Murphy's Law

Now what?

The engine was going, and she could hear the back tires…spinning. The back tires were whirling over the snow, trying to find traction. And failing.

Murphy pillowed her hands on the top arc of the steering wheel again, bracing her forehead against the back of her wrists. The skin of both felt colder than ice. Oh, how she wished she were the sort of woman who gave in to tears! She could use a good, long cry right about now. Could anything else go wrong?!

“You don't have much luck, do you?”

She lifted her head, met his penetrating blue gaze. Her voice flat, she replied, “On the contrary. I've always had a good deal of luck. Unfortunately, all of it's bad. You've heard of Murphy's Law, haven't you?”

One corner of Garrett's mouth quirked up in a tight grin, and his eyes flashed with amusement. The connection obviously wasn't lost on him.

Murphy sighed and shook her head. “I guess there's nothing else to do. Time to get out and push.”

“When the woman's right she's right.”

He made to open his door. The hand Murphy placed on his arm stopped him.

“Stay put,” she ordered as she turned the engine off, then jerked the key from the ignition. Her gloves were on the floor near his feet—underneath the blanket he'd kicked off, next to a crumpled paper hamburger wrapper and an empty paper cup that had, many miles ago, contained the chocolate milkshake she'd bought at a popular fast food restaurant on the Maine Turnpike.

She'd left her hat at the house. Murphy cursed the oversight when she opened the car door…and was immediately slapped by a bracing gust of snowy, northeast wind. Her spirally curls lashed at her cheeks, forehead and neck like a whip as she tugged her gloves on. Muttering under her breath, she trudged through almost knee-high snow to the back of the car.

There were grooves in the snow from where the wheels had spun uselessly, mixing the snow and dirt into a slushy mud. Because the front tires had sunk into the ditch, the two rear ones were now poised more than a quarter of an inch above the cold, frozen ground.

Murphy McKenna wasn't violent. Therefore, it surprised her to feel an almost overwhelming urge to kick the offending tires as hard as the padding of her Reeboks would allow. She didn't, of course, however that didn't make the urge go away. In the end, the only thing that stopped her was the possibility of breaking her foot. The way her day was going…

While Providence wasn't the Snow Capitol of the World, its winters were harsh enough that she wasn't entirely ignorant when it came to driving through—and getting one's car unstuck from—snow. When she'd climbed out of the Rabbit, she'd figured that if she couldn't push the car into motion—and she had serious doubts she could—then she could always dig up and disperse enough dirt under the rear wheels to give them the traction they needed.

That idea burst like a bubble to a pin prick when she saw the state of the back tires. She couldn't give them traction

of any sort if they weren't touching the ground.

She had only one option: push the car out of the ditch. Her sore body protested the idea when it was a thought; her aching muscles shrieked their reluctance when she put the plan into motion.

For all her rigidly scheduled aerobic classes, she knew she wasn't that strong. In fact, she learned just how humiliatingly weak she really was when she opened the driver's side door, put the Rabbit in neutral and, bracing her feet in the snow as best she could, shoved with all her might.

The car barely rocked; it didn't budge.

She wasn't surprised. She hadn't expected to be able to move it and she'd been right. It was times like this when being right wasn't all it was cracked up to be. At least she'd tried.

Fifteen minutes after she'd gotten out of the car, Murphy wearily climbed back in. She was chilled to the bone, and if she'd been given to swearing she might have tossed a few imaginative cusses at, first the heater that hadn't worked in months, then at herself for not having the forethought to get the dratted thing fixed.

Moonshine bounded over the seat and plopped down in her lap. The cat felt wonderfully warm, and she wedged her hands beneath him, her frigid-to-the-point-of-numb fingers greedily absorbing his heat.

Garrett sneezed, sniffled, then sneezed again.

Murphy absently reached under her seat and retrieved a box of tissues. They were warped and damp—the Rabbit had a mysterious leak that even Tom had never been able to find—but they would have to do. She passed him the box, which he accepted after only a beat of hesitation and a stuffily muttered, “Dank yew.”

“Looks like we're stuck,” she said. The glance Garrett sent her said he already knew that…and probably had before she'd even gotten out of the car. The ache in Murphy's right shoulder, from trying to move the car said it would have been nice if he'd clued her in on the information then and saved her the time and trouble.

Garrett blew his nose, took another tissue, repeated the process. Moonshine regarded him curiously from his soft bed atop Murphy's lap.

Thinking aloud, she said, “I suppose I could walk back to the house and see if the phone's working yet. How far do you think it is?”

“A mile?” His tone was now nasally. He grabbed the duffel bag off the floor near his feet. Rummaging inside, he came up with the bottle of allergy tablets. He shook one out and popped it in his mouth, then opened the door and scooped up a handful of snow, washing the chunky pill down. “Maybe two. Not more than three, I don't think.”

Her shoulders slumped. “That far?”

He nodded and slammed the door shut.