Winner Takes All. Cheryl Harper
died by plunging over the side of the road. Brushing off her concern and the real danger took some getting used to.
A cold drink might be the only thing to save her, so she fished a Coke out of her convenience store bag. The first sweet sip was calming.
“What do we do if we meet another car?” Stephanie asked and bit back a frightened squeak as gravel spun under the truck’s tires.
“Negotiate. Very carefully. You’ll see.” His certainty didn’t reassure her.
That’s what she’d been afraid of.
Was he trying to frighten her back to Lima? One glimpse of his face convinced her that this was his normal. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
If he’d wanted peace and quiet for his drive to Alto, he was totally going to get it. She couldn’t have made inane conversation about sports teams and weather if her life depended on it. She was too busy swallowing back pleas to slow down and be careful. Be more careful. Please be more careful.
Then the truck lurched, headed for the wall instead of the drop and Daniel cursed. Before she could gather her breath to scream, before the movie of her life began to flash in front of her eyes, he had the truck stopped. “Flat tire.” Instead of shouting it like it might be the thing that spelled the end, his voice was flat with annoyance.
As though a flat tire while clinging to the side of a mountain was the same as a hangnail.
Here it might be.
Stephanie glanced wildly over both shoulders as if something might have changed in the two seconds she’d had her eyes squeezed shut. “Here?”
Daniel rested his chin against his chest for a second and then handed her his bottle. “They hardly ever happen on nice, level spots, especially around here.” He slid out of the truck, and she put both bottles in the cup holders before she inched her way out between the truck and the dusty mountain.
“But you know how to fix it?” Her fingers ached and she realized she’d tangled them together in a tight ball. At this second, in this place, she was as equipped to change that tire as she was to fly back to Lima. Eventually she might figure it out, but not before they were flattened into more Peruvian dust.
Daniel wrapped both hands around hers, the ones she didn’t know she was wringing like a true damsel in distress, until some of his calm and warmth seeped through her skin. He’d always been able to do that, break through her worry and give her some peace.
“Relax. This is business as usual. I can change it. Haven’t I always kept you safe? You and the other Holy Horrors have trained me well. Big brother to the rescue again.” He tilted his head to catch her stare, and they stood there for a long minute. “We’ll get the tire fixed in the next town. Everything is fine.” She matched every deep breath he took and realized that, although he was a brilliant doctor, this ability he had to convince her that everything was going to be okay made him the best.
Then she understood what he’d said. Big brother. Except he wasn’t and the way he saw their relationship hadn’t changed at all.
But she had.
Or she could if she wanted to, and this trip was her shot to show him and prove it to herself.
Starting right here, on the side of this mountain, where they both might be pulverized together if they didn’t get a move on.
“Okay. What can I do to help?” Now that she was breathing properly, she was ready to do whatever she could to get them moving again.
“Get back in the truck.” He turned away, pretty much assuming his order would be carried out quickly.
“Can’t get back in the truck. I’m helping.” Forcing her hands to her side was a strong first step. From there she could...do something.
When Daniel turned around, his impatience was impossible to miss. He raised a single eyebrow in response.
“I’m lending moral support.” She motioned at the narrow space between the truck and the mountainside. “You won’t even notice I’m here.”
Unexpectedly, his lips were twitching when he let out the long beleaguered sigh that had often been his response to their shenanigans.
“Stay there, between the truck and the mountain. If someone comes around that curve, I don’t want you out in the road.” He pulled the spare out of the back of the truck along with the jack, and once again she was reminded that now he was the sort of doctor who did heavy lifting. Obviously. Watching him work was pleasant.
“Well, since you asked so nicely...”
Then she focused on what he’d said. Someone else might be coming around that curve? She leaned over the hood to try to gauge the chances of another car making it around them. “We’re all going to die.”
His rough chuckle was easy to hear even as he worked the jack. “Nobody’s going to die. I have patients to see tomorrow.”
She thought about explaining how that made absolutely no sense, but she didn’t want to distract him. Instead she stared out over the vast space between the road they were on and the amazing mountain opposite them. Nothing but air and dirt and a tiny little ledge that cars and people were supposed to move along.
“Are you still with me?” Daniel asked. He must have had to repeat himself because he was standing next to her, wiping his hands on a towel that couldn’t have been much cleaner than his grease-covered palms.
“Ready to go?” The shrill tone didn’t please her, but maybe Daniel gave points for effort because he didn’t tease her or show any impatience. He nodded, walked around the truck and slid onto the driver’s seat.
The cold bottles were sweatier than her hands, but Stephanie took them out of the cup holders and handed him one. “Nice job, Doc.”
“I couldn’t have done it without your support.” His warm smile reminded her of other sunny days, other adventures. Everyone else thought he was so serious.
Was she the only lucky one to see this side?
They clinked the necks and Daniel started the truck. The shot of cold and sweet settled her jitters, and she was able to concentrate on how smoothly he negotiated the road.
“That didn’t even bother you, did it? Change a lot of flat tires on your Mercedes back home?”
He yanked off his cap. The wind blew through the window, ruffling his sweaty curls and Stephanie tried to remember if she’d ever seen them before. Daniel wasn’t answering her question about his former pride and joy, and she needed a distraction from her calculations on how long they could travel without meeting a car coming the other direction, so she said, “Not breaking any rules. That has nothing to do with Holly Heights Hospital or being fired, although if you’d like to talk about it, we certainly can. If you’d told me what a rotten day you were having, I would have never added to it by propositioning you.”
And she might not have to wonder if her invitation, which had bordered on a declaration, was one of the things keeping him away from Holly Heights. The poor guy might have made it home sooner if he hadn’t been afraid there’d be a lovesick fan waiting right behind his sister.
“Propositioning me? You asked me to dinner. Choose your words more carefully, English teacher.” He navigated a sharp turn in the shadow of the mountain. She watched his lips tighten and he rolled his shoulders slowly. “Flat tires are just another day around here. The first one rattled me, but I’ve learned I can handle them. That’s one good thing about this life. You find out pretty quickly you’re capable of more than you ever imagined.”
So he was going to skip over the parts he didn’t want to talk about. That made a lot of sense.
She’d already started doing more than she’d imagined. She’d had her doubts whether their friendship would be enough to get her into the truck. If she’d known about the condition of the road, Stephanie was certain she would have believed