“I didn’t mean I have fleas...”
Quade raised his hand for silence. “Is there any more discussion about putting a bond issue on the ballot?” There wasn’t. “Then I call for a vote.”
*
After two days of driving across Texas, Buffy had memorized the Country Music Top Ten. She’d also learned six ways to prepare chili and eight tips on perfecting her barbecue sauce. Try as she might, she couldn’t find a radio station that specialized in romantic advice and decorating tips. Not that she needed either, considering that she was on the brink of a divorce and only a few degrees short of flat broke.
She’d closed her bank account before leaving L.A. The house and furnishings had been Roger’s before their marriage, so she didn’t have a bed to call her own. Just a baby, a tiny trunkful of luggage and a large bag of organic dried fruit.
Buffy drove past a sign that read, “Nowhere Junciton, 10 miles.” Someone had misspelled Junction—years ago, judging by the weathered condition of the paint— and no one had bothered to fix it. This was a far cry from Beverly Hills, where, when a building needed repainting, they tore it down and put up a bigger one.
Buffy was entertaining a parade of second, third and fourth thoughts about her destination, when her two-timing engine seized its chance to self-destruct.
This round, it didn’t bother to sputter in a dainty, respectable manner. Instead, it gave out a huge clanking noise and hissed like a diva spotting a knockoff of her new designer dress worn by her husband’s mistress.
A burning smell wafted into the passenger compartment.
“Cut the theatrics!” Buffy said.
The engine spluttered one last time and died. A profound silence settled over the Texas night as the car drifted to the side of the road.
She was stuck, ten miles from Nowhere. In the back seat, Allie slept. Overhead, a zillion stars glittered uselessly. Buffy had never felt so alone.
“How boring,” she said. Taking out her cell phone, she dialed Carter Murchison’s business number, which was the only one she had for him.
It rang four times. Five. Six. He must have closed up shop for the evening. There wasn’t even an answering machine. What now?
She was about to click off when, on the seventh ring, a woman answered, “Murchison’s Garage.”
Was he married? He hadn’t been married two years ago. Not according to the records that the clinic had provided.
“Mrs. Murchison?” Buffy asked.
“No, this is Mimsy. I mean, Dr. Miles,” said the woman.
“Are you a mechanic?” “Doc” might be a nickname.
“No, I’m the town doctor,” the woman said. “I was on my way to the school board meeting when I heard the phone ring and I thought someone might be in trouble, so I answered it.”
“The phone rings on the street?” she asked, confused.
“I was walking by the garage,” the doctor said. “Carter left it open. To whom am I speaking?”
Buff gave her name and explained that she was on a trip with her baby daughter and her car had broken down. Surely Carter Murchison could drive his tow truck out to rescue her.
“He’s over at the school,” the doctor said.
“Be a dear and give me his cell number, would you?” Nearby, in the rustically fragrant darkness, something uttered a strangulated chirp. Buffy chucked a prune at it.
“He doesn’t have one,” said Mimsy. “He uses CB.”
Buffy puzzled over the initials. Usually, she was good at alphabet soup. She knew USC and UCLA, LOL, TTFN and, unfortunately, the CHP, which had socked her with a ticket for using the freeway car pool lane even though she was pregnant at the time and therefore consisted of two people. “CB? He calls back?” she guessed.
“Citizens Band Radio. It’s totally outdated, but… Quade!” Mimsy exclaimed, which made no sense until she added, “I just remembered. Quade has a cell phone. He’s at the meeting.”
At last they were making progress. “Thank you,” Buffy said. “I’ll be happy to take that number.”
“Just a hint. Don’t tell him your first name is…”
Too late. She’d already pushed the red button. Besides, why on earth would Carter care about her name?
*
The vote to put a bond issue on the June ballot failed, 3-2. Only Finella sided with Quade.
