Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(17)

There was quiet for a while. The road was curvy, banked by very tall trees heavy with snow. The snow was falling lightly, softly. The higher they went, the more snow there was on the ground. There were some sharp turns along the road, and a few drop-offs that, in the dark of night, looked like they were bottomless. He drove slowly, carefully, attentively. If he looked at her at all, which was rare, it was the briefest glance.

“Very pretty out here,” she said quietly.

He responded with, “Can I ask you a personal question?”

She sucked in her breath. “I don’t know….”

“Tell you what—don’t answer if it makes you the least bit uncomfortable,” he suggested.

“But wouldn’t my not answering tell you that—”

“Did you fall in love with him the second you met him? Like right off the bat? Boom—you saw him, you were knocked off your feet, dead in love?”

No! she thought. “Yes,” she said. She looked across the front seat at him. “You?”

He shook his head first. “No. I liked her right away, though. There were things about her that really worked for me, that work for a guy. Like, for example, no guessing games. She was very up-front, but never in a bitchy way. Not a lot of games with Penny, at least up until we got to the breaking-up part of our relationship. For example, if we went out to dinner, she ordered exactly what she liked. If I asked her what she’d like to do, she came up with an answer—never any of that ‘I don’t care’ when she really did care. I liked that. We got along, seemed like we were paddling in the same direction. I wanted to be a surgeon, and she was a nurse who liked the idea of being with a doctor, even though she knew it was never easy on the spouse. When I asked her if she wanted to move in with me before the residency started she said, ‘Not without a ring.’” He shrugged. “Seemed reasonable to me that we’d just get married. I’m still real surprised it didn’t work out that way. I really couldn’t tell you exactly when it stopped working. That’s the only thing that scares me.”

She stared at his profile. At that moment she decided that if she ever broke a bone, she’d want him to set it. “But by then you were madly in love with her, right? By the time you got to the ring?”

“Probably. Yeah, I think so. The thing is, Penny seemed exactly right for me, exactly. Logical. Problems that friends of mine had with wives or girlfriends, I didn’t have with Penny. Guys envied me. I thought she was the perfect one for me.”

She heard Glen’s voice in her head. I thought you were the best thing for me, the best woman I could ever hook up with for the long haul….

“Until all this fighting started,” he went on. “Things had been so easy with us, I didn’t get it. I thought it was all about her missing her friends, me working such long hours, that kind of thing. I’m still not sure—maybe it was about another guy and being all torn up trying to decide. But really, I thought everything was fine.”

“What is it with you guys?” she said hotly. “You just pick out a girl who looks like wife material and hope by the time you get to the altar you’ll be ready?”

Drew gave her a quick glance, a frown, then looked back at the road. And that’s when it happened—as if it fell from the sky, he hit a buck. He knew it was a buck when he saw the antlers. He also saw its big, brown eyes. It was suddenly in front of the SUV—his oldest sister’s SUV that he had borrowed to go up to the cabin. Though they weren’t traveling fast, the strike was close, sudden, the buck hit the front hard, was briefly airborne, came down on the hood, and rolled up against the windshield with enough force for the antlers to crack it, splinter it.

Drew fought the car, though he could only see clearly out of the driver’s side window. He knew that to let the SUV go off the road could be disastrous—there were so many drop-offs on the way to the cabin. He finally brought the car to rest on the shoulder, the passenger side safely resting against a big tree.

Sunny screamed in surprise and was left staring into the eyes of a large buck through the webbed and cracked windshield. The deer was lying motionless across the hood.

Drew turned to Sunny first. “Sunny…”

“We hit a deer!” she screamed.

“Are you okay? Neck? Head? Back? Anything?” he asked her.

She was unhooking her belt and wiggling out of it. “Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God! He’s dead! Look at him! He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Sunny,” he said, stopping her, holding her still. “Wait a second. Sit still for just a second and tell me—does anything hurt?”

Wide-eyed, she shook her head.

He ran a hand down each of her legs, over her knees. “Did you hit the dash?” he asked. “Any part of you?”

She shook her head. “You have to help the deer!” she said in a panic.

“I don’t know if there’s much help for him. I wonder why the airbags didn’t deploy—the SUV must’ve swept the buck’s legs out from under him, causing him to directly hit the grille, and since the car kept moving forward, no airbags. Whew, he isn’t real small, either.”

“Check him, Drew. Okay?”

“I’ll look at him, but you stay right here for now, all right?”

“You bet I will. I should tell you—me and blood? Not a good combination.”