And then he told himself all over again, Jimmy Joe Starr, she’s not your concern.
He got the doors unlocked, then went around to help her into the passenger side, trying not to let out most of the warmth in the process. He had to almost lift her up the two high steps and into the cab, and once inside it seemed a natural thing to leave his arms where they were and just go on holding her. She didn’t seem to mind, which surprised him some. Then again, he thought, maybe she was so cold she would have been willing to hug a grizzly bear for the heat. Shoot, that coat she was wearing was so thin it wasn’t worth a nickel in weather like this. But then, what could he expect from somebody from California?
And again he told himself, Jimmy Joe, she’s not your concern.
It was warm and close in the cab, and after a minute or two she pulled away from him, giving herself a little shake, like someone throwing off a blanket. Neither of them said anything, although Jimmy Joe did sort of cough and mutter, “’Scuse me,” as he moved past her to turn on the light in the steeper.
The light wasn’t kind to her. He thought about what she’d told him, about how she’d been in junior high when he was still in diapers, and he still didn’t believe it. He still thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on in his life, but now for some reason it made his throat ache to look at her. Seeing her like this, so pale and drawn, and the glassy look of pain in her eyes, all he wanted to do was make her feel better.
And he told himself, Jimmy Joe, she’s still none of your concern.
But this time from another part of his being a whole new voice answered back, Yeah, she is.
Although his overriding urge was to put his arms back around her and hug her some more, he didn’t give in to it, limiting himself to a guiding touch on her elbow while he held back the partitioning curtain. “There you go,” he said gruffly. “Climb right on up there, now. Pull back the covers if you want to. Be warmer that way.”
“Thanks.” She sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him, and he could see she was beginning to feel uneasy about him being there. “I’ll be fine.”
He knew she was waiting for him to go. He knew he ought to. But that new voice inside him had other ideas, and he wasn’t all that surprised to hear himself say, with a firm, no-nonsense shake of his head, “I’m gonna just stay and make sure you’re settled before I go.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Her voice sounded breathy. “I’ll be all right now. Honest.”
Honest… She sounded just like a little girl when she said that, which made him smile. “Ma‘am,” he said as he put his hands on her shoulders, “I don’t intend on goin’ anywhere until I know you’re resting, y’hear? Just lie right on down there, now.” And as gently as he knew how, he eased her over so she was lying on her side with her knees pulled up against her belly and her head resting on her folded-up arm. “That’s the way. There you go. How’s that?”
She flashed him one bright, angry look that cheered him considerably, then closed her eyes without answering. He could tell by the way she was breathing through her nose-in slow, deep breaths-that she was hurting.
It came to him suddenly, gleaned from memories of suffering through two pregnancies with J.J.’s mama, what her problem might be. “Your back achin’?” he asked, sitting beside her on the very edge of the bed. She nodded, just too plain miserable to talk. “Yeah…” he said softly. “That’s what I thought.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, overcoming a powerful urge to reach beyond it, just to smooth the hair back from her face. With that tenderness simmering inside him, he said, “Ma‘am, why don’t you turn over on your other side? What I’m gon’ do is rub your back a little. Make you feel a whole lot better, help you relax. Okay? Come on, now… Roll on over.”
Instead of doing what he’d told her, she suddenly squinched up her face without opening her eyes, as if she’d felt a sharp pain, and said in a sulky voice, “Do you have to keep calling me ma’am?”
That made him grin, but her eyes were closed so he didn’t have to worry about her seeing it, and thanks to all those phone conversations with J.J. he knew how to keep it from showing up in his voice. “Sorry about that,” he said, solemn as a judge. “I don’t mean anythin’ personal by it. It’s just a habit-shoot, it’s probably in my genes.”
“Well, it makes me feel really old.”
Now he did chuckle, resisting again the urge to touch her face, just to run his fingertips lightly across the ivory curve of her forehead, which, as far as he could see, in spite of her concern, was completely unmarred by any wrinkles. “You have to understand, it’s got nothin’ to do with how old you are, just the fact that you’re female.”
