The sound of breaking glass was actually the shattering of a pleasant fantasy, but at the time Katie was aware only that she was involved in her first auto accident.
Shaken by the impact of the collision between the Camero and her elderly Mustang, she squinted apprehensively through the dazzling glare of the sun on her windshield at the other vehicle.
Moments before, the driver of the Camero had his hand upraised in casual greeting. Horror swiftly replaced the smile with a look of shocked disbelief as he realized her Mustang wasn’t going to stop. Unfortunately, Katie’s frantic spinning of the wheel as her brakes refused to hold coincided with the other car’s evasive action.
Echoes of the crash still ringing in her ears, Katie unfastened her seat belt with shaking fingers, climbed out of the low-slung bucket seat and wobbled forward. After two steps, she had to lean against her car’s fender for support; the ground seemed to be heaving beneath her feet.
Was it an earthquake to add fresh devastation? No, she was trapped in a blast of words seeking to whirl her away, like an old newspaper caught in a windstorm. Now she knew why they now named hurricanes after men? Surely, nothing could match the masculine fury now raging around her.
“What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you see the stop sign? Or was your Seeing Eye dog taking a nap in the back seat?
His sarcastic tone glittered as brightly as the mingled shards of broken glass from the headlights of both vehicles. Katie shook her head to clear it.
She knew this man. Despite the scowl, his face was as familiar as her reflection in the mirror when she brushed her teeth. Each morning they passed on their opposite ways and he saluted her with a wave and a smile. His handsome features reminded her of a poster depicting Sleeping Beauty being kissed awake by a prince, a prince whose heart-stopping smile had decorated her room until she was fourteen.
As the other driver surveyed the twisted nose of his vintage Camero, he shuddered with revulsion and turned on Katie. She hugged the battered side of her car for support as he raised his voice to a shout.
“You’ve ruined her!”
Katie felt tangled in the sticky web of a nightmare, the chilling kind where monsters stalked innocent children playing in a field of daisies. Perhaps she’d hit her head on the steering wheel. Perhaps she was still asleep and in an hour would be waving a greeting to the man in the baby blue Camero.
As he pounded the hood of her crumpled car with a clenched fist and vented his frustration, Katie remembered the hours she’d spent visualizing their first meeting. They would pass on the street and he would stop, studying her features with interest. “Say, don’t I know you? You’re that pretty girl who waves to me each morning!” Coffee, an intimate candlelight dinner, dancing—“Katie, you’re so special, darling”—then marriage, children and happily ever after.
The prince, whose smiles she’d cherished and hugged deep inside, the man whose every gesture had been stored away as a special memory, had been changed by enchantment into a fire-breathing dragon.
A crowd composed of dog walkers, joggers and the curious occupants of neighboring houses gathered to view and comment on the accident. Cars trapped behind the two stalled vehicles honked impatiently.
The sun burned down on Katie’s uncovered head. She was dizzy and her lower lip, bitten through on impact, felt as if it had swelled to the size of her mother’s strawberry pin cushion.
The edges of the scene seemed fuzzy and surrealistic. She longed to escape and lie down with a cool cloth over her eyes, but the prince-dragon was still demanding an explanation.
She swallowed a giggle. You could almost see the puffs of smoke emerging from his nostrils as he snorted and snarled.
“Get a grip on yourself, Katie, my girl. I think you’re delirious,” she cautioned herself before saying aloud, “I’m very sorry but it was an accident. My brakes must have failed. I tried to avoid you but we seemed to have been on the same wave length.”
He winced at the word “wave” and swept an accusing hand at the damage. “Do you think being sorry is going to fix that?”
“And do you expect me to wave—oops, I apologize, poor choice of words—point a magic wand and have your car restored? I’m insured, so relax.”
If this had been a story book romance, he would be cuddling her shocked, trembling body against his powerful chest, their hearts beating as one while he assured her he would take care of everything.
Well, this wasn’t a romance, this was reality and the man of her dreams seemed unmoved at the sight of the blood she could feel trickling down her chin. Since he continued to abuse both her and her poor battered car, her Irish temper finally sparked. Katie stalked over and slammed her own hand down on the hood of the his Camero with each word for emphasis. “I’m sorry—I’m insured—Stop shouting!”
He did, abruptly switching to a moan of pure pain that she had dared to lay hands on his injured sweetheart. The pathetic tinkle of the last glass fragments parting from the headlight casing and falling to the street almost brought him to his knees.
“She’s only fit to be scrapped. This was a sleek, hot-blooded cruising animal until your junk heap mauled her!”
As she stared into his hate-filled eyes, Katie wondered what she could do to strike back. Kick a tire? She didn’t want the situation degenerating any further into a black and white slapstick routine as two motorists methodically dismantle each other’s cars in revenge.
“Calm down, mister. She still looks like an animal. Instead of a thoroughbred, though, you’ve got a bull dog.”
The crowd tittered in appreciation of Kate’s wit, but the driver of the other car clenched his fists and stalked towards her. She felt a tremor of fear at having pushed him too hard. A male jury would never convict him. A shrill cry from the growing throng of onlookers stopped him from committing justifiable homicide.
