The smell of gas and flames and blood hit him hard. Jake hesitated long enough to report the accident from his cell phone. Leaping from the Ferrari, he sprinted toward the closest car, the crushed Volkswagen. The road was strewn with shattered glass and metal fragments. Shaina and her new boyfriend lay motionless on the ground in the distance, blood running from them in streams. Neither had been wearing a seat belt and both had been thrown several feet from the car. He doubted if anyone could have lived through the force of that head-on collision, but something propelled him forward in spite of the flames moving quickly along the road.

Gas was everywhere, even splashed along the mountain-side where the Volkswagen had tumbled end over end. Inside the Volkswagen, two occupants were hanging upside down, held by their seat belts, heads and arms dangling limply. He pulled at the nearest door. It was already hot with the flames licking at it from the flaming grass on the mountain. With superhuman strength he tore it open and reached inside to unsnap the passenger’s seat belt. The body fell into his arms.

It was a woman, covered in glass and blood but alive. The burning gas left him no time to examine her first. He lifted her out of the crumpled vehicle, closing his ears to her cry of pain. He ran a distance from the cars to deposit her on the grass. Blood was pumping from a terrible gash in her leg and he yanked off his belt and wrapped it tightly around her thigh, just above the gash.

When he turned back, the Volkswagen was already engulfed in flames. He had no hope of bringing out the other victim. He hoped the occupant had been killed instantly. Resolutely he turned toward the convertible. He had covered half the distance when an agonized cry froze him in a fragment of time that would remain etched in his mind forever.

“Andy!”

The woman he had rescued had somehow managed to get to her feet, which was a miracle, considering her injuries. She stumbled back toward the Volkswagen. For a moment he could only stare incredulously. She had broken bones, was covered in deep, ragged gashes, her face was a mask of blood, yet she was running back, right into a wall of flames, and she moved with astonishing speed.

For a split second, pure shock held Jake frozen to the spot. The gasoline on the road had ignited. The flames actually licked at her legs, yet she continued to race toward the fiercely burning vehicle. The woman had to have known the car was going to explode at any moment, yet still she ran toward it.

Jake cut her off just a few feet from the car, snatching her up into his arms, sprinting away from the intense heat and building conflagration. She fought like a wildcat, kicking, scratching, the blood making her so slippery he lost his hold more than once. Each time he dropped her, she didn’t hesitate to turn back, her eyes on the burning car as she tried to run and then crawl back toward it.

“It’s too late,” he cried harshly, “he’s already dead!” Ruthlessly he flung her to the ground, covering her body with his own, pinning her down while the earth beneath them rocked with the force of the explosion.

“Andy.” She whispered the name, a lost, forlorn sound wrenched straight from the heart.

In an instant, all the fight went out of her. She lay motionless in Jake’s arms, small, completely vulnerable and broken, her eyes staring up at him, unseeing. Again, time seemed to stand still. Everything tunneled until he was focused wholly on her eyes. Enormous, tilted like a cat’s, aquamarine with dark orbs, unusual and mesmerizing, now haunted. She seemed familiar—too familiar. He knew her, and yet he didn’t.

For the first time in his life he felt a strong protective urge welling up out of nowhere. He became aware of the gathering crowd staring down at the woman as others leaving the party came upon the scene. Instinctively he shielded her, barking orders to check the overturned convertible, to ensure an ambulance and the police were on the way.

He worked furiously at stemming the flow of blood pouring from the woman’s temple and from her leg. A part of him knew he should be thinking instead of Shaina and the child she was carrying, but his mind was consumed with the woman he protected. All he could do was vow silently not to allow her to slip away as she so clearly wanted to do.

Her grief-stricken green eyes begged him to let her go. Where had he seen those eyes before? He looked into them again, drawn by some unseen force. Almond shape, pupils round and black, the irises a rare aquamarine, the blue-green surrounded by a golden circle. Unusual. And yet somehow familiar.

“Let me go.”

Jake found himself leaning close to her, his breath warm against her skin. He held her gaze with ruthless command, letting her know he refused to allow her to slip away, that he would hold her to him through sheer will alone. “No.” He said the word implacably. “Did you hear me? No.” He denied her a second time, his teeth snapping together in finality as he applied more pressure to the pumping wound in her leg.

She closed her eyes and turned her face away from him as if she had no fight left in her. The ambulance was there, paramedics pushing him aside to work on her. A short distance away, firefighters draped a blanket over Shaina’s friend. It occurred to Jake with grim satisfaction that this was one accident Shaina’s father could not make go away with his money.

More paramedics were working desperately at Shaina’s side. It took him a minute to realize they were taking the baby—his son. His heart in his throat, he waited until he heard the triumphant cheers. The child was alive, which was more than they could say for the mother. He waited to feel emotion—any emotion—at Shaina’s death or at the birth of his son. He felt nothing at all, only a sense of contempt for the way Shaina had lived and died. Silently cursing his own cold nature, he looked down at the woman lying so still, her dark eyes staring past the paramedic to the burned car. He shifted slightly while they worked on her, to block her view.