But now, almost an hour into our drive, I’m awake enough for my brain to start working. And since my brain has nothing better to do with itself, I begin a critical examination of the interior of the BMW. It’s a beautiful car, inside and out, and the seats are very comfortable, which is a good quality in a vehicle you’re going to be spending a lot of continuous hours sitting in. By comparison to my truck’s cab, it’s quite small, of course, but thanks to the careful design and positioning of the dashboard, the door controls, and the footwells, it feels more cozy than cramped.
It’s still missing the same thing every vehicle I’ve ever been in lacks, though: a good place to put a purse.
Seriously, there’s no excuse for this inattention to detail. Automobile manufacturers give you a place for just about everything else—maps, sunglasses, cups, driving gloves (which no one even wears anymore), wallets, and these days, even cell phones—but completely ignore the purse problem.
But, Sylvia, there’s the footwell, you say.
Yes, I answer, but that space is for people’s feet. Why should you give up valuable real estate intended for a body part to your handbag?
Well, you respond, you can put it on the back seat or in one of the rear footwells.
Unless there are people sitting there, I point out. Then where do you put it?
The answer, of course, is that someone winds up giving up some of their space for your purse. Which is just ridiculous.
Don’t worry, though. Auntie Sylvia is working on a solution. Patent soon-to-be pending.
And I’m pretty sure my design will fit in this car, although I can’t be sure without looking at my drawings…and I can’t look at my drawings without my laptop or phone. Ugh. Everything’s password protected and in the cloud, but not being able to access my stuff is annoying AF.
But whether or not my current design will hang properly in this car, I’m going to need to up my game on materials for a luxury model like this. Stretchy velour just isn’t going to cut it. Maybe a beautiful butter-colored suede…
“Do you want to drive?” Ivan’s question jolts my out of my thoughts.
I snort-laugh. “God, no. I drive for a living, but it’s not like I enjoy it. Why would I want to if I don’t have to?”
He cuts me a side-eye. “Wait. Why’d you become a truck driver if you don’t like driving?”
“Mostly because pays better than minimum wage. And I didn’t say I dislike driving; I just don’t love for its own sake. I don’t see any reason to do it if I’m not getting paid for it, especially if I don’t have to.”
“Seems crappy to have to make a living doing something you don’t love.”
Now I’m the one delivering the side-eye. “Don’t tell me you buy that whole ‘do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’ bullshit.”
“Damn,” he drawls, shaking his head, “you’re cynical.”
“Nah, just realistic. I hope you’re not going to sit there and tell me that playing hockey professionally isn’t work, no matter how much you love it.”
Ivan rolls his right shoulder and stretches his left leg, as though unconsciously testing old injuries. “You’re right, it is work. Damn hard work. But I’d rather work my ass off doing something I love than something I don’t even really like. It’s the fact that I love hockey that makes all that damn hard work worth doing.”
“That’s fair,” I concede. “And honestly, I don’t think anyone would do something as physically and mentally difficult as playing a professional sport if they didn’t absolutely love it. But not everyone has a job that’s as demanding as being an elite athlete, and driving a truck is definitely way easier than that.”
“Okay, fair enough, but still, doesn’t it get kind of boring and lonely?”
“Sometimes,” I admit. “But I listen to a lot of audiobooks, which entertains me, and I mostly don’t mind being by alone anyway. It gives me time to think.”
“About…?” he prompts.
I press my lips together. My plans—by which I mean drawings, designs, diagrams, not pie-in-the-sky goals—aren’t something I talk about with anyone these days. I’ve learned my lesson the hard way. But something about Ivan makes me want to tell him. Okay, probably the thing that makes me want to tell him is the same thing that makes me want to have sex with him. Both are against my better judgment, but if I’m going to do one or the other, this seems safer. “About things that don’t work very well or are harder than they should be and how to make them easier or better. And when I have what I think is a workable idea to solve the problem, then I make drawings and diagrams and try to improve on them.”
“So you’re an inventor?” The question contains none of the scorn I’m half expecting. Instead, he sounds genuinely curious and even a little bit impressed.
You should marry him. Or at least fuck him.
Shut up, libido. I try to tone down my heart-eyes. “I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that. I’m no Alexander Graham Bell or Elon Musk or anything. The stuff I come up with isn’t high-tech or fancy; it’s more like the stuff they hawk on those late-night informercials or QVC.”
“Hey, my mom’s been known to buy things off QVC. I hope you’re not saying that’s a bad thing.”
The teasing note in his voice makes me smile. “Not at all. I hope someday all my gadgets are being sold there. I just mean it’s not like anything I come up with is going to change the world or save the planet. But if you hate getting short-sheeted or not being able to get the last bit of shampoo out of the bottom of a pump bottle, I’ve got you covered.”
“Really? Because that pump bottle thing really pisses me off.”
“Right? I can never decide whether to just throw away the pump or try adding water so I can pump more out. Why can’t someone make a pump that actually works when the bottle’s almost empty?”
