Apple Orchard Bride. Jessica Keller
on her own. “Toby!” she yelled again. Hurry up!
“Jen—” Toby’s face fell when he entered the room. “What happened?” He dropped down beside her.
“I don’t know. I found him like this.” Her words trembled as tears started to crash down toward her chin. “I can’t lose him, Tobe.” Her childhood name for him slipped out before she could rein it in. She pressed on. “Will you help me roll him over?”
Toby eased closer. “Call 9-1-1. If he needs it, I know CPR.”
“But—” Feeling completely out of control in the situation, she froze. She wanted to curl up in a ball and let Toby take care of everything. But Dad needed her.
“Now, Jenna. Call.” Toby looked back at her father. He gently cupped where the nape of Dad’s neck met his hair and flipped him onto his back. The line of blood on her dad’s temple shifted to run down the side of his face. He looked as if he had on fake paint for a monster costume. On the positive side, if the gash was still bleeding, then he couldn’t have been passed out long.
Toby grabbed her father’s wrist and leaned close to his chest. “He has a pulse and he’s breathing. Call, Jenna. Go call for help.”
Dial 9-1-1. Right. Her cell phone. She felt in her pockets. She hadn’t grabbed it earlier. Jenna started for the kitchen but stopped when she heard a quiet groan.
Toby smiled. “He’s awake.”
Her dad blinked a few times and then tried to sit up, but Toby stayed him with a hand to his shoulder. “Easy, now, Mr. Crest. You fell. We found you passed out. We’re going to call an ambulance for you.”
“No.” Her father pressed his eyes shut and groaned again. “No ambulance. I won’t leave my house that way.”
Toby sent Jenna a look that said “What now?” It was only an uneven lift of his eyebrows, but she knew him well enough to know what all his facial expressions meant.
“Daddy.” She slowly stepped back into the room, as if he might scare if she walked normally. “You’re bleeding. You were unconscious. We need to get you to the hospital.”
“Stop your worrying, the both of you.” Dad started to try to rise to a sitting position again, so Toby braced his back and helped him up. Toby pulled one of the chairs closer so her father could lean against it.
Dad gingerly touched his temple. “It was nothing.”
“Nothing?” Jenna arched her eyebrow. “Like your hands shaking were nothing this morning?”
“I tripped on the carpeting and knocked my head on the arm of that chair on the way down.” He pointed at the curled-over edge of their large rug and the wooden armrest on one of the two antique chairs that flagged the sitting area. “That’s all. It could happen to anyone. Even someone strong and fit like you or Toby.”
“Even still.” Toby exchanged another worried look with Jenna. “We’d like to get you to the hospital.”
Her father set his jaw. “I’m not climbing into an ambulance.”
“They help you into it—” Toby started to say.
Jenna shook her head. “That’s not what he means.” Dad could be more stubborn than dried tar. Which was probably where she got that particular trait from.
Jenna disappeared into the kitchen and grabbed her keys, her cell phone and a clean dish towel from the counter. She marched back into the sitting room and jangled the keys. “I’m driving you there.” She tossed the kitchen towel to Toby. “Press that to his cut.”
Toby did as instructed. And as if reading her mind, when they were ready to leave, Toby wrapped his arm around her father and helped him walk to the car.
“I’ll sit in back.” Dad motioned toward the backseat of her late-model Camry. “I may want to lie down.”
Toby made sure her dad was buckled in. “Try not to fall back to sleep. I’m sure they’ll want to check you for a concussion,” he instructed before claiming the passenger seat.
Jenna started up the car and backed out of their driveway without looking over at Toby. If he hadn’t been there...if she’d been all alone and something happened to her father...something worse...what would she have done? Would she have been able to clear her mind enough to call for help? She wanted the answer to that question to be yes, of course. But whenever panic clawed its way into her chest, it seemed to affect her ability to think, as well. What if something happened to her father and she couldn’t help him because she was in the middle of an anxiety attack?
Toby was right. She needed another person at the orchard. She needed help.
Now to taste humble pie.
“Thank you,” she whispered so only Toby could hear. No need to stress her father out in his condition; he didn’t need to know that she and Toby had been arguing.
“For?” Toby’s eyebrows rose.
“Coming when I called...even after...” She swallowed hard and tried to make her voice even. “After what I said to you.”
“Listen.” He angled his body so he was leaning over the middle control area and lowered his voice. “From what I’ve gathered, there’s some water under the bridge that you and I need to sort through. And we will. But no matter what—and hear me on this, Jenna—no matter what happens between us, I’ll always come if you call for me. Got that? Always.”
She sucked in a shaky breath and nodded. Toby wanted to deal with their issues? Was that even possible? And if they did sort through everything...then what? They weren’t kids running through the apple orchard any longer—they could never go back to those carefree days. After everything that had happened in both of their lives, they could never go back to their old, easy friendship.
She could accept his help on the orchard and with her father, but she couldn’t welcome him back as a friend. Not ever. Not after the way he—and every guy after him—had betrayed her.
“Mr. Crest.” Toby opened his visor and used the mirror on it to keep an eye on her father. “I’m going to ask you some questions to help you stay alert, okay?”
“Do your worst.” Her dad’s smile was soft, but his joking manner made Jenna ease her foot off the accelerator. It wouldn’t help them to get a speeding ticket on the way to the hospital.
“Favorite food?”
“Besides apple pie?”
“Sure.”
“Roast-beef sandwiches.”
“Who’s the best football team?” Toby asked with a grin.
Dad laughed. “Packers.”
“You know that makes you a state traitor, right?” Toby shook his head as his grin widened.
“Oh, please.” Her father crossed his arms. “Had they offered for you out of college, you would have accepted.”
“You’re...you’re not wrong.”
Had Toby flinched? Or had Jenna only imagined it?
Toby cleared his throat. “Did Kasey give you any trouble this morning?”
“Who’s Kasey?” Jenna glanced in Toby’s direction at the next stoplight. His pale blue eyes almost looked like they had a white electric circle in them. She forced herself to look back at the road.
Her dad leaned toward the front of the car. “She’s only the cutest little girl I’ve ever met. Present company excluded.” He tapped Jenna’s shoulder and then rested his other hand on Toby’s shoulder. “She was nervous about her first day of school and starting after everyone else, so she and I prayed together before she got on the bus.”
“Wait.” Jenna gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Who’s