"We can drive all night." She twisted her shoulders to ease the tension. "I slept earlier. You can bed down in the back while I drive."
"No." He slowed down and eased the car between two big cows that had appeared out of nowhere. "We'll find a hotel. There'll be something reasonable in the next village. It's a fair size."
"But—" Why was she letting him take over the decisions? Where to get water. Turning on the heater. Now the hotel. "Joe, I want to drive all night. It's my—"
"You'll hit a cow. Or a bus." He pulled off the road, turned and suddenly they were bumping along a gravel road towards a small settlement. "You've seen enough livestock to know the cows run loose in this country. How are you going to spot them at night? I can tell you that you won't always find them in your headlights in time to avoid hitting them. If that's not bad enough, the busses roar along these highways at a terrible rate. They know damned well there's no one else on the roads after dark and they don't mind taking up the whole road."
He stopped outside a sprawling building. They'd found some kind of town, or at least a scattering of buildings. Joe turned the key off and the engine fell silent. With the wind gone, she could hear the sounds of laughter from somewhere nearby.
He said flatly, "Nobody travels at night on the Baja. Nobody sane. It's suicide."
She thought of the busses, of the curvas peligrosas. She shuddered, knowing that you only had to add a cow or two and she could easily find herself at the bottom of one of those cliffs.
"Is this a hotel?" It looked a bit like one, although she couldn't see a sign. She wondered if a room would have a shower. If she couldn't jump in the ocean, a shower would be a heavenly alternative.
Joe leaned back in the driver's seat and released his seat belt. The belt disturbed the mat of his chest hair as it retracted. He turned and retrieved his shirt from the back seat. She told herself she was glad to see his broad, naked chest covered.
He said, "A reasonable hotel. Comfortable enough, not expensive." He twisted his shoulders, settled the shirt down over his chest. "Get yourself a room for the night. I'll sleep in the car."
Why? Had she misjudged him? He was a drifter, but she hadn't thought he would do anything like steal her car or hit her over the head or rape her in the middle of nowhere.
He had leaned his head back and closed his eyes. She tried to see something in the lines of his face. "Joe, do they speak English in there?"
"I doubt it." He grinned, the eyelids remaining closed. She saw him shift his shoulders as if they were stiff from all the driving.
She bit out angrily, "I don't know how to ask for a hotel room in Spanish." What was the word for room? Right now she felt too exhausted to deal with sign language and strange-sounding words. He was quiet, still. She saw his fingers curl around the steering wheel. "Joe?"
His words were very deliberately harsh. "Lady, I'm not your baby-sitter. You came down here alone for some crazy reason. If you don't know the language you should take a plane, book a tour or something. Only a fool would drive the Baja frontier alone with no Spanish."
He opened the door and unfolded himself, stretching as he stood. Then he slammed the door and walked away, not looking back, going heaven knew where. And, damn it! He had her car keys! Did he expect her to chase after him, pleading and acting like the dizzy blonde female he seemed to have decided she was?
She wouldn't do it. She really didn't care very much whether he took the car or not. She was not capable of the energy required to go after him. Lucky he hadn't given in when she suggested driving all night. She felt as if a steamroller had hit her, or a blast furnace. Right now the idea of a shower and a real bed took precedence over everything else.
She got out and locked the car door. Then she detached the little magnetic holder with her spare keys in it from under the front bumper and got her suitcase out of the trunk. Spanish or not, she would get herself a room.
Actually, it was easier than she had thought. The man she found in the office did not speak English, but within ten minutes she was inside a very plain, very clean room with two hard beds. She tried both beds, decided the wider one was more comfortable.
She had her suitcase open on the narrower bed and was unpacking the necessities for a wash in the tiny bathroom when someone knocked on the door. What was it about that brief rapping that reminded her of Joe? No wasted motion. No extra sounds.
She opened the door. He wasn't leaning against the doorjamb, but he looked tired, as if he wanted to. His face was tense, strained. He smiled at her, but it was a weak effort. He seemed almost nervous as he pushed his hair back. It seemed he wasn't going to talk, just stand there.
"Hi," said Dinah.
He grimaced and said, "Look, I'm sorry."
She frowned at him, but he looked terribly tired. She didn't know why that should touch her somewhere near her heart, but she felt soft and weak, had to fight an overwhelming urge to touch his cheek, to smooth the disturbed lines from his forehead.
She made herself shrug, made her voice indifferent. "I did all right without you. I got a room."
She turned away. He might as well come in. A car in the middle of nowhere or a hotel room, it didn't seem to make much difference. This hotel room was very bare and not at all romantic. She walked across and sat down beside her suitcase.
He didn't comment on her accomplishment in getting a room without him. She had felt proud of managing to communicate without the help of a common language. Now it seemed a trivial victory. "The man knew I wanted a room. After all, if you run a hotel and some woman comes through the door with a suitcase, you're not going to try to sell her a stereo, are you?"
He didn't say anything.
She said dully, "We even managed to communicate about the money." Why didn't he talk? Not that he was a chatty man, but up until now he'd been willing to at least say the odd word. "I'm not helpless, you know. I didn't ask you to help me. It was your idea, and those Mexicans. I'd have done fine on my own."
