“That’s right,” he said as if such things were perfectly normal, and she was the crazy one for asking the question.

“What about my car? Look at what he did to my car!”

“Didn’t you see the moose-crossing sign a mile or so back?”

“I saw it and a thousand others, but I didn’t think it meant a moose would be stupid enough to stand in the middle of the road where it could get hit by a car.”

“Are you calling Fred stupid?”

As cold, wet muck seeped into her lovely boots, Cameron wanted to shriek. This whole thing was beyond stupid! She wished she could close her eyes and be back in her SoHo apartment, in a world where everything made sense to her. A “town moose” standing in the middle of a road definitely did not make sense.

If she could manage to extract her feet from the goop, the first thing she’d do was click her heels together three times and hope for instant transport home. Hey, it had worked for Dorothy, right? Thinking about her favorite movie of all time buoyed her flagging spirits.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, almost sounding concerned.

“I don’t think so.”

“Where you heading?”

“Butler.”

“You’re close.”

“I know. The GPS said I was minutes away before Fred got in my way.”

“Looks to me like you hit him, not the other way around.”

“Tell it to the insurance company,” she said, wondering if her insurance covered mooseastrophies. This really couldn’t be happening. Maybe she’d fallen into a dream the way Dorothy had, and when she woke up she’d laugh about the guy who’d been more concerned about a moose than he was about the smashed-in front of her brand-new car.

“Fred definitely got the better end of the deal,” she muttered.

“If you want to grab your stuff, I can give you a ride into town.”

Cameron, who’d spent a lifetime avoiding dangerous situations, who never left home without a can of mace, who rarely talked to strangers or made eye contact with people on the street, had no idea whether she should get into a car with a perfect stranger who could very well be an axe murderer. Then she remembered the can of mace in her purse.

“What about my car?”

“I’ll have Nolan bring it in for you.”

“Who’s Nolan?”

“He runs the garage in town.”

“Oh.”

Cameron pondered her limited options and decided she really had no choice but to take her chances with him—as long as her mace was close in hand.

“No worries, I have all night to stand here and wait on you.”

“I, um, my feet seem to be stuck.”

“Stuck?”

“What is this crap all over the road?”