here!” she screamed. She lunged for the door, flinging out her hand to try to grab the flying strap of her purse.
Two things registered simultaneously as the door slammed shut on her fingers—the dark car that pulled up to the entrance, then sped off with a screech of rubber, and the pain that nearly brought her to her knees.
Clutching her right hand in her left one, Mariah shouldered open the door and barged into a solid wall of flesh. A tough-looking man with a black beard and a fierce scowl caught her by the shoulders.
“Get out of my way!” She shoved at him with both hands. Pain threatened to cripple her again.
“Whoa,” the man growled. “What the hell’s the big hurry?”
“Lady, you’ll never catch him now. He’s long gone,”the attendant called after her.
Mariah ignored him. “Oh, God, he’s getting away!” She dodged to the left just as the dark stranger did. She sidestepped right at the same time he did. The man’s hands clamped down on her shoulders again, and Mariah glared at him, distractedly taking in the image of shaggy beard, battered, black leather jacket, rumpled khakis and worn Western boots. He looked unnaturally pale. “Would you please just let… me…go?” she wailed.
“What’d you do, rob the joint?”
The attendant stood behind her, surrounding her with his beer-and-onion breath. He squinted off into the veil of heavy rain. It was really pounding down now, dancing up off the pavement. A hundred-odd feet away, a steady stream of traffic raced by, headlights and taillights glowing fuzzily in the preternatural darkness. “Sorry, lady. They’re long gone by now.” He turned to go back inside, looking relieved that she instead of he had been the victim.
Breathing in a crazy mixture of lilacs, diesel fuel and cherry extract, Gus stared down at the woman in his arms. But not too far down, because she was almost as tall as he was.
Cheekbones. He’d always been a sucker for good bone structure. She had it. Man, did she ever have it! As long as she was there in his face, so to speak, he figured he might as well take inventory. He might be barely recovered from the lingering flu, but that didn’t mean his male hormones were out of commission.
Her eyes were not quite brown, not quite gray—sort of a pale combination of the two. Her hair was the same no-color shade. Actually, she reminded him of a weimaraner that had taken up at his house a couple of years ago. He’d grown pretty fond of the mutt before the owner had finally shown up to claim him. “What happened?” he growled, wishing his voice didn’t sound quite so rough. It hadn’t been used much in the past week.
“That creep stole my purse! He poured Cherry Freeze all over me and then he grabbed my purse!” She tried to pull free, but Gus held on because, cheekbones or not, she looked pretty shaky. “Let me go! I’ve got to try and catch him!”
“Tall guy, short guy. Two of ’em. One had a base ball cap, the other one had sort of dirty blond hair and crooked teeth,” the attendant said helpfully. “Didn’t see no gun, but that don’t mean nothing. Lot o’ that kind o’ thing going on these days.”
The woman wilted visibly. For one brief moment she allowed her head to rest on Gus’s leather-clad shoulder. “My keys,” she whimpered.“ He even has my car keys.”
Gus glanced at the attendant, who hovered in the doorway. “Don’t look at me, man, I can’t leave this place. For what it’s worth, they headed south in a dark Chevy—looked like a ten-to twelve-year-old model, but they’re long gone by now. I’m real sorry, lady. You got any money on you? You still owe me for the drink and the—”
Gus swore. He jerked out his wallet and handed over a fistful of bills. “Take it out of that!”
While the two men were thus engaged, Mariah left the cover of the canopy. The rain had slacked up momentarily, and she’d spotted something pale and flat lying near the edge of the highway. It was probably only a bit of trash someone had tossed out, but…
Just as she reached the edge of the pavement, an eighteen-wheeler whipped past, throwing up a barrage of dirty water. She gasped at the second icy deluge within minutes.
“Are you crazy? Get the hell away from that highway, dammit!”
She just had time to snatch her purse when another truck roared past. Someone grabbed her hand—her left one, fortunately—and hauled her back from the edge of the highway. Before she could protest, her bearded assailant—or would-be rescuer—swung her off her feet and started jogging back toward the service station. “What the hell is it with you, lady? You got a death wish or something?”
He practically shoved her through the door before she could protest. The moment he set her on her feet again she tugged at the flap of her sodden purse, unthinkingly using her right hand.
Tears sprang to her eyes and she must have made a sound. Blackbeard took the dirty canvas shoulder bag from her, slung it over his own shoulder, and led her around behind the counter t o the attendant’s stool.
“Sit down before you fall down,” he commanded. Very much to her surprise, she did. He handed over her purse. “I can tell you before you even look inside what you’re going to find. Zilch. A lipstick, maybe a hanky, but nothing of value. Might as well face facts right up front.”
Mariah glared at him, daring him to have spoken the truth.
But of course he had spoken only the truth. Gingerly, she held her ruined purse on her lap, wedging it under an elbow, and slid her left hand inside. Out came one sticky comb, one wad of damp, sticky tissues and a few sticky shards of the tiny jar of guava jelly she’d bought when she’d filled up her tank in West Palm. It had evidently broken and leaked all over the inside of her bag.
She didn’t cry. Mariah never cried. Having learned a long time ago that tears were a waste of energy, she had developed her own way to deal with stress. If a few tears escaped now to slither down her rain-wet cheeks, that didn’t mean she was crying. She would deal with this setback the way she had dealt with everything else since she had put away her dolls and taken on the job of raising a family.
Well…perhaps not exactly the same way. At least, not until she got home.
“What happened to your hand?” She glanced up as the pale-skinned, black-bearded stranger reached for her right hand, wondering if he was so pale because he’d just gotten out of prison. She wasn’t ordinarily given to snap judgments, but it was hard not to be a little paranoid when she’d just been robbed and her hand was swollen, aching and rapidly turning an ugly shade of reddish purple.
It was also sticky.
Gus wiped his hand off on a clean handkerchief, wishing he’d never pulled off the highway for a break. Some break! He’d been feeling washed out, run down, mean as a junkyard dog—and that was before he’d had the misfortune to tangle with this p articular walking disaster.
Oh, hell. The woman, her damp hair straggling around her wet face, was staring down at her own hand as if it belonged to someone else. If she hadn’t looked so damned defeated, he might have been able to walk away. But Gus had always been a sucker for lost causes, and with those big, shimmering eyes and that naked, vulnerable mouth of hers, she was about as lost as it got.
“I’m going to wake up any minute now, and y’all are going to disappear. I just thought I ought to warn you.” She tried to smile
