On Common Ground (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Kelleher, Tracy

  “Sure, I called your father. Since you’re my responsibility, he’s mine, as well—for the weekend, that is,” Justin answered her.

  “Do you have your rental confirmation number?” the perky woman behind the desk asked. Her white teeth sparkled and matched the high-gloss sign hanging behind her.

  Lilah narrowed her eyes. “So you two talked about me?” She waved off her own question. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” Then she turned and dealt with the tedious process of renting her car.

  And now as she inched along Route 206, she glanced to the right at the tiny strip mall with its row of small shops—a tae kwon do academy, a high-end marble and tile store, and a fresh pasta shop. So Grantham, isn’t it? she thought and she told herself she had been right to practically push Justin into that ridiculous little car of his. It was cute, wasn’t it? And she had been right to insist that, no, she wasn’t too tired to drive to the airport and that she would meet him at the baseball field by the university football stadium. “Yes, I remember where it is,” she had said, not bothering to mask the irritation in her voice. “After all, how hard is it to miss a football stadium?”

  “But there’s a new physics building blocking it from Adams Road as you cut across campus,” he had tried to explain as he reluctantly eased his way into his car.

  He’d looked up, all puppy-dog eager—she could picture what he must have looked like as a young child.

  And then she’d slammed the door in his face and inserted the keys into the late-model Hyundai sedan that she’d rented.

  She’d been right, definitely, she told herself, creeping forward as the cars crawled in the end-of-lunch hour traffic. She had needed space, distance, to decide just what she was going to do with Justin Bigelow. She eased her foot off the brake, letting the car roll forward.

  “What’s stopping you?” she asked out loud. “You’re thirty-two, a free woman. Why not enjoy yourself for a change? There’s nothing wrong with feeling good or having a good time. People do it all the time—feeling good and having sex.”

  Lilah glanced at the clock on the dashboard. If the traffic kept up like this, she would be cutting it close. She tried not to feel anxious. So she was late. It wasn’t like her father would disown her—unlike her mother for whom punctuality superceded godliness. Besides, she could always text him. Now that he had acquired his iPhone—in addition to his iPad—he had officially become a techie.

  And just like that, thoughts of smart phones had her thinking about a certain cuter-than-cute photo on someone else’s phone that she had recently seen. Justin. He had been so proud, so engaged, so geeky so… Her thoughts turned decidedly away from geeky....

  She slammed on the brakes as the traffic abruptly came to a halt. Then she saw the reason. Two cars up, a minivan put on its turning signal to take a left onto a side road.

  “So what if Justin and I—this weekend—kind of…?” she asked herself out loud, barely able to form the words yet somehow wanting an answer.

  She got it.

  A violent jolt from behind. A crunch of metal. Her car lurched forward. Her head snapped back against the headrest. Her chest pressed against the seat belt.

  Her first thought was thank goodness she’d taken full insurance coverage on the rental. Her second was to look in her rearview mirror. She saw a lightweight truck, a man at the wheel—older, and a woman in the passenger seat—talking, no, yelling at each other.

  She turned off the car engine and located the emergency flashers. Watching for traffic in her side-view mirror—this being New Jersey, the cars insisted on passing around her without bothering to stop—she carefully inched open her door and stepped out. Well, it might have been a lightweight truck, but it had a giant bumper that had managed to dent every panel in the back of her gray sedan. Luckily, it looked as if the structure had survived unscathed, no doubt due to the low speed of the truck on impact. That would explain why the airbag hadn’t triggered.

  The inspection over, she walked back to the truck. The driver, a diminutive man, sat there shell-shocked behind the wheel, blinking rapidly as his wife loudly complained to him. Then when Lilah came into view, she turned her complaints on her. She rifled in her purse and pulled out a cell phone, punched in a number and proceeded to complain to the person on the other end.

  The driver got out and circled the front of his truck. He stared at his bumper, then her car before looking up guiltily at Lilah. Not a word passed his lips.

  “I think we better share insurance information,” Lilah said.

  His back hunched, he retreated silently to the truck and leaned over his wife to open the glove compartment.

  His wife pushed him aside and clambered out of the truck. With a melodramatic heave, she began patting her chest. “My heart, my heart. I can’t take this.”

  “Is there something I can do?” Lilah asked.

  “My heart! I was just at the doctor. I have pain. Something terrible. Why did you keep going and stopping and going and stopping?”

  “Well, it was stop-and-go traffic,” Lilah replied. She watched the husband come to his wife’s side, and the older woman let him guide her to sit on the curb. She adjusted the keyhole opening of her navy T-shirt.

  “Do you want me to call 9-1-1?” Lilah offered.

  The woman’s head snapped up. “I already called it and ordered an ambulance.”

  Lilah pursed her lips, wondering when someone was going to ask her how she was. After all, she was the one who had been rear-ended.

  In the distance, she heard sirens, and as she looked south toward the center of Grantham, she caught the flashing lights of a police car. And another police car. The first car slammed on the brakes in front of Lilah’s rental. The other blocked the entrance to the strip mall.

