Kate dug for a dollar. She only had a twenty. “Could you break this? I forgot the tip.”
The hostess began counting change, then stopped as the phone rang. “Motel restaurant. Sure, we’re easy to find. Take the Palmdale Road exit...”
Kate couldn’t believe it. Mitch was going to get sent to the electric chair because she didn’t have a buck for a tip.
“No, we’re on the right...” Whoever was calling must have had difficulty hearing, because the hostess had to repeat everything several times.
Agonizing moments later, she hung up and finished her task. Kate handed back a dollar. “Give this to the waitress, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
She stepped back and bumped into someone. Someone tall and solid, but not as tall and solid as Mitch.
“Sorry.” Kate glanced up, directly into the expressionless eyes of the highway patrolman. Her whole body went cold, and she could barely force out the word, “Yes?”
“That your friend out there in the truck?”
She couldn’t deny it; he must have seen Mitch wave. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, he forgot to latch the door in the back of the camper. I noticed it when he pulled in.”
Kate resisted the urge to sag against the counter. “Thank you. I’ll tell him.”
“Wouldn’t want you folks losing your possessions all over the interstate.” The patrolman shook his head. “Inconvenient for you, and a heck of a mess to clean up.”
She gave him a weak smile and went out. Mitch came around the front of the cab to open her door.
With her back to the coffee shop, Kate said, “The camper door’s open, and there’s a highway patrolman about six feet from you inside the restaurant.”
“I know.” Mitch didn’t blink an eye as he helped her in. “I didn’t notice him until I was stopped, and then I decided it was better to act casual.”
“Well, act casual quickly because I’m about to have a heart attack,” she said, and gave him the suitcase.
The truck rocked as he stowed the case away, then closed and secured the camper door. The driver’s door opened and he got in beside her. “He didn’t suspect anything?”
Kate glanced into the café. A plate of doughnuts had the patrolman’s full attention. “Nope.”
“Nope?” Mitch started the motor and they pulled away. “You don’t sound much like a school principal today.”
“I don’t feel like one. I feel like I’m starring in a low-budget remake of ‘The Fugitive,’ ” she said.
“I’ve felt like that for the past ten days,” Mitch agreed.
Her heartbeat slowed gradually from machine-gun staccato to near-normal. As it did, Kate became aware of the wonderful scent filling the cab, cedar and spice and a hint of motor oil.
Despite the coolness of the day, it felt warm in here. That warmth, she knew without checking, didn’t emanate from the truck’s heater. In fact, given the general decrepitude of this vehicle, she doubted the heater even worked.
It came from Mitch. And it was as much psychological as physical.
AS THE DAY PASSED, the truck’s steady rhythm made her doze. When she awoke, the landscape appeared unchanged, except for the addition of a few stark, crooked Joshua trees.
They were passing the East Mojave National Scenic Area when a faint pattering made Kate frown. For a moment she feared the truck was breaking down again, and then she saw raindrops speckling the bug-smeared windshield.
“I was hoping to make Kingman tonight, but I think we’d better find a place to pull over.” Mitch’s voice had a tight quality that inspired Kate to check her side-view mirror for some sign of pursuit. She didn’t see any.
“You sound as if something’s wrong,” she said.
“You slept through the last weather report.” He slowed to fifty-five miles per hour and turned on the headlights as the rain spatter thickened. “They’re predicting heavy showers and a possibility of flash flooding.”
“Surely not on the interstate,” she returned.
“I wouldn’t think so either, but the visibility’s pretty low and it could drop to near zero.” In the lane beside them, a semitrailer roared by as if they were standing still. “Given the speed people drive around here, we’re in danger of getting rear-ended.”
“I don’t suppose your tires have a lot of tread to spare, either.” A downpour heavy enough to create flash flooding might slicken the road and send them hydroplaning into oblivion. “I’ve always wanting to try waterskiing, but not in a truck.”
