by Unknown
He whirled around, restarted the motor, and drove away.
“What about my feet?” she yelled.
“If I injure your feet, you’ll just have to stay in bed.”
But the wind caught his words and flung them away. All Fortune heard was that she’d have to stay somewhere. “Stay where?”
In my bed was the answer he didn’t give, the answer that came vividly to life as he felt her settle back into the neat little package she made behind him. He felt like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, wearing Fortune Dagosta like a shell.
Everybody knew that a turtle depended on its shell for warmth and protection. Fortune laid her cheek against Hunter’s back and tightened her grip. He didn’t know about the protection bit, but he was beginning to wish that the scavenger hunt had been held in December. He was much too warm, and he never asked for protection.
Maybe the Chattanooga Choo-Choo was air-conditioned. Surely, the scavenger-hunt people had reserved two separate rooms.
He was wrong.
The reservation manager at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo was expecting them, though not by name. Hunter and Fortune’s reservation was for a private parlor car.
The bell captain escorted them to their car, demonstrated the vending machine complete with sodas, beer, and snacks, the sofa that could be made into a bed if they’d had children.
“Wow! This motorcycle company believes in going first class, don’t they?” Fortune plopped down on the velvet-covered king-size bed and leaned back. She’d seen the king-size bed and panicked, until the hotel employee had demonstrated the sofa.
Relax, Fortune, she told herself. They were just two people sharing a room. She’d done that for most of her life, often with people she’d known a lot less about. The line of thought was meant to reassure her. It didn’t. Hunter wasn’t a stranger, no matter how much she pretended he was. And that was the problem.
They’d acknowledged the S-word, and the letter seemed to be branded on Fortune’s body. She could feel it throbbing. Hunter was standing at the doors, closing it behind the bellboy. Fortune was still stretched out on the bed.
“The first thing I’m going to do,” she said brightly, “is take a bath. What about you?”
“I think I’ll just sit here and unwind while I look through these travel books.”
Fortune didn’t miss the strain in his voice. She realized What she’d just said and winced. Staying in the hotel was for Hunter’s benefit. “Sorry, cowboy. I didn’t think. You take a bath first. Fill that tub up and take a long, hot soak.”
“That’s all right, you go first.”
“No, you. You’re the one with the bad back.”
“Take a damned shower, Fortune! I can wait.”
They were practically screaming at each other. Fortune opened her mouth to protest, but the undeniable flame of heat scissored down her legs again. He was right. She’d take a quick shower, and then he could stay in the tub as long as he liked. She grabbed her pack and scurried into the bathroom, turning on the shower as she pulled out the new clothes Hunter had bought for her. Quickly, she soaped up, shampooed her hair, and rinsed off. Hunter was still standing by the door when she came out, drying her hair as she tried not to look at him.
She could tell he was tired. His face was drawn, but, even now, without the sunglasses, his blue eyes seemed to challenge her. His eyes, without the words to accompany them, spoke of rumpled sheets and the invitations not yet acknowledged. Sexual tension arched from him, catching her in its force, and again her feet seemed welded to the floor.
“Your turn, cowboy.”
He nodded, moved past her into the steamy bathroom, and turned on the hot water in the tub. As it filled, he pulled clean jeans and a shirt from his pack.
Fortune turned on the reading light by the chair and opened the travel book. She heard Hunter slide into the tub, and forcing her attention to her book, she began to read.
The index listed Lithia Springs, Georgia. She turned to the page and scanned for the description. “Bingo! Hunter, I found it, the mineral springs in Lithia Springs, Georgia. And there’s a frog, a thousand-year-old frog rock on the premises.”
“Good, anything on the creature?”
“Nope, nothing yet. That’s the only clue without a single word to direct you. ‘North is South and West is East … Bring us a tear from the creature’s … eyes.’ ”
Running her fingers through her hair, she dried it quickly. She finished one book and was almost done with the other when she realized that Hunter had been soaking for a long time. Carefully, she marked her place in the book and stood up. The door to the bathroom wasn’t completely closed. A sliver of light shone through the opening. Fortune tried to see inside, but the angle didn’t allow her any view of him.
“Hunter?”
There was no answer.
“Hunter?” she called again. Still no answer.
Fortune pushed open the door and rushed in. “Hunter!”
At the same time he bobbled his head, blinked his eyes, and stood straight up.
“What’s wrong?”
Fortune could only stare in disbelief. Wrong? Nothing. Not one solitary thing that she could see, and she could see it all.
“Fortune, I don’t really mind being gawked at, but I’m not used to having it done while I’m not at my best.”
“That’s all right,” she whispered, backing slowly out of the room. “I’m a secondhand person, you know, and I can honestly say that Goodwill would love to get a chance at you.”
Dinner was a strained affair at first. Neither Fortune nor Hunter could get past the great bathroom encounter. Fortune couldn’t get the scene out of her mind. She felt as if she were watching some Technicolor movie, with the film stuck on one frame.
They chose a table on the Palm Terrace overlooking the great fountain beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The menu included a choice of meals, and both settled on the special New Orleans shrimp. Meanwhile, knowing his partner’s appetite, Hunter ordered a selection of appetizers that included special muffins and breads.
