She should say something, shouldn’t she? Something that wouldn’t make her seem like someone totally inept? Something comforting. Something sympathetic. Damn, say something!
“I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. You’re not. You didn’t even know her.”
This time she heard the pain behind the flat tone. And it stabbed at her, in a way she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Words tumbled out.
“You’re right. I was going to say I’m sorry. For her, she was obviously young. But more for you. There’s a lot of love in that picture, and it had to be hard to lose it.”
He stared at her. She held his gaze as long as she could, but it was too intense, and as her own words echoed in her head they started to sound presumptuous. For just as she knew nothing about that kind of love between a man and woman, she knew nothing about losing it.
She did, however, know a great deal about loss.
Even as she thought it, he startled her by asking, “Who died on you?”
Caught off guard, she answered, “A friend.”
“What about family?”
Surprising herself, she answered again. “They’re alive. But they’re as lost to me as if they had died.”
He studied her for a moment, so intently she wished she hadn’t said anything. And when he spoke again, the cold, flat tone was gone, replaced by something much, much kinder. “Your grandparents?”
He was too perceptive. And apparently didn’t forget anything. She bit her lip fiercely.
When she didn’t answer, he asked quietly, “There’s no fixing it?”
Interesting—and she supposed to be expected—that his first thought was about fixing. She only wished it were that simple, a matter of going back, making what amends she could, and taking back the one good, clean part of her life.
“No.”
“Your fault?” She stiffened. It was true, but that didn’t mean she liked him saying so. Or being perceptive enough to realize it. At her stare, he shrugged. “If it was theirs, you wouldn’t be missing them enough to call them lost to you with such pain.”
That easily he’d cut to the heart of it. And understood.
I’ve got a bit of a knack with people. . .
Yes. Yes, he did.
She glanced once more around the comfortable room. Had he lived here with her, the woman who looked at him with such love? Or had the living arrangements with his sister happened after her death? Had some long, painful illness put that gray at his temples, or had it been the shock of instant loss?
He’d been born and raised in Texas. He had a life here in Whiskey River, clearly a solid one. There was no way he was connected to what she’d escaped. Just no way. Still, caution won out when she finally answered him.
“It is my fault. All of it. I had good intentions, but made some. . .bad decisions, choices. It’s taken me a long time to get out from under some of them.”
“And the rest?”
She couldn’t. She just couldn’t talk about the things she would never be out from under. “I’m still trying.”
He smiled than, and he was once more the guy who’d been willing to help a stranger. “That’s all we can do, isn’t it? Keep trying.”
“A little success now and then would be nice.”
“It happens.” He nodded toward the book she’d looked at, the one signed with obvious feeling by the writer even she knew was world-famous. “By all rights, he should have been dead long ago. And yet he’s safe now, and very, very happy.”
The words sparked an emotion inside her that it took her a moment to recognize. Hope. That silly, foolish feeling she’d been named for. There would be no refuge for her, here or anywhere else. She didn’t dare risk it. Because if she did, someone else would pay the price. Again.
Chapter Six
“True’s a good guy,” the solid, gray-haired checker in the drug store said. “Straight arrow as they come. Not to mention eligible. I think every woman in town has her eye on him.”
Hardly a surprise, Hope thought. What was a surprise, to her at least, was that so far in this visit to downtown Whiskey River she’d been met with polite curiosity, but none of the wariness she’d gotten used to on her travels. Probably because she was dressed in normal clothes now, clean and hole-free.
The bigger surprise had been the ridiculous urge that had had her standing in the makeup section, actually considering spending some of her precious stash on something, anything, to make her feel more attractive. To make her not look like a kid.
To who? Him? What does it matter what you look like when you’ll be gone in a few days?
The man behind her in line spoke. “Never mind that. If anything needs doing in Whiskey River, True’s the man you call. He’ll get it done.”
A woman pondering the display of candy at the checkout turned her head to agree. “He’s a man of his word, and as honest as the day is long.”
Interesting, she thought, considering she hadn’t asked. Apparently just being seen with True Mahan brought on this wave of endorsements.
They were all looking at her, and she felt oddly compelled to say something. Anything. “He seems. . .nice.”
The woman with a candy bar now in her hand laughed. “He is, but honey, if that’s all you see you need your eyes checked.”
Hope felt her cheeks heat. She lowered her eyes to the box she held, which thankfully no one had even blinked at.
Candy bar lady was studying her now. “We all yearn after him, even us happily married types.” The man behind her gave a snort, but with a smile. “Something about a man with that sadness in his eyes. . .”
When the checker spoke again, Hope didn’t think she imagined the warning in her voice as she shifted her gaze to her. “It’s nice to see him with someone after all this time, but no one in Whiskey River would like to see him hurt. That boy’s been through enough.”
With someone. She was a little stunned at how that assumption made her feel, and hastened to dispel the sensation. “Me? I’m just a. . .stray he picked up and helped. Next week it’ll probably be a dog.”
