up. Not her usual smile of snarkiness or mischief, but one of relief, of gratitude. “You know, it’s not going to do my reputation any good if people find out a nice, considerate guy came to my rescue not once but twice today.”
Ha. As if anyone would recognize him as a nice, considerate guy. Seemed they were both suddenly acting out of character. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Opening her car door, she got in. “Fair enough. Thank you.”
She didn’t say anything else as he walked away, nor much when he came back ten minutes later with a small gas can. Though he offered to follow her to the station after he’d put some gas in the tank, she insisted she’d be fine.
He didn’t press it. Whatever moment of weakness she’d allowed him to see earlier, it was under control now. She was staunch and resolute, appreciative, but also once again very self-confident. So accepting her final thank you and knowing there was nothing more for him to do, Mike got in his Jeep and drove away from her for the second time that day.
JENNIFER DIDN’T LIKE THE END of anything. Whether it was one of her books that she was having a great time writing or a visit from her parents or simply the joy of the holiday season, she hated reaching The End.
She especially hated watching people leave. Particularly people she’d just met—sexy people—who she’d like to get to know better. Like him.
But it obviously wasn’t to be. Like before, he’d played the hero and ridden away on his Jeep Wrangler steed. Big, strong, silent. As she watched Mike Taylor’s taillights disappear into her history again, she felt like a saloon girl watching the handsome lawman ride away in some cheesy western.
Pathetic. She was thinking like one of the women who wrote to her talking about how wonderful her own handsome hero had been before he’d turned into a cheating toad.
This latest incident was simply the crap-flavored icing on her mud pie of a day. One for the to-forget books.
After filling up her tank at Trouble’s one and only gas station—paying prices that would make an oil baron blush—she headed downtown. Her mood had slipped from mostly gray and cloudy to nearly black and stormy. A big part of her wanted to just keep driving, straight back to New York. She had a book to finish—her third—with a hefty check waiting at the end of it.
But she had a feeling that if she left, she would never be able to make herself return to Trouble and see her aunts again.
While that appealed to her on one level, on another, she knew that, as twisted as they were, she’d miss them. Miss their stubbornness and their independence, their caustic natures and the aura of mystery that had always surrounded them.
No. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until they’d hashed things out, face-to-face.
But first things first. She steered the car toward the local store. Once inside, Jen ignored the shelves full of expired canned goods for a nickel to scout the first-aid area for bandages and antiseptic to clean her blisters. She managed to find a tube of stuff that didn’t look as if it had been produced during the Carter administration. Adding a toothbrush to her cart, she paid for her things just as the store closed at six.
Six o’clock on a Friday night and the town was closing up shop. Rolling up its sidewalks. The one stoplight in the main square had already stopped changing from red to green and turned into a flat, blinking yellow beacon that screamed, “You’re in the middle of nowhere! Get out while you still can!”
“Unbelievable,” she muttered, glancing across the street at the one business that still appeared to be open. But it took a few minutes for her to muster the courage to actually go over and enter Tootie’s Tavern. Because if the Travel Channel ever stopped doing shows on the ten scariest places in the world, and started naming the ten scariest places to eat, this would probably make the cut. She’d bet it was on an FDA watch list somewhere.
Finally, though, she forced herself inside. Knowing Aunt Ida Mae and Aunt Ivy were very untrusting, she suspected they hadn’t even crawled out of their hiding places yet, much less unlocked any doors.
“Hey there, missy, thought you was gonna spend your whole week here without comin’ in to see me!”
This comment came from the owner, Tootie herself, who was shaped like a box—as wide as she was tall—with hair the color of congealing sausage gravy. But she had always been nice to Jen as a kid. Even if Jen’s mother had always made her throw away any cookie or treat Tootie had slipped to her during a family visit.
“Hi,” she said. “I, uh, need to use the ladies’ room.”
Jen immediately wished she hadn’t put it like that. She knew she’d been overheard when a meaty guy at a nearby table, wearing a Bud T-shirt and a backward baseball cap, snickered like a third grader who’d spotted a little girl’s underwear.
That, of course, instantly made her think about the conversation she and Mike had had earlier…and his wickedly erotic comment about the soft fabric between a woman’s soft thighs. The soft fabric between her soft thighs had gotten a mite damp after the remark, that was for sure. And just thinking about Mike now could probably make it more so.
Forget it. He’d driven away—twice—without mentioning the possibility of seeing her again. Besides, she didn’t like the big, strong, drop-dead gorgeous, dangerous, silent type.
Hmm. Maybe…No. Not her type, even though her friends all thought she should be happy with any guy who was breathing. But she wasn’t that desperate. Yet.
“Sorry, sweetie, facilities are for paying customers only,” the proprietress said with an apologetic shrug, her loud reply ensuring they were being overheard now.
Then the words sank in. Perfect. She was actually going to have to eat here? “Oh, uh…”
“Meat loaf’s on special.”
She was tempted to ask what type of meat was in it—armadillo, mastodon—but wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Unfortunately, every other place in town was probably already closed. This might be the only bite she’d have until she could get her aunts to let her in. That could take a week.
“Could you just get me a plain salad and an iced tea?”
Tootie nodded. “I’ll have Scoot put in the order, but you’ll have to sit at the counter. There’s no tables.”
She glanced at the counter, seeing a sea of men wearing red plaid and wife-beater T-shirts. All packed shoulder-to-shoulder, heads down, like horses at a trough. All probably having heard her ladies’ room comment and right now thinking about her walking into the next room and pulling down her panties.
Eww.
“Can I get it to go?”
“Didn’t she already say she had to go?” a phlegmy voice asked. The question was accompanied by a lascivious chuckle. Both had emanated from a guy at the closest table who, judging by his comma-shaped posture, was between one hundred and death.
Tootie leaned close. “I don’t blame you, sugar. Some of these fellas act like mongrels over a bone when a pretty woman comes around. Me ’n’ Scoot have taken to giving each other signals when we need help extricating ourselves from one when he gets over-amorous.”
