Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper Read Free

door that held her arm trapped. “We need to make sure you don’t move until Tommy and the fire department get out here.”
    “Yeah, but Sheriff—”
    The sheriff picked up the radio on his hip and started speaking into it. Most of what he was saying was police jargon, but she got the gist of it. They needed bigger equipment out here to cut her out of this car. The fear washed over her in icy-hot waves. She used her good hand to pull the fighter’s jacket tighter around her, seeking comfort from it. Her instinct was to start crying again, but she realized now why her thoughts were scattered in other directions besides the pain. Extreme shock had settled in at some point. Her arm was still hurting, but her acknowledgment of it had faded to the background.
    More sirens wailed in the distance. Help was coming. She should be relieved, but instead she looked back to the fighter, standing there illuminated by her headlights. The snow was falling in his dark hair and resting on his broad shoulders.
    “It wasn’t his fault,” she said quickly to Sheriff Conner, wanting to get it out before the fire department showed up. “There was another car. This crazy woman swerved into his lane right as he was coming over the hill. None of this was his fault, Sheriff. It was just b-bad luck.”
    “Okay, darling.” The sheriff squeezed her good hand. “Just focus on breathing easy and not moving until we can get you out. Can you do that?”
    Katie took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, but about—” She paused, realizing she’d never asked his name. “The m-man out there.”
    “Don’t you worry ’bout Marcos. He’s a big boy, and there’s not a scratch on him.” The sheriff squeezed her hand once more. “You’re the one we’re gonna focus on right now.”
    “It was just bad luck,” she repeated, thinking of not just the accident, but a long string of rotten luck and getting the impression she wasn’t alone as she stared at the fighter again. “It wasn’t his fault.”
    Rather than respond, the sheriff got out of the car to meet the fire truck that pulled up. Katie got the distinct impression the fighter, Marcos, was low on his priority list, but Katie still worried about him.
    The entire time they worked at cutting her out of the mangled mess of her car, she thought of Marcos. She would look for him, her gaze searching the accident site when the fear or pain got too much. She’d usually find him standing out of the way with a brown blanket over his shoulders. She wished she could hold his hand again, but there were firefighters everywhere. Tommy, the paramedic, sat next to her taking her vitals, talking in that calming voice of his that made it obvious why he was good at what he did. He had put a brace around her neck. He was getting her ready for the stretcher as the horrible grinding of metal being cut away made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
    She was shaking. The shock was still clouding her brain. It blocked out some of the pain, but still she fought for clarity as the relief of finally being free made her vision haze. The world started to spin as they put her on a stretcher. Tommy had to take extra time with her arm, splinting it on a board. Katie didn’t have the nerve to look.
    “I-I need the jacket,” she told them, knowing it had been tossed aside somewhere. She didn’t want it to end up at the tow yard. “P-please. I need to take it with me to the hospital.”
    “Sure, darling.” Tommy gave her a warm smile that made more than a few Garnet women weak-kneed.
    The paramedic was one of their most eligible bachelors, but Katie was still worried about her fighter. She breathed a sigh of relief when Tommy put the jacket over her as they wheeled her toward the ambulance. She was just starting to think everything might be all right when Sheriff Conner’s voice drifted over from the other side of the street.
    “Have you been drinking tonight, Mr. Rivera?”
    She wanted to scream at him to