“Seems to be,” he replied, jumping out of his seemingly dead vehicle, lifting the hood, and staring at the mechanical parts underneath. Panic washed over him like a tidal wave. He didn’t know a damn thing about cars.
“It purred like a kitten yesterday,” he murmured. “I have no idea what could be wrong. Is there a mechanic in town I could call? I need to get this fixed now.”
Gram winced. “I know the names of a couple of mechanics, yes, but it’s eight a.m. on a Sunday, and the first day of the festival no less. Getting your car fixed today could be difficult.” She paused. “But Tina Marie’s uncle is a retired mechanic and he’s usually up early. He might not be able to fix your car on the spot, but he could probably at least tell you what’s wrong.”
Well, that was something.
He watched his grandmother go into the house to ring up this Carl guy, grateful for anyone who might be able to help.
By nine, Tina Marie’s uncle had not only come over, but he’d diagnosed the problem and, simultaneously, crushed Trevor’s hope of making it to his meeting on time.
“You need a new distributor cap,” Carl said. “I have no idea what happened to it, but it’s missing. Best I can figure is that it was already loose or that it cracked last night and fell off somehow. It’s odd.” He rubbed his forehead. “Given the make and model of your car, a new one can probably be ordered fairly easily, but I doubt they’d have it on hand at the shop. I’ll give Dylan Maxwell a call to check this morning, and if they don’t have one, I’ll see if they can place an order for you. But it’s not likely to be here before Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Damn.
Trevor sat down on Gram’s front porch steps and buried his head in his palms. This was a gigantic mess, but he was a resourceful guy. There had to be a way to get from Sapphire Falls to Colorado Springs in the next twenty-four hours.
“Don’t look so glum, Trev,” his grandmother said. “Maybe just call that person you were meeting in Colorado and postpone the interview for a couple of days. There are great people to talk to right here in Sapphire Falls, you know. Ty Bennett, for one, is an Olympic Silver Medalist.”
He met her eye and tried to assess what he was seeing. She looked so innocent. Too innocent, to be honest. This was much too coincidental to be happening naturally. But while he usually gave in to a family member’s wishes, this was one time when he couldn’t just go with the flow.
“As a last resort, I’d consider postponing, Gram, but not if I can come up with a better solution first. I had to call in a few favors to get this one-on-one interview, so I don’t want my inability to show up on time to reflect poorly on the friend who vouched for me. It’s a matter of professionalism.”
Something in Gram’s expression shifted and a shadow of some other emotion—sadness? guilt? embarrassment? all three, perhaps?—flitted across her face.
But she didn’t have a chance to speak because another car pulled into the driveway just then and the gorgeous redhead he hadn’t expected to ever see again stepped out, looking dazzling in a pale yellow dress. Also with her was Carl’s wife, Debbie.
“We just came from church,” Debbie said. “Bernie texted us and said there was a problem with your car, Trevor. Did Carl fix it?”
Trevor’s mouth had gone dry staring at Tina Marie, and when she smiled at him, he lost his train of thought for a moment. But finally he recovered enough to tell her aunt, “He did his best, ma’am.”
And Tina’s uncle shrugged and explained that Sapphire Falls Auto Care didn’t have the necessary part at the shop, but it would get there by midweek.
“Midweek?” Tina Marie said. “But your big meeting is tomorrow.”
Trevor nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been running though options. Getting a last-minute flight would be tough, and I’d still have to get to Lincoln or Omaha to catch a commercial plane. But maybe I could rent a car? Or perhaps there’s a bus that goes round trip to Colorado Springs?”
Debbie squinted at her husband. “Isn’t there a rent-a-car place in York?”
Carl shook his head. “The one you’re thinking of went out of business last year, but there might be another one now. And there should be a bunch of places in Lincoln—”
Tina Marie walked up to Trevor as her aunt, her uncle, and his grandmother debated rent-a-car locations. She leaned close to him and whispered, “This isn’t an accident, is it?”
