Matthew’s words comforted Hope like nothing else.
That’s what friends did, comforted one another. So why did she keep noticing the play of muscles beneath his T-shirt? Why was she feeling an electrical charge from being so close to him?
She wasn’t attracted to him. She just couldn’t be. She was off balance, that was all. Yes, that had to be it. She was out of her usual environment, like a fish out of water. That had to be why she was feeling this way.
The reason she’d let herself close enough to see Matthew’s heart and feel her own response…
Hope Ashton leaned her forehead against the wet edge of the lifted hood and tried not to give in to a growing sense of defeat. Her brand-new rental Jeep was dead, and she was stranded miles from nowhere in the middle of a mean Montana storm. Strong north winds drove cold spikes of rain through her T-shirt and jeans and she shivered, wet to the skin.
How was she going to get to her grandmother now?
Just get back inside the Jeep and think this through. There was nothing else she could do. Hope took a step in the dark and felt her left foot sink into water. Cold sticky mud seeped through the thin canvas mesh all the way up to her top lace. She jumped back, only to sink up to her right ankle in a different puddle.
Great. Just great. But hadn’t her life been one obstacle after another since she’d received the call about her grandmother’s fall? It was emotion, that’s all. Frantic worry had consumed her as she’d tried to book a flight across the Atlantic.
She’d come too far to lose heart now—Nanna was only a few miles away. God had granted Hope two good legs. She would simply walk. A little rain and wind wouldn’t hurt her.
Lightning cut through the night, so bright it seared her eyes. Thunder pealed with an earsplitting ring. Directly overhead.
Okay, maybe she wouldn’t start out just yet. She ached to be near Nanna’s side, to comfort her, to see with her own eyes how the dear old woman was doing, but getting struck by lightning wasn’t on her to-do list for the night. Hope eased around the side of the Jeep, resigning herself to the cold puddles, and into her vehicle.
Warmth from the heater still lingered, and it drove away some of the chill from her bones. As lightning arced across the black sky and rain pelted like falling rocks against her windshield, she tried the cell phone one more time on the chance it was working. It wasn’t.
The electrical storm wouldn’t last long, right? She tried to comfort herself with that thought as the wind hit the Jeep broadside and shook it like an angry bull on the rampage. Shadowed by the flashes of lightning, a tall grove of trees rocked like furious giants in the dark.
Okay, she was getting a little scared. She was safe in the Jeep. The Lord would keep her safe. She’d just lived too long in cities and had only spent a year of high school here in Montana, on these high lonely plains.
Round lights flashed through the dark behind her, and she dropped the phone. Rain drummed hard against the windshield so she couldn’t see anything more of the approaching vehicle. Twin headlights floated closer on the unlit two-lane road, and she felt a little too alone and vulnerable.
Maybe whoever it was would just keep going, she prayed, but of course, the lights slowed and, through the rain sluicing down her side window, she could see the vehicle ease to a stop on the road beside her. Her heart dropped as his passenger window slid downward, revealing a man’s face through the dark sheets of rain.
She eased her window down a crack.
“Got trouble?” he asked. “I’d be happy to give you a lift into town.”
“No, thanks. Really, I’m fine.”
“Sure about that?” His door opened.