“You people are a bunch of cheap so-and-sos!” Mazeppa rattled her shopping cart, which, as usual, she had brought with her. “What are you planning to do, hold classes in a barn?”
JoJo Anderson, the postmistress, stood up. “Does anybody have a clue how much a new school is going to cost? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Hold on.” Quade performed a quick search in his phone. “Here’s a ballpark estimate. Even considering that we already own the land, it’ll be somewhere in the neighborhood of five million dollars.”
A hush fell over the auditorium. It was broken only by the drip-drip-drip of a leaky pipe that Billy Dell had tried twice to find, without success.
“That’s a lot of bake sales,” muttered Finella.
Quade’s phone rang. Carter hoped there wasn’t trouble on his cattle ranch.
With an apologetic smile, the board chairman answered, “Quade here.” He listened, then handed the unit to Carter. “It’s for you.”
“Me?” Who would call him on Quade’s phone? Putting it cautiously to one ear, he said, “This is Carter.”
“Thank goodness! This is Buffy.”
The woman had to be joking. “That isn’t possible,” he said. “Buffy’s my cat.”
“Excuse me?”
“There’s nobody in town named Buffy except my cat.” To his chagrin, Carter realized that some fifty people were listening intently to his end of the conversation. Also, it struck him that the name had popped into his mind when the cat wandered into his house shortly after his return from L.A. But what did that have to do with anything?
“Let me get this straight.” The woman spoke in a no-nonsense manner. “This is not your cat. Are we clear on that?”
“Well, which Buffy is it?”
“Buffy Arden. You may not remember me, but we’ll deal with that later,” she added. “My car broke down ten miles outside town. I need you to come right now!”
He got the picture. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until after the board meeting, miss. We’re making on a very important decision.”
An exasperated breath rattled the receiver. “Mr. Murchison, I wouldn’t insist if it were just me, but there’s the baby.”
“What baby?” he asked.
Fifty sets of ears pricked up. The only one who spoke, though, was Mazeppa. “What’s this about a baby?”
Carter put his hand over the mouthpiece. “This lady’s car broke down outside town and she has a baby.”
“Is it a motor home?” asked Finella.
Apparently his hand didn’t prevent the nonfeline Buffy from hearing, because she said, “It’s a sports car.”
“Sports car,” Carter repeated aloud.
“You can’t leave a little baby out in the cold!” huffed Sweetie Popsworthy, although she of all people should know it wasn’t due to drop below seventy degrees tonight. She occasionally broadcast the weather on public access cable TV from her husband’s dry goods store.
“I move that Carter goes out and helps the lady,” said Billy Dell.
“Second!” Gigi wasn’t qualified to second the motion, since she didn’t serve on the board, but nobody objected.
“Any discussion?” asked Quade. “Hearing none—”
“Wait a minute.” Carter needed to think this over. He wasn’t sure he wanted to rush out in the middle of an important meeting to help a woman with the same name as his cat.
“Hearing no discussion,” Quade repeated, with a glare, “I call for a vote. All in favor, raise your hands.”
Four hands went up. “Opposed?”
A man ought to know when he was licked. That was one lesson am
ong many that Carter’s father had taught him. “The opposition yields.”
A cheer arose from the audience. “To the rescue,” called the ever-ebullient Pastor Ephraim O’Rourke. At ninety-three, he was still spry as a grasshopper.
Carter unfolded his long legs and said, “I’m on my way.” He returned the phone to Quade and left the auditorium. As he crossed the street in the warm night air, he felt grateful that none of his fellow townspeople had guessed the real reason he was reluctant to go.
He could swear he’d heard that woman’s voice before, long ago and far away. It had been in connection with an incident he would really, really, really rather forget.
Chapter Two
Sitting in the front seat eating a dried apple ring, Buffy tried for the thousandth time to remember what Carter Murchison looked like. Vaguely, she recalled that he was tall with brown hair, but that was as far as it went.