He whispered back, “I doubt it, but Gram’s not admitting to anything.” He sighed. “She’s created a pretty major complication, but at least I get to see you again for a little while until I can figure out what to do.” He smiled at her.
She smiled back. “I think I know what to do.”
He shot her a quizzical look, but she just murmured, “Trust me.” Then, to the older folks on the lawn, she said, “No need to find a car rental place. I’ll drive Trevor to Colorado.”
Both her aunt’s eyes and Gram’s widened to saucer sizes. Carl looked confused again and slightly concerned. “It’s seven hours one way,” he said.
“That’s right,” Tina Marie piped up. “But we can’t leave him stranded here. It wouldn’t be the neighborly thing to do.” She smiled sweetly—if not entirely sincerely—at Debbie, Carl, and Gram. It took all of Trevor’s restraint not to jump up off the porch stairs, yell “Whoo-hoo!” and kiss Tina Marie until she was breathless.
In the face of their elders’ shell-shocked expressions, though, he did manage to ask her if she was sure. “I know you’d intended to leave town soon. I don’t want to disrupt your plans.”
“You aren’t,” Tina Marie replied, sending her aunt a particularly cryptic look.
“Does that mean you’ll stay through the festival?” Debbie asked, a note of hopefulness in her voice.
“Not sure yet,” Tina replied. “I hate to have to miss the fireworks on Tuesday night, but I’ve seen them before. I’ve seen a lot of this before,” she added, though from the slight edginess of her tone, Trevor suspected she wasn’t just talking about the festival events.
Gram had pretty much been staring at him and Tina mutely, but she finally spoke up. “Just, erm, drive carefully, okay? And let me pack you a few snacks for the road.” She rushed into the house before Trevor could say anything, but there was a brightness in his grandmother’s eyes that might have been a sheen of tears. Was she lonelier than he’d thought? Lonely enough to do something reckless to make him stay? Maybe he should make his trip to Colorado as short as possible so he could spend more of his week off here with Gram in Sapphire Falls.
Tina Marie nudged him. “Uncle Carl has his car here, so he can drive Aunt Debbie back home. This is my car.” She pointed to the sporty silver two-door coupe at the end of the driveway. “We just need to stop by our house so I can grab my guitar and a few things. Then you and I can hit the road.”
“You’re a saint for doing this,” he said.
She shook her head and fiery red hair went flying. “I’m not a saint.” Then, lowering her voice, she added, “But I know the players in this game. Other people—often out of love—will try to derail someone from following a dream. I’ve been the recipient of such kindly manipulation before. We creative types need to stick together and go for it anyway.”
Trevor felt something deep in his chest when she said these words. It was part gratitude, part respect, part indebtedness, part admiration. But there was more. Something soft that whispered, “I could fall in love with this girl.” And he probably would if circumstances were different.
All he said to her, though, was this: “Just let me know how I can make it up to you.”
“Oh, I will,” she said. “I’m expecting you to take me out for dinner tonight. A huge burger and cheese fries. And dessert. Ice cream. And at least a thirty-minute shoulder rub.”
“Deal, deal, and really pleasurable deal,” he murmured, just as Gram emerged from the house with a bag filled with soft drinks, crackers, and sweet treats.
“Be careful now,” his grandmother said.
She hugged him hard and he got the distinct sense that, while she was pleased with the outcome of this problem, this hadn’t been the way she’d expected him to solve it.
Tina Marie hugged and kissed both her aunt and uncle, assuring them that she’d be fine.
Trevor overheard her aunt whisper, “You’ve only known him for less than a day, do you really think—”
But Tina interrupted. “A girl can learn a lot about a guy at a book-club meeting. And at a bar.” Then a little louder. “Besides, he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to help me write my next song.”
Trevor grinned as he pulled his stuff from his car and transferred it over to Tina Marie’s. “Sure. What’s involved?”
“Mostly rhyming words. And keeping me plied with Oreos.”
“These seem like tasks I can handle.”
“Good. Get in the passenger’s seat and let’s get you to Colorado Springs.”