“Adam, that that you? Remember, you’ve a court appearance at ten this morning—oh, Adam, your car! How dreadful!”
The woman who approached was apparently also a lawyer. A calfskin briefcase swung at her side and the severely tailored black suit did nothing to detract from her ash blond femininity. Slipping a comforting hand through her colleague’s rigid arm, she turned a laser-blue gaze on Katie.
“What happened here? Are you hurt, Adam?”
“She destroyed my car, Michelle! My baby’s ruined. She’ll never be the same. This woman ran right through a stop sign and plowed into me!”
“Adam, what a terrible tragedy! I can empathize—I know the pain you’re experiencing. I’d be just as devastated if a vandal destroyed one of my Persian rugs.”
He scowled, as if resenting any comparison between his car and a carpet.
Katie felt very tired. Adam and Michelle deserved each other. She hoped they would get married and buy a Great Dane which refused to be housebroken around Michelle’s Persian rugs and chewed the upholstery in Adam’s next car.
Since Adam seemed wrapped up in his own personal torment, Katie offered Michelle an explanation. “As I told Adam before, I’m insured and it was truly an accident. My brakes failed. I’m very sorry.”
Michelle paid as much attention as if a slimy bug had crawled out of a crack in the sidewalk and attempted to address her. After a haughty glance in Katie’s general direction, Michelle patted Adam on the shoulder in an attempt to offer comfort.
Adam, however, was still obsessed with his grievance. “Don’t ever wave at me again!” he snapped petulantly and turned his back on Katie.
“Wave?” Michelle arched perfectly plucked brows. “You know each other?”
Her assessing glance swept over Katie’s buttercup yellow sun dress, so bright and cheery an hour early, now smudged with dust from leaning on the car, the puffed and bloodied lip she’d seen in her rearview mirror.
Michelle smiled.
The contemptuous smile hurt Katie more than the sting of her cut mouth. To keep the tears from spilling over, she turned to survey the damage to her Mustang. The front of her car was badly crumpled and the jagged metal had also cut and collapsed a tire. The effect was that of a dignified matron with a bloody nose.
She wished fervently that the police would arrive and issue her a ticket—or arrest her. Jail would be better than being imprisoned here in the street with Adam and Michelle.
“Katie?”
The familiar voice sent her spinning around, searching for a friendly face in a haze of hostility. “Matthew! I’m so glad to see you!”
Puzzled by the warmth of her greeting, the man thus addressed sent a quick glance over his shoulder, as if to check whether another Matthew had wandered into the vicinity.
Katie’s relief was genuine, although their acquaintance was limited to a lunch date several weeks ago. Matthew had installed the new computer system in Katie’s office. She’d enjoyed the conversation, but the memory of a gleaming smile, wavy chestnut hair and a baby blue Camero had kept her from accepting a second date.
Now the concern in his voice as he asked if she was all right sent the tears she’d been too proud to shed coursing down her cheeks. “My brakes didn’t work—I turned his vintage car into a bull dog—he keeps going on and on about the damage until I could scream! I apologized, Matthew, but he yelled at me.” She gulped. “And she smiled ...”
Within minutes, Matthew had Katie seated inside his truck while he procured a plastic bag filled with crushed ice from a neighboring residence for her swollen lip.
When a policeman finally appeared, Matthew explained about the brake failure and insisted that Katie be interviewed as briefly as possible. A sullen Adam watched his bruised vintage baby hauled away by a tow truck before climbing into Michelle’s BMW.
Matthew opened the door. “I’m afraid your car isn’t drivable, Katie, so I called the garage down the street for a tow truck. I’m going to run you over to the ER for a check-up and stitches in that lip. I don’t like the way it’s bleeding.”
“I’m not too crazy about it myself,” Katie quipped feebly behind the makeshift ice bag. “But don’t you have to be somewhere on a job?”
Matthew’s gentle smile widened and he winked. “I’ll call in that I have an emergency. Can’t abandon a lady in distress, can I?”
As he went around to the driver’s side and climbed up behind the wheel, Katie studied him out of the corner of her eye. Why had she decided this friendship wouldn’t be worth developing? Because Matthew wore khaki work pants instead of a three piece suit? Carried a tool box instead of a briefcase? Went to night school instead of joining the country club?
Just because his features weren’t poster perfect didn’t mean he wouldn’t be perfect for Katie O’Brien. After the trauma of the morning, Katie was ready to discard her silly, insubstantial fantasies about a knight in shining armor for a man who could chase away the real life dragons that lurked around every corner.
As Matthew turned the key in the ignition, Katie reached over and patted his hand.
He glanced at her. “Feel all right, Katie?”
“I’m glad you rode your white charger today, Matt.”
“Charger? This is a Chevy truck—not a Dodge Charger. Are you sure you’re not concussed?”
Katie leaned her throbbing head back and sighed contentedly. “I may not be an automotive expert, Matt, but I do know my knights.”
THE END