Read Online The Girl He'd Overlooked by Cathy Williams - Free Book Online Page A

Not a problem. I still have so much work to do, anyway! You wouldn’t believe it! Plus I’m going to take the opportunity to catch up with some of my frie…’
    ‘Jennifer, shut up.’
    ‘How dare you?’
    ‘You need to do exactly what I say. Get dressed in some warm clothes, come out of your cottage and head for the copse behind it. You know the one I mean.’
    ‘James, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.’
    ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident.’
    ‘You…
what
?’ Jennifer stood up, felt giddy and immediately sat back down. Every nerve in her body had gone into sudden, panicked overdrive. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘There were some high winds here a couple of days ago. Just before you came. Some fallen branches in the copse behind the cottage and a tree that’s about to go and is dangerously close to one of the overhead cables.’
    ‘You tripped over a branch on your way here?’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous! How feeble do you think I am? After I left you earlier, I got back to the house, did some work and then thought that I might as well see if I could bring the tree down, get it clear of the overhead power lines.’
    In a flashback springing from nowhere, she had a vivid memory of him as a young boy not yet sixteen, strapped halfway up one of the towering trees that bordered the house, chainsaw in one hand, reaching for a branch that had broken, while underneath his parents yelled for him to get down
immediately.
He had grown up in sprawling acres of deepest countryside and had always loved getting involved in the hard work of running the estate. He had had a reckless disregard for personal safety, had loved challenging himself. She had adored that about him.
    ‘I can’t believe you could have been so stupid!’ she yelled down the phone. ‘You’re not sixteen any more, James! Give me five minutes and
don’t move.’
    She spotted him between the swirling snow, just a dark shape lying prone, and the worst-case scenarios she had tussled with as she had flung on her jumper and scarf and coat and everything else smashed into her with the force of a ten-ton block of granite. What if he had suffered concussion? He would be able to sound coherent, make sense, only to die without warning. That had happened to someone, somewhere. She had read it in the news years ago. What if he had broken something? His spine? Fractured his leg or his arm? There was no way that a doctor would be able to get out here. Even a helicopter would have trouble in these weather conditions.
    ‘Don’t move!’ She had brought two tablecloths with her. ‘You can use these to cover yourself with and I’m going to get that table thing Dad uses for wallpapering. It can be rigged up like a stretcher.’
    ‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Jen. I just need you to help me up. The snow’s so soft that it’s impossible. I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back.’
    ‘What if it’s more serious than that, James?’ she cried, kneeling and peering at him at close range. She shoneher torch directly at his face and he winced away from the light.
    ‘Would you mind directing the beam somewhere else?’
    She ignored him. ‘What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t move if you think you might have done something to your spine. It’s one of the first things you learn on a first-aid course.’
    ‘You’ve done a first-aid course?’
    ‘No, but I’m making an educated guess. Your colour looks good. That’s a brilliant sign. How many fingers am I holding up?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘My fingers. How many of them am I holding up? I need to make sure that you aren’t suffering from concussion…’
    ‘Three fingers and move the bloody torch, Jennifer. Let me sling my arm around your neck and we’re going to have to hobble to the cottage. I don’t think I can make it all the way back to the house.’
    ‘I’m not sure…’
    ‘Okay, here’s the deal. While you debate the shoulds and shouldn’ts, I’m going to pass out with hypothermia. I’ve