courteous. She could do polite. After all, they were stuck together for who knew how long; there was no point in being snotty. No point in causing each other more pain than they already had.
“They’re fine,” she said, studying him. In the glow of the dashboard lights, his profile looked hard, as if it were chiseled out of stone. But she remembered all too well how easily his rigid expression could slide into a smile. Suddenly nervous, she reached for another chocolate, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth.
“Your mom still buggin’ you to move back to California?”
Karen smiled. “She’s getting better. It’s only every other phone call now.”
He nodded, and keeping his gaze locked on the rainswept road in front of him, he said, “I thought maybe after we broke up, you might just do it. Move, I mean.”
Oh, those first few days after she’d ended it between them, she’d wanted nothing more than to find a place to hide. But she’d refused to run away again. She’d done that once, running from California to South Carolina, and in the process, she’d run smack into the very thing she’d been running from.
So hiding wasn’t the answer. Her only choice left was to stand her ground and try to forget what she and Sam had had so briefly. Fat chance.
“So how come you didn’t go back home?” he asked.
“Because,” she said, taking a deep breath, “this is home now. I like living in the South. I like small-town life. Besides, I don’t believe in going backward.”
“Me, neither,” he said, shooting her a quick glance.
“Good,” she said, guessing that he meant he had no interest in reviving what they’d once shared. “I mean, we’re stuck together for a while, but this really changes nothing.”
“Agreed.”
“Then we understand each other.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and she watched him take a deep breath as if purposely calming himself. “Yeah,” he said finally, “we do. And you can relax. I’m not interested in lining up to have my heart ripped out again.”
Karen sucked in air as if she’d been slapped.
He shot her another look, then swerved the car around a fallen tree branch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not,” he said quietly. “You did what you had to do. I can appreciate that, even if I don’t understand it.”
Guilt swirled in the pit of her stomach. She knew she’d hurt him. But she’d had to break up with him before he’d become important enough to her that the loss of him would have killed her.
God, that sounded stupid, even to her. Which is why she’d never given him a reason for the breakup. She was sure he’d have fought her. Argued her out of her decision, and then one day, they both might have regretted it.
The miles flew past. Sam kept his gaze on the road and his mind on the problem at hand. Finding shelter. If he’d been by himself, he’d have pulled off and parked by now. All he really needed was a place to pitch his tent and ride out the storm.
But with Karen along, things were different. He needed to find a motel. Something sturdy enough to stand up to the growing winds. The trees on either side of the road bent nearly in half, stretching out their twisting limbs as if trying to grab the car hurtling past them.
He had passed exit after exit, knowing they were still too close to the coast and determined to get far enough inland that Karen would be in no danger. But judging by the strength of the wind, he was running out of time.
And then he saw it. A squat cinder block motel at the side of the highway. A dozen or so cars sat nestled in its parking lot, but the broken green neon sign out front still blinked VA C NCY.
“The Dew Drop Inn?” Karen asked as he took the off-ramp and headed for the place.
He grinned. “Sounds cozy, doesn’t it?”
“Cozy?” she repeated, staring through the rain-swept windshield. “It looks like it’s a hundred years old.”
“Good. Just what we need.”
“Huh?”
He parked in front of the office and turned off the engine. Facing her, he shrugged and said, “If it’s that old, it’s survived a lot of hurricanes. It should make it through this one.”
Sure, Karen thought, but the question was, would she?
Three
She watched him through the windshield. Waves of rainwater made his image blurry, as if this was all a dream and she was really safe at home in her own bed, with her mind tormenting her with visions of Sam.
But, as the motel owner stepped up behind the counter, scratching his dirty-tank-top-covered hairy chest, the dream notion was shattered. An older man, he had a well-rounded stomach that looked as though he hadn’t missed many meals, and his gray hair stood out in spiky tufts all around his head. He grinned at Sam and turned the registration pad toward him.
“Oh, this place is obviously the Ritz,” Karen muttered as their host picked at his teeth with a thumbnail. Her gaze briefly strayed from the dimly lit office to the motel itself. It looked like something out of a fifties horror movie. Dingy block walls, stained with years of traffic exhaust and neglect. A solitary tree stood in the center of the parking lot and was now bent almost completely in half as the wind pushed and shoved at it, trying to rip it right out of the small patch of earth it claimed. Here and there a lamp gleamed from behind threadbare draperies, and the cars that huddled side by side looked forlorn and abandoned.
“Okay,” she told herself firmly, turning back to keep her eye on Sam, “now you’re getting weird. There’s nothing wrong with this place that a nice little A-bomb wouldn’t cure.”
In the office, Sam shook the other man’s hand and the two of them shared a jovial laugh. “Hmm. A meeting of the minds,” she said wryly.
A moment later, Sam was sprinting through the wind and rain toward the car. He opened the door, jumped inside and shook himself like a big dog coming out of a lake.
“Whew!” he said as Karen wiped droplets of water off her face. “Man, this storm’s really something.”
“So I noticed,” she said, and took the registration paper from him when he handed it to her. “Where are our rooms?”
He sniffed, scooped one hand across his militarily short black hair and turned to look at her. “Well, that’s the thing,” he said.
“What?” she asked warily as the broken vacancy sign blinked off and the motel owner disappeared into his own room.
“Jonas says it’s been a busy night.”
“Jonas?” Good heavens, had he really had time to bond with the man?
“Yeah.
