Joyride

by Patricia Coughlin

  He grinned suddenly, his quiet chuckle drawing a strange look from a couple passing by. He couldn’t help it. The thought of Cat’s reaction should he try to tell her what clothes to wear made him laugh out loud at himself. Something he didn’t do very often these days.

  He shook his head. Slacks and a long-sleeved shirt in the middle of August. Why not go ahead and suggest a baggy overcoat while he was at it? No, on second thought, he’d better just keep his mouth shut about her clothes, which was more or less what she would tell him to do anyway if he was stupid enough to broach the subject. All in all, it would be easier to shut up and put up with the distraction her bare legs presented than to put up with her temper. They still had a lot of miles ahead of them, he reminded himself grimly.

  He checked his watch, feeling restless. Now that he was fully awake he was anxious to get moving. He stretched his legs, took a look at the map and rearranged the trunk, which, crammed as it was with Cat’s brightly colored assortment of bags and other junk, reminded him of a teenager’s bedroom.

  He checked his watch again, astounded as he had been most of yesterday by how long it could take a woman to splash some water on her face and order a cup of coffee.

  * * *

  Cat had never seen anything as cute as the handmade stuffed rabbits with floppy bodies made of ivory muslin rather than the usual fur. Their embroidered faces were amazingly expressive, and each one was dressed uniquely in hand-sewn clothes. There was a dignified lawyerly rabbit in a pin-striped suit, with tiny black wire spectacles perched on his long nose, and a rabbit chef with an apron, a ladle and a pot labeled People Stew. But the one that stole Cat’s heart was the soldier. She smiled, thinking it looked disarmingly like another soldier she knew, right down to the black whiskers and steely gaze.

  Reaching out, she picked it up and gave it a gentle squeeze. Just as she suspected, soft as a marshmallow on the inside.

  “Adorable, isn’t he?” asked the woman behind the makeshift stand, which had been set up in the spacious lobby of the building. There were two teenage girls behind the table with her. Students, most likely, since a banner behind them announced that the rabbit sale was a fund-raiser for the home-economics department of a local high school.

  “Absolutely adorable,” Cat agreed with the woman. “I’ll take him.”

  She shook her head at her impulsiveness as she fished money from her purse and waited as the woman slipped the rabbit into a bag for her. What on earth was she going to do with a stuffed soldier? Cat had no idea. She just knew the instant she saw him with his ferocious expression that there was no way she could walk away and leave him there.

  The lawyer and chef bunnies had obvious fine points and would easily find homes, but not many people would bother to check out the soldier’s soft heart. He needed her, she told herself, shaking her head all over again as she walked away, bag in hand. And she needed to hurry up. This was supposed to be a pit stop, not a shopping excursion.

  * * *

  Sometimes there were lines in the ladies’ room, Bolt reminded himself. Cat had told him so only yesterday. A flimsy excuse if he ever heard one, he groused to himself, arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the car and waited. He’d never stood in line to use a men’s room and he’d told her so. She’d had an answer to that, too, of course. She had an answer for everything and, to his surprise, he liked hearing them. Partly because she was irreverent enough to make him laugh and partly because she had the guts to speak up and say whatever was on her mind no matter what he might think about it. Cat was the most guileless woman he’d ever known, and he liked that, too.

  It’s only because she’s still young, he reminded himself with the same masochistic streak it would take to prick himself with a pin. He’d discovered he didn’t like dwelling on the age difference between them. Fourteen years. And a lifetime of experience, he added to himself grimly. The fact that she was young explained why she might not have yet learned the tricks women were so good at. Then what about Angelina? came his next thought. She’d been young, too, just about Cat’s age, and by the time he met her she’d already mastered every trick in the book. He had a hunch some women were born knowing all the tricks. Did it follow then that other women went a lifetime without bothering to learn?

  He checked his watch again. What the hell could be taking her so long?

  * * *

  The line inched forward. Cat wished Bolt was there to see it. No, on second thought, she didn’t wish that. The thought of Bolt in a ladies’ room was scary and comical at once. It would be nice, however, to prove to him that there was such a thing as a line for the ladies’ room. He insisted there was never a line for the men’s room. Cat watched with a sympathetic smile as yet another mother struggled to zip, button and marshal to the sinks two small children and thought that was probably because men had so much less to worry about when they went to the john. Zip, zip, in and out. No rambunctious toddlers, panty hose, lipstick application or bad hair disasters to slow them down.

  Two women squeezed past her to reach the exit and she moved up exactly two spaces in line. At least there was a nice measured predictability to the whole affair. You counted the stalls, counted the bodies ahead of you and could more or less estimate the length of your wait. Kids counted as two, of course, because they took so long, and senior citizens...forget it. Cat had observed that for some elderly people on the road, rest room visiting qualified as a hobby.

  Take this lady, for instance, Cat thought, watching a heavyset woman making her way to the door. Definitely the type who had to check all the stalls to find the cleanest one, then swath every square inch of the interior with squares of bathroom tissue, after which she would attempt to perform the feat itself while clutching her purse, lest the occupant of the next stall reach over the dividing wall and snatch it from the door hook. That would be a time-consuming procedure even for someone more spry.