She escaped with her small shopping bag, and nearly ran into True coming in.
“Get what you need?” he asked, making a U-turn and exiting with her.
“Yes. Thank you.” Her mouth twisted slightly. “I’ll add the gas to the tab.” She’d had enough for her purchase, but it would have been a long walk on a leg that still wasn’t quite happy.
“I told you—”
“I know. No problem. You had to come to town anyway. Although I doubt normally to buy. . .these.”
He glanced at the bag. She knew the label on the box of tampons was visible through the translucent plastic.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said, easily enough. And not in the least embarrassed. But then, the man had been married. She wondered how long they’d had, that golden couple in the photo, before life reared up one of its uglier heads and destroyed them. She hastened to think of something else, anything else to ask before she let that question slip out; she seemed to have lost the governor on her curiosity since she’d met this man.
She glanced back into the store. “You have a lot of friends here.”
He gave a half-shrug. “Lived here all my life.”
“And apparently you mean what you say.”
“I expect to be held to my words, yes.”
“By who?”
“Me, if no one else.”
She wondered if he realized how rare that was. A man who held himself to his own promises. Not needing the pressure of others, not needing a legal contract, just his word and his own. . .what? Code? Honor? Whatever it was, there hadn’t been much of it among the males in her life except for her grandfather.
“I need to stop at the hardware store,” he said as they neared his truck. “Anything else you need to pick up? There’s a clothing store over on—”
“No,” she said quickly, before the idea of some actual new clothes settled in her mind. �
�This is all I need. And my own clothes, when they’re dry. Thank you.”
She wondered if that had sounded as stiff and choppy to him as it had to her. And tried to remember the last time she’d ever thanked someone so much.
Because you haven’t had much to thank anyone for?
That was probably true. But she had a great deal to thank this man for. Not the least of which was not being the kind of man who would expect the kind of payment many others did, sometimes for something as simple as giving someone a ride.
Which for some reason made her think of old Bill, the kindly, almost grandfatherly trucker who had picked her up outside of Flagstaff and given her a lift all the way to Albuquerque. He’d even let her rest in the sleeper portion of his cab while he drove. He was headed home after this run, he’d told her, and glad of it. He missed his Mary, he’d said.
Best woman I’ve ever known. I’d be nothing without her.
That he could say that after the forty years he said they’d been together had left Hope feeling a kind of awe. And when he’d let her off in New Mexico, he’d seemed honestly worried about her. So much that she worried about him; these days even picking up a woman could be dangerous. He’d laughed and told her he was a better judge of character than that. For instance, he’d known right away she was just in trouble, not a troublemaker.
She later found out how much he’d been worried—and how generous his soul—when she found a hundred dollars in twenties rolled up in her jacket pocket. That cash had gotten her to the Texas border.
So maybe she’d been a bit hasty about the men she’d encountered. Maybe that last one had soured her outlook a bit.
When they arrived at the hardware store, she went in with him. She wasn’t even sure why. Maybe curious to see how he was received here, in what was probably a place very familiar with him. Or maybe because she wanted to see what he was like when focused on his work. Or maybe she had absolutely no idea.
He was hailed immediately by the man at the register and a woman in the blue shirt with the store’s name and logo on the chest, and she heard his name called out even from a couple of customers. With liking from all.
She was looking with some longing at a warm looking jacket—one that didn’t smell like it had been used to wipe a barroom floor—when True came up behind her.
“They probably have one that would fit you better.”
It didn’t take much willpower to turn away from the rack; one glance at the price tag took care of that. “No point. It’ll be too warm for it soon, and it’d be too heavy to lug around.”
He didn’t say much after that until he’d finished his business—ordering in some lumber, paint, and getting the number of a glazier for windows, so she guess this was related to the house she’d been in—and they were back in the truck.
“This is a nice town,” he said as he started the engine. “Even fun sometimes.”
“Floating whiskey barrels down the river?”
“Among other things. Maybe you should stick around for a while. Take a break from. . .your travels.”
The burst of longing that shot through her at his words startled her. “I can’t,” she said, and the sudden tightness of her throat made it barely a whisper.
He was quiet for a moment, maneuvering out of the parking lot. Then he glanced at her.
“So you plan on hitting the road again right away?” His tone was so neutral she knew it was intentional.
“It’s what I do,” she said in the same kind of tone.
“But is it what you want?” She smothered a laugh. “So the idea of doing what you want is laughable?”
“Pretty much.” God, I sound bitter. I should get out of here before it rubs off on him.
It hit her then that he had as much reason to be bitter as she had. He’d lost someone he’d obviously loved dearly. And yet he was not. His first instinct, when confronted with someone in trouble, was to help. Once, that might have been said of her, too—in fact it was what had gotten her into this mess—but for a very long time she’d thought of nothing but herself. Trying to survive, to keep moving and staying alive.
“Did you have a job?”