Debbie, Carl, and Gram waved as Tina Marie started the car, but not one of the three could disguise their concerned expressions.
“They look sufficiently worried,” she said, pulling away from Gram’s house.
“They do, and you were right. You’re not a saint. You’re something much better.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You’re my superhero, Ms. Moran. I think I need to get you a red cape to go with the truckload of Oreos I’m going to buy you.”
She laughed. “This sounds like the start of a very promising friendship.”
Chapter Three
There were only three occasions in Tina’s life where she’d gone on a spontaneous road trip across state lines:
1. To Austin, Texas with Lori during college because her former best friend had a crush on a University of Texas football player and wanted to surprise him. (Lori was the one who’d gotten the surprise, though. The guy had gone home to San Antonio for the weekend.)
2. To Topeka, Kansas with David just after graduating college because her former fiancé got last-minute tickets to see Bruce Springsteen in concert and that was where he was playing. (Great show, bad boyfriend.)
3. To Jefferson City, Missouri with a few of her musician friends last winter because another mutual friend eloped and invited them all to the big post-wedding party. (Dangerously icy roads, but the event itself had been pure fun.)
And now to Colorado Springs with Trevor. Make that four occasions.
Her prior road trips had been a mixed bag of experiences and emotions, so she didn’t know what to expect from this one. Except that she desperately hoped Trevor would kiss her again. Last night’s goodnight/goodbye make-out session had her burning up until morning. And when Aunt Debbie told her that Trevor’s car wasn’t starting and Uncle Carl was working on it, Tina didn’t kick up the slightest fuss when her aunt suggested going over to Bernadette’s place to check on things.
But Tina’s offer to drive him to Colorado came as much of a surprise to her as it did to everyone else on Bernie’s front lawn. And now, three hours into the journey and headed directly into a thunderstorm, Tina found herself wondering what she was going to do in Colorado Springs. Not during the day, when Trevor was occupied with interviews—she could fend for herself well enough then—but at night, when he was free.
The man in question, however, was pretty obviously not thinking about her at the moment. He was behind the wheel of her car (he’d insisted on taking turns driving), staring worriedly out the front windshield, and repeatedly checking both the color of the sky and the digital car clock.
“We’ve got a half hour tops,” he stated, clicking the windshield wipers into a higher gear, “before we get pounded by this storm.”
A jagged crack of lightning lit up the darkening sky, as if to underscore his point, and the heavens rolled with thunder. “Make that twenty minutes,” he added.
He was right. The rain, which had begun as a light pitter patter a few miles west of Sapphire Falls, had been coming down steadily for the past hour. Now it was getting heavier, harder, faster, and more furious. Visibility was limited and growing worse by the mile.
Up until this point, she and Trevor had had an uneventful drive, unless his hilariously toneless singing along with Kenny Chesney, Lady Antebellum, and Keith Urban counted as an “event.” She’d laughed at his vocal renditions until her sides ached, especially after he grinned at her and said, “I probably shouldn’t go pro with that, huh?”
“Probably not,” she’d agreed, but there was something so darned charming about him—even as he sang off key—that would likely have him winning over crowds if he ever did perform in front of a live audience.
And when she’d been the one driving, he insisted on stopping at a convenience store for her requested Oreos, feeding her half of the package—one delicious cookie at a time, and even reaching over to give her a quick shoulder rub every thirty or forty miles.
But once the storm started strengthening, he got behind the wheel, flipped the radio station from country music to 24-hour weather, and turned very serious.
“Flash flood warning for areas in western Nebraska, northeastern Colorado, and southeastern Wyoming...” said the radio newscaster, and Trevor winced as the heavy rains morphed into a torrential downpour that nearly engulfed the car and started to turn Interstate 80 into a river.
“It’s like the Nidawi River flowing out here,” she said.
He nodded. He’d already slowed to a fraction of the posted speed limit, but he drove even slower. “We’re only halfway, Tina Marie. And much as I’d like to press on, I think we’d better stop somewhere for a few hours. I can’t see a damned thing.”