  Cat pressed herself against the wall to give the woman as much leeway as possible as she passed. Everything would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the bag in her hand. Afterward she swore that soldier bunny had poked his boot through the plastic and snagged the woman’s purse on purpose.

  The purse snapped open, and contents equal to the goods at a medium-size yard sale rained down on the tile floor. And it was all Cat’s fault. The woman didn’t actually say so, but the angry look she flashed her made Cat feel that way.

  “Oh, no, oh, no,” the woman cried, as people stepped around her in their hurry to get out the door. The line moved forward around Cat who stood frozen in place.

  What choice did she have?

  “Here, hold this for me,” she said to the woman, thrusting the bag with the bunny at her as she stepped from line. “I’ll pick up everything for you.”

  Crouching down, she quickly began to gather the combs, sucking candies, pennies, matches, keys and other accumulated necessities that were scattered across the floor. Since her own bag held about the same number of many of the same things, she really couldn’t even get angry.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” the woman was saying now, tossing in an occasional “Bless you” for good measure whenever Cat had to crawl under a sink or reach behind the trash receptacle.

  By the time she’d picked up everything, the woman was beaming at her in a way that made Cat glad she had helped, even if her knees were dirty and she was four places farther back in line.

  * * *

  Bolt glanced at his watch again, then in the direction of the walk to see if maybe he could spot Cat coming back, then at his watch. This waiting was really beginning to get to him. Heaving his shoulders in disgust, he paced to the back of the car and for at least the tenth time since he’d been there he ran his gaze the length of the crowded parking lot, checking to see what was around him.

  This time, when he caught sight of the Mustang parked at the far end of the lot, he wasn’t surprised at all. The car had been backed in to the parking spot so as to afford a clear view of Bolt and the C
hevy to anyone sitting inside who might be watching. And someone was. He knew it. He could feel it.

  In a matter of seconds he was around the car and across the grass median strip that divided the parking lot into sections, running full speed toward the back of the lot and the Mustang.

  He was sure he saw movement behind the tinted windshield. An instant later he heard the car’s engine start.

  “Oh, no, you don’t, you sucker,” he growled under his breath. “You want to play games with me, this time we play my way.”

  He veered sharply to head them off and didn’t even see the kid doing the balancing act with the ice cream cones until he was on top of him. Literally.

  The kid was screaming, the mother was shouting at him, and he was elbow deep in rapidly melting chocolate ice cream and colored sprinkles.

  Worse, the Mustang was getting away.

  Bolt lurched to his feet and sprinted after it, but it was useless and he knew it before he was halfway across the lot. Cursing soundly, which earned him a few more dirty looks, he hurried back to pay the mother for the spilled ice cream cones. He even offered to take the kid inside to get replacements, but she refused, grabbing the little boy’s hand firmly and pulling him safely behind her. Under the circumstances he could understand her reaction.

  He brushed off as many of the sprinkles as he could as he headed toward the car. He was going to need a wet paper towel to get rid of the ice cream. Better yet, he decided, he was going to need a clean shirt. He opened the trunk and pulled one from his duffel bag, then looked around, realizing that Cat still wasn’t back. He’d heard all the jokes about women and rest rooms, but this was ridiculous. She’d been gone much too long.

  The implications of that settled over him with all the subtlety of getting a bucket of ice water in the face on a winter day. Where the hell was she? All he could think about as he started up the walk at a trot was that she’d been gone for too long and that the black Mustang had taken off. The two thoughts chased each other around in his head, threatening to link together and create a nightmare he couldn’t afford to think about right now.

  He was supposed to be watching out for her, damn it. He was supposed to have been watching out for Angelina, too. That was different, he thought frantically. This was New Jersey, not Colombia. Cat wasn’t the sister of the head of a major drug cartel, preparing to testify against him. Supposedly preparing to testify.

  Not now, he thought frantically. He couldn’t let himself get all tied up in that now. He had to find Cat.

  By the time he pushed through the crowd gathered around a table just inside the door, he was once more running full speed. There were lots of kids with ice cream there, he noted, dodging them and the strollers and the little old ladies from the tour buses as best he could. He ran past the ladies’ room to the food court. He guessed that she would have used the ladies’ room as soon as she came in and should have been out of there long before now. He circled the perimeter of the food court, noting hopefully the long lines at every counter.

  What was she wearing? What was she wearing? he asked himself frantically. Shorts and a sleeveless top, that’s all he could remember. No wonder women complained that men were only interested in one thing. Concentrate, he ordered himself, his eyes raking methodically over the crowd. He’d been trained to notice details. Shorts. What color? Blue, he decided. Denim cutoffs. And the top? Concentrate, concentrate. Yellow. That was it. Bright yellow on top, much brighter than the soft gold of her hair, and denim on the bottom.

  His examination of the crowd became more focused, but no more fruitful. There was lots of yellow and there were lots of blondes, but none of them were Cat. Could she have been in the Mustang? Could someone have forced her out there without his seeing? And why? Why didn’t matter now, only actions. But could they have done it without his seeing? Was he that rusty? If last night was any indication, maybe he was.