Would she? The car had needed water, and it would have taken her a long time to figure that out with the overflow reservoir full. Where would she have found water in the desert?
He didn't close the door. She thought he didn't even realize it was open. He said, "Of course you're not helpless."
His eyes were on the empty bed like the eyes of a man dreaming about heaven. Why hadn't he wanted to take a hotel room? Was he that short of money? He might be. He'd been hitching rides, and hadn't she heard that travelling by bus in Mexico was incredibly cheap? So he hadn't been able to afford a bus.
"Does the room have a shower?" he asked.
"Yes, but there aren't any towels." She'd been dreaming about a shower, had been trying to find out how to ask for towels in her phrase book when he knocked on the door.
"They don't usually put them in the rooms." He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. "You have to ask. I'll get them for you." She opened her lips to protest and he said in a low voice, "I was having a fit of temper, OK. I know you're not helpless, and I'm sure you'd get yourself from here to Timbuktu in one piece if you decided you wanted to."
She found her eyes caught in his. Most men assumed she wanted to be looked after, like Warren with his ridiculous conviction that she couldn't travel without a man. Joe looked at her as if he knew her all the way through. Was she transparent to him? Was it an illusion, the feeling that she knew him from some other time, some other life?
"I have to get to La Paz," she said quietly. "It's not just a vacation. Somebody needs my help, and I had to come."
He drew in a deep breath, seemed ready to say something, then swallowed the words. He muttered something in Spanish as he turned away and started walking out of the room.
"Where are you going now?" She followed him to the door. "Why are you leaving?" So, all right, he left when complications developed, but she'd like someone to show her a complication. She had been getting ready to ask his advice on how to find Cathy. He seemed to know the ropes in this country, and
she had known all along that she would need to find someone to help her. She wasn't going to ask for active help, just advice, for heaven's sake!
But there was only his back, walking away across the courtyard towards the road.
"Joe?" He stopped, didn't look back and her voice was more weary than she realized when she asked, "Do you ever stick around to finish off a conversation? You took off in the car when we—and now—"
Damn! He was walking on. He was walking away, might never come back for all she knew. It shouldn't matter. He was nothing, nobody. A drifter. Not a man she should ever think about, and definitely not one that seemed to want to think about her. She slammed the door he hadn't bothered to close and rummaged in her suitcase for the face cloth and hand towel she thought she might have packed.
Part of her understood. She didn't know how he had been hurt, what he was running from, but she knew about running. She remembered that day, ten years ago, the day she stopped running. Standing in Leo's living room after he had driven her to his house, she'd swung on him.
"I don't need anyone. I don't need you. I don't need anywhere. I bloody don't want any more damned family life! You gave me your number and I just thought I'd call and say hello." She'd swallowed fear of the outside and had gritted, "So I said hello, and now I'm going."
Luckily she hadn't really walked back out that door, because that night her life had turned from running into building, but she still understood about running. Maybe that was why Joe bothered her so much. He would have his own story, his own reasons for the closed look on his face, but the feelings were the same. She had been running, she supposed, where Joe seemed to be just rambling, but it came to the same thing. Only she'd had the sense to stop and reach for someone who could help, while Joe might still be out there on his boat, alone, a hundred years from now.
She locked the door that she had closed, shutting him out of her mind. She had no room for anyone but Cathy right now.
The hot water was not exactly hot. It ran tepid and not very plentiful. She pulled the skimpy shower curtain and stood under the water, soaping herself and rinsing off the dust and sweat slowly, twisting this way and that to get the water on the right places. She hadn't been able to find her shampoo in the suitcase, must have left it in the hotel back in San Diego. She washed her hair using bar soap, needing to feel it clean and smooth before she slept.
She slicked the moisture off her body with her hands, hoping that she could get reasonably dry with one small hand towel. If not, she was sure she would air-dry in minutes. It was so warm. She pushed the curtain aside and—
There were two bath towels folded on the edge of the bathroom sink. She craned her head around the curtain. The bathroom door was closed. She hadn't closed it. There hadn't seemed any need when she was alone in the locked hotel room.
She padded across the bathroom floor in her wet feet, reaching for the door in case there was someone out there still, someone who might walk in on her. But there was no lock, only an ordinary latch. And someone had already walked in, had put the towels on the sink and closed the door. She picked up a towel and wrapped her hair in it, then started rubbing her skin dry with the other towel.
The hotel man? Surely he wouldn't walk right into the bathroom when she was showering? Wouldn't he knock?
Was there someone out there?
She held the towel in front of her. It was thin and small for a bath towel. It could not possibly cover both her front and back at the same time. She held it as best she could and opened the door a crack.
"Is there someone out there?"
Silence. She strained her ears. The sound of music from somewhere outside. Another sound that might be the ocean. Were they near the ocean? Her clothes were out there, lying on the bed, and she didn't feel alone.
"Hello? Who's there."
A sound like breathing.
She swallowed, got a better grip on her towel and twisted her head around the door to see into the room. It was no good. She couldn't see into the room without putting her undressed self into view. She glanced down and saw that she was covered, but anyone looking would know there was nothing behind the towel, nothing covering her naked back and buttocks.
