It might end up being a long ride with two little ones, but she didn’t mind. It almost felt like they were a family, going somewhere together. She hadn’t realized how much she’d longed for that.
Thoughts of Robyn and what she might be doing or planning threatened to spoil her joy. Robyn could come back at any time and decide she wanted the kids in Europe. Doubtful, but still possible. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about. After all, she was leaving them anyway.
She looked back again. The girls were lying on their stomachs, facing each other and giggling. The bunk didn’t seem very big, but it was a novelty, and they seemed to be enjoying it.
Mack’s door opened, and he stepped up. Her heart skipped, and she looked away. But then she remembered that she was leaving and had decided to enjoy this last time with him, so she looked back, smiling when he met her eyes.
They didn’t say anything. She felt like they didn’t need to. He pulled out slowly, and she watched, a little scared because there was so much she couldn’t see.
“You can probably let go of the door handle now,” he said after they had rolled out of town and were headed toward the interstate.
She looked down, seeing her white knuckles as her hand gripped the door handle. “Yeah. Probably can.”
He laughed. “You afraid of heights?”
“No. I can’t see. When the car disappears behind the hood, I think you’re going to hit it.”
“Well, I can see just fine on this side.” He nodded his head toward the passenger steer tire. “I can’t see over there, so I have to pay attention to what’s going on in front of and behind me, so when a car disappears in my blind spot, I know it.”
“You have to make a lot of assumptions.”
“You do. Especially in these old long hoods.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant but decided it wasn’t important.
“It’s funny,” he said, after a few minutes of silence, “but I’ve seen you over the years as we’ve harvested around your dad’s church, and I never one time thought you’d ever be riding in a truck with me.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Bet your parents would flip if they could see you.”
“Definitely. I’m sorry about them, by the way.” They’d insinuated that he wasn’t good enough. They hadn’t been subtle with her dad pointing a gun at him and everything.
He lifted a shoulder like it didn’t matter. She knew it probably had to, though. “You can’t help what your parents do, just like they can’t control what you do.”
They had for many years, though. She still wasn’t quite used to making her own decisions.
“Was it just you and your sister growing up?” She wanted to get the focus off herself, but she was also curious about him. He’d insinuated a lot of things, but she wanted details.
“Yeah.” He gave a little snort. “I thought I was the wild one. Never figured I’d be the one keeping her kids while she ran off.”
They’d reached the interstate, and he got in the lane to turn to go east.
Angela checked in the bunk, making sure the girls were happy playing. She wasn’t going to fool herself into thinking that they’d be happy there the whole trip, but she’d take what she could get.
“You seem so steady. When you say wild, I have trouble picturing it.”
“Well, don’t. Because I was. My parents fought a lot, especially through my teenaged years.” He shifted as they went up the ramp. She’d not ridden much in a vehicle that had a gear shift, but she did notice that he didn’t use the clutch as he went through the gears, which seemed weird. He seemed very confident, and she enjoyed watching him, although she tried to do it so he wouldn’t realize she was staring.
“Dad would leave and come back. A few times, he moved into an apartment in town. Couple times, he had a girlfriend. When he was out, Mom would sometimes bring guys home.”
She raised her eyes to his face. He stared at the road as they merged into the right lane at road speed.
“That must have been hard.”
“Yeah, I guess. It was a mess, but it seemed normal. Still, there wasn’t much of a standard at home, and there wasn’t anything keeping me back from doing whatever I wanted. It’s actually a small miracle that I finished school. It’s more than a small one that I got hooked up with Clay. I’d probably be in prison today if it weren’t for him.”
“I would never have guessed it.” She was a little shocked. She knew that kids had home lives like that; she’d worked with kids like that. But hadn’t figured Mack for one.
Mack slanted a look over at her. “He doesn’t give his guys a choice about going to church, and that was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. That, and being around guys like Preacher and Abner. They preached with their lives and didn’t need to open their mouths.”
She nodded, knowing what he meant. Knowing also that it was his character that had allowed the change in his life. No one had forced him into it. She had to admire that.
“I’m never gonna be a preacher, though.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Guess I figured I just needed to be honest.”
That comment made her look over, trying to figure out what he meant. But he wasn’t looking at her.
“I’m never going to be a preacher either, if it makes a difference to you,” she said with a grin, just trying to see if she could get him to lose the serious look that had settled over him.
His lips turned up. “You’d make a good one. Preach at them for a while, then you can feed ’em pie when you’re done.”
She gasped. “I forgot the pie.”
“It’ll still be there when we get home.” He tilted his head. “Maybe not. Between my parents and Mr. Swanson, it might not make it.”
“Well, there’s more where that came from, although I was planning on spending next week working on the Christmas festival. It starts Thursday night with the parade.” Her stomach tightened. Maybe she shouldn’t have come. She still had a lot of work to do.
“I’ll give you a hand,” he said easily.
That loosened her nerves somewhat, and she put the festival out of her mind. She’d been working hard on it, and everything was under control. She could take a couple of days and let her hair down. She might never have the opportunity again.