“I’m guessing because it’s hard,” Ivan offers as he switches lanes to pass a blue minivan that’s crawling along in front of us.
I sigh. “Yeah, it is,” I admit. “That’s one of the ideas I’m still working on. But I’ll crack it eventually.”
We sail past the minivan, and Ivan slots our car back in the right-hand lane in perfect European-style driving mode. This further endears him to me. American motorists, as a whole, think nothing of driving hundreds of miles in the left lane of a two-lane highway, even when there’s no one to pass, and they’re the bane of truckers.
“So what have you cracked?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Sorry, trade secret. Until I get my designs patented, I’m keeping them under wraps. One of the reasons I became a truck driver in the first place is that I made the mistake of sharing a design with someone who promised to help me. Want to guess how that turned out?” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my tone.
“They stole your idea?”
“Oh, he was sneakier than that,” I grumble. The truth is, I have no one to blame but myself. I was young, true, but my gullibility still grates on me. “He told me my design was clever, but the gadget was too ‘niche’ to be worth patenting and putting into mass production on its own. When I practically burst into tears at the news, he assured me this didn’t mean my design was worthless. By itself, there wasn’t much I could do with it, he said, but he could have it produced as part of a larger package of items he already had in development. All I had to do was sell him the design.” I have to close my eyes and force myself to breathe steadily, because the old rage is welling up in me like a pot about to boil over.
Ivan reads my temperature…and, apparently, my mind. “Shit. He paid you peanuts, then made a fortune on your idea, didn’t he?”
“Nailed it,” I say, holding my thumb and index finger in the shape of a gun and pointing it at him. “He gave me a lousy four thousand dollars—which, I’ll admit, seemed like a fortune to me at the time—and then went on to sell millions of units. Actually, I even saw one at your brother’s house. They’re so common now, I almost forget sometimes that I came up
with the idea.”
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Ivan asks.
“I can’t. Literally.” I sigh, thinking back to the dumb kid I’d been. Sean Cartwright must’ve seen me coming a mile away. “The contract I signed included a nondisclosure clause that prevents me from ever claiming the idea as mine.”
“Damn, now I’m even more curious. I promise I won’t tell anyone else.” He gives me a hopeful, wheedling grin.
My answering smile is regretful. “Sorry, no can do. And it’s not that I don’t trust you to keep the secret; it’s that however much I hate that I signed that NDA, I made a promise when I did, and I believe in keeping my promises.”
His expression sobers, and after a few seconds, he nods. “I can respect that. Even if I’m going to spend the rest of my life wondering if I’ve bought one myself and put money in a swindler’s pocket.”
“Don’t worry,” I say solemnly. “I’m sure you haven’t bought one. You’re definitely not in the target demographic.” My lips are twitching, though.
“Oh?” Then he looks at my face and sees how I’m trying to keep from cracking up and says, “Ohhhh!”
“Yeah,” I manage, and then the giggles start in earnest.
It takes me a few minutes to shut down my amusement. Every time I imagine Ivan buying my first invention, I break down again. I mean, it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility, but it’s not likely.
When my laughter finally subsides, Ivan says, “So this experience led you to become a truck driver because…?”
“Because the alternative was doing what my parents wanted and going to college to get a degree in engineering or, barring that, finance and accounting—which I would both hate and suck at, since math makes me want to poke out my eyeballs—and I knew what I needed wasn’t an education, but money. So I did my research and figured out that one of the best ways to earn a good living without a college degree is owning and operating a trucking business. I had to drive for a company for the first couple of years after getting my commercial license, which doesn’t pay as well, but after that, I was able to buy my own truck.”
The truck I no longer have. Even with the insurance coverage, it’s going to be a setback in my financial plan. I had jobs lined up for the few weeks that I’m going to have to cancel, and that’s never good for business in either the short or long run. The thought makes me heave a sigh. I’ll just have to hope my customers understand and don’t stop contracting me because this incident makes them think I’m unreliable.
“Anyway,” I continue, pushing aside my worries, “truck driving is a means to an end, and that end is enough money to patent, prototype, and license my designs myself. I’m never letting anyone take advantage of me like that again.”
Ivan nods approvingly. “Makes sense to me.” There’s no mistaking the genuine admiration in his tone. Like he actually believes I can do this. Like he agrees with my choices.
My libido flares again. Is there anything more desirable than someone who supports you? Especially one who’s also hot enough to set your panties on fire. “Well, that makes two of us.”
“You mean your parents are still pressuring you to go to college?”
“Not just my parents; my entire family. And after this...?” I gesture vaguely around the car to indicate my present circumstances and grimace. “They’re going to lean on me even harder than ever.”
A shiver of dread runs through me as my imagination serves up the content of the lectures I’m going to receive from my parents, brother, grandmother, and multiple aunts, uncles, and cousins. They’ve all drunk the “college is the only way to be successful” Kool-Aid, and I know exactly what each of my relatives is going to say. My mom will go for the God and destiny angle. My dad will be less churchy about it—he’s almost as lapsed a Catholic as I am—but he’ll lean heavily on the idea that this is all a “sign” from the universe that my life is on the wrong track. Gabriel, my brother, will point out yet again that no one in manufacturing is ever going to take me or my inventions seriously if I don’t have some letters behind my name. And so on.
