He caught her staring at them, too, a wistful look on her face. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“It’s like a quilt.”
That was another way of looking at it.
“We should go,” she said after a few more minutes. “Lots of miles ahead.”
But he couldn’t leave without buying a couple of t-shirts, one for each of them. Then he thought about her little boy and bought another one, guessing at the size. She’d gone ahead of him, of course, not being the type of woman to wait for anyone. He sort of liked and appreciated that about her, while being simultaneously irritated by it. Pretty much standard fare for him. The story of his life had been to be attracted to strong women who didn’t appreciate his brand of protectiveness. He was half Hispanic, for the love of God. It was practically his birthright.
When he arrived at the Mustang she was sitting on its hood staring towards the trees in the distance. “I’m sorry. I always feel guilty coming to places like these without David.”
“Not quite the same as being here.” He threw her a kid-sized t-shirt. “Guessed at the size.”
She caught it one-handed. “Thank you. He would really love this place.”
For the first time since he’d met Fallon McQueen, Jack felt a tightness in his chest quite different from the one that had taken up residence there a few months ago. This one was mildly pleasant and barely recognizable. She loved that kid, and he could see it written all over her sweet smile.
“Tell me about him.” He pulled out of the grove’s parking lot and headed back to the highway.
Jack pulled on to the freeway and listened to Fallon talk about David. He was a math whiz, liked baseball, and happened to live in a town where the famous Oakland Sliders retired pitcher Billy Turlock ran a kid’s sports camp, which gave him plenty of opportunities to develop his skills. Skills, which if you wanted to believe his mother, were those of a future World Series hitter.
“And just in case it comes up, which it probably won’t since it was forever ago, Billy was my boyfriend in high school.”
“Interesting. And you two are still friends?”
“Small town. Plus, Billy’s a great guy. He hired me when I needed a job, and then his wife hired me at their winery for a while. She wasn’t his wife at the time…this is a long story.”
“I have time.”
“You’ll see when we get to Starlight Hill that people there are just…different. We help each other out. It’s not like L.A.”
“So why did you leave?”
“I wanted to do something with my life, not just work odds jobs forever. I wanted David to be…proud of me.”
“I’m sure he is.”
She smiled at that but something in the quick blink of her eyes told him that Fallon wasn’t quite proud of herself. And he would investigate that further, were it his problem to fix. If he hadn’t decided that he would stop being so damn curious about other people and get a life.
Fallon turned up the radio when a Bruno Mars song played, and Jack tried to concentrate on the road. Not on the beautiful woman sitting beside him, who seemed to have good rhythm given by the way she bounced in perfect time. Fallon was unfortunately turning out to be far more complicated than he’d initially thought. She had a body like a centerfold’s but had her heart in her eyes when she talked about her son. He had hoped she’d be a woman with little on her mind but getting to a wedding and having a good time. No such luck. She was real and genuine, and he couldn’t figure out why that bothered the hell out of him.
Because you’re not ready for someone like her, genius. Bad timing.
He pulled his mental focus back to the road. A mid-sized pickup truck switched lanes in front of him, carrying a load of Christmas trees. The trees jostled about in the back and didn’t look to be tied down properly. Worried him a little. Again, not his problem. He put a little more distance between him and the truck and just as he did several Christmas trees spilled out on to the road. The truck swerved to the left, and Jack briefly wondered why he seemed destined to attract trouble wherever he went. He swerved to the right just as a large fir rolled on to his dashboard with a loud thunk. He tried to avoid the inevitable.
But he still ran over a Christmas tree.
* * *
Fallon had been right in the middle of getting down with her semi-bad self when a plunk drew her attention away from the funk. A Christmas tree landed on the hood of their car, and then several more spilled out on to the road. She froze. Jack reacted quickly and swerved presumably to avoid the attack of the Christmas trees. No such luck as he ran over one. Or two. Instead of the smell of road kill, a lovely pine-scented fragrance surrounded her. And probably plenty of tree sap too.
“Are you okay?” Jack’s hand curled around her thigh and squeezed.
“I’m all right.” She shook off the daze and stared at the hood of the car. “But your car doesn’t look so good.”
“Yeah.”
Steam rose from underneath the hood of the Mustang, meaning that it probably didn’t appreciate being hit by a tree. The truck’s driver, a man dressed in a floppy Santa hat and candy-stripe red suspenders, ran around the highway waving his arms around and screaming like a lunatic while he picked up Christmas trees. This had all created a commotion and stopped traffic in the lane behind them while cars slowed to a crawl in the passing lane. Some drivers honked, laughed, and asked where they might find the seventy-five percent off sale.
Jack helped her out of the passenger side door and walked her to the side of the highway, and over the guard rail. “Stay here. I’m going to secure the scene.”
The man who wasn’t going to be a cop anymore sprang into action while Fallon tried hard not to notice that he was sex personified, even while yelling at people to stop staring and move along, or bending to pick up trees.
