“I’m not leaving. I’m going to call for help,” she shouted.

“I’m OK,” he said.

“Let me call for an ambulance. Then you can tell me what happened.” She leaned over him and put a hand on his unshaven cheek. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

He grabbed her wrist. “No. I’m fine. There was a woman lying in the road. I swerved into the trees to avoid hitting her.”

Had someone been hit by a car? Stella turned her head and scanned the road. “I don’t see a woman.”

“She was there.” He struggled to sit up as the rain slowed to a drizzle.

Stella stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Slow it down. You were unconscious.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I just tripped.”

Bullshit rang in Stella’s head, but she held her tongue. She and Mac had met the previous November and numerous times since. In addition to being hotter than a solar flare, he was frustratingly closed off. An intense person, he elevated self-control to an art form.

“I need to find her.” Tonight, his eyes were wild, and his self-control looked tenuous.

“Easy. Stay put. I’ll go double check the road.” She raced back to the bend. Sweeping her light across the wet pavement, she saw nothing that indicated a person had lain there. She checked the weedy area on both sides of the road in case a wounded person had crawled off the pavement. But there was nothing.

“She was there.”

Stella turned. Mac stood behind her, scanning the ground, one hand pressed against his side. “At the bend.”

How had he sneaked up behind her without making any noise? She shined the flashlight on him. Its beam highlighted the sharp planes of his face. With his control back in place, he’d returned to his usual countenance: lean and lethal.

“I already looked there.” Stella lowered her light to his body. A large, dark splotch stained the side of his light-colored T-shirt. “Are you bleeding?”

He glanced down, irritation crossing his face. “It’s nothing. The woman . . .”

She put a hand on the center of his chest. “There’s no one here, Mac.”

“But how . . . ?”

Maybe he had a concussion.

“No one is hurt in the road. I’m going to call an ambulance. Come sit in my car where it’s dry, and I’ll have a look at that wound.”

His head swung back and forth. “No. I’m fine.”

Stella headed for her car, one hand firmly under his elbow to steer him in the right direction. The rain tapered off until only the trees were dripping.

He pulled his arm away. “You can’t make me go in an ambulance. I have to look for her.”

She whirled, temper heating her face as she studied him. His square jaw was set in defiance.