The Fifty-Cent Groom

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “I do not care to ‘run up,’ young man, nor do I throw articles of clothing out of windows. I will open the gate in five minutes, and if the two of you are not off the premises in ten, I will contact the security service. Good night.” With that dismissal, Arthur closed the door.

  Ben let go of Sara’s hand and raised his fist to knock, but she grabbed it in time. “Will you stop that?” she said. “West will sue you for harassment.”

  “Me? You’re the one who left him steamed up.”

  She hurried to the van, glancing back as he followed more slowly than she would have liked. “I hope you have the keys, because I really don’t want to walk home.”

  “Especially not in that outfit.” Ben dug into his pockets. “Patrolmen would be stopping to ask you what color underwear you have on.”

  Her temper warred with her urge to put a considerable distance between herself and this house. “Unless you feel the need for a midnight stroll across Kansas City, I’d suggest that you forget everything you overheard in West’s bedroom tonight.”

  “Hmm, tall order, but I’ll do my best.” He pulled the keys from his pocket and held them up with a smile before he moved to unlock the driver’s side door. “Hello, Cleo. Did you miss me?”

  The Lab barked a sharp denial, and then barked some more.

  Sara jerked the keys out of Ben’s hand. “Make her hush, will you?”

  “Speak, Cleo. Speak,” he said, and the dog lapsed into immediate silence.

  “See? Reverse psychology works best on her.”

  With a sigh, Sara looked at Ben’s engaging grin. “Whatever you do, Ben, don’t get in the van.”

  He climbed across the driver’s seat and console without further delay. “What do you know?” he said. “It works on me, too.”

  Sara got in, inserted the key and turned the ignition. The engine didn’t even sputter, and her heart plunged to a new low. “I don’t believe this.” She tried again with no better success. “I really don’t believe this.”

  “Sounds like the battery is dead. Pop the hood and I’ll take a look.”

  “What’s the point? No matter what the problem is, I can’t do anything about it now. And don’t bother to suggest that I go back to the house and ask to use the phone.”

  “How about asking to use their battery cables?”

  She looked at him and then laid her head against the back of the seat. “This has been the absolute worst day of my life.”

  “I’ll bet you fifty cents that in an hour, you’ll be laughing about it.”

  To her horror, she felt a teardrop slip from the corner of her eye and trickle down her cheek in utter and complete frustration.

  With the utmost care, Ben caught the teardrop on his fingertip and held it up to the light beaming down from the upper corner of the house. “What do you know?” he said softly. “Reverse psychology works on you, too.”

  Wallowing in misery was not her style, so Sara took a deep breath and made a decision. Slipping the gear stick into neutral, she released the emergency brake and felt a spurt of accomplishment when the van rolled slowly forward.

  “We’re moving.” Ben looked from her to the windshield and back to her. “But we appear to be moving toward the house, not away from it.”

  “I know that.” She twisted the steering wheel as hard as she could, and the direction altered by a few degrees. “If I can just get this turned a little more…”

  “I’m not sure what your plan is, but unless it involves cutting through the house, you might want to apply your brakes.”

  She struggled to wring another couple of inches from the steering wheel. “I’m trying to pick up speed, not slow down.”

  “And doing a fine job of it, too.” His hands clamped onto the wheel, bracing her strength with his own, enhancing her effort with steady pressure.

  The van turned, rolled faster and skimmed past the corner of the house with a quarter inch to spare. It bounced several times, then dropped five or six inches onto the driveway. Sara resolved not to think about which of the flower beds on this side of the house contained West’s prize roses. Tomorrow would be soon enough to assess further damage. Right now, she just wanted to get herself and her van on the other side of that gate before she got closed in here for the duration of the night. She turned the wheel, but the van was slow to respond. It crossed the driveway and rolled onto the lawn. Water sloshed across the windshield as the sprinkler system’s rotating heads made their midnight rounds. Realizing she had gone from compacting West’s roses to crushing his meticulous lawn, Sara overadjusted and drove across the driveway and up onto another flower bed. There was a loud clunk and then a grating, groaning noise, which became a watery scrape, which in turn changed to a rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.