She fished her phone out and dialed Kailey. “Running a little late here.”
“Where are you? Sounds like you’re in a tunnel.” One of her little boys yelled in the background and Kailey shushed him. “What’s going on?”
“I was hit by a Christmas tree.”
Dead silence for a beat. “No really. What happened?”
“Really!” Fallon sighed. “We were following this truck overloaded with trees and then a few of them rolled out on to the highway.”
“Are you all right?”
“We’re fine, but the car isn’t. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
She’d lost her job, almost been the victim of a crime, and now she’d had an accident with a Christmas tree. Difficult to believe she wasn’t stuck under a dark cloud of bad luck lately.
“I still can’t believe you got him to agree to come to the wedding with you and pretend to be your fake boyfriend.”
“I suspect the man has a hero complex. All that Latin machismo.”
He was now helping the police set up cones on the highway while another cop directed all other vehicles around the truck. She was beginning to think that maybe machismo had received a bad rap for too many years. It wasn’t half bad from this angle.
“What’s he like? Tell me more.”
“My god he’s pretty.”
“Hmmm,” Kailey said. “So you want to date him for real?”
“Uh-uh. Not a good idea.”
He was now under the hood of the car and from where she stood, not looking too happy. He scowled and ran a hand down his face.
“Rosie wants me to tell you that she’ll beg the landlord not to raise the lease if you’ll take over the Curl Up and Dye,” Kailey said.
An old-fashioned throwback to the seventies hair salon was not what Fallon had in mind for her storefront. She wanted modern and cutting edge.
“Still not interested. I’ve got to go and figure out what we’re going to do about the car.”
Fallon hung up with Kailey and went to meet Jack under the hood. “How bad is it?”
He squinted above a puff of smoke. “Thought I told you to wait over there. It’s not safe here.”<
br />
“Excuse me if I’m not the little woman. I want to know what’s up.”
“I called a tow truck. We’ll know more when we get it to a shop.”
“A shop!” It was difficult not to clutch her heart.
“Yeah.”
Her experience with auto repair shops involved days waiting to hear how bad the damage would be, followed by a quote that made her want to throw up and give up driving for public transportation, followed by another week of waiting for said work to be complete. Surprising herself, Fallon felt genuine disappointment when she realized this road trip had probably come to an untimely end.
5
They had the Mustang towed to an auto shop in Pismo Beach. Fallon stood by Jack and listened as the mechanic rattled off lingo she couldn’t quite grasp. But she clearly heard the word ‘tomorrow.’ It would mean she’d miss the welcome breakfast her mother had planned. Fallon didn’t much mind, though she knew Mom would be pissed. She’d use it as one more reason to demonstrate that Fallon was still too flighty and irresponsible. As if it was her fault that she’d nearly been impaled by a tree. Mom would just suggest, and maybe rightfully so, that Fallon shouldn’t have been driving up in the first place.
After speaking with the mechanic, Jack pulled her aside. “Look, I’ll buy you a plane ticket so you don’t have to wait. You fly up and I’ll wait for the car. I’ll get up there as soon as I can.”
“You would do that?”
“I checked. There are a few regional airports not too far. You could go see what’s available.” He pulled out his wallet and handed her his credit card.
“No, Jack. I said I’d paid for everything.” She tried to hand it back to him.
“The road trip was my idea. Take the card.”
She stared at it in her hands. “But what are you going to do?”
He took a seat on a red-covered vinyl chair in the waiting area of the shop and stretched his long legs out. “Guess I’ll go find a motel room for the night. I’m looking at this as an adventure. Someday, believe me, this will actually be funny.”
And today is not that day were his unspoken words. She felt bad for him, but she had to get to Starlight Hill.
“Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow, or whenever you get there. Call me when you’re in town and I’ll give you directions. I can always make up some excuse, like you had to work late at your super important job.”
He shoved hands in his pockets. “This gives us less time to get our stories straight, but maybe we’ll just make it up on the fly.”
“More fun anyway.”
She tried to smile but the thought worried her. If Jack made up something about their non-existent six-month relationship, she had a feeling it would be pretty wild and outlandish and she’d find herself going along with it to keep up the farce. Later, she’d have to live it down and he’d have moved on to…whatever he was moving on to.
Fallon ordered an Uber and walked outside with Jack to move her luggage.
“I’m sorry your road trip ended like this,” she said.
When the Uber driver came, a kid who looked to be twenty-something, Jack loaded the suitcases in the trunk of the sedan without any assistance. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Make sure you talk me up real good with all my fake future in-laws.”
“Okay, Jack. And thank you for an…interesting time.”