“My tires are okay.” Mitch peered ahead. “Except for the left front one. I haven’t been able to replace it because I don’t dare use my credit cards.”
“That’s reassuring.” Kate took a deep breath. When she’d signed on for a bit of risk, she hadn’t considered bald tires and desert floods, but it was too late to chicken out. Not that she wanted to. “There!” She pointed to an exit sign. “We can get off here!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mitch said, and signaled a turn.
The rain intensified as they left the highway and eased down the ramp. There wasn’t a single building in sight. Mitch turned onto a two-lane road, and within seconds the downpour curtained off any sign of the interstate in Kate’s side-view mirror.
With no streetlights or oncoming headlights to break the gloom, they might have dropped into another dimension. Kate didn’t realize she wasn’t breathing properly until the truck slowed further and jounced onto an unpaved side road marked View Turnout.
Realizing Mitch must intend to park here, she took in a shuddering gulp of air. This wasn’t exactly a campground, but it beat blundering around in zero visibility.
They climbed until the road ended at a rock formation. An overhang cut the steady thrum of rain to a slow trickle.
Mitch peered into the thin area of gray defined by the headlights. “At least we’ve got some shelter. This doesn’t look like a canyon mouth, and we’ve come uphill a little.”
“So we’re not likely to wash away?” Kate asked.
“That’s true.” He killed the motor and turned off the lights. “Well, honey, we’re home.”
She started to laugh. Then she remembered that, tonight, there would be no motel and no sleeping outside.
She had no choice but to share the camper with Mitch.
Chapter Seven
Mitch had intended to fetch an umbrella from the camper, but Kate apparently didn’t hear his instructions to wait in the cab. Instead, she jumped down at the same time he did, and they both arrived at the back soaking wet.
He tried to shelter her as he unlocked the door. Standing so close, it was impossible not to notice the way the dampness brought out the perfume in her hair and the musky allure of her skin.
Mitch scolded himself for getting distracted again. He’d been thinking about Kate this morning, wondering if she might have bailed out on him overnight, and that was why he’d forgotten to lock up properly.
Absentmindedness could be deadly for a man in his situation. He needed to concentrate, all the time. Including now.
As soon as he did, he realized he should use some of the large rocks lying about to wedge the truck’s wheels. The grade here was so uneven that a small mudflow might send them slipping down the slope.
“Get inside,” he said. “I’m going to shore us up.”
“I’ll help.” Without waiting for a response, Kate stepped into the rain.
A steady stream of water ran from the brim of Mitch’s hat, but at least his head was dry. “You’re not dressed for this.”
“Then we’d better hurry, hadn’t we?” she said.
He had to admire Kate’s zeal as she rolled and lugged rocks beneath the tires. Within minutes, her clothing was soaked, but she hardly seemed to notice.
Mitch noticed. Wet clothes didn’t leave much to the imagination, and Kate’s compact figure had curves in all the right places.
With her blond hair sticking to her face and her blouse and jeans molded to her bo
dy, Kate bore little resemblance to a crisply efficient school principal. She looked more like a—well, a temptress.
He couldn’t help imagining how it would feel to press his lips to hers and cup those soft, tantalizing breasts in his hands. He could imagine the shudder that would run through her, the way it had when they’d touched by accident.
Mitch wrenched his thoughts back to the present. “We’ve done as much as we can out here.”
“Do you think we’re safe now?” she asked.
He nodded toward the rocks wedged beneath the wheels. “Safe from a minor mudslide, anyway.”
Inside the camper, Kate wrapped her arms around herself and smiled at him apologetically. “I guess I’d better change. I’m kind of a mess.”
He removed his hat, patted the felt with a towel and set it crown-side down so it wouldn’t lose its shape. “I’ll make tea. After you change, you can wrap up in a blanket if you’re still cold.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll change, too.”
Mitch didn’t take chilling lightly. A guy who tried to tough it out on the range not only risked catching pneumonia, he ran the more immediate danger of hypothermia.