  No. No, he told himself again, more firmly. Oh, sweet heaven, please, no.

  His heart pounding ferociously, he turned toward the ladies’ room. Maybe she was sick. Not a pleasant thought, but at that moment a very welcome one. Definitely preferable to what was quickly becoming the only logical alternative. That she was gone.

  He stood directly outside the rest room, one leg flexing anxiously as he watched the door open and woman after woman, girl after girl, emerge. None of them Cat. Bolt ignored the indignant glares he was drawing by keeping such close watch. The rest room was set up with double doors so that he couldn’t even sneak a look inside when someone came out to see if Cat might be bent over a sink in there. Surely if she was sick someone would send for help. Wouldn’t they?

  Wouldn’t they?

  He couldn’t afford to count on the kindness of strangers, he decided abruptly. He had no choice but to ask the next woman who stepped out to check and see if Cat was in there.

  The next woman out had blue-tinted hair and a hearing aid. It didn’t matter to Bolt. Nothing short of a Seeing Eye dog by her side would have discouraged him from asking her to go back and take a look inside for Cat.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, approaching and reaching out to her without thinking.

  She screamed.

  There was no other way to describe the sound she made. Bolt was only thankful her advanced age made her a little short on oxygen so it wasn’t loud enough to draw the attention of more than, say, the two or three hundred people in the immediate vicinity.

  He stubbornly pressed on, trying to explain what he wanted, but she hurried away from him as if he was the devil himself. At that moment he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the shiny metallic front of a snack machine and winced. He couldn’t blame the woman. The way he looked, unshaven and desperate, his own mother wouldn’t feel safe around him.

  Any minute he expected the rest area security police to descend upon him, alerted to the troublemaker who ran into kids and accosted old ladies outside rest rooms. They would want explanations at the very least. He didn’t have time for that or to stand around waiting for someone to help him.

  Grabbing the handle of the ladies’ room door, he yanked it open, doing the same to the one inside it, slamming it back against the tile wall with a bang.

  “Cat? Cat, are you in here?” he shouted, looking around.

  Holy hell, he thought.

  Chapter Seven

  He was surrounded by women.

  Of course, he expected to find women in a ladies’ room. Maybe just not quite so many of them, and all staring at him. Old, young. Tall, short. All kinds of women. Suddenly silent women, with their eyes and mouths open wide in surprise. Make that shock, Bolt thought. Women who within seconds recovered en masse from the shock of his sudden, wild-eyed appearance and began to scream and shout at him in unison.

  It didn’t matter. By then he had spotted Cat, standing at a sink with her back to him, and their eyes met in the mirror in front of her.

  She was there. That’s all Bolt could think. All that mattered. She was there and she was safe.

  She was also mad as hell. He could see the anger flashing in her eyes as she hurried toward him with her hands still dripping water.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she hissed.

  “I think so,” he replied, strangely light-headed with relief. He never got light-headed. “I think maybe I have.”

  She grabbed his arm roughly, stretching back to snatch a bag off the sink and clamping it to her side.

  “Let’s go,” she ordered, pushing him backward through the door. “I can’t believe you did that. I have never, ever in my whole entire life been so humiliated.”

  “Really?” He turned so he was walking facing front by her side. “You must lead a charmed life if that’s the only embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you.”

  “I didn’t say it was the only embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me,” she corrected. “I said most embarrassing. Most, do you hear me? Which is saying a lot, seeing I was raised by a man for whom orchestrating em
barrassing moments is second nature.”

  Bolt grinned. He wasn’t just relieved. He was exhilarated, jubilant, walking-on-air relieved. Not even the mention of the general could bring him down. He wasn’t even angry with Hollister any longer. Cat was safe. He hadn’t screwed up out there. Heck, he just might be the happiest man alive.

  “Hold on,” he said, bringing her to a halt by the exit. “What about your coffee?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Soda,” he suggested. “Ice cream? One of those pretzels you like so much?”

  “Nothing. All I want right now is to get out of here and to never see any of these people again.”

  “That may not be possible,” Bolt said, trailing her outside. “You’d be amazed how the same people keep turning up at these rest stops.”

  “Then I just won’t stop at one again.”

  “All the way to Florida?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about when nature calls?”

  “I’ll exercise self-control,” she retorted. The world around Bolt seemed to lurch briefly when her stormy, challenging gaze zeroed in on him.

  “You’re not the only one with willpower, you know,” she snapped.

  Bolt wouldn’t argue with that. Not at the moment, at any rate, when he was feeling as if, where Cat was concerned, he’d run out of willpower entirely. Somehow the adrenaline rush of a few moments ago and his relief at finding her safe had become all twisted up inside him with another, much more basic emotion. Desire. It had been there from the start, but the panic of the past few moments had simply eclipsed his ability to ignore it. Now it was a warm, steady, insistent throbbing at his core as he followed her to the car.

  “All right,” she said, whirling at him as soon as they were there. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Bolt broke off in the middle of a thought about how it would feel to have her stretched out above him, her hair spilling across his face and his throat, and just stared at her.