Should she hug him? Give him a peck on the cheek? Lips? He inspired far more than a peck, so true, but this wasn’t really the time or the place standing right in front of Sam’s Auto Repair, under the watchful eyes of a fresh-faced college age kid who was already staring. But Jack made the decision for her, tugging her into a hug that didn’t feel at all awkward. She found herself crushed against his hard chest and enveloped in his heat. He smelled like pine and salt air and sand and one hundred percent male. She closed her eyes and wondered why someone like Jack would have no plan. But she had enough of her own problems to work out for now. One of them getting to this wedding.
Jack let her go and opened the back passenger door for her. “Seat belt.”
“Of course.” She took her seat and gave him one last smile before the door shut.
“Dude! Where you going with all that luggage? Are you moving?” Her Man-Child driver asked.
“No. I’m going to a wedding. Take me to the closest airport.”
The driver pulled away from the curb, and she glanced behind her to see Jack walk back into the shop.
“Right on. I love weddings. Free food and drinks. I wish I got invited to more weddings.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still young. The invites are coming.”
The thought seemed to cheer him. “Airport, here we come!”
Her young driver chatted about school finals, traffic, and pizza, but Fallon barely heard him. She thought about Jack sitting alone in the auto shop. Thought of him getting a hotel room for the night. Alone. What a damn waste. She thought about a man who would restrain a criminal even while dressed in a Santa suit. Who worried about her overgrown Oleander bushes and offered to trim them. Who would drop whatever he’d been not planning to do to help her ridiculous situation just because she’d asked. A man who would buy her son a t-shirt when he’d never even met him. A man who would give her his credit card to book a flight home because he’d inconvenienced her by being behind the wrong truck.
“Turn around.”
“Did ya forget something?”
“Yes, I did.”
So she’d be a day late. No big deal. She wasn’t going to have Jack drive the rest of his road trip alone. Not when she was getting used to the big Alpha guy. Back at the auto shop, her driver pissed and moaned about cancelling the ride until she told him to charge her anyway. And then, more happily, he unloaded all her luggage and left her at the curbside with one last cheerful wave.
She left the luggage curbside, and found Jack in front of the vending machine. His hands were shoved in his pockets as he stared at the ground.
“You have to promise me one thing, Jack Cooper,” Fallon said from the entrance.
Jack turned and a hint of a smile curved his lips as he squinted. “What happened? Don’t tell me you got run over by a reindeer.”
“I changed my mind, that’s what happened. You’re a lot more fun than I thought you would be, and I’m in. I just want this last leg of the road trip to be a little less dangerous and a lot more stimulating. Can you think of a way to do that?”
His easy smile changed the geography of his face from gloomy to downright boyish. He had a killer smile.
“I can think of a few things.”
* * *
Damn, she was a sight.
She stood in front of him, hands on her hips, flashing him a gift-wrapped smile. He’d never been quite so pleased or genuinely surprised to see anyone. And he’d had plenty of surprises in his life, although to be fair most of them were not positive ones. He’d already resigned himself to the rest of his road trip on his own, which although would still be worthwhile, wouldn’t be quite the same without his sassy companion.
It was good to know she’d felt the same way.
He accepted his credit card when she handed it over. “We should probably get dinner and find a nearby hotel.”
“I’ll call another car. We might even get the same guy. He can’t have gone far.”
Sure enough, the same kid was back three minutes later. “Dude, you aren’t going to change your mind again?”
“Not this time,” Fallon said and she helped get the luggage back in the car.
“Where to?” their driver asked. “Airport?”
Jack glanced at Fallon. “With all your luggage, we’ll need to get a hotel room before we have dinner.”
“Take us to the closest hotel,” Fallon said.
“And for dinner, you gotta try Three Amigos!” While their driver sang the praises of their Godzilla-like steak burrito, Jack kept his eyes on Fallon.
Her left hand rested between them and kept bumping into his thigh. W
hen she noticed him studying her, she smiled and folded her hands into her lap as though caught in the middle of some unscrupulous act. But he wanted her touching him. A year ago, after Alicia had left him, he’d been done with women. It had been one long dry spell while he threw himself into work. He’d never cared for casual sex and nothing had changed in that regard. Other than the fact that he wondered whether one night with his pretend girlfriend would count as casual sex. He wondered that so loudly he half worried she might hear him.
They arrived at the Mission Inn Hotel and he unloaded all their bags. An attendant helped carry their luggage inside and Jack tipped him. Inside, the lobby was decked out for the festivities with garland everywhere. Twinkling lights. The haunting melody of Frosty the Snowman piped through speakers. Lit mirrors. Sprigs of holly. Pine boughs.
“How may I help you, sir?” the young female desk clerk asked.
Jack was hyper-aware of Fallon standing beside him. She smelled nice. Like a pine tree. Or was that him? “Two rooms.”
“Two rooms? Really?” the clerk asked, eyeballing him.
“Yes,” Jack said through gritted teeth.
“How many nights?” She tapped into her computer.
“One.”
She quirked a brow at the luggage around them, enough for a month’s vacation, were they all his bags. “I have one room for one night. Now, if you were staying three nights I could give you two rooms.”
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