  She twisted the wheel and appealed to Ben for assistance. “I’ll give you my firstborn child if you can help me get this back on the pavement.”

  “That’s a bit drastic. I’ll settle for dinner, how’s that?” He grabbed the wheel, wrested it to the right, held on through a series of bone-jarring and teethrattling bumps and grinds until the van corrected course and rolled steadily toward the gates at the end of the drive.

  Releasing the wheel, Ben looked out the window, twisting in the seat to see behind them. He let out a long, low whistle.

  “What is it? What did we hit?”

  He resumed a forward-facing position and slumped slightly in the seat. “You don’t want to know.”

  She glanced in the mirror. “I don’t see anything unusual.”

  “Really? Well, that’s good. Just try not to think about it.”

  “This is not a good time to tease me, Ben. Tell me what I did.”

  “You made it easier for Ridgeman to water his lawn, that’s all. You probably did him a favor.”

  With a lift of her eyebrow, she demanded to know the whole sorry saga.

  “The sound you heard was the sprinkler system being ripped from the ground like the pull string on a pack of chewing gum.”

  She quickly checked the mirror again, but saw only a haze of moisture reflecting off the house lights. “The sprinklers seem to be working.”

  “Overtime. The mist you see behind us is actually a geyser. Or rather, dozens of geysers spewing barrels of water over what may soon be Ridgeman Pond.”

  He had to be kidding. “That isn’t funny, Ben. I feel bad enough about driving across West’s lawn without your trying to make it seem worse than it is.”

  “I wasn’t trying, Sara.”

  She checked his sincerity in a glance that sent her heart plunging to her toes. “You mean that noise was the sprinkler system? I did uproot it?”

  “Afraid so.”

  Her moan was low and desperate as she checked the watery landscape in the side mirror. “West will never speak to me again as long as I live. I can’t believe this. I really can’t…” She frowned. “How much does a sprinkler system cost? On the average?”

  “I don’t know. Probably less than it’s going to cost to repair your van.”

  “You’re kidding. Less than the cost of replacing the car battery?”

  “I didn’t factor in a new battery.”

  “Oh. But the van’s working.”

  “It’s rolling. There’s a difference.”

  She nodded unhappily. “Right. Well, once we’re off the property, I’ll call the automobile club and get a tow truck. At least we won’t have to walk home.”

  Ben frowned and leaned forward. “I thought we had ten minutes to vacate the premises.”

  With a blink, Sara realized the gate was closing, and she automatically floored the gas pedal…which only increased her anxiety and did nothing to speed up the van. “Arthur said he’d give us ten minutes,” she whispered in dismay. “Maybe if I honk the horn, he’ll hear it and open the-” Her attempt to honk the horn met with futility, and she rattled the steering wheel in frustration. “Does anything around here still work?”

  “The gate, apparently. Altho
ugh I have a feeling that along with the sprinkler pipes, you probably unearthed the security-system wiring.”

  “Wouldn’t that keep the gates from closing?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  The iron gate shut with a resounding clank only seconds before the van rolled into it, bounced back, then rolled forward again and stopped, bumper to bars, just this side of the open road.

  Ben rubbed his chin. “Do you realize there are people who don’t experience this much excitement in their entire lifetime?”

  “You may find this hard to believe, but until today, I was one of them.”

  Even before he turned to look at her, she knew he was fighting the impulse to laugh. Good humor leaked across the solemn line of his mouth and softened the crinkles around his eyes. As his lips gave in to the smile and his silence to a companionable chuckle, Sara recognized a similar response fighting its way past her misery. There was nothing remotely amusing about her situation, but in less than a heartbeat, she was laughing as if she hadn’t just carelessly run over her future, as if she hadn’t impulsively and inexplicably ruined her life. She didn’t understand what was going on inside her head…or her heart. But suddenly, for no good reason she could fathom, her frustration dissolved into the buoyant, comforting sounds of Ben’s laughter.