  Some shoppers at the strip mall came out to aid the moaning woman. “Did you hit her?” a man, wearing a PSE&G uniform, asked Lilah.

  Lilah tried to keep her cool. “No, they hit me.”

  “Are you on medication? I’m a nurse.” A female shopper in crepe-soled shoes rushed to the woman, who now rocked back and forth.

  “My heart. My heart,” she keened.

  More sirens approached from the other direction—this time the ambulance. It pulled into the strip mall parking lot, blocking the exit. The EMTs jumped out and immediately started questioning the woman on the ground. Soon, more stranded lunchgoers gathered around. Then, a green Mazda pulled up behind the first police car. Out jumped a twenty-year-old coed who looked remarkably like the woman on the ground, minus thirty pounds and the dark red hair dye. “Mama,” she shouted and rushed to the moaning woman. Lilah, standing there like an outsider, took in all the commotion. The only other person not involved in the action was the driver of the truck. He had withdrawn several feet from his wife, though still within shouting distance.

  Lilah could easily sympathize, if she weren’t starting to feel sorry for herself. I’m the victim here, she wanted to scream, which of course she didn’t. Instead, like the good citizen she was, she stood silently by, watching as the woman, talking again on the phone, was carried off on a stretcher.

  Finally, two policemen came over and surveyed the damage. The older male officer, who obviously lifted weights in his spare time, looked up. “You were in the truck?” he asked. He wore a sensitive smile on his face.

  “No, I was in the car that was rear-ended.”

  He blinked. “Are you all right? Should I call the EMTs?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Her neck was a little sore, but that was to be expected.

  “So the woman was your passenger?” He nodded toward the ambulance that had just pulled out into oncoming traffic. Lilah waited for another accident to occur, which miraculously didn’t.

  “No, she was the passenger in the truck that hit me. Her husband, at lea
st I presume it’s her husband, was driving.” Lilah pointed to the silent little man in the heavy blue trousers with a thick belt and short-sleeved shirt tucked into his pants. He looked like a good breeze could knock him over. He was nodding, his chin tucked into his concave chest, as the young woman from the green Mazda talked to him. His daughter, she figured.

  “So why don’t you tell me what happened?” the policeman asked nicely.

  And Lilah ran through the whole scenario. He nodded at all the correct moments. Lilah felt in the comforting presence of Mr. Rogers, if Mr. Rogers had worn a walkie-talkie on the epaulette of his cardigan and looked like he could bench-press twice his weight.

  His younger partner, his ferocious eyebrows furrowed into a corrugated line, looked on sternly. “We’ll need your license and registration,” he demanded. “And your insurance card.”

  Lilah blinked, a little taken aback by his aggressive approach, but decided to cooperate without question. One thing she had learned dealing with law enforcement personnel worldwide was to stand firm but act politely. She’d even kept her cool in dealing with warlords, when it came down to it. What was one obnoxious Grantham cop?

  “My license’s in my bag on the front seat of the car, which is a rental, by the way. The insurance and registration information is with the rental packet in the car, too.”

  “A rental,” the policeman exclaimed with disdain.

  Lilah schooled herself to keep from rolling her eyes. “Yes, a rental,” Lilah replied as if she had been asked for a weather report. “I am here for the Grantham University Reunions, and I rented a car to pick my father up at the airport. He’s flying in this afternoon.” She looked down at her watch. “Speaking of which, is this going to take much longer? My dad’s due in in less than an hour.”

  The Mr. Rogers cop offered her another smile. “We’ll try to hurry it along as much as possible. Let’s go over to your car, and you can get the information for me. Then you can sit there and take it easy. We still have to talk to the other driver, and we need to put our report into the computer.”

  Lilah swallowed. What choice did she have? None. She breathed in slowly, then walked back to the car and retrieved the necessary documentation. Then she sat.

  And sat some more.

  She pushed up the sleeve of her suit jacket and glanced at the time—again. This was no good. She was going to need someone else to go to the airport.

  She dug in her shoulder bag on the front passenger seat for her cell phone and dialed Mimi’s number. After a few rings it went to voice mail. Great! They had planned to meet for dinner with her dad, so who knew where she was now. Still, it wasn’t like her not to pick up her phone.

  Now what? She sat back. Maybe she could leave her dad a message to call her when he got in? If necessary, she could ask him to take the train directly to Grantham Junction, then take a taxi into town. But she hated the idea of having him go through all that hassle.

  The sun streamed in through the front windshield, and she could feel her face start to glow. She closed her eyes, and let herself bake. She should really take off her jacket, she thought, as she felt a bead of perspiration trickle down the middle of her chest and catch in the underwire of her bra. It was the only one she’d brought this weekend, and she needed to look presentable for her award. Her eyes still closed, she contorted to free one arm.

  There was a knock on the window.

  She stopped midsleeve and opened her eyes, expecting one of the policemen, hoping it was Mr. Rogers and not Rambo.

  It was Justin.

  She looked at the door to wind the window down, then realized it had an electric roll-down feature. She’d need to start the car to put it down, and she wasn’t sure she should do that given that she was supposed to just be sitting here. Probably Mr. Rogers wouldn’t mind, but Rambo? Her mind was turning uncharacteristically to mush.

