Winner Takes All

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 herself incapable of riding shotgun without gasping at each turn. By the time she landed in Texas again, what else would she be have mastered? “You going to teach me how to change a flat?”

He slowly shook his head. “Not until I show you how to drive on these roads, and neither one of us is up to that.” He shot a look at her death grip on the handle over the door. He was right, but she wouldn’t let him know that.

“Pretty sure I could handle it.” Just like that, she had to eat her words when they met not a car but a truck filled with people coming the other direction. Daniel immediately stopped his truck and eased it back to a dip in the mountain wall. “First rule of passing: hug the mountain.”

“Let them take the outside? Got it.” They both watched as the truck eased around them with shouts and waves from the passengers, and then Daniel pulled out of the dip and hit the gas.

Stephanie picked up the bag of chips, forced herself to let go of the handle and calmly shoved a handful in her mouth. By the power of carbs, she’d make it through this. When they rolled to a stop in the small main square of the next town, she’d managed to work her way through the bag, her Inca Kola and the Coke. And she felt better.

“Proposition, to propose something, like a date. I am good with words, Dr. Lincoln. In fact, I’d say we’ve already had our dinner date. We just shared a bag of chips and a drink. That’s almost a meal—a really cheap date with spectacular scenery.” She waved a careless hand to demonstrate how un-terrified and well-adjusted she was at this point in the trip and her life.

The fact that she’d actively plotted a way to prove her lack of injury, years after the incident, might not support her claims.

“Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll take you to the hospital for the restroom as soon as I get the tire patched.” Before she could salute smartly, Daniel was out of the truck. She glanced back in time to watch him lift the tire out of the back. He was tall and strong and didn’t seem much like the hotshot doctor she remembered. Dirty jeans and tan skin were a good look for him. The dark frown on his face was a lot more familiar. After he walked down the middle of the street and turned the corner, she checked on her suitcase, gasped in dismay over the solid coating of dust, and settled back in her seat.

“Stay here. Don’t move,” she grumbled. His voice wasn’t easy to copy but the frown was. “Big brother or dictator? It’s a fine line.”

That was when she noticed a line of schoolgirls forming on the sidewalk behind the truck. Dressed in adorable navy and gray uniforms, they watched the truck closely and giggled.

Small town Texas or mountain village in Peru, giggling eight-year-olds must have been universal.

Digging around in her bag from the convenience store, she grabbed the candy she’d picked up and then took her camera out of her backpack. One more glance showed impatient mothers joining the kids. Even better. She could ask permission to give candy and take photos.

If she could remember that much Spanish.

Maybe they knew English.

Stay here. Don’t move. Those had been his orders and she couldn’t claim she’d forgotten his second rule with a straight face. So this was going to make him mad.