Opening her eyes about halfway, she studied him from under her lashes. “You call your mom ma’am?”
“Oh, you bet.”
“Uh-hmm. Your sister?”
“Well, now…”
“Girlfriend?”
He wanted to laugh, now that he thought he knew where she was headed. “No, don’t believe I would-if I had one.”
She chewed on that for a moment or two, then said slowly, “The waitress in there-you called her ma’am. Would you have done that if she was nineteen?”
“Sure would. Yes, ma’am.”
“So…it’s a matter of respect.” She said it like, “Aha!”
“That’s right.” But he was beginning to feel just a little uneasy, wondering if he knew after all what she was getting at.
“So…you don’t respect your sister or your girlfriend?”
Well, she had him there. He rubbed the back of his neck while he thought about it, then said, “It’s kind of hard to explain-especially since I don’t believe I was ever called upon to try to before. You grow up in the South, it’s just somethin’ you take for granted, like grits for breakfast. But I guess what it is, it’s respect. But it’s more like-it’s formal, you know? You don’t use it when it’s personal, like with your friends, or your close kin-” he paused to smile before he said it “-unless they’re older.”
“Let me get this straight.” A little pleat of concentration puckered the skin between her eyebrows, but her voice had grown drowsy and he could see that the warmth in the truck, the lateness of the hour and her tiredness were beginning to have their way with her. “You can’t stop calling me ma’am because you don’t know me well enough.”
“Yeah, I guess that’d be about right.”
“But you know me well enough to rub my back?”
So that was it. Again that tenderness wafted through him like a warm breeze over damp skin, stirring shivers of laughter that felt like goose bumps inside. Keeping it soft so as not to rile her he murmured, “Okay, Marybell, I’ll make you a deat-you quit arguin’ and roll on over there, and I’ll quit callin’ you ma’am. How’s that? Deal?”
“Deal,” she whispered.
It was only after he’d helped her through the ponderous process of rolling over and she was once more settled on her side, this time facing away from him, that a tiny echo in her head said incredulously, Marybell?
But then she felt the warm weight of his hand on her lower back, on the exact spot that ached so awfully, and a firm, circling pressure that felt so wonderful she forgot everything else; so wonderful she almost wept with the sheer relief it brought her.
“Oh…God,” she groaned, “how did you know?”
Jimmy Joe’s voice was soft and oddly muffled, as if she were hearing him through a layer of fur. “Oh, I’ve done this for J.J.’s mama a time or two. It’s been awhile, but I guess you don’t forget how.”
“Lucky,” Mirabella muttered with a sigh. “How’d I get through eight months without you?”
A chuckle undulated along her auditory nerves like ripples in black velvet.
Chapter 5
“You got one of those new anteaters? Man, that is one ugly truck. ” “Bet you wish you had one as ugly. ”
I-40-New Mexico
Mirabella was hearing vo
ices. Mostly men’s voices, but now and then a woman’s, too-strange voices, mumbly and scratchy at the same time, sometimes far away and crackly, other times loud and clear, as if whoever it was talking was standing right next to her. At first she ignored them, hearing but not really registering the sounds, the way you do when you fall asleep with the TV or radio on. Gradually, though, words began to filter into her consciousness, then string together in a way that made some kind of sense.
“East a’ Tucumcari.”
“Couple a‘ county mounties come through here ’while ago with their lights on. Don‘ know where they was goin, but they was hurryin’. ”
“Dry and dusty to the Texas line.”
“They gonna open ‘er up sometime fore Christmas, or what?”
“Uh…they’re sayin‘ maybe noon, that’s what I heard.”
“One helluva mess. Got more’n a hunnerd accidents ‘tween here and Amarillo. Got rigs off to the side, four-wheelers ever’where… ”
“Where’n hell they keepin‘ the snowplows?”
