Page 5 of Spellbound

But quiet was good, right? All the better for me to hear the monsters and the serial killers sneaking up behind me .

Wait. Maybe not monsters or serial killers—though you never knew about those tricky bastards—but weren’t there actual, real bears around here?

Of course there were—we were in the mountains, for God’s sake, or the foothills, anyway, so almost certainly there were black bears around.

And what about coyotes? I knew that this area was part of the Blue Ridge Mountain chain, so yeah, there had to be bears and coyotes and wildcats and foxes and all kinds of wildlife close by.

Just not too close, I hoped. And didn’t Bigfoot hang out around here somewhere?

I sent up a little prayer that every damn one of them would stay in the woods where they belonged and leave me the hell alone, and I kept limping on down the road.

I’d been walking about five more minutes or so and beginning to get exhausted, when I saw some headlights coming my way through the fog.

I stepped well off onto the shoulder and raised my hand with the flashlight in it to flag down the driver, thinking I could ask whoever it was to call someone to come and give us a tow—assuming I could get his attention in this damn fog.

The driver of the big pickup truck saw me, though, and the truck slowed down and rolled to a stop next to me. The man behind the wheel lowered his window and looked out. Instantly my heart began to beat a frantic tattoo, because I thought I might know who this was.

But before I could say his name or much of anything at all, he informed me in a hard, unfriendly voice, “This is private property. And you’re trespassing.”

“I-I am? I’m sorry, but we were just following the GPS.”

I started blushing. My face was suddenly burning hot, and my fair complexion, always a source of embarrassment to me, usually showed every emotion plainly on my face.

I stepped uneasily over to the window of the pickup for a closer look at the man in the driver’s seat.

Had I been mistaken about who this was? I didn’t think so.

That was Ben Jackson in the flesh, the foster son of my great aunt Rosalyn.

I’d seen him years ago on the one and only visit I’d had to North Caolina up to now, and I’d seen plenty of pictures of him, too, usually scowling at the camera like he hated getting his picture made.

He was driving the pickup, looking at me with absolutely no recognition at all on his handsome face.

Finally, I found my tongue. “Ben Jackson? Is that you? It’s me—Asher MacGregor? Rosalyn is my great aunt. We’ve been trying to find her house, but our car just broke down, and I was walking to try and find a phone. I left my grandma behind while I went for help.”

“Asher MacGregor?” he said, as if testing the name on his tongue.

He was staring at me, and I couldn’t tell if he liked what he saw or not, because his eyebrows rose the tiniest bit, and he looked surprised as he stared at me.

He had dark hair and piercing, brown eyes, an odd shade of brown—light colored, with a golden tint, and kind of an amber quality.

He was unshaven with at least a day's growth of beard, and he was wearing dusty work clothes, like he’d been on a construction job or whatever somewhere and was just coming home from it.

He looked dirty and disreputable, and a little bit dangerous.

He was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. Just saying.

That remark about trespassing hadn’t sounded very welcoming, though, and considering the fact that his foster mom had to be expecting us, he was apparently being kind of a jerk.

“You’re late ,” he said, glancing over at me as he pulled the truck into gear.

Okay, maybe I imagined that extra emphasis, but I was cold and wet and had wild animals after me and possibly a Bigfoot or two.

Maybe a serial killer. The least he could do was invite me to get in his truck and out of the drizzling rain.

“Oh?” I replied in a frosty tone. “Well…the weather’s not great, as you may have noticed, so traffic was terrible.

Since I’m out here walking, and freezing my ass off, you may have surmised that we’ve had car trouble.

But if it’s a problem, I suppose we can just sleep in the car tonight.

We certainly don’t want to be a bother to anyone. ”

He grinned at me, a pirate’s grin that only served to make him look rakish and even more attractive. “Touchy, aren’t you? I didn’t say it was a problem. Get in the truck if you’re cold.”

“Oh. Well, then...okay,” I cleared my throat nervously. "Sorry, but it’s been a really long day.”

He kept staring at me as I limped around the front of the big truck to the passenger side and opened the door.

