Jesse Collins was sick and tired of people lying to her. Everyone lied. In fact, she was pretty damn sure that she had been lied to nearly every day of her life. It was a thing. Everyone had to lie to Jesse. And now Jesse was left feeling as though she had nothing left in her life that she could count on.

She blinked and swiped a hand across her face. The rain was thick. It was falling in black sheets that obscured the road and made her feel as though she were in a world devoid of sight and sound. At what point would she just cease to exist? Would she drive through one of those silly wormhole things you heard about in science fiction stories and just disappear forever?

Her truck fishtailed as she swung the wheel hard left in order to make her turn. The rain was so thick and her headlights did so little to penetrate the gloom that Jesse had nearly missed the turnoff to her own ranch.

The wheels hit the gravel and slid hard. Jesse bit her lip, but the shriek escaped anyway. Her whole world flipped around and around as her truck spun out of control in the wet gravel and mud. The headlights made crazy patterns on the ground. Rocks, trees, distant mountains, and then finally, and with sudden finality, she saw the bottom of the ditch as it came rushing up at her.

The impact was hard. It jarred her bones and made her teeth clack together hard. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Her bottom lip was split. She had hit it on the steering wheel. The truck’s engine was roaring. She struggled to sit up. The seatbelt was pinning her in place. Then she realized that her foot had slammed down on the accelerator.

Jesse pulled her foot off the gas pedal, and the vehicle shuddered to a stop. The rear wheels stopped turning, and gravel stopped pinging underneath the wheel wells. The engine was still running. The headlamps reflected off the wet ditch in front of her. She had a bad feeling the front of the truck was pretty messed up. That didn’t really matter right now. Jesse was more concerned with getting the hell out of here and back to her warm, dry house.

Unlocking the driver’s door, she tried to open it. Nothing happened. She shoved again. It was stuck. It would not budge. Her brain stuttered to a stop for a second, and the sensation of being trapped bit deep.

Panicking, she began slamming her shoulder against the door. It squeaked but did not budge. The metallic screech of metal on metal lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. Her breathing was ragged. It began to fog up the window, and the humidity inside the cab increased. The heat was pouring into the cab from the dashboard heater.

She forced herself to calm down. Grappling for the heater controls, she managed to shut the thing off. Gradually the heat receded and Jesse could breathe. Her brain kicked into gear. She realized that the impact of the truck’s front end hitting the bottom of the ditch had pushed the front fenders back and caused them to trap the doors closed. Okay. She could deal with this.

Unfastening her seatbelt, Jesse scooted up in her seat until she could get her butt through the space between the two front seats. She squeezed herself over the center console and into the backseat. Once there, she exhaled a sigh of relief. She hadn’t really thought about the purchase of a crew cab truck as a necessity for anything other than space and cargo, but apparently, it was also a viable secondary exit strategy.

It only took a second to unlock the back door and get out. Once outside, she was instantly drenched. She didn’t care. Jesse pulled up the hood of her jacket and eased her way toward the front wheels of her pickup truck. She had to lock the hubs in order to get the thing in four-wheel drive and have a prayer of getting it out of the ditch without going home to retrieve a tractor. Sometimes being on her own sucked ass.

She put her right hand on the truck’s rain-slicked fender and put her boot in the mud. She started to slide through the gravel into the ditch and had to hang onto the tire to keep herself from slipping right into the bottom of the ditch.

Hub. Hub. Hub. Her index fingernail sheared off as she scrabbled to get that little knob inside the hub assembly turned clockwise a full turn. Finally, it gave and she heard a click. Turning around, she clawed her way back up to the road.

It took no time at all to get around the truck and head for the other side. But the passenger side was further buried in the ditch because the truck had gone in at an angle. That meant Jesse was stuck climbing down into the muck and freezing water gathering steadily in the bottom of the ditch. Her boots sank into the soft dirt. She gasped as it began pouring in through the top.

Faster, faster, faster, she tried to move quickly as she grabbed that hub assembly and turned it clockwise until she heard a click. Then she was trying to scoot herself back up onto the road by grabbing anything she could find. Her hands found purchase on the tire itself, and she managed to drag herself out of the mucky ditch bottom and back onto the road. The rain continued to pour down, and she wanted nothing more than a warm fire and a cup of cocoa.

Shivering and feeling like she also needed a shower, Jesse shoved wet hanks of her blond hair out of the way as she climbed back into the backseat of her truck. She pulled off her wet jacket and left it on the seat. Then she groped around for a sweatshirt or anything that might have been left in there sometime during the last few weeks.

Jesse finally came across a hoodie and tugged that on over her damp shirt. She left the hood up to cover her wet hair and began the awkward process of climbing back into the front seat. She was just glad the truck was still running. With the front doors trapped shut because of front end damage, there was every possibility that the engine compartment had been damaged. But there was no time to think about that right now. She needed to pray that she could get out of this ditch and home before anything else went wrong.

Jesse settled into the driver’s seat and reached for the gearshift. She dropped the truck into four-wheel drive and mentally crossed her fingers. Then she threw the truck into reverse and slowly applied the gas.

The wheels spun, but then they caught. She heard a horrible dragging sound as the undercarriage rasped across the wet road at the top of the ditch. But slowly the truck backed out of the mess until all four wheels were on solid ground.

