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and stared down at me, his hands on his hips. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up over his forearms. His service weapon rode in a holster on his right kidney, and his badge was clipped to his belt. He carried a cell phone/radio in his hand, and he looked grim.
    "I'm okay," I said to Wyatt, hating that look on his face. I'd seen it before. "Kind of."
    He immediately switched the laserlike focus of his gaze to Dwayne. Dwight was fiddling with their medic cases, putting stuff back, so Dwayne was the target. "How is she?" he asked, as if I hadn't even spoken.
    "Probable concussion," said Dwayne, which was likely against some sort of regulation, but I supposed most of the medics and cops knew one another, and maybe cops could get all kinds of info that was supposed to be private. "A lacerated scalp, some contusions."
    "Road rash," I said glumly.
    Dwayne smiled down at me. "That, too."
    Wyatt squatted beside the gurney. The bright light the medics had set up for their work threw harsh shadows on his face. He looked tough and mean, but his hand was gentle as he took mine in it.
    "I'll be right behind the ambulance," he promised. "I'll call your mom and dad on the way." He shot a look at Spangler. "You can finish taking her statement at the hospital."
    "Yes, sir," said Officer Spangler, closing his notebook.
    I was loaded into the back of the ambulance—to be precise, the gurney was loaded in the ambulance, but since I was on it, the end result was the same. The guys closed the double doors, and the last sight I had of Wyatt was him standing there looking both cold and fierce.
    Then we pulled out of the parking lot, lights flashing but no siren wailing, for which I was grateful because my head ached so much.
    Well, this was familiar. And in this case, familiarity sucked.
    ----
    Chapter Four
     

     
    Wyatt was the last thing I saw before the doors to the ambulance were closed, and the first thing I saw when they were opened.
    He looked so grim and cold and furious, all at the same time, that I reached for his hand again as I was unloaded from the back of the vehicle. "I really am okay," I said. Except for the concussion, I really was. Banged up, but okay. I wanted to sound brave, which would convince him I was fine and was putting on a false front to garner sympathy, but my head hurt too much for me to muster the energy, so instead I sounded sincere, so of course he didn't believe me.
    The man/woman jockeying-for-position supremacy thing was too complicated for me to deal with right then. You'd think he'd be relieved, but no, I could tell by the way his jaw clenched that instead he was worried as hell. Men are so perverse.
    I mustered my strength. "This is all your fault," I said, with as much indignation as I could manage.
    He was walking alongside the gurney holding my hand, and he gave me a narrow-eyed look. "My fault?"
    "I was shopping tonight because of your stupid deadline. If you'd listened to me I could have shopped during the daytime, like civilized people, but no, you have to give me an ultimatum , which forced me to be in the parking lot with a road-rage-crazed psycho bitch in a Buick."
    His eyes got even more narrow . To my relief, the grim look had relaxed somewhat. He figured if I could work up a head of steam, I really was all right, " If you had managed to plan something as simple as a wedding," he said with maddening disregard for the millions of details that go into a wedding, "I wouldn't have had to step in."
    "Simple?" I sputtered. " Simple ? You think a wedding is simple? A shuttle launch is simple . Quantum physics is simple . Planning a wedding is like planning a war—"
    "An apt comparison," he muttered under his breath, but I heard him anyway.
    I jerked my hand out of his. Sometimes I wanted to just smack him.
    Dwight, pushing the gurney, laughed. Dwayne was much nicer than Dwight. I said, "I don't want you pushing my gurney. I want Dwayne. Where's Dwayne?"
    "He's