Joyride

by Patricia Coughlin

  “About what?” he asked cautiously.

  “About our foreign policy toward China,” she snapped. “About that little scene in the ladies’ room. What do you think about what?”

  “I think you’d probably like my answer to the China question better.”

  Her head shook with frustration. “Why did you do it, Bolt?”

  Bolt shrugged. “I got tired of waiting.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Just about.”

  “What about that crack about seeing the same people at every rest stop. Did you think you saw the Mustang again?”

  “I don’t think I saw it,” he replied shortly. “I saw it.”

  “And?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  He sighed and told her all of it, about chasing after it and about the ice cream cones and about how he’d been worried that something had happened to her. He glazed over most of the part about worrying. He didn’t know the right words to explain how he’d felt when he thought she might be hurt or gone, any more than he had the words to explain how he was feeling now. Not even to himself. “Still think it’s all one big coincidence?” he demanded when he was through.

  “Yes,” she retorted, frustrating him all over again. “What else could it be? I mean, why would anyone want to follow us?”

  “Good question. If you come up with a good answer, let me know. In the meantime...”

  He left the sentence hanging and moved around to the back of the car, opening the trunk and tossing things to the pavement. He mostly made a show of tossing things. It put a small dent in his frustration. He took special care with her cameras and other equipment, however.

  “Now what are you doing?” Cat asked, standing a safe distance off to the side.

  “Looking.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. But if someone is following us, I’d stake my life it’s not just because they have a crush on one of us. They’re after something.”

  “What?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t have to look.”

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. Then, a few seconds later, “Can I help?”

  Bolt paused only long enough to tell her to check under the seats and in the openings between the seat back and bottom cushions.

  “Be careful sliding your hand around in there,” he warned. “You never know what you might find.”

  Once the trunk was empty, he pressed and tapped on every inch of it, checking out the sides and bottom and even the back wall. Cat was still examining the seats when he finished loading the trunk. Bolt got the flashlight from his bag. Dropping onto his back on the pavement, he slid under the car, and holding the flashlight in one hand, he used the other to check out every possible place where something might be concealed.

  He was working cold, with no clue what it was he was looking for. Drugs, microfilm, everything he considered seemed preposterous. But then, so did being shadowed by two dumb punks in a flashy, impossible-to-miss sports car. Could this have something to do with the car coming from Cuba? Could the punks be CIA? Nah. Undercover Feds? He mulled that over and found it not quite as ludicrous.

  He heard Cat rustling in the trunk above him, moving things around. Probably because he’d left it a little too neat for her taste, he thought, smiling reluctantly.

  “Shall I shut this now?” she called to him.

  “Sure, go ahead. I’ll stick the flashlight in the glove compartment when I’m through.”

  A few seconds later she was beside him, flat on her back on the warm pavement.

  Bolt turned the flashlight on her face. She smiled.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “Helping.”

  “You’re through helping. Get out of here. You’ll scratch up your legs on this pavement.” Not to mention the marks the gravel might leave on her soft beautiful shoulders. He had selfish reasons for not wanting that to happen. He was in love with her shoulders.

  “I don’t care about that,” she said, brushing off his concern. “Did you find anything yet?”

  “Nothing but oil and...damn.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing but oil and some thirty-year-old grit,” he grumbled. “I just got a piece in my eye.”

  “Let me help.”

  “No, I...”

  “I can at least hold the flashlight.”

  “I can do it all—”

  “Will you stop being so stubborn and manly and hand me the damn thing?”

  Bolt reluctantly relinquished the flashlight and used the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe his eye. He blinked several times to make sure whatever had been in there was gone.

  “All set,” he told her. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Even heroes need help sometimes.”

  Bolt stiffened, his tone turning low and harsh. “I’m not a hero.”

  “You’re sure trying to be. Face it, Bolt, this is just an old car that some spoiled rich guy wants to park in his garage along with all his other old cars.” Her tone had become one of pleading indulgence. “Don’t complicate matters.”

  “I didn’t complicate them,” he said, turning to meet her gaze in the semidarkness. A minute ago he’d been choking on oil fumes. Now all he could smell was her, sweet, intoxicating, as if he’d stuck his face in a bunch of wildflowers.

  “Oh, right,” she drawled, “the guy in the Mustang is the one who’s complicating things, is that it?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  She blinked, her beautiful mouth softening prettily as she frowned at him. “Bolt, this is crazy.”

  “I know,” he agreed, his voice dropping lower still as he tipped his head closer to hers. He lifted his palm to her cheek. “Insane. So’s this.”

  He hadn’t planned to kiss her. If he had, he would have planned to do it slowly and gently. This was neither slow nor gentle.

  He parted her lips with the hungry pressure of his own, using his tongue to taste and learn and arouse. A craving for more of her, for all of her, roared in his head, blocking out any other sound and feeling.

  He rarely surrendered himself to the moment, but he did so now. Completely forgotten was the fact that they were lying under a very conspicuous car in a busy public parking area. Her uncle and the Mustang and any sense of responsibility ceased to exist. There was only the soft warmth of Cat’s mouth responding to his.

