At the Crossroads (Buckhorn, Montana #3)(31)

“I could tell you,” Vi said disagreeably.

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked her. He must have sounded sincere, because she looked at him, studying him, as if in shock.

“I’m not the one who needs to forgive you,” she said after a moment. “Knowing my daughter...she probably already has,” Vi added with a sigh. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“Tina’s going to be all right,” he said and looked to her for reassurance as he saw cops surrounding the café. He realized how desperate he was that he thought Vi might offer the encouragement he desperately needed. She didn’t, and he went back to praying. He and Chloe needed Tina.

He could see that Vi did, too. They had become a family, and not just the three of them. Vi, alone except for her daughter and granddaughter, needed them as well. In time, maybe she would grow to tolerate him, if not fully accept him as family. Or not, he thought, as Earl Ray rose to open the door for the EMTs and cops.

ALEXIS DROPPED TO the ground next to Tina and placed her fingers against the woman’s throat to search for a pulse. Culhane followed, fearing Tina was already dead, had been dead before she’d been thrown from the van.

But as he reached the two women, he heard Tina let out a moan of pain as she opened her eyes. She instantly recoiled, first from Alexis and then from him before she seemed to recognize them. As Tina tried to sit up, she groaned in pain and fell back. He could see that she was skinned up from being thrown out of the moving van onto the dirt road. But her injuries appeared to be minor, given what she’d been through.

“Don’t try to get up,” Alexis said next to her. “Can you tell me where it hurts?”

“It’s my arm,” Tina cried. “I think it’s broken, and I...can’t...breathe. I think my ribs are...broken, too.”

Culhane looked over at Alexis. “We need to get her to the hospital to make sure she doesn’t have any internal injuries.” He met her gaze and held it. “You need to take her to the next town.”

“What are you trying to pull?” she whispered from between gritted teeth.

“Let’s get her into the pickup,” he said, and she helped him help Tina to her feet and into the passenger seat.

Closing the door, he turned to Alexis and talked fast. “Tina needs medical attention. I have to talk to Bobby. I recognized him as the man I saw leaving Jana’s the night she was allegedly murdered. I have to find out what he knows. He’s the one person who can prove that I didn’t kill her.”

“Other than Jana herself,” Alexis snapped. “I knew you’d pull something like this,” she said with a curse.

He shook his head. “I swear that’s not what this is about. You need to get Tina to a hospital. Beyond her arm and her ribs, she might have injuries that will kill her otherwise. Either way, she needs medical attention.” He could see that her big heart wouldn’t let her leave a woman in pain. “It’s not that far to the next town to the east. Then come back for me. I promise I’ll be here at the end of this road waiting for you.”

When she shook her head angrily, he took her chin in his palm and lifted it up until their eyes met. “I promise.” He felt her weaken. “Go, and hurry back.”

“So help me, Culhane, if you—”

He kissed her, pulling her into him and kissing her as if he might never see her again. There was a good chance he wouldn’t. Not that it was what he was thinking about as he’d kissed her with the passion that only this woman evoked in him. The thought of losing her made it hard for him to catch his next breath.

THE KISS TOOK Alexis completely by surprise. There was an intensity to it that frightened her. Was he saying goodbye because he thought he might die? Or because he had no plans to see her again? During the kiss, it hadn’t mattered. She’d melted into him, caught up in her unrelenting desire for him, in the hard lines of his body, in the warmth of his arms around her. She never wanted the kiss to end.

But, of course, it had.

“Go,” he said again. For just an instant, their gazes locked, and she thought he was going to say the words she’d yearned to hear. But then he turned and took off up the road at a run.

Alexis sighed and turned back to the pickup. Her legs felt weak under her, the kiss still churning in her system, making her soft inside and more vulnerable than she wanted to feel. The man could get to her with just one kiss. At the thought that she might not see him alive again, she felt sick to her stomach and had to throw up in the ditch before taking off the too-large vest and climbing behind the wheel.

She looked over at Tina and felt badly that she’d been here in pain even for the length of a kiss. “Hang on,” she told her. “It’s not that far to the hospital.” The woman was covered in dirt and dust, her face streaked with tracks of dried tears, but she looked strong, sitting there holding her arm and taking shallow breaths. She’d faced death and had lived through it. Something like that either made a person stronger or left them frightened and weak.

Alexis started the pickup. She could barely make out Culhane’s dark figure on the horizon. According to the map, he wouldn’t have to go far before the road dead-ended at the river.

Tina also looked down the road after Culhane. She was shaking from fear or relief, Alexis thought maybe both. “You two know each other.”