  She laughed until her sides hurt, until the shambles of all her plans were covered in a dreamlike mist and seemed not so terribly important. When the laughter finally ebbed, she rubbed her eyes. “This isn’t funny, you know.”

  “All I know is, this is the most fun I’ve ever had while wearing a tuxedo.” His smile was sensual and sincere, and she couldn’t help thinking that until now she had thought the two words were mutually exclusive.

  “You’re only wearing part of a tux,” she said logically. “Only the shirt and bow tie.”

  “I think I’ll design a line of formal wear based on the camouflage theme. ‘For the well-dressed man, who wants to keep his legs covered.’ Or, ‘When it’s important not to be seen.’ Or how about, ‘Only her legs should show.’ What do you think?”

  “I think you and your legs should slip through those iron bars and see if you can open the gate from the other side before Security shows up.”

  He glanced at the gate. “I’m in camouflage, Sara, not a rubber suit. But I couldn’t squeeze through there if I was coated in three layers of vegetable oil. You’re a lot smaller than I am. Couldn’t you scrunch through the bars?”

  “There are parts of my body that refuse to scrunch, no matter what kind of reward is offered. I may as well confess that I’ve never been able to do the splits or the Hokey Pokey.”

  “I never would have guessed.”

  With the pressing knowledge that the Security service was probably on its way, or the intimidating possibility that West himself would make an appearance, she jerked the handle and opened the door of the van. “We’d better reassess our situation in a hurry, because from here the possibility of a happy ending looks like a washout.”

  BEN RATTLED THE GATE—which held fast—then stepped back to study the wall of masonry that surrounded the house. Ridgeman had built a damned fortress.

  Hands on her hips, Sara examined the pointed, javelinlike bars of this new obstacle to her plans. “I’m not climbing over the gate, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it—duck!” They crouched beside the left front wheel as the spray from the only functioning sprinkler head oscillated past. As soon as the deluge of droplets moved on, Ben stood and reached for Sara’s hand to help her up. “There has to be a better way.”

  He sensed a wry challenge in the look she gave him and was delighted that adversity only seemed to spark her fighting spirit.

  “You know,” she said, “this would be an ideal time to demonstrate your theory that real men are born with the right tools.”

  “I said they were born with all the tools they need. I didn’t say they were born with the right tool for every occasion.”

  “Don’t get testy. I just thought you might have a chisel in your pocket, that’s all.” She looked from him back to the gate. “Any chance you could pull those bars apart with your bare hands?”

  “Not even if I had two Clydesdale horses to help me.” He watched her, endlessly fascinated by her facial expressions, continuously amazed at her determination to do things her own way.

  “Duck,” she said. The sprinkler sent water over the top of the van in a pounding shower. When it moved on again, Sara fluffed her hair with her hands, shedding water drops like a dog after a soak. “I’m getting nearly as wet trying to keep from being sprinkled as I would be if I walked around the van and dared it to hit me.

  “If I’d thought about it, I’d have brought along an umbrella.”

  She balanced on one foot and brushed a clump of mud from her ankle. “If I had an umbrella right now, I have no doubt that lightning would make a beeline for it.”

  “There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

  “Believe me, that is only because I am not holding anything remotely resembling a lightning rod.”

  Laughter rumbled in his throat. He couldn’t recall the last time he had felt so alive. “In that case, you might want to avoid touching the gate, too.”

  “You’re right.” She reestablished her balance by setting both feet in the center of a trickling river that coursed down the drive and out the gate. “Maybe Cleo could squeeze through the bars and go for help.”

  Ben thought she might be developing a fever. “You must have her confused with Lassie.”