  She did respond. Bolt’s heart clenched and then soared at the realization. She slid her tongue lightly, almost experimentally across his lips and made a soft sound of pleasure far back in her throat that made him wild.

  From somewhere far away, something, his conscience most likely, kept reminding him he ought to stop, but the pleasure of it kept dragging him back under, further and further away from that nagging voice. He was so far gone it was a miracle he could feel the urgency in the pressure of the hand Cat placed against his chest. And even beyond miraculous that he was able to heed the gentle urge to stop.

  When he lifted his mouth from hers, she refused to look at him.

  “I...” She wet her lips and seemed to find the sensation unsettling. “I think I need some fresh air.”

  Bolt let her go without saying a word. Then he stared at the car’s blackened undercarriage without seeing it.

  “Nice going,” he muttered to himself.

  “Did you say something?” Cat called.

  “No. Just talking to myself.”

  Too bad he wasn’t as good at listening to himself, he thought darkly. Then maybe he wouldn’t have gone making an impossible situation even more so by doing something as crazy as kissing Hollister’s precious niece. And liking it.

  There was no denying that he had liked it. He’d liked kissing Cat more than he’d liked anything in a long time. How long, he wondered as he slid toward the front of the car, absently feeling behind wires and clamps for anything that didn’t belong there, how long had it been since a kiss had left him fe
eling this good?

  A while. A long while.

  He finished checking out the car and got to his feet, dusting himself off and trying to look as if nothing significant had happened between them in the past few minutes. He noticed that Cat had combed her hair and applied lipstick that made her lips look all rosy and wet and made him want to drag her into his arms and kiss her all over again.

  “Find anything suspicious?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “So what’s your next theory on why someone would want to follow us?”

  “I don’t have one,” he admitted. “But I still can’t shake the feeling that someone is.”

  “So what next?”

  “A clean shirt,” he replied, frowning at the sticky splotches of dried ice cream. “Think you’ll be all right alone here while I run in and clean up?”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine. Take your time.”

  Not likely, Bolt thought. He went as fast as he could, returning with two iced coffees as well as some sandwiches and French fries for them to eat on the road. Cat looked pleased, which thrilled him beyond reason.

  She rigged a cup holder from the cardboard box the sandwiches were packed in and they ate as they drove. If their hands brushed when they reached for the same fry, he pretended not to notice the contact. He had a hunch Cat was doing the same. Pretending everything was the same as it had been, pretending they were just two strangers thrown together against their wills and straining to be civil, pretending that everything they’d felt lying under the car had been left back there in the parking lot. They seemed to reach for the same fry an awful lot.

  They didn’t talk much, however, and Bolt was comfortable with that. When they finished, she gathered the trash into a bag and tossed it into the backseat. They continued to ride in silence. After a while Cat rummaged in the tote bag at her feet and pulled out the paperback book he’d seen in her hotel room last night. Bolt frowned at the sight of it.

  “I’ve been thinking, that is, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he began, strangely tongue-tied. He glanced sideways and found her listening intently and felt even clumsier. “Look, I’m sorry I made fun of your book last night, all right? If that’s what you thought I was doing. I didn’t mean to.”

  “Forget it,” she said, shrugging and opening the novel to where her finger had kept her place. “It’s only a book.”

  “Is it?” he pressed.

  She flipped it shut and made a show of looking at the cover. “Yup. Sure looks like a book to me.”

  “What about what you said last night? About me not understanding your philosophy of life?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “That seemed to be all tied up with that book.”

  “Maybe. Sort of.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “About my philosophy of life?” she countered, a startled laugh in her voice.

  “About why you got so upset last night.”

  “I didn’t get—”

  “You know what I mean. Tell me, Cat.”

  She hesitated a few seconds. He could almost feel her intensity.

  “I can’t,” she said finally.

  “Can’t?” he asked, darting her a skeptical look. “Or won’t?”

  “Don’t want to,” she replied matter-of-factly. “How’s that?”

  “That’s honest, at least. Do you not want to tell me because you’re afraid of my reaction?”

  She laughed, an easy, unencumbered sound that seemed to fill Bolt’s lungs when he drew his next breath and spread to every part of him.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid if I tell you, you’ll laugh and then I’ll be forced to reach over and strangle you. I think I’d look awful in a prison uniform.” She patted her hips. “Horizontal stripes, you know?”

  He didn’t think she’d look awful in anything, but her casual manner of self-deprecation made him want to smile. Almost as much as he wanted to know everything there was to know about her. He conquered the urge to chuckle, slanting her a sober look intended to reassure.

  “And if I promise not to laugh?” he asked.

  Cat stared at him, holding a deep breath that finally came out as a resigned sigh.

  “All right, you win,” she said. “Pull up a seat and I’ll tell you all about my philosophy of life. Just don’t blame me if you fall asleep at the wheel.”