It had been a year and a half since she’d met him. During the two or three months she’d spent working as a spokesperson for the fertility center, she’d recruited him at a hotel seminar, along with hundreds of other willing victims, as she now considered them.
Why had she ever taken that ridiculous job? She was no public relations expert, no matter how much Roger had wanted his wife to have a glamorous profession. The very idea of duping men attending conventions into sitting through a fake seminar, then accompanying her to the clinic to “donate” in exchange for a tiny payment to their favorite charity, was distasteful if not downright fraudulent.
Well, maybe it hadn’t been so wrongful most times. But on the day she learned—after the deed was done--that the hotel had accidentally spiked the men’s punch, she should have fought harder for some sort of remedy. She had confronted the clinic director, who’d ordered her to keep her mouth shut.
“Do you expect us to destroy all those beautiful, eager-to-please sperm?” he’d demanded. “That would be a crime against nature.”
The next day, after a sleepless night, Buffy had resigned. And it might all have faded into a minor incident had Roger not insisted they use the same sperm bank soon afterwards for their own needs. He’d been dazzled by the fact that, as an ex-employee, she received a fifty percent discount.
Disaster had followed. Thanks to her threat of a lawsuit, the clinic had provided Carter’s address, his occupation and his age, which was thirty-three, five years older than she was, but no photograph. So what kind of guy was he?
Buffy had never personally known an auto mechanic, aside from the supervisor at the Mega-Mall Auto Center. She didn’t think he counted. He wore a suit, for one thing, and once when he’d tried to find the hood release on her car, he’d had to call for assistance.
She searched her memory again. According to the records, she’d recruited three men the day she’d met Carter Murchison. One had been Chinese. The second was named O’Flaherty and she recalled him as having red hair and freckles. The third man remained a tall, brown-haired question mark.
Buffy groaned and kicked off her shoes, which pinched. She wore them only because, during their five years of marriage, Roger had drummed into her the importance of always looking your best.
No doubt his latest sweetheart, Yoko the Japanese lingerie model, always looked her best. Especially in bed.
Never mind about that. What mattered now was Allie.
Resting one arm atop the seat, Buffy gazed at her daughter. The baby slept in angelic innocence, her little cheeks pink even by moonlight.
Although Buffy had wanted a baby, she hadn’t been prepared for the tempest of feelings that swept through her the moment the nurse laid Alison in her arms. The tiny thing was so helpless. So cuddly. So filled with the promise of birthday candles and Christmas joy and prom dresses to come.
The distant thrum of a truck drew Buffy back to the present. Too many things had gone wrong for her precious little girl in the past six months. This man Murchison had better not let them down. If he did, Buffy would, well, do something drastic.
Even if it required breaking a fingernail.
*
As the tow truck rumbled along the highway, Carter sorted through his impressions of the board meeting he’d just left. There were, he felt, two major issues at stake. First, how were the townspeople supposed to raise five million dollars to rebuild the school?
And second, what if Billy Dell Grimes really did kick Mazeppa out of his laundry room and send her to live with Carter?
Mazeppa had showed up in Nowhere Junction about ten years ago. People said she was distantly related to several of the town’s founding families, but no one knew which ones, so everyone chipped in to help her out. It seemed only neighborly, despite the fact that, with her sharp tongue, she could be a real pain in the butt.
Carter didn’t need her hanging around criticizing his every move. Not that he begrudged shelter to a homeless woman, but he liked doing things his own way and at his own pace.
That was what made him such a good mechanic. It might take him a while to fix a carburetor, but when he did, it stayed fixed.
Ahead, Carter spotted a sleek black shape by the side of the road. He’d gone nine miles out of town, not ten, but he figured Buffy Arden must have gauged her distance by the Nowhere Junction sign.
Since the highway was too narrow and the shoulders too soft for him to turn the tow truck around, he drove on toward the entrance to the Lazy Snake Ranch half a mile farther. As he passed the car, a woman yelled, “Hey, are you blind?”