“Yes,” she said, rather defiantly; she might be an idiot, and have made some really bad choices, but she wasn’t a slacker.
“Doing what?”
She hesitated. “Office work,” she finally said, figuring that was vague enough, and would give him no way to track down her grandfather’s accounting business, where she had managed the office. And not quite sure why she was answering at all.
They pulled back into his driveway. He stopped the car, turned off the engine, then shifted in his seat to look at her.
“What happened to you?”
He said it quietly, and so gently the whole story bubbled up inside her, wanting to be spoken for the first time. She bit it back. She couldn’t do it, no matter how much she might want to. He didn’t know what he was asking, what might come down on him if he were to get sucked into her mess. And after everything she’d heard about him today, she did not want that to happen.
He just waited. Saying nothing, just looking at her with those eyes, that steady gaze, until the pressure was too much and she had to say something. And what came out was, in its shortest form, probably the whole story.
“A serious mix of foolishness and wrong place, wrong time.”
“Did you break any laws?”
Her mouth twisted wryly. “Not unless they’ve made stupid illegal.”
“In that case, I know an awful lot of people who should be in jail,” he said in a tone that matched her expression. “Hurt anyone?”
She had to look away from him then. She stared at the dash of the truck, at the clipboard where he’d fastened the receipt from the hardware store. Finally she answered.
“Directly or physically, no.”
“But someone got hurt. That friend?”
She let out a long, compressed breath. Tried to reassemble her armor of smart-assery. “If I’d known this ride was going to be so expensive I would have walked.”
“This isn’t for the ride.”
She turned her head to look at him. He was still watching her in that way that seemed to unnerve her. “Then what’s with the string of questions?”
His mouth quirked, and she could only describe his expression as rueful. “I think it’s a job interview.”
Chapter Seven
“It would only be temporary.”
Hope stared at him. The man was crazy. There was no other explanation.
“You okay with computers, scanners, that kind of thing? My sister wants to digitize our old records, but she hasn’t had time.”
“I. . .yes.” It had been a while now, but she’d been reasonably literate, and she could learn quickly. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was trying to figure out why she was even taking this seriously.
“Can’t pay a ton, either, maybe five hundred a week for a couple of weeks’ work, but. . .it might help.”
It had been a very long time since she’d seen that kind of money, let alone had it in her pocket. She stared at him. “Why are you doing this?”
He shrugged. He did a lot of that, she’d noticed. Was it because nothing seriously bothered him, or because that’s what he wanted people to think? As someone who’d now had a lot of practice in keeping up a front, she thought she recognized the signs.
“Seems like you need. . .running money,” he finally said.
She didn’t like the way that sounded. Or maybe it was the way he looked at her when he said it.
Stop it! What does it matter what this near-stranger thinks of you?
Except he didn’t really feel like a stranger. And it wasn’t just the annoying fact that she kept looking at his eyes, at the striking color of them, and the eyelashes that were, rather unfairly, longer and thicker than her own. Or that she felt a pang at the bits of gray hair at his temple, thinking they were like a badge of honor, hard-earned. Or that she liked just watching hi
m move, with that easy, long-limbed grace.
Oh, no. You’ve got no room for that kind of thing.
But a thousand dollars would carry her a long, long way. Maybe even pay for a new identity, a prospect she’d been considering for some time now. She’d used different names in different places, but she’d never stayed long enough to find someone to fake papers for her, because that cost money and what she had went for just enough food to keep going.
“I’d need cash.” She blinked, startled that she’d said it aloud.
“I figured,” he said. “You can borrow my guest room, or maybe my sister’s, but you’d have to take that up with her. I’ll throw in a meal a day here,” he added, “if you don’t mind very basic.”
For some reason that threw her even more than the idea of staying under his roof. “You’d. . .cook?”
He laughed. “I don’t cook. I fix. Grill some meat, nuke some veggies, maybe toss a salad. That’s about the extent of my culinary repertoire.”
I fix.
She had the feeling those words were at the core of who this man was, from the livelihood he’d carved out to picking up strays. Strays he offered first aid, food, and a roof?
A sudden ripple of. . .something rolled over her. A longing, a wishing she’d thought she’d banished long ago.
Okay, you’re attracted to him. No reason to go all cow-eyed. Isn’t that what they’d say here in Texas? Be logical. You do need the money. And it sounds like something you could do. Unless his sister is an ogre.
“Have you even mentioned this to your sister?”
The look on his face gave her the answer. But then the shrug again. “She’ll be okay with it.”
She had a feeling there was a silent “eventually” attached to that one. “She’s used to you bringing home strays?”
His expression changed to something almost bemused. “No. No, she’s not. I don’t, as a rule. I mean, I see to them, but I don’t. . .bring them home.” Then he seemed to snap out of it. Gave her a pointed look. “But I’ve never come across a human one before.”
Whiskey River Runaway (Whiskey River Series Book 2) Page 4