After a few hours, she’d been surprised at how good the girls were and thought that maybe the trip was going to be easier than she thought. Mack had been telling her stories about his time on the harvest crew, and she’d been enjoying their easy friendship when a bang from over her right shoulder made her think someone was shooting at them, which was ridiculous since they were on a flat highway in the middle of snow-covered fields.
Her first instinct was still to duck and check the girls.
But she turned her head. Mack didn’t look scared. Just annoyed.
He’d been looking in her side mirror, but he glanced at her, saw the questions in her eyes, and said, “Blew a drive.”
He didn’t say anything more, and she spent a couple of minutes chewing on that before she assumed he meant a tire.
The truck was slowing as Mack eased it off onto the frozen shoulder, which was mostly free of snow, although it was piled up along the road.
“What was that?” Holly appeared in the opening of the bunk.
“I pee,” Ashleigh said from behind her.
Angela bit her lip and looked at Mack. His face was still tight with annoyance, but there was a small twinkle in his eye.
“I’ll take care of the tire. You take care of the kid.” The truck came to a complete stop, and he pulled the brake knob out. “Sounds like a fair deal to me.”
“Maybe you could give me a hint on how I should take care of the kid,” she said hopefully as Ashleigh and Holly came out and climbed up in her lap.
The annoyance completely disappeared as Mack’s face crinkled into a grin. “I’ve dealt with blown tires before. However, a kid that ne
eds to pee in the middle of nowhere, on snow-covered ground, in sub-freezing temperatures...that’s new.”
“Should I take her outside?” Angela asked, not finding the situation as funny as Mack but appreciating that he was laughing and not angry.
He pursed his lips. “I don’t have anything for her to pee into in here, so, yeah, I think you’re gonna have to take her outside.” He pointed past her head. The truck shook as a semi blew by them. A car on its left had prevented it from giving them a lane. “I’d take her straight out there, and I wouldn’t mess around. I’m gonna set up triangles, but people fly in this area, and we’re not really in a safe spot.”
That scared her a little. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m gonna take a look at things. Sometimes when they fly apart, they make a mess. If the truck’s too mangled to change it, we’ll have to figure something out. If not, I don’t have the tools to change it myself, so we’ll have to call someone. I’ll give Preacher a call soon as I get out, see what he wants. Being that it’s Saturday night, it’s not gonna be easy or cheap.” He tweaked Holly’s chin. “I’d really like for you girls to stay inside as much as you can.” His eyes glinted. “If Ashleigh can wait until I get things rolling with getting this tire taken care of, I’ll take her off the highway a bit to go.”
“Can you wait, Ashleigh?” Angela asked, running her hand over Ashleigh’s head and smoothing her hair back.
Her head shook, and her lip trembled.
Mack gave her a thoughtful look before he seemed to make a decision. “Hang on. I’ll be over.”
Chapter 16
Having a cap fly apart wasn’t all that unusual, although it happened more in the summer when it was hot out. But still, it’d have been real nice if he could have had it happen sometime he didn’t have Angela and the girls.
Angela hadn’t seemed upset, though. Although she probably didn’t realize that it was going to be hours before they were back on the road. He hadn’t wanted to hit her with too much at once, so it seemed like a good idea to leave that info for another conversation.
Glancing at the ruined tire, he could see the half fender was bent, but not to the point where they’d need to do major surgery on it.
He pulled his phone out and hit Preacher’s contact before he opened the door and held his arms up for Ashleigh.
“Come here, kiddo.”
Angela helped her swing her legs over and lowered her down to where he could grab her. Holding his phone pinched against his shoulder with his head, he caught Ashleigh around the waist and adjusted her in his arms.
He felt like he should apologize to Angela or something, but she gave him a small smile just before Clay answered the phone.
“Hello?”
Mack turned away and shut the door, making sure it latched tight. They’d probably be leaning on it, and he didn’t want it to pop open.
“Hey, Preach. Gotta blown drive, passenger side.” He gave their location to the nearest mile marker.
“How bad’s the fender?” Preacher asked.
“Bent, but not to the point we’ll have to take it off.”
“Okay.” Preacher sounded distracted, and Mack assumed he was already looking for garages that did roadside calls. Would probably be a little hard to find in this remote area of North Dakota.
He made a note to check to see how far it was to the next exit as another big truck rumbled by. Mack was twenty feet off the road and wasn’t watching, but that would have made his truck sway. He was fine with that, but he didn’t want some driver who was distracted by a cell phone or something else to run off the road and hit them. At the speeds traffic ran on this road, that wouldn’t be a pretty situation for anyone. He didn’t like that the girls weren’t safe.
There wasn’t any shelter off the road, so he turned his back to the highway and spent a few seconds considering what was the best way to approach the pee situation. Best way being defined as the way he was least likely to get any of Ashleigh’s bodily liquids on himself. He’d like to keep it off her, too, since that was pretty much the point.
“I’ll call you back in a couple minutes,” Clay said.
Mack didn’t add any pleasantries, but shut his phone off and shoved it in his pocket.