Fortune immediately dived in. By the time their shrimp arrived, she’d made a huge dent in the appetizers, and they’d got past the awkward moment and were able to talk.
“Tell me about your children,” Hunter asked. “How’d they get to be yours?”
“We just seemed to find each other. Lucy and I met in Atlanta. We were both on the road, so to speak.”
“You mean you were hitchhiking?”
“Not exactly. Lucy was on her way home, and her car got as far as Atlanta and quit. I was on a temporary job at Jake’s Coffee Shop when she came in. A week later we were both on our way to her family home in South Georgia.
“The one with no roof.”
“Yep, only it had a roof then, and it had Mickey.”
“Mickey?”
“He was sleeping in the barn. Jade came the next week. Somebody she met along the way had told her about the barn and Lucy’s aunt, who was always good for a meal. Mickey found Beau hitchhiking on the freeway about a month later.”
“What about Joe?” Hunter was curious about the boy who’d burned the roof and entered Fortune in the contest to win money for repairs.
“A friend brought Joe to us. He caught him foraging in the trash behind the local café.”
“Didn’t you catch any flak from the authorities?”
“Yes and no. There isn’t a shelter for juveniles in the county. It’s a matter of shipping them to one of the state facilities. When you’re dealing with runaways, the officials are more than willing for somebody to offer them a place to stay. Rachel and Tom were working with us to make our shelter a permanent facility.”
Hunter saw Fortune’s restraint fall away as she talked about her children. The children had been alone and needed a place to stay. Lucy had inherited a house with plenty of rooms.
Dressed in the new blue chambray shirt and a pair of regular jeans, Fortune Dagosta was charming. She’d touched h
er lips with pale pink lipstick that brought out the color in her cheeks. Her hair was bouncy, swinging from side to side as she talked. She had energetic hair, he decided, which matched the rest of her very well.
“Something wrong, cowboy?”
He’d been staring at her. If she’d asked a question earlier, he hadn’t heard it. He had to replay the last few minutes in his mind to pick up the conversation. They’d been talking about the runaways that Fortune had taken in.
“But what about Lucy, didn’t she mind? Didn’t her family mind?”
“That’s why she was going home. Her aunt had been living in the house, and when she died, she left the house to Lucy. Heck, you saw it. It was practically a mansion. Neither one of us had ever had a real house before, not since—” She broke off. “What about you, where do you live?” She helped herself to the last shrimp and deftly changed the subject.
“I already told you my mother lives in Greenville, South Carolina.”
“And your sisters and brother?”
“My brother, Robert, is only sixteen. He lives at home, like my youngest sister, Penny, and works in one of the hotels part time. My sister Julie is twenty-three. She’s the assistant to the president of Kincaid Chemical Corporation.”
“And the president is …” Fortune prompted, knowing that Hunter had talked all around his father without mentioning him.
“My mother’s husband.”
“Come on, cowboy. If his name is Kincaid and your name is Kincaid and he’s married to your mother, he must be your father—even a wild woman like me can figure that out.”
“No, he’s not my father. My father died when I was eight years old, working in the Kincaid Chemical Company plant.” Hunter laid his napkin on the table. “Are you about finished here?”
“I am not, and neither are you. Since we don’t have to pay for it, I intend to have one of those sinfully delicious desserts before I go anywhere.”
“You’ve already eaten all the bread and a full shrimp dinner complete with baked potato. And you want dessert too?”
“I do, and I want an answer to my question. Is Mr. Kincaid your father or not?”
“He adopted me when he married my mother. It wasn’t my idea, and I fought it until I realized how much it hurt my mother. I had to become Hunter Kincaid, but I didn’t have to like it. There was just so much compromise I could handle. At sixteen I moved out.”
Fortune gave a little gasp. “I haven’t seen it, but somehow I don’t think the house you moved out of was anything like the one Mickey and the rest of us ran away from.”
“No, I guess not. But I’ve gotten along all right without fine furniture and servants.”
“Sure, I never could take having somebody wait on me either,” Fortune said airily. “I lived with my grandmother, after my mother died. She used to say, ‘Waste not, Want not.’ And boy, she never wanted for anything. Me? I learned a lot about want. But that’s another story.”
“You lived with your grandmother? What happened to your folks?”
“My mother died when I was six years old.”
“Your father?”
“Died last year. At least he was buried last year. He died a long time ago.”
She didn’t have to say any more about the man who’d deserted her for most of her life; her tone of voice said it for her. She stared at the table as the waiter removed their plates and took their orders for pecan pie with ice cream. She took one look at Hunter’s face and knew that the man he called Hale, instead of father, was a subject for another night.
Most of the other diners were gone when they finished their pie. Fortune swiped the last two packets of crackers and stuffed them in her pocket. The waiter poured their after-dinner coffee and left.
Hunter was still very quiet. Fortune covered his hand with her own. “Looks like you were right, cowboy, we’re a pair. Two misfits out of somebody’s bad dream.”
“I’ll take the couch,” Hunter said as he followed Fortune into the sleeping car.
“That’s dumb. You’re two feet taller than I am. The couch fits me. You take the bed.”
