Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

no tolerance for delay and very little patience these days for anything, especially since the first brick of what she'd thought was her very safe world had recently come huffing and puffing and blowing down around her.

She laid out the rope in a wide zigzag then unfolded the blanket on top, arranging the setup as close to the man as possible before moving to stand at his feet. Taking hold of his ankles, she slowly lifted his hips, sidled over, and lowered him onto the blanket.

He lay awkwardly crossways, and with that arm at the angle it was, she hesitated on how best to straighten him out. She stared down into his dirty face for a moment, at his dark brows that furrowed even while he was passed out, at the stubble of both beard and hair, at his lips which were dry, cracked, parched. She had a bottle of water in the cab— no, she needed to move him while he remained oblivious.

The dog, FM, sat at the fence line watching, his lolling tongue nudging her to hurry. He needed water, too. The man's mangled arm was fortunately on the far side. Standing on the blanket, she slid one hand beneath his nape and the other beneath his shoulder until she reached his spine.

Squatting to lift with her legs, she hefted his weight up and over and promptly fell flat on her ass. She groaned at the thud, and the rush of air from her lungs. All this time she'd been so proud of her upper body strength. Too bad her balance was shot, but at least he was on the blanket.

It was when she got back to her feet, had swathed him like a mummy and was binding him up, that she saw him watching her again. She stopped, stared, wanting to reassure him without frightening him because the look in his eyes spoke of pure panic. Could she blame him? Unable to move and faced with a wild-looking, freckled, and redheaded Amazon?

She moved nearer his head and, smiling, crouched down. "I'm Neva. I'm getting ready to winch you up into my truck and take you to the doctor."

"The dog?" he croaked out.

"Let me get you some water—"

"The dog?" he demanded again, this time sharply, gruffly, expending so much effort he ended up closing his eyes.

"Him, too. Though he is in better shape than you look to be."

"His collar?"

She frowned, glanced over to where the dog now sat half-crouched, his tail sweeping back and forth. "Still there." Though she knew from checking earlier that the tags showed only vaccine information and a shelter address. Nothing about his current owner.

When she looked back, the man was again unconscious, and so she wasted no time hoisting the end of the rope coiled around his ankles over her shoulder and dragging his heavy body to the truck.

Once there, she lifted his legs onto the slanted plank, wrapped the come-along strap around his ankles, secured the hook, and climbed up into the bed. After ratcheting the slack until the strap drew taut, she tucked into the lever with the full force of her one hundred forty pounds and winched him up one slow quarter at a time.

When his head finally hit the truck bed, her biceps were screaming, her shoulders burning, and sweat ran like the Rio Grande into her eyes. She didn't even bother removing the strap or the rope or the blanket from her living bundle. She simply jumped to the ground and snapped her fingers at the dog. He trotted over, bounded up the ramp, and settled in at his master's side.

Neva slid the plank next to the duo and latched the tailgate. She did make one last circle around the truck to make sure she wasn't leaving anything, forgetting anything, or missing anything belonging to the man. That done, she climbed behind the wheel and collapsed—but only for the thirty seconds she allowed herself to catch her breath.

She had no time to stop and smell roses, lilies, or even manure, and so she turned the key in the ignition and put the rig on the road. And then she reached over and turned off the CB radio before it had a chance to crackle to life. Candy was waiting on the supplies and wouldn't be happy with the delay or with Neva being incommunicado.

But Candy would just have to deal. As long as she'd lived and worked with Neva, as far back as their relationship went, the duality of their backgrounds on which it was based, any upset suffered wouldn't last long, leaving Neva to let that worry go and focus on the one in the here and now.

Because there was something about the added cargo in the bed of the truck that left her itchy and rubbing the backs of her fingers beneath her chin. If she hadn't already been in a precarious position, looking over her shoulder at every pin she heard drop, finding him wouldn't have caused a blip in the circle of her personal radar.

And more than likely a simple explanation existed for the condition of her mummy man. Unfortunately, she couldn't come up with anything that worked in context. Had she found him busted all to hell up in a parking garage or behind a club or in a halfway house in Houston where she'd once lived, that would be one thing. This was another.

He was out of place. One hundred percent out of his element. Staring at the endless road ahead, she thought back to what she had seen. The goatee and mustache that were clipped and shaped, while the rest of his beard was a day's growth waiting to be shaved. The same with his hair; it was just long enough to visibly hint at a dark coffee brown.

No man in Pit Stop wore GQ-styled facial hair or purposefully shaved his head. And then there was the tattoo. Not a simple Cupid's arrow piercing a heart or the word Mom. No