The Cowboy's Gift-Wrapped Bride

He left his engine idling and reached across to the glove box, popping it open and retrieving a flashlight from inside.

It was only midafternoon but the clouds were so dense and the snow so thick—not to mention that it was piled up almost completely over the other car—that he thought he might need some extra light to see inside the vehicle.

He set the flashlight in his lap, flipped up the fleece collar of his suede shearling coat and pulled down on the brim of his Stetson to keep it securely on his head. Then he opened the door and hopped out of the truck into wind so fierce it had turned the snowflakes into shards of glass against his face.

Luckily he knew exactly where his shovel was—just behind the truck’s cab—so he reached blindly for it with one gloved hand, pulling the tool out from beneath its wintry blanket.

Carrying the shovel and flashlight, Matt plowed through snow that was nearly knee-deep in some places, making his way as fast as he could to the side of the road.

The wind was a howl that obliterated any other sounds, but he was reasonably sure no one was calling for help from within the car. He had to dig to get to the driver’s side door, then he managed to break its frozen seal and pull it open to shine the flashlight into the interior.

It was a good thing he’d taken the trouble.

Inside the car was a woman hunched over the steering wheel, her head bloody against the windshield.

She didn’t move and Matt had a moment’s sick feeling that he was too late.

He yanked off one glove and pressed two fingers to her neck, just under her jawbone.

There was still some warmth and softness to her skin, telling him right off the bat that she was alive, and when he found her pulse, he had it confirmed.

But she was hurt. There was no doubt about that. Badly enough to be unconscious.

He knew it wasn’t good to move her but what choice did he have? Even if this had been a sunny day in May he’d have had to call for a helicopter rescue because they were too far from the nearest hospital for an ambulance to reach them with any speed. In this weather neither a helicopter nor an ambulance could risk it, so he was the only help this woman was going to get.

And the longer he spent pondering it, the more danger they were both in.

So he switched off the flashlight and slid it into his coat pocket, jammed the shovel into the snow like a stake claiming land and replaced his glove. Then he eased the woman out of the car and into his arms as cautiously as he could, gently hoisting her up against his chest like a fragile sack of grain.

She wasn’t much bigger than a minute. He’d carried calves and foals that weighed more. But since she was still unconscious, she was dead weight.

Her head fell limply to his shoulder and her right arm swung outward like a loose gate. He kept his head hunched over her to provide as much protection as he could from the elements he knew were biting through the simple wool coat she had on. She wore no gloves to cover her hands or hat to conceal the long fall of curly burnished red hair.

She moaned when he lifted her into the passenger side of his truck, but she still didn’t regain consciousness.

“You’ll be okay. I’ll get you to a doctor,” he told her anyway, thinking maybe the reassurance would penetrate somehow. Then he reached behind the seat for the emergency blanket he kept there and covered her with it, cranking up the heat before he closed the door and went back to her car.

A quick scan of the inside of the topsy-turvy sedan showed him a black leather purse and a single suitcase on the rear floor.

There was no telling when anyone would be able to get out here again and he knew she was likely to need her things so he grabbed the purse and the suitcase to take along, too. Then he retrieved his shovel, closed the door and finally high-stepped his way to his truck once more, hoping he could make good time getting his unplanned passenger to help.

The first thing she was aware of was an unrelenting headache that started in her temple and wrapped around the side of her head like a vise.

The second thing she realized was that she was very, very cold even though it felt as if there were heavy blankets covering her. So cold her fingers and toes ached almost as bad as her head did.

She could hear the sound of voices and a telephone ringing, but it was all from a distance. Muted. She couldn’t make out any of what the voices were saying.

She opened her eyes into slits that let in stabbing white light. But she couldn’t bear the bright fluorescent glare and had to scrunch them closed again in a hurry.

That was when a deep male voice said, “Are you finally going to join us?”

The voice wasn’t familiar. Not at all. But it was smooth and full-bodied and confident, and it reminded her of dark molasses.

Then she heard a few footsteps, a door opening and the same voice said, “I think she’s coming to,” before the click of boot heels brought the man to stand near her again.

Painful or not, she decided she didn’t have any choice but to open her eyes again. By very, very slow increments, allowing in only as much of the light as she could endure and adjusting to it before raising her lids more, until she finally had them completely open.

She found herself looking up into a face of chiseled planes and rawboned, ruggedly masculine beauty.

“Don’t be afraid, Jenn,” the man said. “You’re okay. You were in a car accident but you’re safe now.”

Jenn? Had he called her Jenn? The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Jenn?” she repeated.

“We had to get into your purse and look at your driver’s license to find out who you are. I’m sorry for poking into your things, but—”

“Jenn,” she said again, alarm building in her voice to match what was building inside her as it began to sink in that the name didn’t mean anything to her.

“Jenn Johnson—it’s on your driver’s license. Along with your picture.”

“You think that’s me? Jenn Johnson?”

“That’s what we’ve pieced together. Isn’t it right?”

“Is it?” she said with growing agitation. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Her heart was racing now. She could hear the rush of blood through her veins and it crossed her mind that maybe she was dreaming. Maybe she was having a very vivid nightmare. A very vivid nightmare in which she’d somehow forgotten who she was.

But her head hurt too much for this to just be a dream.

“I don’t know if that’s the right name or not. I don’t know that name at all. I don’t know if it’s mine,” she said, sounding on the verge of hysteria.

“You don’t know who you are?” he asked as if he doubted his own comprehension of what she was saying.

“I really don’t know!” she said, the full force of her own panic echoing in her voice.

He must have heard it, because he said, “Okay, okay. Don’t get riled up. Your driver’s license says you’re Jenn Johnson,” he said soothingly. “Your car went off the road in a snowstorm. I found you inside, slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious and bleeding from the head. I brought you here—you’re in a doctor’s office. No one recognized you from around these parts so we looked in your purse for identification and that’s what we came up with—a Colorado driver’s license with your picture on it that says you’re Jenn Johnson.” He explained everything in such detail, no doubt hoping it would make her recall something.

But it didn’t. And she felt a fear so intense it was palpable.

She tried to sit up then to combat her own sense of extreme vulnerability.

But when she did, her head started to spin and she thought she’d pass out.

The man seemed in tune with what was going on with her because he stepped even closer to the examining table and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “I think you’d better stay lying back until my brother gets a look at you. He’s the doctor. We’re in his office.”