They hadn’t put Ashleigh’s shoes back on, so he decided to just take her pants completely off. Couldn’t get pee on them if they were over his shoulders. Man, he hoped not, anyway.
He held her legs just above the knees and used his elbows and upper arms to steady her torso. She gripped his biceps with her hands.
Squatting like a football player at the line of scrimmage, he hoped he’d figured the trajectory of the situation out correctly.
“Okay, kiddo, let ’er rip.”
Nothing.
He waited a few seconds. Her little butt had to be getting cold. His fingers sure were.
“Go ahead and pee, honey.”
Ashleigh whimpered. “I want potty.”
“Yeah, me too.” Like, times ten. “But we don’t have one, so we’re gonna pretend that I’m a potty,” wow, if the crew could only hear him now, “and you’re gonna pee.”
“I can’t.”
“I thought you had to go really bad.”
She started to whimper harder. It sounded like crying. “I do.”
What was he going to do? He had a crying child in the middle of the frozen North Dakota flatlands who was going to have frostbite on her nether regions or else he was going to put her clothes back on and she’d pee in the truck after she got back in.
Angela probably wouldn’t be very happy about that.
“If you pee, you can turn the snow yellow.”
Ashleigh stopped crying. She looked down at the pretty white snow. “Yelwo?”
“Sure. Your pee will turn the snow pretty yellow.”
“I show Annie,” she said, which was what she called Angela.
His legs were starting to get tired, and he was pretty sure that Angela wouldn’t want them to take any yellow snow back to the truck with them, no matter how pretty. After all, that was the whole reason they were standing out with the wind blowing over them anyway. But hey, if it got her to go... “Sure, we’ll show Angela. She’ll love it. Yellow’s probably her favorite color.”
Those seemed to be the magic words since Ashleigh then proceeded to color a lot of snow yellow. As he bent there, waiting for the stream to end, Mack was pretty grateful she hadn’t let loose with all that in the truck. He hadn’t brought floaties.
It didn’t take him long to get her clothes back on her. He started back for the truck.
“Wait!” she cried. “Yelwo snow for Annie.”
Mack stopped. Oh, boy. He said they’d show Angela. It had been a promise. He couldn’t not keep his word to Ashleigh. He didn’t know what was going to happen with his sister and his nieces; they could leave next week, and he’d never see them again. But for however long he had with them, he needed to be a good influence in their lives. Which meant keeping his word, no matter how hard.
But Angela wasn’t going to want to see the pretty snow.
“Of course, honey.” He stopped and turned, walking slowly back to the spot in the snow that was a faded yellow. Man, what was he going to do?
Ashleigh bounced on his hip, smacking her hands against his chest and back. He couldn’t let her down.
But as he knelt, his phone pushed into his back pocket.
Ah, yeah. He could take a pic. He took it out and pulled up his camera app. He’d just said he’d show Angela. He hadn’t actually said they’d touch the snow.
“You gonna push the button?” He figured Angela wouldn’t care if it were fuzzy. Maybe she’d prefer it that way.
“Me push!” She bounced again, almost making him lose his balance. He was able to catch himself without pitching forward, which would have been way closer to the yellow snow than he’d ever want to be.
They snapped the pic, several of them. He made a mental note to delete them later, pretty sure th
at normal people didn’t have pics of yellow snow on their phones.
This satisfied Ashleigh, and they made their way back to the truck where Angela and Holly’s heads stared at them through the passenger window.
He opened the door.
“Yelwo snow. I made yelwo snow!” Ashleigh called out.
“You did? Wow. That’s great.” Angela looked over Ashleigh’s head. Her eyes were smiling.
“She wanted to show you,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t think—”
“I took a picture.”
“Oh. That’s what you guys were doing.”
“Yeah.” He lifted Ashleigh up and set her back in the truck. “I didn’t think she was going to go. She wanted a potty.”
“I see. So you bribed her?”
He held his phone up for her to see. “No. It wasn’t a bribe. I just encouraged her to stop suppressing her inner artistic creativity.”
“It was a bribe.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“You weren’t there. It’s not your call.” He would have argued more, but his phone buzzed.
“It’s Clay.” Angela seemed a little uncomfortable, and he wondered again if she was still harboring feelings for him, even though she’d denied it.
“I need to get it. I’ll let you know soon as I know what’s going on.”
She nodded and he closed her door, swiping his phone with a cold thumb. He needed to get his gloves out of the dog box.
“What’d ya find out?” he asked, forgoing any greeting.
“Said they’d be there in four hours.”
Mack blew out a long breath, the air fogging around him. He didn’t want the girls to be sitting along the road that long, then it’d be at least another hour to change the tire. They were looking at a pretty late night, too, when they made it to the Cities.
“I’m checking to see how close the next exit is. I might try to limp it to an off-ramp at least.”
“That’s what I thought,” Clay said. “The next exit is twenty miles.”
“That’s a no-brainer. I’m gonna try to baby her down the road. Even if it takes an hour, that’s better than sitting where we are for five or six.”
Cowboys Don't Stand Under the Mistletoe (Sweet Water Ranch Western Cowboy Romance Book 10) Page 13