Honestly, I don’t know why they bother talking to me—well, at me—when I can predict with almost one hundred percent accuracy what each of them will say. And none of them are going to change my mind. I know what I’m doing, and I’d rather spend the rest of my life driving a truck than sit in a classroom ever again.
Ivan gives me a sympathetic look. “Damn, that sucks.”
“They only want what’s best for me,” I say on a sigh. “They’re just wrong about what’s best for me.”
“Families often are. Mine didn’t want me to become a professional hockey player.”
“Really? I thought your family got you started in hockey.”
“They did, but they never thought I’d actually try to make a living at it. They thought I’d just put myself through college on my hockey scholarship and then use my degree to get a nice, safe day job.”
Okay, color me curious. I mean, I knew he must’ve gone to college, because that’s how hockey players get noticed by professional scouts, but I hadn’t thought much about the fact that this means Ivan must’ve actually studied something. He just has such an overwhelming physicality that it’s hard to imagine him sitting through lectures or hitting the books. “And what’s your degree in?”
His cheeks darken in what must be his version of a blush, and he flashes a sheepish smile. “Business and finance.” After a beat, he shrugs and adds, “Hey, I’m good at math.”
I stare at him open-mouthed, and then I burst out laughing. He follows me a few seconds later.
Hot, helpful, and a sense of humor? Damn, I’m never going to make it to L.A. without jumping him like a turnstile.
Eight
Ivan
“We don’t have to stay here tonight,” I tell Sylvia as I insert the key into the lock. And by this, I mean an actual metal key and an actual keyhole, not one of those key card and sensor thingies.
The Desert View Motel, the only one of the two roadside motels to have a vacancy when we rolled into Shoshoni, Wyoming twenty minutes ago, looks like a well-preserved relic of the 1970s despite its claim to possess free wi-fi and satellite TV. Maybe the owners decided to hang onto the old lock-and-key system to appeal to the nostalgia market. Or maybe they just needed to save money so they could afford to put in the wi-fi and TV.
“We can always drive back to Casper,” I continue. The knob turns, and I push the door open to reveal the room on the other side. It’s not quite as rustic as I feared, having obviously been redecorated sometime within the last decade, but one thing is exactly as I expected, based on the clerk’s description. One bed. Not a king or even a queen. A double. “I’m sure we can get a room with two beds there. Maybe we’ll even find someone who’s willing to rent us two rooms.”
Sylvia brushes past me into the tiny room and switches on the light. “No one’s going to rent us two rooms unless I can produce an ID.” She tosses the small duffel she bought to store her meager possessions onto the bed and flashes me a rueful smile. “That’s one reason I was so grateful to your brother for offering me a place to stay. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a hotel room, even once I got a replacement for my credit card. It should’ve occurred to me that it would be just as much of a problem once we were on the road, but for some reason, it didn’t.” She’s right, of course, We both should’ve seen this coming. Valid picture identification is required to check into pretty much every hotel and motel in the U.S. The only ones that would let you register without one are likely to be of the “by the hour” variety.
“All the more reason to stay somewhere else tonight.” I cast a meaningful eye at the bed, which looks even smaller now that her bag is on it. “That bed is barely even big enough for one of us.”
Shaking her head, Sylvia crosses to the bed, pushes her duffel to the other side, and flops down on the mattress. “We decided not to stay in Casper because coming this far would give us more time i
n the park tomorrow. No way should we drive an hour and a half in the wrong direction just to avoid a little discomfort. Besides—” she flings her arm up over her eyes, “—it’s past my bedtime.”
It’s not quite nine. But I guess if you normally get up at four in the morning, you probably go to bed around eight p.m. Except, when I look at her sprawled across the frothy white bedspread, sleep is the last thing that comes into my mind.
My fingers twitch. My balls tighten. My dick presses uncomfortably against my zipper. If I get in that bed with her—that teeny, tiny bed—I’ll be responsible for my actions and I’m not sure I can guarantee they’ll be the best actions.
But she’s right that going back to Casper would put a big dent in our schedule.
I cast a dubious glance around the room, which is proportional to the bed. Between the dresser against the wall at the foot of the bed and a tiny café table with two chairs underneath the window that looks out to the parking lot, there’s barely enough room to walk around the bed to get to the bathroom. It’s going to be a tight squeeze, but I can manage it.
I toss the room key on the top of the dresser. “I’ll get some extra blankets.”
Sylvia uncovers her eyes and blinks at me. “Wh—?” she begins, and then comprehension dawns. Propping herself up on one elbow, she shakes her head at me. “Oh, no. You’re not sleeping on the floor. You’re the driver. You need your rest.”
Well, in that case, chivalry be damned. “Then you can be the one to sleep on the floor.” I turn away, ready to head to the motel office to put in my request.
SemiTough Luck: A Motocrossed Romance Page 4