He hoped, profoundly, that Buffy Arden’s car had done nothing worse than throw a spark plug and that she would soon be on her way.
*
The man must be a complete idiot. The sports car was the only vehicle for miles. How could he miss it?
As the tow truck dwindled into the night, Buffy’s spirits plummeted. She’d held up all these months for Allie’s sake, through the divorce proceedings and the news that Roger’s fashion design firm verged on bankruptcy. Also through the shocking revelation of Allie’s paternity after he insisted on a DNA test. Also through this tedious cross-country drive, staying at cheap motels and trying not to dwell on the future.
Now she dissolved into tears. She hugged herself as she rocked in the front seat, trying to avoid any noise that would wake her daughter.
Why had she thought she could drive out here and dump the truth into Carter’s lap? What did she expect—that for the first time in her life a man would act like a decent human being?
She had a broken-down car and nobody to call except this total stranger who was likely to throw her out the minute he learned why she’d really come. The only people she could count on were her mother and sister in California, and neither was in any position to ride to the rescue.
Slowly she got a rein on her emotions. Buffy Arden wasn’t some wimp who needed rescuing. To heck with Carter Murchison and Roger Arden and every other man who tried to grind her down. She had her wits, her daughter and a credit card that would keep reality at bay until she found a job.
Buffy fumbled with the latch of her purse and felt around for a tissue. In the dark, she couldn’t find one, so she blew her nose on a baby wipe instead.
An engine rumbled behind her. The tow truck was coming back!
Her luck had changed already.
*
As he approached the sports car, Carter wished he had one of those fancy tow trucks that hoisted a vehicle onto a flatbed. He had a feeling this Buffy person might sue him over the few scratches her overpriced car was likely to suffer on its way into town.
Well, he was who he was and he drove what he drove. If she didn’t like it, she could call some mechanic from Groundhog Station and see how far that got her.
He parked on the shoulder in front of the car, careful to keep two tires on the pavement. Behind him, a car door slammed.
In the side mirror, he watched a woman march toward him. “What happened?” she demanded when she came within speaking distance. “Did you finally figure out there wasn’t anoth
er sports car stuck down the road?”
“I had to turn around.” As she reached the open window, he had his first clear look at the woman’s green eyes and blonde hair. It formed a bell around her face, which was oval except for the determined jaw. He didn’t suppose she resembled a movie star, but there was a glow about her.
He hadn’t forgotten her in a year and a half. Heck, he wouldn’t have forgotten her in a century and a half.
She was the woman who’d haunted his dreams ever since he got back from Los Angeles. What was she doing in Texas?
*
Carter’s explanation for passing seemed sensible, Buffy had to admit. She could see that the tow truck was too big to turn around easily.
But she wasn’t feeling rational. Not while she was standing this close to the man.
How had she managed to put him out of her mind? His masculine aura of motor oil and soap could punch the daylights out of Roger’s designer aftershave. And where did he get those broad shoulders? Were they making implants for those now, too?
He definitely wasn’t the sort of person she wanted to hit with the blunt truth. She ought to break the news to him gently--preferably after he fixed her car, to allow a quick escape if he got angry.
“Okay, I forgive you,” she said.
“For what?” Gray eyes fixed on her face.
“Driving past me a minute ago.”
“I explained that.” He sat calmly in his seat, while Buffy clung to the door handle to keep from sinking into the soft soil.
“And I forgave you.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said with that same maddening steadiness.
It felt like a test of wills, and maybe it was. With her car broken, he had her at a disadvantage. “Whatever,” she said. “Now do I have to hook up my car to the tow truck myself, or will you help me?”
“First I have to get out,” he said, “as soon as you step back. Otherwise I might bump you with this door.”
“Oh.” Buffy hated the way he kept one-upping her, so she stood there a moment longer. Then she sauntered toward her car, as if moving had been her idea.
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