She agreed. “We could use a break to stretch our legs anyway.” She consulted her phone. “There’s a small city called Big Springs coming up ahead. How about there?”
“On it,” Trevor answered, spotting the exit ramp that would take them off the highway and into the town.
He pulled into the parking lot of a little diner, and they waited for a break in the rain to run inside. After seven minutes, the break still hadn’t come, so they just raced across the parking lot to the awning by the entrance, both getting drenched in the process.
“Remind me to buy you an umbrella for your car,” he said, grinning and swiping the raindrops off his face like sweat. His shirt clung to his body like a second skin.
“I’ll let you.” She wrung the water from her hair, looked down at her dress, and frowned. Her outfit wasn’t as see-through as, say, a thin white t-shirt, but the yellow fabric wasn’t exactly opaque either. As a few droplets of rain trickled down her face, she caught Trevor staring at her, his mouth slightly open, his breathing shallow. Winded from their race to the diner...or was it some other reason?
He held her gaze for a long moment before he finally glanced away and over to the door. “Shall we go in and dry off?” he suggested.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He opened the door for her and soon they were seated at a cozy booth toward the back, hot coffee on the way.
“Well, we made it almost to the Colorado border,” he said, checking out the GPS app on his phone. “Not entirely sure we’ll make it out of Nebraska, though, if this storm doesn’t lighten up soon. We’ve got another three and a half hours to Colorado Springs.”
“Let’s see what the next few hours are like. It can’t keep pouring like this all night.”
Turned out, it could.
Despite the couple of hours they spent at the diner, the distraction of juicy burgers, cheese fries, and ice cream, and the animated conversation they had about alternative rock versus country music, the rain just kept falling. And falling.
“Road conditions are dreadful,” their waitress informed them. “We’ve heard that part of I-80 into Wyoming and I-76 into Colorado are closed because of flooding.”
“Shit,” Trevor murmured. “Any idea if there are detours or when they project the roads will be passable again?”
“Maybe tomo
rrow,” the waitress said kindly. “But it’s not a great idea to be out there right now.”
Tina could feel the waves of frustration Trevor had building up inside. He wanted to get to Colorado Springs so much—that desire radiated from him like a beacon on a foggy night—and, yet, he’d been derailed at every turn.
She couldn’t help but sympathize. She’d experienced something similar more than once. She felt his exasperation. Could almost taste the potency of his disappointment.
But he tried not to show it. He just shrugged and said, “Ah, maybe it’s a sign. Maybe we should turn back as soon as the rain stops. Get you safely home to Sapphire Falls. No need for both of us to change our plans this week.”
“Maybe it’s a sign...” she repeated. That was what she’d said to herself when she’d first put off her decision to go to Nashville because David had proposed. If you counted the offhanded phrase, “Hey, babe, let’s get hitched,” as a proposal. Hmm. Given all that had happened since, perhaps it really hadn’t been a sign. It may have just been fear of pursuing her dream and a convenient excuse to continue doing what was comfortable.
She reached across the table and covered Trevor’s hand with hers. “I’ve said those words to myself before. Guess I didn’t realize writers were as superstitious as musicians.”
He smiled slightly. “What can I say? At first I thought my grandmother was the reason everything seemed to go awry this weekend. But even Gram doesn’t have control over Mother Nature.”
“Not that you know of...”
They both laughed.
“True,” he admitted. “I suppose I shouldn’t rule that out. The woman’s got connections.”
“Here’s my idea,” she said, pointing out the window toward a MOTEL sign in the distance. “Why don’t we stay here tonight and reassess the road situation in the morning, okay? If there’s a way to get you to where you need to be on time, we’ll do it. If not, you can decide then whether to cancel the meeting or postpone it or whatever. But don’t worry about changing my plans, Trevor. Nothing will. Trust me, this is only a slight delay of a day or two, but I’ll be in Tennessee by the end of the week. No one’s stopping me this time.”
Sapphire Falls: Going For It (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 4