no public facilities, so she’d have to settle for some nice bushy bushes and pray she wouldn’t step in anything else.
“It’s funny,” a deep voice drawled behind her. “But up until now, I thought ‘barefoot and pregnant’ was just a figure of speech.”
Ryanne peered into the void as a man emerged from the shadows, all wide shoulders and long legs. His clothes were the color of the night. Dark shirt. Dark jeans. Dark hat.
Oh, goody. A cowboy vampire comedian. Just what she needed to make the evening complete.
She couldn’t see his face, but she heard the smirky grin in his voice. The smirk was the last straw. She could not have stopped the words, even if she’d wanted to. They spewed forth, hot enough to peel paint.
“You think it’s funny? I guarantee there is nothing even remotely amusing about any of this. I just spent two days on a bus ride from hell. With puking children, sweaty people, and no air-conditioning.
“I’m tired. I’m hot. Every muscle and bone in my body aches. And as you so cleverly observed, I’m pregnant. You know something? When I got on that bus, I had shoes. I lost ’em. But, hey! It doesn’t matter. They don’t fit. Because, like the rest of me, my feet are beyond humongous, and I am retaining enough water to irrigate every cornfield in Oklahoma. Do you see how not funny that is, cowboy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The clod didn’t even have the manners to conceal what was obviously a bald-faced lie. That only fueled the fire. “But the fun doesn’t stop there. I just stepped in a wad of bubble gum the size of a cow patty!” Her final shriek fell well within the vocal range of howler monkeys.
“Let me see.”
The man’s quiet request had a cold-water-in-the-face effect on Ryanne. She stared at him. Or at least in his direction. She really couldn’t see him very well. “What?”
“Give me your foot.”
Under normal circumstances she would not consider surrendering her foot, or any other body part, to a total stranger. However, these were not normal circumstances. Like much of the bus trip, they bordered on the surreal.
The total stranger in question pulled a red bandanna from his pocket and moistened it liberally with his tongue. Straddling her uplifted foot like a blacksmith shoeing a mare, he rubbed her sticky sole until it tingled.
She clung to his rock-hard arm for balance. His rear end was backed up against her, and the wave of heat she felt had nothing to do with ambient temperature.
“That’s better.” He finished scrubbing and returned her foot to the sidewalk.
“Did you just spit on me?” She still felt off-balance. Even with both feet firmly on the ground. When she noticed where her hand lingered, she snatched it away.
“I reckon so.” His words constituted a verbal shrug.
“Well, thanks. I think.”
“Happy to oblige.”
Ryanne groaned when the baby executed an impromptu shuffle-ball-change. “Cowboy, it’s only fair to warn you that if I don’t find a rest room soon, I cannot be held responsible for what happens.”
“I can help there, too.”
“I doubt it.” Ryanne pressed her hands to the small of her back. A cloud skidded past the full moon, permitting a quick glimpse of her rescuer’s face. Too tanned to be a vampire. Way too amused to be dangerous.
That was the good thing about podunk towns. They didn’t have much to offer psycho ax-murderers.
“Well, don’t just stand there.” She knew some might call her tone “bitchy,” but she preferred a less-common adjective such as churlish.
“What is it you expect me to do?”
“I don’t know. Rob me? Mug me? Dump my battered body in a bar ditch?” Like a stressed-out lab rat, Ryanne could no longer run the maze. Biting the head off her own kind seemed a logical progression. “Is that what you’re planning?”
“Hell, no, ma’am.”
“If you have crime on your mind, I can save you the trouble. Nothing I own is worth working up a sweat over.”
“Ma’am, I don’t want anything.”
“What? You’re just a good-ol’-boy Samaritan? Have spitty hanky, will travel. Is that it?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay, then. Watch my stuff while I go to the bushes. And it better be here when I get back or I will track you down and sit on that silly hat.”
“But I—”
“Just watch it, buster.” Although what he had to guard it against, she had no idea. A marauding coyote perhaps?
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ryanne picked her way into the darkness, muttering to herself. She threw a parting comment over her shoulder. “And stop calling me ma’am.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She thought of bugs and snakes only in passing. She was more worried about the man in black, a gifted quipster who communicated only in short sentences. There was something unnervingly familiar about him. Or maybe the unnerving part was knowing he waited, politely, on the other side of the shrubbery while she conducted business of a very personal nature.
And she thought the world had run out of ways to humiliate her.
Tom Hunnicutt wasn’t interested in the woman’s pile of battered, mismatched suitcases. But like a man who couldn’t tear his gaze away from a train wreck, he was fascinated by the woman. Despite the bad attitude, the lopsided ponytail, and the gummy bare feet, she was just about the cutest little egg-shaped female he’d ever seen. Even if she did waddle like a Christmas goose.
Who was she? What was she doing here? And why had she been put off the bus in the middle of the night? Those were all legitimate questions, but what he really wanted to know was, how did such a tiny girl carry around a belly like that? She had to be expecting a medium-size third-grader.
“Do you have a phone, cowboy?” Miss Congeniality was back and she had a way of making even simple questions sound like stamp-her-foot demands.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Didn’t I tell you to stop ma’aming me?” She thrust out her hand.
Not knowing what else to do, Tom shook it. “Nice to meet you. I’m—”
She snatched it back and propped it on her hip. “May I use your phone?”
“I don’t have it on me. It’s attached to the house.”
Using an I-must-be-speaking-to-the-impaired voice, she drew a vague circle in the air. “Is…there…a…phone…any…where…around…here?”
Tom