Jesse put the truck in park and wrapped her icy hands around the wheel. She was shaking. This could have been a disaster. It was still about four and a half miles to her house. She might have had no choice but to walk that distance. The thought was frightening. She was all alone in the world. Was that how she wanted things to be for the rest of her life? Was that what she had signed up for by taking control of her inheritance at the ripe old age of twenty-one? What was she doing? She was going to get herself killed, and nobody would even know.

Would Cal even care?

She didn’t want to think about that. Not right now. Cal was a non-issue. She had made him one in the last two days when she had finally decided to set aside her girlish crush and her fantasy hopes and dreams. It was time to see life for what it really was. And Cal was not a part of her life. Not now. Not ever. Not anymore.

With that in mind, she put the truck in drive. With a grinding noise that made her cringe in sympathy, the poor vehicle shuddered to silence and sat there dead on the gravel road. Jesse’s heart sped up again. She felt it thudding against her ribs.

Shoving the gearshift back into park, she tried to start the truck again. The truck engine roared to life. Then she put the thing in drive, and it once again shuddered to silence.

“No!” Jesse shouted at the vehicle. “You worked. A minute ago you worked!”

She wrenched the gearshift back out of four-wheel drive in case that was making the difference. But no. Every time she tried to put the vehicle into drive, the engine died. That undoubtedly meant that she had damaged the transmission and not the engine or something of that sort. She wasn’t a mechanic. She had no idea how these things worked.

“Wait.” Jesse sucked in a breath and held it. “I used reverse. Just a minute ago I used reverse.”

The tricky part would be trying to make a three-point turn on this road, but there was a really wide spot back toward the entrance of the road because of the exit and entrance onto the highway. It was originally made so that trailers and big cattle haulers would have plenty of room to pull off if necessary.

Feeling determined and maybe just a little desperate, Jesse threw the truck in park and started the engine. Then she put the gearshift into reverse. To her relief, the vehicle did not stall. The engine whined, but it moved. She flung her hand over the passenger seat to anchor herself for a long trip backwards. Then she maneuvered her way into a U-turn in reverse.

It was a dizzying trip. The rain began to fall harder, if that was even possible. Sheets of it obscured her view through the rear window. Her reverse lights were barely able to illuminate the road that was now simultaneously in front of and behind her. She made careful progress. With shallow streams of water covering the road in several places, she had a tough time keeping herself headed in the right direction and on the road itself.

Her stomach was in knots. She kept looking for the barn lights of her ranch. Collins Ranch. That’s what it was called because her father wasn’t a fanciful kind of person. Her father. He was her father. She didn’t want to hear otherwise. Not from anyone.

Finally, she spotted a light in the wet darkness. Her front porch. The big floodlight on the front of the barn. They were all blazing a welcome that helped guide her down that last hundred yards of road leading home. And when she finally managed to get that truck to the farm, she parked it on the side of the barn because there was no doubt in her mind that it was going to take an act of God to get that thing working properly again.

When the engine was off, Jesse let her head fall forward to the steering wheel. The tears were hot on her cheeks. She had never been so worried and horrified about so many things simultaneously in her entire life. It was as if everything had fallen apart all at once.

With a deep breath, she forced herself to get her wallet and her house keys. The doors weren’t going to magically open again just because she was on her ranch. So, she had to climb into the backseat once more. It was awkward to get all of her stuff gathered up so she could slip out through the rear door. Perhaps that was why she did not notice when another truck arrived on the scene.

In fact, Jesse did not notice that there was another truck sitting in front of her house until she nearly ran into the front fender on her way to the stairs. Halting, she reeled back a little and struggled to figure out who had come calling without an invitation.

Wait. She should have known that white truck anywhere. With the HLC brand emblazoned on the sides, it was essentially a beacon to the entire region that a Hernandez family member was in the area.

“What do you want?” she demanded of Cal as he exited the truck. “I’m a little busy.”

“I saw your backwards trek down the road.” Cal had to shout to be heard over the rain.

It was still coming down pretty hard. Water dripped down the back of Jesse’s neck and made her shiver. She jumped up the steps and felt relieved to be under the front porch overhang. The two-story farmhouse had been in her family for generations. Her family. She still refused to believe that it could be any other way.

“My transmission needs service.” Yes. That was a good way to put it. The service it required probably fell under the heading of overhaul, but there was no need to expand on that at the moment.

“I want to talk.”

She did not even have to think about her response. “Well, I don’t want to talk.”

“I need to explain.” He sounded desperate. She didn’t care.

Jesse turned toward her front door. “Some other time. I’m busy tonight. Just go home and I’ll do the same. Then maybe we can really think about the reasons your home and my home are fifty miles apart door to door.”

“Only if you use the road,” he pointed out. “It’s fifteen minutes by horse.”

Jesse didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to dwell on all of the trips she had made back and forth with Cal between the Hernandez ranch and the Collins place. Those were long ago and far away. Right now, Jesse needed answers, and they were not going to come from those memories. They were going to come from something outside her heart.

“Jesse. Don’t.”

But those were the last words she let him say. Or at least those were the last ones that she heard. Unlocking her front door, she stepped inside her home and let the door slam shut behind her. It shut Cal out of her life, and for now, that was how it had to be.