but she would probably scream and squeal—the prude—and worry that he was getting her dirty. Fat chance of that happening. He would only humiliate himself, so he yanked her keys from the ignition and moved off of her, his hand accidentally brushing her thigh.

When he leaned in this time, he was scowling.