  “Look at her. She wants out of here as much as I do.”

  Cleo sat in the driver’s seat of the van, watching the activity with a critical eye. “Yes,” Ben said. “It’s easy to see how desperate she is.”

  “Can you see how desperate I am? Does it show?”

  “Not noticeably. Otherwise, you’d go back up to the house and ask for help.”

  “I would rather shinny up that cedar tree over there than face West again tonight.”

  “I don’t see why. You didn’t have any trouble seducing him a little while ago.”

  “I did not seduce him. I merely used the tools I was born with to escape from a rather delicate situation. And under no circumstances will I do another thing to imprint this disastrous night on his brain.”

  “When he has to swim down the driveway in the morning, I’m afraid he’ll develop instant recall.”

  “Yes, but in the morning, I won’t be here.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. Duck.” This time, as they huddled beside the van, Ben slipped a hand around her waist…ostensibly to steady her, but really because he couldn’t keep from touching her. Her shiver translated itself into his body as desire, and he wished he could believe there was no other interpretation, that she, too, felt this bewildering and incontestable attraction. But she was wet and getting wetter, and her shiver indicated nothing other than a slight chill. He moved his arm to her shoulder and pulled her close. “We’ll be out of here soon,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

  She looked at him, and his heart stopped. He had held enough women in his arms to know that his number had just come up. In Sara’s russet brown eyes, he could see his future—a house with a porch swing, kids in the yard, Cleo at his feet, a redhead by his side. It was all there, within his grasp, waiting for him to claim…

  “Ben? What are you doing?”

  He took a long, deep breath. “Adjusting my perspective,” he said. Then he lowered his head and kissed her.

  Chapter Nine

  Something happened the moment his lips closed over hers. The kiss, of course. She was well aware that was happening. But there was something else. Something unusual, strange, magical. Like the moment the dress had twinkled at her. She had been doing crazy things ever since, and now…Now Ben was kissing her. With purpose. With forethought. With devastating intent.

  And damn it, she was kissing him back. With feeling.

  Of their own accord,
her hands slipped around his neck, and when he pushed to his feet, she moved with him. He pulled her against him and deepened the intensity and thoroughness of the kiss. A subsequent and serious yearning uncoiled inside her, like a spring stretched to the breaking point and then released. She felt giddy and dizzy, foolish and fanciful, drunk with a crazy, impulsive longing. This did not bode well for her plans, she thought.

  Then she remembered she had no plans. Why not seize the moment? What the hell? Kissing Ben was the only pleasurable event of the entire evening, anyway.

  His lips moved over hers, drawing desire to the surface. His arms gathered her against him, evoking a whole new awareness. His fingers grazed her skin beneath the raw edges of the rip in her shirt, and a heat wave of response radiated from that one touch. She imagined him ripping off the shirt, imagined his hands on her breasts, imagined him kindling the passion she had always suspected was smoldering inside her.

  When the first drops of water showered over her, Sara thought she heard a sizzle, but a second later, the full force of the spray soaked her. And the heated kiss—along with the rest of her—cooled instantly.

  Ben drew back, cupped his hands on either side of her nose and brushed the moisture from her face. The texture of his palms on her cheeks was both rough and soft and full of a gentle sensuality. The look in his deep green eyes left her weak and wanting…and wondering. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath as he tucked strands of dripping hair behind her ears. “We forgot to duck,” he said.

  “It was your turn to warn me.” Her words were so soft, he leaned closer to hear, which didn’t help her voice get stronger as she repeated, “It was your turn to warn me.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Let the record show that defendant was otherwise occupied and unaware of the impending shower. Therefore, defendant is not guilty of the premeditated crime of soaking the plaintiff.”

  “Overruled.”

  “Objection.”

  “You can’t object to a ruling.”

  “You’re the plaintiff. You can’t make a ruling.”

  “That just shows how much you and I know about courtroom procedure.”