The man who had rented her the room had seemed polite and courteous. She was a good judge of character and she was certain she was not wrong about him. It could be Joe. She swallowed and felt the conviction that it was Joe. He had come back, whether to apologize or to get into another argument she had no idea, but whichever it was—
Whatever his reason for being here, she was going to send him right back out the door! He wanted to sleep in the car and he was darned well going to sleep in the bloody car or pay for his own room.
Did he have money for a room? She shoved that thought away. He was a capable man. If he was short of money he could go into business fixing radiators or something. It wasn't her problem. She took a deep breath, got rid of any friendly thoughts towards Joe-the-drifter, and strode out into the room.
"Look, this is my room and I—"
He was lying on the bed, on her bed, the one without the lumps. His eyes were closed, his arms crossed over his naked chest. He had taken off his shirt, and his shoes and socks. She watched as he drew in a deep breath. She saw the muscles of his chest expand and flex as his lungs filled. Then he turned, thrusting out one leg in an unconscious move for comfort. The denim of his jeans pulled tight, exposing his masculine shape.
Dinah shuddered, found her tongue licking her lips. Here she was, twenty-six years old, not even interested in the man, and the sight of his half-naked body was sending her heart wild, her breath choking in her chest. She bit her lip and tiptoed into the room, grabbed her clothes out of the suitcase and ducked back into the bathroom.
At least he'd left his jeans on.
Chapter Four
Dinah woke to the sound of water.
Thin blankets over her, twisted because the night had been too hot. The smell of something spicy coming through an open window. The sound of water and a man humming tunelessly.
The hotel room. A village she didn't even know the name of, somewhere in Baja California. Mexico. She breathed deeply, taking in the smell of someone's breakfast from outside. It smelled good. Exotic and strange, but good. The water stopped and she opened her eyes then. There was no one on that other bed, so it was Joe in the shower, Joe who couldn't hold a tune but seemed to enjoy trying as he showered.
Her suitcase was where she had left it on the floor. She'd been angry last night, partly because he'd had the nerve to come back and fall asleep as if she would welcome him; partly because he'd taken the comfortable bed. Damn it! She was the one who had paid for the hotel room!
She had packed only one sundress. It was lying at the bottom of the suitcase, wrinkled and crushed. She pulled off the oversized T-shirt she'd slept in and replaced it with the dress. It wasn't the kind of dress you could wear a bra with, but it was loose enough that maybe the soft thrust of her breasts wouldn't be too obvious. The important thing was to stay cool. No more blue jeans. They were killers in the heat.
She had her suitcase done up and was carrying it to the door when he came out. He still didn't have a shirt on. She kept her eyes away from the damp curl of hair on his chest, found herself looking down at the floor. Damn! What was it about the man! There was even something erotic about his bare feet spread out on the hard floor, the line of fair hair on their tops.
He said, "Morning," hardly looking at her. He was no more talkative than he'd been the day before. He scratched the damp hair on his chest absently and she could smell the clean soapy freshness of him, mixed with something musky and intimate, his personal scent.
She said "Morning," trying to be as curt as Joe but somehow it didn't work and she was grinning at him. "I thought you were going to sleep in the car."
"Yeah, me too, but that bed looked pretty tempting." He came across the room and she had to force herself not to back up. What was it about this man that she found so incredibly masculine
? He was good looking, but not unusually so; muscular, but probably not more so than any husky lumberjack.
She picked up her suitcase, concentrated on looking around the room for anything she had missed. "I locked the door," she said deliberately. "Last night. I locked the door before I took my shower."
"It wasn't much of a lock."
She glanced at it and supposed that if you know about locks, you could open it. Lord knew what kind of skills the man had picked up. It didn't seem worth making an issue of. It wasn't as if he'd done her any harm, just used the bed she would have liked to have, although she had an uneasy fantasy that he might have stood at the bathroom door, looking at her naked silhouette through the shower curtain.
"Well, I'm going." With the suitcase in her hand, her words seemed ridiculously unnecessary. "I'll put the suitcase in the car and then try to find breakfast. I can smell something pretty good out there."
Outside, she discovered that those appetizing smells were coming from a taco stand across the street. She bought a burrito, using sign language and the big Mexican coins, then stood eating a spicy, warm breakfast that tasted better than anything she could remember eating in years.
Joe joined her and devoured three of the steaming tacos. The Mexican man standing beside Dinah asked Joe a question and she listened as they talked, catching something about La Paz and nothing else. Then the Mexican left, smiling widely at Dinah, and she was left alone with Joe.
"At least you put your shirt on," she murmured. The shirt was another T-shirt, somewhat less tattered than yesterday's. It looked good on him, the cotton knit pulling tight across his muscular chest. She tried to tell herself she didn't care what he looked like. He'd put on sandals, too, and she wondered again how his bare feet could seem sensual when they were a little bony and certainly had no objective claim to beauty.
He said, "It's not acceptable for a man to go around bare-chested in Mexico, unless he's at the beach."
"I didn't think you'd care what people thought."
So Much for Dreams Page 5