  For the next few minutes Bolt listened with growing incredulity as Cat revealed her philosophy, if you could call it that. Fantasy was more like it, revolving entirely around love. Love of the starry-eyed, at-first-sight, violins-in-the-background, fairy-tale variety, which anyone with a grain of common sense knew didn’t exist outside the covers of novels like the one she was clutching.

  My God, he realized as he listened in silence, the woman was even younger and more naive than he’d first thought.

  Young and idealistic and absolutely convinced that living happily ever after was only a matter of finding the right person to love. Her soul mate, as she put it in a tone full of wide-eyed conviction. She was, he realized bleakly, everything he was not. Not any longer, anyway, if he ever had been.

  The whole true-love thing was clearly a subject very close to her heart, and as she spoke, she became increasingly more animated. The silver charm bracelet on her right wrist tinkled merrily whenever she waved her arm. He’d noticed the bracelet at breakfast that morning, and Cat had happily held out her wrist to show it off to him. Scattered amidst glitter-encrusted stars and moon charms had been a tiny silver castle, a unicorn, a heart with a key attached and a magic wand. Cute, Bolt had thought at the time, decidedly more interested in the plate of bacon and eggs the waitress put in front of him. Now he could see there was definitely a pattern at work in her choice of charms and that they held tremendous significance for her.

  A man who believed in cutting to the chase as quickly as possible, Bolt didn’t need to ask her to elaborate on any of the points she was making with such passion. It was obvious to him that the noisy little bracelet summed up her philosophy better than words ever could.

  “Destiny,” she concluded with a dramatic toss of her head. The quick glance he slanted her way revealed that her eyes were shining with excitement. “In the end it all comes down to destiny.”

  “Let me get this straight,” he said, feeling as if he should say something by way of response after pressuring her to talk about it in the first place. “You really believe that everyone is preprogrammed to be right for only one other person in the entire world and that those two people are destined to meet somehow?”

  “Yes, exactly,” she said, nodding vigorously. “There are other people with whom they could get along, of course, and even fall in love to an extent. But there’s only one man or woman who’s absolutely perfect for each of us.”

  “Mr. Right?” he said, amused.

  “Or Ms. Right, depending.”

  “On destiny?”

  “Exactly. Go ahead, laugh,” she said, sounding totally unconcerned. “I can already tell that you don’t believe in destiny. Do you?” she prodded.

  Bolt shrugged evasively.

  “Be honest,” she ordered.

  “Hell, Tiger, I’m not even sure I believe in love. Destiny? That’s a real stretch.”

  Now she did look concerned. Concerned, puzzled, a little stunned.

  “How can anyone not believe in love?” she asked faintly.

  Bolt wasn’t about to explain. Nor could he have explained what made him suddenly reach out, flick her charm bracelet and add, “Just for the record, I don’t believe in fairy tales, either. Or happy endings.”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s just call it personal experience.”

  “But don’t you see?” she countered, leaning forward eagerly. “That proves my point. If you’ve had a bad experience with love, and trust me, most people have, it’s because you were in love with the wrong person...or rather you thought you were. You might have believed you’d found the wo
man for you, but obviously you hadn’t.”

  “Obviously,” he concurred sardonically.

  “You have to keep trying.”

  “What are you?” he asked, one eyebrow arching speculatively. “Cupid’s assistant or something?”

  She smiled enigmatically and leaned her head against the seat.

  “How about you?” he asked. “Have you had a bad experience with love?”

  “Not really. But I think that’s only because I’ve done so much thinking about the whole thing and figured it all out before I had time to make too many painful mistakes.”

  “Pretty clever, Tiger. Some poor suckers spend their whole lives trying to get a handle on love.”

  She laughed, either missing his sarcasm or ignoring it. “Destiny. That’s the key.”

  “Just a matter of waiting for your soul mate to come along. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What if he comes along and you don’t recognize him?”

  “That could never happen. When I meet him, I’ll know.”

  “Just like that? No secret sign? No matching birthmarks to look for?”

  Again she laughed, clearly above being teased or rattled on the subject. She really believed this, he marveled. Hook, line and little silver key to her heart.

  “Just like that,” she said. “When the right man for me comes along, our eyes will meet—”

  “Across a crowded room,” he couldn’t resist interjecting cynically.

  “Across whatever, and...” She smiled faintly, her gaze drifting off to some point in the distance. “I’ll know.”

  Yeah. Right, Bolt thought. And he was the next King of Siam. But no sense spoiling everything by telling her that.

  * * *

  They reached Baltimore late that night. Too road-weary to be fussy, they checked into the first hotel they came to that had rooms available. Again they were given adjoining rooms, this time on the twenty-sixth floor, and again Bolt insisted on inspecting Cat’s room thoroughly before leaving her alone in it.

  Once he was gone, Cat deliberated only a few seconds before unlocking the adjoining door from her side. She wasn’t sure if Bolt did the same, or if he was bothered during the night by the bad dreams he’d told her about. She couldn’t even have described the decor of her room except to say it was considerably more luxurious than the last one and had a comfortable queen-size bed where she fell instantly asleep and didn’t see or hear another blessed thing until morning.