Snow Baby. Brenda Novak

window as the Landcruiser’s owner gave her car a skeptical frown. “You look like you belong on the streets of Beverly Hills,” he said. “I bet you’ve never driven in snow.”

      “Listen, I come from New York. You’ve never seen snow until you’ve spent a winter back East.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t owned a car for most of the ten years she’d lived in the Big Apple. Taxis, public transit or, more often, limousines had always carried her where she’d wanted to go, but she wasn’t about to volunteer that information. He didn’t need to know how precisely his accusation had hit its target.

      “Excuse me,” she said to get him to step back. “I want to see the damage.” She buttoned up her coat and scrambled out of the car, wincing as her white tennis shoes sank deep in the cold slush. Her vision swam for a moment, but she kept one hand on the door for support and soon the world righted itself.

      Like most people, the Landcruiser’s owner did a double take when he saw her at her full height. His gaze started at where the snow buried her feet, then climbed her thin frame until it met the withering glare she reserved for gawkers.

      She raised a hand before he could make any comment. “I know, I hear it all the time. I’m almost six feet, so you don’t have to ask.” She gave him a glacial smile to cover the way her body shook with reaction to the blizzard and the accident. “That doesn’t make me a freak, but it does intimidate some men.”

      He grunted. “Short men, maybe.”

      Chantel had to admit he didn’t look like a man who could be easily intimidated. Similar to her in age, he had shoulders twice the width of her own and was taller by at least four inches. But she’d always hated her height, even when she stood next to bigger people. She’d grown up to taunts of “Daddy Long Legs” and “Miller High Life” and couldn’t see herself as anything but gangly and awkward, despite a successful modeling career.

      She shut her door and leaned into the wind, fighting the weakness of her legs as she trudged over to check out the damage. “Ouch,” she said, sheltering her face from the snow so she could view the Jag’s crumpled front bumper and broken headlight. The Landcruiser sported a smashed right rear panel. “Well, my car certainly got the worst of it, don’t you think?”

      He cocked an eyebrow at her, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to; she could guess what he was thinking.

      “It was your fault, too,” she said, irritated by his smug attitude, which reminded her too much of Wade, even though this stranger looked nothing like her ex-boyfriend. “You slammed on your brakes for no apparent reason.”

      He gave an incredulous laugh. “The car in front of me stopped. What did you want me to do? Drive off the cliff?”

      Is it too late to consider that option? Chantel bit her tongue, knowing her hostility was spurred by the memory of Wade and not this stranger. Not really.

      Glancing at her car’s smashed front end a final time, she hurried back into the driver’s seat. The accident had caused some expensive damage, but it was still pretty much a fender bender. She wanted to swap information and be on her way, or Stacy would think she wasn’t coming.

      She hoped this guy wouldn’t insist on waiting for the Highway Patrol.

      “Why don’t you grab your driver’s license and insurance card and come get in my truck?” he called after her. “It’ll be drier and warmer than trying to do it out here.”

      Never get in a car with a stranger, her father’s voice admonished.

      Especially such a powerful-looking stranger, Chantel added on her own.

      “I’ll just write it all down and bring it to you. You’re not planning to wait for the police to arrive, are you? There’s really no need. In a collision like this, the rear ender’s always on the hook.”

      He smiled, transforming his expression from a Terminator-style intensity to the guilelessness of an All-American boy. “There’s a good reason for that, you know.”

      “Okay, so I might have been following a little closely, but in a storm like this, calling the cops could hold us up for hours. Can’t you just file a report in the morning or something?”

      “No problem. I want to get out of here, too.”

      “Great.” She gave him a relieved smile—a semblance of the smile that had made her a living for the past ten years—and hurried back to her car. After scribbling down her policy number, insurance agent’s name and phone number, license-plate number and driver’s license number, she walked toward his truck.

      He rolled down his window and glanced at the slip of paper she handed to him. “What about your name and telephone number?”

      “My agent will handle everything.”

      “No way. You’re not leaving here until I have your name, your number and your address. Just in case.”

      Chantel fought the wind that kept blowing her long blond hair across her face. “In case of what?”

      “In case I need to contact you.”

      “I don’t think my husband would like me giving out that information,” she hedged, blinking the snow out of her eyelashes.

      He scowled. “I’m sorry, but you just rear-ended my truck. I want to know I can get hold of you. And I don’t care whether your husband likes it or not.”

      This could be a dangerous world, and she was completely alone in it. But what were the chances she’d just rear-ended another Ted Bundy? With a sigh, Chantel gave him the information he’d requested, hoping he’d fallen for the imaginary-husband routine.

      He passed her a card. “I wrote my cell phone number on the back. You can reach me on it anytime.”

      “Fine.” She glanced down and read, “Dillon Broderick, Architect,” before shoving the card into the back pocket of her jeans to keep it from getting wet.

      “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

      She was still a little rattled but determined to fulfill her promise to Stacy, despite the storm, despite the accident, despite everything.

      “Yeah. You?”

      “I’ll have a stiff neck tomorrow, but I’ll live. Take it easy,” he said, and pulled away before Chantel made it back to her car.

      DILLON BRODERICK put his Landcruiser into four-wheel drive and merged into the traffic heading up the hill, cursing under his breath.

      As if his week hadn’t gone badly enough. Now he had the bother of getting his truck fixed—the estimates from body shops, the insurance claims, the rental car—and beyond all that, the maddening knowledge that his new Landcruiser would never be the same.

      “‘I wasn’t tailgating you,’” he mimicked. She’d dogged him since Auburn, when it had started to snow. He’d flashed his brake lights several times, trying to get her to back off. But she’d come right up again and again, nearly riding on his bumper. If a man had done that, he’d probably have broken his nose for risking both their lives, but what could he do with a tall, beautiful woman?

      Grin and bear it, just the way he did with his ex-wife.

      He glanced at the paper where Chantel Miller had written her name and address. She lived in Walnut Creek, not far from his own house in Lafayette. At least they were both local. That should make things easier.

      He shook his head at the thought of the damage the accident had done to her Jaguar XJ-6. What a sweet car! Her husband wouldn’t be pleased when she got home.

      If she got home.

      The thought of Chantel Miller heading up the mountain with only one headlight caused Dillon a moment of guilt. It was difficult enough to see the road with two working lights. He probably should have waited to make sure she had chains and could get them on. But he was already late. His friends had been