Sebastian had offered to volunteer wherever he was needed. Apparently, he was needed in the booster club’s spaghetti lunch line, located on the far side of the market stalls, near the base of the wooded hillside.
He checked his watch. 11:45. His shift started at twelve.
Sunshine fell over beige brick buildings that had been new back when Sebastian had gone to school there. Happy shrieks rose from the area where they’d set up inflatables, a game that involved kids wearing blown-up rings around their waists, and one of those plastic balls big enough for a person to climb inside and then roll down a lane. Today, the clean mountain air held no humidity, and only a few thin strips of cloud marked the blue of the sky. The forecast for this mid-May Saturday: seventy-eight degrees.
Sebastian strode past stalls selling beef jerky, jam, soap. Organic vegetables. Candles. Canned southern staples, like black-eyed peas. Locally crafted beer. Folk pottery. A fruit stand with peaches, plums, and blueberries.
He was just making his way out of the row when he heard a voice. A female voice.
It tripped his memory, and he came to an immediate stop. Listening hard, he weeded through the noise—conversations, the whir of a generator, laughter—until he caught a snatch of that voice again.
“Sure,” he thought he heard her say. He had to strain to make it out. “You’re welcome.”
Recognition and certainty flooded him. It was her.
He spun and scanned the people in his field of vision.
He didn’t see her.
Where was she?
Last November, not far from here, he’d swerved to avoid a car that had veered into his lane. His SUV had ended up nose-down in a roadside ditch, and the impact had knocked him out. When he’d regained consciousness, a woman had been inside his car with him. The voice he’d just overheard belonged to her.
His mind tugged him back in time to the morning of the crash.
“Sir?” she’d said to him.
Sebastian heard the feminine voice as if he were at the bottom of a hole. Chuck Berry’s “Downbound Train” played on his SUV’s radio.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, sounding worried and faintly out of breath. “Are you all right?”
Her voice was smooth and sweet like honey. He didn’t want the woman with the voice like honey to be worried. Also, he didn’t want to wake up because his head ached with dull, fierce pain.
“Sir,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely.
“He fell on his knees,” Chuck Berry sang, “on the bar room floor and prayed a prayer like never before.”
Sebastian slit his eyes open. Pinpricks punctured his vision. He was inside his car, his seat belt cutting against his chest diagonally. What had happened?
Wincing, he lifted his chin. Cracks scarred his windshield. Beyond the hood, he could see nothing but dirt and torn grass. A pair of sapling trees wedged against his driver’s side door.
He’d been in a car crash.
How long ago? Why?
He didn’t know. He’d flown to the airstrip. He . . . He remembered getting into his car and pulling out onto the road in the fog. That’s all.
He’d lost time.
Experimentally, he moved his fingers and toes. Everything was working fine except for the splitting pain in his head.
The one with the beautiful voice clicked off the radio. “Downbound Train” disappeared, leaving only a faint ringing in his ears.
“I’m relieved that you came to,” she said.
The tone of her words softened the agony inside his skull.
Slowly, he turned his chin in her direction. He’d lost his tolerance for light and the pinpricks wouldn’t go away. He squeezed his eyes shut against the disorienting sensation, then opened them and concentrated hard so that he could focus on her.
She . . . had the face of an angel.
An unforgettable face. A heartbreaking face, both hopeful and world-weary. He guessed her to be a year or two younger than he was, but she didn’t look sheltered or naïve.
Long eyelashes framed almond-shaped gray-blue eyes as deep as they were soft. A defined groove marked the center of her upper lip. Blond hair, parted on the side. Neither curly nor straight, it had a natural, faintly messy look to it. She’d cut it so that it ended halfway between her small, determined chin and her shoulders.
Had he died? Was she an angel? She was there, which made him think he’d died. But his head hurt, which made him think he hadn’t.
“Are you injured?” she asked.
“I’m fine. Except for my head.”
Concern flickered in her expression. At least, he thought it did. He struggled to see her more clearly, furious that he couldn’t look at her with his usual powers of observation.
She knelt on the passenger seat, the door behind her gaping open. “I’ve already called 9-1-1. Hopefully they’ll be here soon.”
“I hope not.”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t want them to take me away from you.”
Her brows lifted. “I . . .” She gestured. “I was behind you on the road. I came around the bend just in time to see your car go off the edge. I pulled over and dialed 9-1-1.”
“How long was I out?”
“Just a few minutes. Is there anything I can do for you?”
He extended his right hand to her. “Hold my hand?”
“Of course.” She wrapped both of her hands around his. The heat of her touch had the same effect on him as her voice and appearance.
He suspected he’d cracked his head on his side window, which had knocked him out and likely given him a severe concussion.
“Would it help if I unfastened your seat belt?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He was capable of freeing it using his left hand. But if she was offering to do it for him, he wasn’t about to say no.
She let go of his hand to accomplish the task, and he cursed himself for making a tactical error. But then she braced one hand against the center console and reached across him, bringing her hair within a few inches of his nose. He drew air in and registered the scent of lavender.
Dark satisfaction