“Ah, hell, Texas don’t waste snowplows on the Panhandle…”
Along with a return of familiar discomforts, full awareness brought the realization that, yes, she was in a bed in an honest-to-God truck, a huge blue eighteen-wheeler belonging to one Jimmy Joe Starr, a genuine Georgia redneck who happened to have healing hands and dimples and a smile like an angel’s, assuming the angel spoke with a Southern accent and looked like a young Robert Redford.
And what she was listening to wasn’t a TV, but a CB radio. Which meant, since she hadn’t heard a peep out of it last night, that Jimmy Joe must have turned it on. And since she couldn’t imagine he would turn it on without a reason, that meant he must be listening to it. Out there, right now. He was here in the truck with her, just beyond the curtain.
That thought zapped through her with a tingle that must have been adrenaline, because she felt the way you do when you’ve been jolted awake too suddenly-weak and trembly, heart beating way too fast. She was lying there blinking, thinking about that, trying to make sense of it and feeling scared and disoriented, when the reason for all her inner turmoil stuck his hand through the crack at the edge of the curtain and knocked on the side of the sleeper.
“Hey,” he called softly, “you awake in there?”
“Yeah, I’m up,” she called back in a husky, too-eager voice that betrayed that for the lie it was, struggling to get her feet around so she could at least make a stab at sitting up.
“Mornin’.” The curtain was pulled back and Jimmy Joe’s face appeared like a ray of sunshine. “How you doin’?”
“Okay,” she responded airlessly; in her present position even sarcasm was beyond her.
He drew a small plastic bottle from a pocket in the sleeveless, down-filled nylon vest he was wearing over his Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirt and held it out to her. “Thought you could do with an eye-opener. Get your blood sugar pumpin’.” He was wearing his heart-melting smile, which Mirabella, not being a morning person even at the best of times, was in no mood to appreciate.
“I don’t know where I’d put it,” she muttered, eyeing the orange juice with revulsion. She felt like a dead whale that had lain out in the sun too long-in other words just about ready to explode. Plus she’d slept with her contacts in, so her eyes felt like two tennis balls, and her tongue was so furry she knew she must have a horrendous case of morning breath. The last thing she wanted was a sexy, adorable guy anywhere within ten yards of her, so she was not thrilled when Jimmy Joe plunked himself down beside her, completely ignoring warning signs that were usually sufficient to send close family members diving for the nearest cover.
“Just a sip,” he said, as if he were addressing a three-year old. “Then I’ll walk you in so you can wash up, if you want. Come on, now-upsy-daisy.”
How does he do it? she wondered as, groaning, she allowed him to hoist her upright. Why do I let him do it-treat me like a contrary child, or worse, a helpless female? In her former life she would have flayed alive any man, no matter how attractive and charming, who’d dared to try such tactics with her. She’d spent most of her life perfecting the defenses and signals to ensure that those who did try were few and far between. So what was it about this man?
She sipped orange juice on autopilot while her analytical mind chewed on that anomaly. She knew it couldn’t just be his kind eyes and sleepy little-boy smile; she’d never been vulnerable to that sort of thing, and in fact usually found extremely handsome men to be pretty much of a turnoff. More likely, she thought, it had something to do with him being way too young for her, and therefore no threat to her sexually-rather like a lioness’s tolerance of the immature males in her pride. That, combined with her own vulnerability in her present condition, and the uniqueness of the circumstances.
Yes, she thought, satisfied with her conclusions. That would explain it.
It did cross her mind that she just might have come up against a man with a will equal to her own, but she rejected that idea. As far as Mirabella was concerned, such a man did not exist.
How does she do it? Jimmy Joe wondered, gazing at her as she drank and then licked the juice glaze from her lips. How can she look so doggone beautiful after the night she had?
He’d sat and watched her long after she’d fallen asleep literally under his hands, finally free to marvel all he wanted to at the old-Burgundy shine of her hair, the delicacy of her bones, the way her skin seemed to glow from inside like his mama’s good china when you held it up to the light. Free to touch, with a mettlesome finger and breathing temporarily forgotten, one strand of hair that lay along the curve of her jaw and pooled in the hollow of her neck, and daringly lift and stroke it behind the fragile sculpture of her ear.