Kate rummaged through her suitcase and he turned to the stove. Locating a pot and filling it with water got his mind off her for about thirty seconds, until she brushed by him on her way to the bathroom.
In the narrow space, her body fit much too snugly against his. He became intensely aware that the two of them were alone in the wilderness, stripped of the trappings of civilization.
Gritting his teeth against the masculine tightness in his groin. Mitch angled away and let Kate pass.
“Sorry.” She slanted him a look that was half apology and half speculation.
But not invitation, he reminded himself as she vanished into the bathroom. Even if she wanted him, and he suspected that on some level she did, she belonged to someone else.
Moose might not deserve her; a mental image of that man touching Kate filled Mitch with dismay. But she’d made her choice and her commitment, and he respected it.
After lighting a burner, he got out two chipped mugs, a tea bag and packets of sugar. A gust of wind hit the side of the camper, jolting it so that Mitch nearly dropped one of the cups. Water pelted the roof with such force that they might as well have parked beneath a cascade.
He didn’t want to spend the rest of his days in a rattletrap camper, battered by the elements. He wanted a home and a woman as spirited and intelligent as Kate, but free to love him.
Under normal circumstances, he would have found a wife of his own by now, he mused as he removed his boots, stripped off his soaked garments and replaced them with a nearly identical shirt and pair of jeans. He’d put his future on hold until the day he got the High C back, but that day had never come. Maybe now it never would.
He hung his wet clothes from hooks attached to the walls. Not that there was much hope of anything drying with the air so humid.
The door to the bathroom opened and Kate edged out. She had towel-dried and fluffed her hair, and put on a rose-colored sweater that made her skin glow. Everything about her looked soft and touchable.
The water began to simmer, and Mitch dunked the tea bag in it. He needed to keep his hands busy and his mind focused.
Kate squeezed by him in a cloud of teasing perfume and yielding body parts, and moved toward the small table. “This is cozy.”
Way too cozy. His whole body was vibrating with excess coziness. If they got any cozier, he might explode.
Kate curled onto the padded bench behind the table. She fit perfectly in the Lilliputian setting. She would fit just as perfectly in his arms, and his bed, Mitch thought.
“The camper suits you. It’s kind of small for me, but I try to keep my clumsiness under control.” He was pleased at how normal he sounded. Also by the fact that he’d managed to say anything remotely intelligible.
“Actually, you move with a lot of grace for a man.”
He couldn’t formulate a response that didn’t involve offering to show her exactly how graceful he could be, so he went back to dunking the tea bag. The water was nearly black by now.
“Tell me about Flagstaff,” Kate said. “Exactly who or what are we going to see?”
Mitch seized upon this change of subject with relief as he filled their mugs. “Old Doc Rosen died at his cabin in Oak Creek Canyon south of town, as I mentioned.”
“How long ago?”
“About thirteen years. I hadn’t seen him in a while, but it felt like the end of an era.” He set out a bowl of sugar. “Doc delivered me at home, and he treated me as a kid. I even came back my freshman year in college to consult him when I got bronchitis.”
He could see the doctor’s face, its high forehead wrinkling with concern, the wide-set eyes full of wisdom. Then he realized his memory must be playing tricks, because he could swear the man was a dead ringer for Raymond Burr.
“You mentioned his daughter.”
Mitch handed Kate her mug. “She’s an artist. I think she used to teach at Northern Arizona University, which is why Doc moved to that area when he retired. Also, he loved the scenery. According to Doc, Texas was too flat.”
He described how he’d tried to reach Sarah Rosen after Billy Parkinson showed up with the papers, but there was no phone at the cabin.
He’d finally driven to Arizona, only to learn that she and her husband were in Europe. A renter at the cabin had let him take a look around, but he’d found nothing useful.
The management company had said Sarah and her husband moved frequently. He wrote to their most recent address, but his letter came back. He obtained a new address and wrote to that, but never received a reply. Several additional letters either went astray or were ignored.
