Heather's Hero: Romancing the Spirit Series, #11

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Heather strummed her fingers on the steering wheel to Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain . Outside, pink flowers from Japanese cherry trees danced on a crisp Tennessee spring breeze. A few more blocks and she’d reach the retirement home and begin a fun afternoon of repotting plants with the residents.

A car plowed through the intersection, ran a red light, and crashed into Heather’s Honda Accord. Her body tensed on impact, but she had no time to avoid the collision. The sickening sound of crunching metal and shattering glass was followed by the smell of gasoline and burnt rubber.

When Heather opened her eyes, the world around her took a moment to stop moving. She loosened her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and blinked at the deployed, side-impact airbag.

Through the shattered windshield, she saw Blake climb out of his car and approach her. Black pants, black shirt. The image of him was blurred by smoke puffing out from under her hood and something warm running into her left eye. Dread and fear pulsed through her as she stared at those familiar ice-cold eyes. She needed to get out of her car and away from him, but she was frozen in terror.

Hey, man? You okay? A bystander approached Blake.

As a crowd of bystanders began to gather, Heather’s attacker abruptly turned and stalked away from the scene of his crime.

You need to get out of your car right now.

Heather jolted when she saw a man sitting beside her in the passenger seat. She’d been driving alone, hadn’t she?

He was early thirties with dark hair and sharp, defined facial features—chiseled jaw and ruddy cheekbones. His brown hair and thick eyebrows accentuated a pair of warm brown eyes.

What?

You’re leaking oil, he said. When that ignites and combines with the fertilizer in your back seat, your whole car will go up in flames.

She noticed his clothing—a well-worn, fire-retardant black uniform with yellow reflective stripes. Firefighter. How had he gotten here so fast after the crash? And how had he managed to get inside the car?

His sleeve had a circular patch with a raven against a blue sky sewn into it.

The heat in the car intensified.

Move it, Phillips! the fireman barked at her.

She fumbled free from her seatbelt before shoving open the driver-side door and clamoring out, dragging her purse with her.

With the movement, she felt pain for the first time since the collision. Her left shoulder throbbed in rhythm with her head. She stumbled to a nearby sidewalk on the corner of Crossland Avenue and Cumberland Drive. As she looked around, she didn’t see the firefighter. She didn’t see Blake either.

Her car burst into flame, and she gaped at the sudden heat and fire. Ten seconds earlier and she’d have been toast. Where had the man who’d saved her gone? He’d mysteriously vanished.

Suddenly nauseated, she sat on the cold concrete and put her head between her knees.

Are you okay, young lady? Your head’s bleeding. I called an ambulance.

She looked up to see a man in his sixties standing over her with a worried expression. A friendly Good Samaritan, she deduced immediately. She looked down at her baby blue turtleneck, stained with drops of blood from her head wound.

I’m okay. She’d had worse. Blake had done worse. And he’d probably be back to finish what he’d started.

Heather looked around again. Where’s the fire department? She didn’t see the fireman’s truck or hear sirens.

They should be here soon. The Clarksville Fire Rescue station is just a few blocks away from here. I’ve got a first aid kit in my car if you want me to clean that up a bit.

No. Thanks. I need to make some phone calls.

She pulled her phone out of her purse and called her friend Evelyn.

By late afternoon, Heather had arrived home to the cheerful yips of Denver. The large German Shepherd greeted her at the door as his ferocious tail wagged the entire back half of his furry body.

She dropped her purse on the entry table and deactivated and reset the alarm before sinking her fingers into soft fur. Lowering herself to the floor, she let the dog smother her with love.

After the accident—no, crash, there had been nothing accidental about Blake careening into her car—Heather had watched the fire department drown her car, answered police questions, and turned down an ambulance trip to the ER. She didn’t need another trauma evaluation—one more CT scan of her head in her lifetime and she’d start glowing in the dark. Besides, she’d been beaten and bruised enough to know when she needed to take a few ibuprofen and sleep it off.

She hadn’t lost consciousness after the crash, which was reassuring. Though maybe she had hallucinated. She’d seen a man in her car when he couldn’t have gotten in through the smashed passenger-side door or through the broken windshield. She’d seen the firefighter even though the fire truck hadn’t arrived on the scene yet.

Well, boy, she scratched behind Denver’s ears, "if I’m going to hallucinate a fireman who saves my life, he might as