She’d stirred, then, so that his fingers had brushed against her warm cheek and intersected the flow of her breath as it sighed from between her barely parted lips, and he’d been shocked by the stirring of response in his own body.
He’d squelched it immediately. It had seemed wrong to him; a violation not only of her trust in him, but of some indefinable quality-he wasn’t sure what it was-something about the way she looked with one childlike hand pillowing her cheek and the other resting with maternal protectiveness on the side of her swollen belly. Innocence? How could that be? Or…purity? And yet, he thought he’d never in his life seen anyone so overwhelmingly, breathtakingly female.
Which was confusing, because while part of him had been ashamed of his body’s jolting acknowledgment of that femininity, something else in him had found it downright exhilarating.
He’d pulled the comforter over her and left her then, but hadn’t gone back to the truck-stop café, although he knew he would have been more comfortable there. Instead, unable to bring himself to leave her, he’d turned off the light in the sleeper and drawn the curtain and settled into the passenger-side seat with a book and a pillow. He’d made pretty good headway in the new Tony Hillerman mystery he’d picked up in L.A., even dozed some off and on before full daylight and the comings and goings of his neighbors had roused him.
On a quick trip into the truck stop for a cup of coffee and to use the John he’d heard rumblings about the road opening up, so he’d made the coffee to go, picked up the bottle of orange juice for Mirabella and hurried back to his truck to see what he could find out from the CB. He’d expected she would wake up, with all the noise from the radio and slamming doors and all, but she hadn’t, and he’d listened for a good half hour before he was convinced the news coming out of Tucumcari was more than just wishful rumors, and he knew it was time he was going have to wake her. Wake her, say goodbye and send her on her way.
Now, sitting beside her, watching her drink the juice he’d brought, he felt the same protective feelings welling up inside him that had kept him watching over her all night. Last night those feelings had made a certain sense to him-enough so that he hadn’t thought to question them, anyway. This morning, though, they were doggone confusing.
&
nbsp; “No more,” she said, shoving the juice bottle blindly in his direction. “I really have to go-now.” Her eyes had lost their unfocused, waking-up look and now held a bright glaze of distress.
“Okay, easy now, I’m gonna get you there,” he said soothingly, reaching past her to set the bottle on the recessed shelf at the head of the bed. “What’d you do with your shoes?”
“I don’t know. I kicked them off, I think.”
He found them in the folds of the comforter and knelt to help her into them, noticing that they went on easily enough. He remembered that swollen feet at this stage of the game were not a good thing, so that eased his mind in one small way.
“There you go,” he grunted as he got to his feet. “What else d’you need? Your pocketbook?” She was already wrestling with the sleeves of her coat. He helped her with that, found her purse and hooked the strap over his shoulder, then bent to get an arm around her and hoist her to her feet.
“It’s okay, I can make it,” she protested. “You don’t have to help me.” To Jimmy Joe her breathlessness sounded not so much cranky as desperate. Hearing it, he did as she asked and let go of her, and after hovering anxiously for a moment, went to open the door for her instead.
“I heard the CB,” she said as she eased herself between the seats, moving like a rig backing into a loading bay. “Did I hear right? Did they say the road’s going to be…opening soon?”
She’d paused, apparently to catch her breath, so he pulled the door closed again to save the heat. “That’s what they’re sayin’ ’Bout noon, looks like.”
“What time is it now?”
“Goin’ on eleven. Plenty a’ time, if you want to wash up…have some breakfast.” He pushed the door open, stepped onto the running board and held out his hand to help her down.
But she’d spotted his pillow and paperback on the seat; he could see her looking at them with that little pleat of frown wrinkles between her eyes as she squeezed by. She transferred the frown to him as she took the hand he’d offered and asked, not with gentle concern but in a sharp, accusing tone, “Did you get any sleep?”
One Christmas Knight Page 7