“I suppose a detective could have found her.” Mitch sat opposite Kate, careful to keep his legs from touching hers. “But by then I was going to law school and struggling to keep my head above water.”
She stirred sugar into her tea. “Wouldn’t your Dad’s bank have some record of his checks? He might have paid off the loan that way.”
“Dad liked to pay cash for things,” Mitch said. “He did make regular withdrawals, but they could have been to pay the ranch’s expenses.”
Kate started to say something, then stopped. From her embarrassed expression, Mitch could guess her thoughts.
“And it’s possible he really didn’t repay the loan,” he concluded. “But that would be completely unlike my father.”
“Maybe he couldn’t,” Kate said. “This doctor probably wouldn’t have pressed him, but—possibly he was getting confused in his last years. Maybe he signed the quitclaim without understanding what it meant.”
Mitch had been over this territory endlessly in his mind. “I can’t imagine that he would have been allowed to sign a document if he was that far gone. Sarah could tell us for sure what her father’s mental state might have been.”
“And you think she’s returned by now?” Kate murmured, her tone gentle.
Mitch realized he was stirring his tea so hard it had slopped over. He set the spoon down and folded his hands on the table. “I called the management company last week, before I went out to the ranch to meet Billy. I was hoping to get enough information to twist his arm, maybe force him to back down.”
“They said Sarah was home?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Mitch admitted. “They said she’d terminated their services a few days earlier, that she was planning to sell the place.”
“They didn’t have a phone number for her?”
He shook his head. “But she could be staying at the cabin.”
“Do you think she might have heard about you shooting that cowboy?” Kate asked. “What if she’s told the police you might come looking for her?”
He thought about the winding road that led to the cabin. “We could be trapped,” he conceded. “If you’d like me to drop you in Flagstaff and collect you on the way out, I’
ll be glad to.”
She set down her cup and glared at him. “Mitch Connery, it was just speculation. Besides, you need me.”
If she only knew the half of it! “Do I?”
Kate’s face scrunched like a kid’s as she pondered. Watching her was an entertainment in itself. “First of all, if Sarah is there, she’s less likely to panic if you come with a woman.”
“Possibly.”
“And since you’ve already visited the cabin once and didn’t spot anything useful, maybe you need a second set of eyes.”
“Considering that you couldn’t see three armed thugs in the middle of the street, I’m not convinced you’d be much help in that department,” he said drily.
She appeared on the verge of a sharp reply, when her outrage melted into a chuckle. “It’s only a problem if I get dust under my contacts. But I don’t care if I have to blink and blear my way through that canyon, I’m coming with you!”
If fire had shot from her ears, it wouldn’t have surprised him. The woman could be fierce when aroused.
He wondered what she was like when aroused in a different way. He couldn’t allow himself to touch her physically, but an urge swept over Mitch to sing to Kate.
During his college days, he’d noticed the effect his voice had on women. He had only to pull out his guitar at a small gathering and begin to sing, and they gravitated toward him, entranced.
Not that he expected Kate to respond that way. She wasn’t an impressionable coed, and he wasn’t trying to win a date for the evening. But he found himself wanting to share this private aspect of himself.
Besides, a little diversion would help to pass the time. They were stuck here for the rest of the day, and two people could only play cards for so long.
Mitch reached into a nook for the guitar case.
NO ONE HAD SUNG to Kate since she was a child. That was not counting the time at a park concert when Moose got drunk and decided to treat the band as his personal karaoke accompaniment.
He hadn’t exactly been singing to Kate, but at her. The Gazette’s editor, in a tongue-in-cheek review, had written that, as singing, it might make Caruso turn over in his grave but that, as an imitation of a cow with digestive problems, it ought to win a blue ribbon at the next state fair.
The Cowboy & The Shotgun Bride (The Brides of Grazer's Corners #1) Page 10