No Knight Needed Read Online Free Page A

anything wrong with you? I don’t even know you.”
    Yeah, okay. He had a point. Clare rubbed her hands over her arms, embarrassed by her outburst at the man who had galloped into her life on his white horse and played the gallant knight for her, a heroic rescue so foreign to her she still had trouble believing it. “I’m sorry. Habit. I’m a little stressed right now.”
    He shrugged and shot her a mischievous wink that told her all was forgiven. “No apologies necessary. Takes a lot more than that to offend me.” His smile faded, and his voice became serious. “But you should know, I don’t judge people. People are who they are, and it’s cool.”
    She was surprised by his words, and by the truth she sensed in him as he spoke. It felt good. It felt safe. “I like that.”
    “Good.” He swerved the truck sharply, and she braced her hands on the dashboard as he appeared to head straight into the woods.
    “Where are we going?”
    “The sign said Pike’s Notch. Isn’t that where we’re headed?”
    “Yes, but there’s a bigger road further up.”
    “Why do we need a bigger road? Plenty of room for a truck here.”
    Clare grimaced as the trees appeared in front of the headlights, flashing by so close she half-expected one of them to clip off a mirror. Dear God. What kind of person was he? She learned her lesson fifteen years ago about men who didn’t like to play by the rules. “Who are you, exactly?”
    He frowned. “I told you. My name’s Griffin Friesé—”
    “No, I mean, who are you? Do you live around here? If so, for how long? How come I don’t know you? What do you do? Why—”
    “There they are,” he said, interrupting her string of desperate questions.
    “Where—” Then she saw them. Up ahead, barely visible through the trees, she could see the pale blue of her daughter’s wind-breaker, along with the huddled bodies of three other teenagers, including Jeremy, in his familiar neon-green jacket. She clutched the dash, her throat tightening at the sight of her daughter, standing up, still alive, still safe. “Honk the horn, Griffin,” she said, tears so thick in her throat she could barely whisper them. “Tell them we’re coming.”
    He hit the horn, and the quartet spun around. For a moment they froze, and then they started shouting and waving and jumping up and down. Clare laughed through her tears, her heart aching with relief. “Look at them trying to get our attention. Do they really think we might drive by without stopping?”
    Griffin pulled up and slowed the truck. “No parent would, despite what some people might think.”
    “Who on earth would ever think a parent would drive past?” The comment seemed strange, but she sensed heavy tension in his words... as if someone had accused him of doing that? “You mean, someone thinks you would?” That was insane. The man had driven his truck up the side of a mountain for kids that weren’t even his, for heaven’s sake.
    Instead of answering, Griffin stopped the truck and jerked his chin at the windshield.
    She turned and saw her daughter’s face. Worried, scared and pinched with cold. Tears sprang in Clare’s eyes, and her composure fragmented with the relief of seeing her daughter. “Katie!” She shoved open the door and nearly fell out of the truck as Katie ran up.
    “Mom!” Her darling daughter, who suddenly seemed so much younger than fifteen, threw herself into Clare’s arms. As Clare wrapped herself around the trembling body of the most precious thing in the world to her, she looked over her daughter’s shoulder and saw Griffin watching them with a wistful expression, longing etched so deeply in his face that she wanted to reach out and sweep him into their hug.
    Her heart ached for him, for this powerful, strong man who had taken on the storm and commanded a happy ending. His eyes were dark, his damp hair tousled, his broad shoulders nearly taking up the whole front seat. He was so masculine, a man who wanted no