Hunter locked the door and turned off the light over it. “We could share it,” he suggested. “I think it may be part of the rules.”
“I don’t think so. They probably assumed that two people making up a team are either married or—very close. But then there’s the matter of two bedrolls and the sofa bed. I think they covered all the possibilities.”
“You want to take the bathroom first?”
“Uh, no, you go ahead.”
“Whatever you say, but I have to tell you, wild woman, that I don’t sleep in pajamas when I’m camping, and when I sleep in a bed, I don’t wear anything at all. So if you want to get into your nightie while I’m brushing my teeth, I’ll give you time.”
“Hunter, I don’t sleep in a nightie.”
“Oh.”
Fortune pulled out the sofa and began making it up. Hunter watched for a minute, then went into the bathroom and made a great show of running water, flushing the toilet and brushing his teeth.
Fortune smiled. She wouldn’t have thought so, but he was more nervous than she was.
She peeled off the new jeans and shirt, pulled a tank top over her head, crawled into her bed, and pulled up the sheet. She was nervous.
When the bathroom door opened, she pretended to be asleep. Through half-closed eyes she watched as Hunter leaned forward in a series of aerobic stretching exercises before sliding his briefs down his muscular legs and climbing into bed. He switched out the light.
When she was certain that he was asleep, Fortune slid from her bed and into the bathroom, where she rinsed out her T-shirt and panties. Hanging them on the edge of the tub, she turned out the light and went back into the bedroom.
“Good night, wild woman,” Hunter said softly. “If you change your mind about the bed before morning, feel free to join me.”
Fortune didn’t answer. Changing her mind wasn’t the issue. She’d wanted to share his bed since she’d startled him awake in the tub. Fortune never had been one for planning. And the last thing she’d thought about when she’d left Cordele was making love to her partner. Turning on her side, Fortune admitted that while she might take some foolish risks to help a child, she’d never been quite so tempted to take the kind of risk that would create an unwanted one.
She’d stay where she was.
But she couldn’t keep from thinking about the cowboy with the intense blue eyes. He was so close and yet so far away.
Five
The little refrigerator that had been filled with snacks and sodas the previous night was empty when Fortune opened it the next morning. So was the parlor car. So was the king-size bed. She had the odd feeling that the previous day and night had all been a dream. Now she’d woken up to the truth.
Until she went into the bathroom.
Her lace panties and T-shirt had been moved from the side of the tub. They’d been laid carefully across the towel rack.
Beads of water still hung on the tiled shower wall, and a rumpled towel lay across the edge of the tub. Hunter had taken a shower. He’d probably walked around in his briefs, and she’d slept through it.
Fortune’s face burned with the thought of his discovering her lacy underwear. She’d intended to wake first and put her laundry away.
“Fortune? Are you dressed?”
Hunter’s footsteps sounded in the parlor car.
“Yes,” she said quickly, stuffing the panties under her tank top, “but I’m starving. What happened to the snacks?”
“Oh, I knew you’d want to take them, so I went out and got a small cooler. They’re already packed. They don’t have tickets to the trains anymore, so I got our bill stamped too.”
“You took everything?”
“Yep. I thought I’d save you the trouble. Panther, Inc., can afford it. You ready for coffee?”
He’d brought coffee and sweet rolls from the hotel lobby. He laid it out on the table in
front of the couch and motioned for Fortune to sit beside him as he spread out the maps and leaned forward. She began to relax. He wasn’t paying any attention to her. He wasn’t going to mention the underwear.
And he’d packed all the snacks.
Fortune suddenly felt good. He didn’t understand her need to store the leftover food, but he’d done it anyway. And he hadn’t teased her. She couldn’t explain the quiet feeling of comfort that his actions had caused.
Plopping down beside him, Fortune didn’t try to ignore the ever-present tingle that announced its presence as their thighs touched. He didn’t seem to notice. It had to be her, and a response that was eroding her nerve endings with every touch. He simply spread his legs and leaned closer to the table. Fortune swallowed her breakfast without tasting it. For the first time in her life she drank an entire cup of black coffee without flinching.
The cowboy was wearing his snakeskin boots and his jeans, but he’d left off the leather, and the olive-drab T-shirt was fresh. She wondered what he’d done with his dirty clothes. She might have offered to rinse them out, but that would bring up a discussion of her underwear, the underwear she’d stuffed under her shirt when she’d heard his voice.
He’d combed his blond hair back away from his forehead. As it dried, it fell boyishly forward across his face. She couldn’t resist the impulse and stretched her left hand out to push it back, caught herself, and for a moment her hand floated uncertainly, before she dropped it to the map, searching for some comment to justify its presence.
“Uh, Hunter, which way are we going?”
“What?” Hunter suddenly leaned back and turned, trapping the hand holding her sweet roll against the back of the couch. She rocked off balance and fell against him. “Well, now,” he said in surprise.
Fortune stiffened. She couldn’t move. Somebody had got out the hammer again, except this time it wasn’t nails holding her in place, it was invisible wires of magnetic energy.
With one swift motion Hunter slid his left arm under her bottom and turned her so that she was sitting in his lap with her map arm around his neck.