Playing Dirty (Risky Business, #2)(35)

Idly, I opened my Magic 8 Ball app on my phone. “Should I quit?” I asked it, then shook it and waited as the answer floated to the top.

Signs Point to Yes.

Well, that answer wasn’t a big surprise, but what would I do if I quit? It felt almost like I would be breaking up with someone—with Parker—which was just wrong and weird on so many levels.

I was turning this over in my head as I hurried back from lunch. I’d had to make a detour by the dry cleaner’s to pick up a batch of Parker’s suits and now waited impatiently for the pedestrian signal to change.

Standing on the curb in a group of people, I watched the traffic whiz by. The cookie I’d gotten at lunch was burning a hole in my purse. I dug for it. Why wait for mid-afternoon when I could have a cookie right now? Especially when I was thinking about a man I shouldn’t be thinking about.

Something slammed hard into my back and I stumbled. To my horror, I lost my balance and tripped off the curb, landing on my ass in the street—and directly in the path of an oncoming truck.





CHAPTER SEVEN


There was no time to get up and run, no time to scream for help. I could only watch in terror as the truck barreled my way.

Horns blared and tires squealed. I squeezed my eyes shut, instinctively curling into as small a ball as I could, waiting for the bone-crushing impact.

Glass and metal shattered around me. A scream was ripped from my throat, lost in the sounds of rending metal on asphalt. There was a searing pain in my shoulder and a burning sensation, then a quiet that seemed near silence after the cacophony that had gone before.

I didn’t move, too stunned and afraid to dare hope it was over, that I had survived.

I heard voices, people shouting.

“Hey, lady! You okay? Can you hear me?”

Cautiously, I opened my eyes. What I saw directly above me was the underside of a truck, a scant inch between my head and the metal above. Somehow, I’d squeezed between the road and the undercarriage. My shoulder hadn’t been so lucky to stay utterly out of reach, though, and I could feel the wet, sticky flow of blood. Something had cut me.

“Help me,” I croaked, my voice clogged with tears and shock. “Please, help.”

Hands pulled on me and the asphalt scraped at my clothes and exposed legs, but I didn’t care. I wanted out from underneath the truck.

“Holy shit, you’re one lucky lady,” a man said once I was clear. Another two men had helped get me out and they urged me to sit down as sirens screamed in the distance.

“Here’s your purse,” someone said, setting my bag beside me. Parker’s suits were in a tangled mass underneath the front tire of the truck. “Is there someone I can call for you?”

I nodded and tried digging my phone out, but my hands shook too badly and the blood on my arm had run down to my fingers, making them slippery.

“Take it easy. I’ll help you.” There was a man crouched down next to me, a construction worker, judging by his orange vest and hardhat. He pulled out my phone. “Who should I call?”

“I-in my f-favorites,” I stammered. My teeth were chattering from the cold. “Boss.”

The guy looked at me strangely, but hit the button and dialed. After a moment, Parker must have answered. “Yeah, not sure who this is, but there’s been an accident and the lady wanted me to call you.” A pause as the sirens got louder so it had to be hard to hear. “Down here on Madison and Clark. You close by?” The man glanced at me. “I’d get down here as quick as you can.” He ended the call and handed me back the phone just as an ambulance screeched to a stop.

I was flanked by two EMTs almost immediately. Then more ambulances arrived and people were helping the driver of the truck and the drivers of two other smashed cars he’d hit when he’d swerved to avoid me.

They moved me to sit in the back of the ambulance and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders to ease my shivering. They took my vitals as they peppered me with questions, shined a light in my eyes, asked me who the current president was, what year I’d been born, blah blah.

“From what witnesses say, you’re very lucky,” one of the EMTs said. “You need some stitches in your arm and have some bumps and scrapes, but otherwise, you’re going to be just fine.”

“Sage!”

I knew that voice and looked up to see Parker barreling toward me, his face stricken. When he saw me, his expression eased somewhat, then he caught sight of the blood.

“What the hell happened? Are you all right?” he asked, stopping at the edge of the ambulance’s open door.

I’d held it together until then, but seeing him made the floodgates open as relief poured through me. Tears blurred my eyes and I reached for him. He had me wrapped in his arms in an instant, and the warm strength of him eased the residual terror of only an inch separating me from becoming roadkill.

The EMTs told him the extent of my injuries and what had happened. Parker’s grip on me got progressively tighter as he listened.

“… amazing story, that she’s not hurt worse,” the EMT said. I knew we were all silently thinking “or dead.”

Parker turned to me, his hold loosening. “So you just tripped and fell?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. I’m not that much of a klutz. It-it was almost as though … someone pushed me.”