His Brothers Wife Read Free

through my nose. “You can’t afford not to. Look, I’ll help you.”
    Lush pine trees sped past the BMW’s windows, their images blurred to Monet replicas by the rain-smeared glass as I kept my foot on the gas. Determination drove me. She wouldn’t die.
    The silence spread between us, an insidious virus of questions, until I was sure she didn’t intend to speak at all. Ever again.
    Fine. I needed to concentrate on the road, anyway. The rain pounded the car so hard that the wipers couldn’t keep up. I slowed to a crawl unable to see much past the car’s bumper. To the right, an exit came into view and I took it.
    “We have to find somewhere to stop,” I told her.
    Though I slowed to a crawl on the new road, the storm continued to barrage the car. Beside me, she grew more and more nervous with each crash of thunder. The tension rolled off her, making me sorry for dragging her into the storm—sort of. I’d never be sorry for getting her away from Chad.
    “I know lightning won’t hit the car,” she muttered. “But I don’t believe for a moment that this is the safest place to be.”
    I wasn’t so sure of that either as the gale intensified, the screaming wind rocking the BMW with its force. The clouds had thickened, completely blotting out the setting sun and making it dark as night. The vehicle’s headlights did little to cut the gloom, and as trees canopied the road, civilization seemed a distant memory. As we crossed a small, rustic bridge, the road turned to dirt—or more accurately, gelatinous muck.
    “Where are we?” she asked over the sound of the mud sucking at the tires.
    My stomach flip-flopped as we inched forward into the nothingness. Some hero I was turning out to be.
    “Officially?” I asked, my voice strained with tension. “I’d say the middle of nowhere.”
    “Quit joking around!”
    “Really, I have no idea where we are. Off-hand I’d say we’re on some unnamed, podunk road.”
    “Fantastic,” she muttered.
    The car slid sideways on the slick mud, and Briony stifled a scream behind her hand. My heart beat wildly in my throat as we skidded toward the ditch beside the road. I tried to hide it as I fought to maneuver us to safety. I’d keep her safe, and I wouldn’t freak out. Apparently, I sucked at this hero stuff.
    “I think we ought to go back to the highway,” she suggested tentatively, as if I wouldn’t put much credence to her opinion. Chad wouldn’t have—he would have told her to shut up. I wasn’t that man, and I thought the highway was a damned good idea.
    “At least,” she ventured on, “you’d have some idea where we’re at. And it’s paved.”
    “Right,” I agreed. I executed a sloppy three point turn—impressive, considering the road condition—then headed back toward the interstate.
    Neither of us spoke as the car crawled back the direction we’d come, and the only sound was that of the storm battering the car’s flimsy roof.
    “Fuck!” I slammed on the brake. Though I’d been traveling at snail-pace, the car skidded to a halt.
    “What is it?” she asked peering ahead. “Oh, hell…”
    Up ahead, the rickety bridge had washed out, a deluge gushing over the banks, and we were trapped on the wrong side of the gully.
    “What now?” she murmured.
    “We turn again. This can’t be the only way to the highway.”
    Turning proved to be more difficult this time, but five minutes later, the car again crawled down the slick road.
    “You’re so different from Chad,” she murmured. “You’re so calm. He would have been freaking out and probably screaming.”
    She didn’t need to say that Chad would have been screaming at her. “Uh, thank you,” I replied. I was glad to be different. “I drive in the rain a lot through crappy conditions. You know…hospital over an hour away, blah blah blah. Being a doctor, I don’t have much of a choice whether or not I brave the roads. Though, I do stay there if it’s really bad.”
    Yes, talking would