Read Online Asking for Trouble by Mary Kay McComas - Free Book Online

her. “She can’t lift it over her head.”
    “Well, if it’s not serious, we can drop you off at Mercy when we’re finished here,” the officer said kindly, eyeing Tom’s facial laceration. “You might want the gash on your head looked at, too, sir.”
    Tom touched his forehead gingerly, as if he’d forgotten all about the previous incident. He chuckled. “This didn’t happen in the accident. We’ve ...” He looked at Sydney. “We’re having one hell of a night.”
    Against her will and for no clear reason, his comment struck her as ridiculously funny. Sydney began to laugh, and it felt wonderful. It wasn’t a wild hysterical laugh. It was a good, sane laugh that came straight from her heart. It released the despair and the sense of danger and helped her give up her worries.
    She laughed until there were tears in her eyes, and through the blur she looked at Tom and felt friendship and camaraderie. She sensed she could trust him, depend on him to bring light into the darkness and make the unbearable tolerable. She was drawn to his optimism and easy, lighthearted nature.
    He was a stabilizing force in her life. And she wasn’t so ignorant or infatuated with the man that she didn’t know his actions were quite deliberate. She’d heard the panic and fear in his voice after the accident, when he thought she’d been injured. She’d felt the gentleness in his touch. She’d seen his strength and his capacity for anger and rage in dealing with abuse and cruelty. In his eyes she’d seen intimacy, warmth, and a giving nature.
    No, the man was no fool, she decided, watching him talk with the policeman. He’d felt everything she had felt. The shock, the fear, the pain. But he’d put it aside to meet her needs.
    “Did you see what happened?” the officer asked, the question addressed to either one or both of them.
    Tom’s eyes twinkled merrily, his lips twitching with restrained mirth. She frowned until she recalled what they’d been doing at the time the accident occurred. She burst into giggles once more.
    “It happened very quickly,” Tom told the man with a straight face, not unaware of or ungrateful for the timely delay in having to tell Sydney what he did for a living. He wasn’t ashamed of what he did, mind you. But it was a delicate subject, and he preferred to explain it in his own way, in his own time. “We didn’t see anything.”
    “Do you know if your driver turned to look behind him before attempting to merge with the traffic? Or did he just pull out?”
    “I really couldn’t say,” Tom said, laughter quivering in his voice. “I ... we were preoccupied at the time.”
    “Oh” was all the officer said, as his features took on a knowing expression. He glanced from Tom to Sydney and smiled. He cleared his throat loudly. “Well, in that case I guess I can run you two up to Mercy Hospital real quick and come back for my partner. It won’t take two of us to direct traffic till the tow truck comes.”
    Sydney caught the word hospital and sobered immediately.
    “No. That’s not necessary. I don’t need to go to the hospital,” she said, a familiar feeling of panic rising up inside her and sticking in her throat. “Really.”
    “Are you nuts? Of course you need to go,” Tom said, frowning at her. “If your arm’s not broken, then your shoulder is. You can’t lift your arm. You need help.”
    “I can lift it,” she said unequivocally. She got it as high as her left breast before she whimpered with the pain.
    “That’s it. Let’s go,” he said, pulling cautiously but unrelentingly on her right arm. “No. Don’t say another word. You’re going.”
    “But, Tom, I—”
    “No. You’re going. Ill tell you what,” he said, as he nudged her into the back seat of the patrol car. “If you behave, I’ll have someone put a bandage on my head, so you won’t have to look at it anymore. How’s that?”
    He slammed the car door before she could answer, and walked around to get in