Free Washed Away by Carol Marinelli

have a look. I would have taken you into the clinic, but it was warmer in here.”
    “The clinic?”
    He nodded. “Like I said, I’m a veterinarian. My clinic is attached to the house. It’s called Noah’s Ark. I’m—”
    She held up her hand and smiled. “Don’t tell me, you’re Noah.” Now she saw that animals were everywhere: the dog lying on her stomach, another one sitting on guard by the fire, birds chirping in a cage, that blessed rabbit still thumping its tail, a tiny horse peering around the door—
    Only then did she do a double take. Her mouth opened, but no words came out as she attempted to focus on the most bizarre creature she had ever seen.
    “That’s Georgina.” Noah answered her unspoken question, his eyes following her astounded gaze.
    “It’s a horse.”
    “Don’t let her hear you say that.”
    “It’s a tiny horse,” she amended, shaking her head in bewilderment. A tiny miniature chestnut horse.
    “She thinks she’s a human,” Noah explained with a dry note, “and she’s not actually that tiny. She’s ten pounds overweight and heading for another coronary. That’s why I’ve got her here.”
    “At Noah’s Ark?”
    “That’s right.” He had a slow, deep, lazy drawl, but every word seemed measured somehow, carefully chosen.
    “And it’s raining,” Cheryl said dreamily, enjoying this fantasy more and more. The man staring down at her was heavenly.
    He was six foot four, Cheryl knew that at a glance. From the day she had overtaken her classmates, when height had suddenly really mattered, she had been able to estimate a person’s height from afar. And Noah stood tall. Despite the baggy operating blues he was wearing, she could tell his body was toned and muscular. Light brown hair flopped over his forehead as he gazed down at her, and she was tempted to put her hands up and brush it back from his face, to stare unhindered into those delicious sapphire-colored pools. For a moment or two, the whys and wherefores didn’t matter. It was so much easier just to lie back and gaze upward, to concentrate on the beauty of the man looking down at her rather than attempt to reason why a rabbit’s tail was thumping in her ear, why the wind was howling outside and the rain battering the windows. She wanted to justsnuggle in the warmth of the fire and stare back at this delicious man.
    “There’s a flood,” Noah attempted to explain. “That’s why I couldn’t take you back to town.”
    “So I’m stuck here for forty days?” She started to smile, then immediately sobered as realization finally hit home. A million questions were bobbing on her tongue, but the first one that had sprung to mind still hadn’t been answered. “Where am I?” Struggling she sat up and pushed away the hand that attempted to press her back down. There was an urgency in her voice now. “I don’t understand….”
    “There was an accident.”
    “What sort of accident? How did I end up here?” She blinked rapidly in the semidarkness. “How did we meet?”
    “At the gas station.” Noah gave an easy shrug. “It was a nonevent. It’s no surprise you don’t remember. You were buying chocolate, lots of it and a couple of postcards.”
    “So how come…”
    “I don’t know,” Noah admitted. “But an hour or so later, I was driving back to the clinic when I saw your Jeep on Hansen’s Bridge.” Those brown eyes stared back at him without a flicker of recognition as he gave the location. “Hansen’s Bridge has been closed for years,” Noah explained. “There’s normally a barrier up, but I figure it had blown away. Still, the locals know it isn’t safe. I saw your Jeep….” For a second he closed his eyes, reliving the utter horror and devastation that had swept through him. “I knew you weren’t going to make it. Of course I didn’t know it was you at the time.I could just see a dark Jeep trying to get over the bridge and I knew it wasn’t going to make it. The bridge collapsed,