I stood there contemplating how the hell I was going to climb in the damn thing.

It was massive. It was one of those big pickups, a Ford F-250, complete with the apparently compulsory oversized tires, so I’d need a stepladder to get in.

I thought maybe I could grab onto something and haul myself in, or maybe I could crawl up on the bed, and I heard a noise behind me.

He was suddenly there, putting his hands on my waist and lifting me in the air to deposit me on the seat, like a sack of potatoes.

I felt my cheeks burning again, but I managed to choke out, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he said and went back around to get back behind the wheel.

I got myself settled inside, put my seatbelt on, and I tried out a nervous smile as he watched me do it. I could see the rest of him now, and the long, lean, muscular lines of his body only made me more nervous.

“Is your cell phone not working? Why didn’t you call somebody?”

Stifling my first response, which would have been— Oh snap, why didn’t we think of that?

— I simply replied, “We couldn’t get a signal.

” Then I bit down my lip to stifle any more sarcasm slipping out and added, “I was wondering if maybe you could call a tow truck for us once you get back home. I’d really appreciate it. ”

He continued to stare at me, his eyes roving up and down. Suddenly, I felt really uncomfortable, and it was getting to be kind of a struggle to get a full breath.

“Maybe you won’t need a tow truck. I know a little about cars. I’ll take a look at it.”

“Oh. Well, thanks. That’d be great. Anyway, our car is just up the road there. I left my grandma to wait for me while I found help.” I realized I’d already said that, so I said again—for emphasis, “Just up the road there.”

“Got it. What happened to your leg?”

“I, uh, had a climbing accident and then surgery.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Climbing, huh? As in mountain climbing?”

“Not exactly. It’s kind of a long story.”

He just kept looking at me, waiting for me to tell it. “Okay, I did something pretty dumb. I was climbing around a waterfall and slipped on some rocks. And I fell.”

“That was pretty dumb. And where was this?”

Blushing, I gave him a chilly look. “In a park called Tallulah Gorge. It’s in Georgia. Where we live.”

“Yes, I know where you live, Ash.”

He did? How did he know anything about me at all? I would have figured lesser mortals like me didn’t figure into his thinking.

I tucked an errant curl behind my ear, hoping he wouldn’t ask any more questions.

I had significant memory gaps around my accident, and my therapist said not to force it.

The memories would come back on their own.

So far, they hadn’t, but I was hopeful they would, eventually. And my name wasn’t “Ash.”

I was way too conscious of how he kept glancing over at me.

My hair was a little long, so that could be it, I supposed, although back home…

well, among the students and other younger members of the faculty, anyway, I fit in just fine.

When we had set out from Atlanta, what seemed like days ago now, my hair had still been neatly brushed and tied back.

God only knew what it looked like now, with all this rain and humidity.

My hair kept sliding down over my eyes, so I pushed at it impatiently.

“The traffic was awful,” I said. “And then, the rain and fog came and… we weren’t even sure this is the right road.”

“Didn’t you say you used your GPS?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t trust it.”

He gave that the puzzled look it probably deserved but refrained from saying anything else.

“Let’s go find your grandmother and your vehicle,” he said.

My vehicle, huh? He sounded like some kind of cop, which indeed, he was, like I’d heard my grandmother mention. What was it about this guy that made me feel stupid? He had that stern, no-nonsense look on his face that I’d seen on cops on television. He probably fit right in with the rest of them.

“Yeah, thanks. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

“Uh huh. You sure you left the car up this way?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Yes, of course. It can’t be too far. I hadn’t been walking long when I met you. This fog is kind of intense, though. Disorienting, you know?”

He nodded. “Yes. That’s why you should have stayed with the car. You could have fallen on this muddy road and reinjured your leg.”

“What choice did I have? Send my grandma instead?”

There wasn’t much to say to that, so he didn’t, and I decided to ignore him.

We went a little way down the road and around another curve and then there it was, right where I’d left it.