  She threw up her hands. “I can’t open lower the window without starting the car,” she mouthed silently.

  Justin circumvented that problem by simply opening the door. “I leave you alone for a few minutes and look what happens?” he joked.

  Lilah didn’t laugh. On the contrary, she did the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

  She burst into tears.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “LET ME COME AROUND the other side to get out of the way of the traffic,” he said calmly, nodding at the oncoming stream of vehicles.

  He circled the front of the car, opened the passenger door and slipped in the seat next to her. Without asking permission—without saying a word—he reached across and took her hand that lay limply in her lap. He pressed it gently as they sat in silence—he studying her, she squeezing her eyes and sniffing loudly to hold back any more tears.

  “I told myself I wouldn’t cry. I never cry.” She wiped the back of her hand across her nose, then shook her head. “It’s so stupid, really. I mean, I don’t know why I’m so upset. I deal with stress all the time. Any given day I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pay my monthly rent or if Sisters for Sisters is going to suddenly collapse because the race that’s supposed to take place in Chicago in March gets snowed out. Then in Congo there’re marauding militias, or the endless red tape and needless bureaucracy. It normally doesn’t bother me.”

  She stared at him. “So tell me. If I can do all that, why does a stupid fender bender get me all upset? I mean, it’s just a few pieces of metal—not even mine for that matter. So big deal. That’s what insurance’s for, right?”

  He nodded.

  “And even if I can’t get my father in time and I can’t get Mimi on the phone to pick him up instead, I know I can always contact him when he lands and explain, right?” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “Right?”

  “Right, most definitely right. He’ll just want to know you’re not hurt. You’re not hurt, are you?”

  She shook her head and sniffed loudly.

  Justin squeezed her hand again before letting go. Her vulnerability caught him off guard—touched something deep within. He was used to dealing with the hurt feelings and bruised egos of five-year-olds. He knew when to be patient. When to be understanding. Or when tough love was the better remedy.

  But when it came to handling a grown-up—check that, a woman…the woman who had been for more than ten years the woman of his dreams, the same woman who now needed his help—he was less sure. Because he didn’t want to screw things up. He so much wanted to do the right thing because he sensed that whatever he chose to do could be really, really important.

  Don’t blow it, he lectured himself.

  Then he took a deep breath. “I’m not necessarily the wisest person.” Heaven knows, his father had told him that daily as he was growing up. “But did it ever occur to you that you’re upset precisely because you have to handle all of that—all the big, important stuff under which most people crumble? And maybe, just maybe, this fender bender came along at a moment when too many things had accumulated, on top of little things like, I don’t know, jet lag and the stress of travel, things that leave most people comatose for a few days maybe?” He reached over and rubbed her slumped back with a gentle circular motion.

  She looked up from her hands and slanted her gaze at him. “Not wise? I don’t know about that. Is this a new phenomenon, or were you always just hiding it beneath all that charisma and sex appeal?” She peered at him.

  Now he knew he was going to blow it.

  “Okay, so the superwoman has finally crashed to earth,” she mocked herself. “So, tell me, if it’s okay for me to fall apart after a fender bender, is it also all right for me to be upset that I won’t be there on time to pick up my father? It looks like the police still have to do their paperwork, and that’s after they talk to the guy who hit me, who I am sure is now making up some scurrilous story—”<
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  “Scurrilous?” Justin asked.

  “Yes, scurrilous.” She sniffed. “It means fake.”

  “Yes, I know what it means. It’s just that I can’t say that I’ve ever heard it used in conversation.”

  She frowned. “Now, on top of everything, you’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

  Justin shook his head. “Of course not. I would never make fun of you. It’s just that I had forgotten how you had this very…very…rich vocabulary.”

  “It comes from being an only child and growing up on an island. I read a lot of books. It was that or sail or take up knitting, and since I never had highly developed small—let alone large—motor skills, I picked reading. I merely had to turn pages. It seemed safer.”

  He bit back a smile and the sudden impulse to take her in his arms. Instead, he enjoyed the warm glow that permeated his being and which had nothing to do with the sun beating through the car windows—though it was incredibly hot in the car.

  Lilah cocked her head and stared at him.

  Justin held his breath.

  She wet her lips.

  For Justin, the air molecules in the car seemed to stand still. The only noise was the whizzing of traffic outside and the occasional honk of a car horn. Not to mention the violent thumping of his own heart.

  Finally, she broke eye contact to glance down at her watch.

  Justin kept looking at her, feeling a little light-headed, but aware that air was beginning to return to his lungs.

  Lilah nervously shook her hand with the watch, sighed and then stared blankly around the dashboard, out the side window, at her feet—anywhere but at Justin, it seemed. “To make matters worse, I’m not having any luck getting ahold of Mimi to go to the airport instead of me. And even if I could, I’m so out of it that I can’t remember off the top of my head which airline my dad was taking. So in the end, there’s really no point in trying to track her down because I’d have to dig through my bags for the relevant information to give her.” She rubbed her forehead in frustration. “I’m rambling. Sorry.”