Completely disregarding what I’d told her, my grandma immediately got out of the car as we drove up, came around the back and began waving frantically, like we might miss her and the car sitting squarely in the middle of the road if she didn’t flag us down.

I waved back so she could see me, and she looked relieved.

He parked right behind the Suburban, but before he could come around and manhandle me out of it again, I sort of lurched out on my own, managing to jump and land mostly on my good leg. A spear of agony went through my leg, and I had to hold onto the door to keep my footing.

“Pop the hood,” he said, nodding at the rental car, and I looked at him a little blankly, wondering how I was going to accomplish that exactly.

First of all, it would require walking, which I didn’t think was going to happen right away, and second of all, I’d “popped” hoods before.

Kind of—but this wasn’t a car I was familiar with in any kind of way.

I hadn’t even driven it yet. I would have figured it out, but in that brief moment of hesitation, he didn’t quite roll his eyes, though I think it was close.

He strode confidently to open the driver’s door and nodded as he passed my grandma. “Ma’am…” he said by way of a greeting.

Then he slid in the seat and reached under the dash to pull some lever, so the hood came open with a little click.

He went back around and pulled the hood up, not looking at us as he leaned over the engine to take a look.

He did something with wires inside, and said, “Your battery cables were loose. Try it now.”

I limped around to get behind the wheel and tried it, and like he said, and the thing fired right up.

“God, thanks so much. We’ll get out of your way now and get back to the highway.”

He looked at me with a confused expression. “But aren’t you going to Rosalyn’s house? It’s straight ahead, not far up the road, and she’s expecting you. She has dinner prepared.”

“Wait, do you know Rosalyn?” my grandma asked, peering myopically through the fog at him. Suddenly she recognized him. “Oh, my goodness. Ben? Is that you? My gosh, how you’ve changed since the last time I saw you. You’re all grown up now. It’s so good to see you again, honey.”

“Yes ma’am. It’s good to see you again too.”

“Thanks so much for rescuing us,” she said, giving him a big smile. “I don’t know what we would have done without you. I was afraid we’d have to spend the night in the car. Asher was panicking a little, but I think he just has low blood sugar.”

“Grandma, what in the world are you talking about? No, I do not.”

She shrugged, looking unconvinced, and Ben smiled.

“It was my pleasure, and you were on the right road. The house is nearby, and I’m on my way there now for dinner too, so let me take you with me. You can just follow me, if you like.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Gran said.

“Yeah, great,” I murmured.

He gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, but I didn’t get the big, easy smile he’d given my grandma.

Instead, his words to me were a little bossy.

“These roads are tricky at night, so you need to be careful. Just go slow and watch out for the drainage ditches on either side. The last thing we need is for you to fall in one of them. I’ll go around you when we hit a wider spot in the road, so you can follow me through the gate.

Until then just go straight ahead. Slowly . ”

“Uh, okay, but my grandma will be the one driving.”

He glanced over at my seventy-eight-year-old grandma and then back at me with one eyebrow quirked up.

“I’ve been taking pills. Pain pills. For my leg. I have a prescription.”

“Uh huh. Well, follow me, please.” His eyes raked over me again.

“Just go nice and slow, ma’am.”

He went back to his truck, and my grandma and I got back in the car.

We began to “slowly” move forward, as per instructions .

Maybe he was a cop, at that. I was nervous, considering how thick the fog still was and how I was just learning that there were apparently ditches deep enough that the car could “fall into one of them” on either side of the damn road, which I thought must be a slight exaggeration.

We kept going, though, until miraculously, the fog seemed to suddenly start clearing up before we’d gone even another half of a mile. What the hell was that about?

He passed us on the road as we came to a wide spot ahead at yet another nameless dirt track and by that time, I was realizing how tired and hungry I really was—the idea of a meal waiting on us at my great aunt’s house was making my stomach growl in anticipation.

I felt like I’d made a bad impression on Ben, and I didn’t know why that bothered me so much.

I didn’t give two snaps for his opinion.

Besides, I decided maybe Gran was right, after all, and I might actually have low blood sugar.