Susan Phillips - The Great Escape

A grunt.

“Where is that, by the way?”

“Up north.”

“Colorado? Nome?”

“Do you have to talk?”

“Married? Divorced?”

“Watch that pothole. If you break your leg, you’re on your own.”

She pulled some extra air into her burning lungs. “You know the details of my life. It’s only fair that I know some of yours.”

He moved ahead again. Unlike her, he wasn’t out of breath. “Never been married, and that’s all you’re getting.”

“Are you involved with anybody?”

He looked at her over his shoulder-faintly pitying. “What do you think?”

“That the pool of lady alligator wrestlers isn’t big enough to give you a lot of dating opportunities?”

She heard a sound-either amusement or a warning that he’d heard enough stupid questions-but all she’d learned was that he was single, and he could be lying about that. “It’s so strange,” she said. “As soon as we got here, your manners improved. It must be the swamp air.”

He cut to the other side of the road. “The question is,” she said, “why bother with all that spitting and scratching since-and I have to admit I was surprised about this-it doesn’t seem to come naturally?”

She expected him to dodge the question, but he didn’t. “So what? I got bored when I realized you were too much of a nut job to be scared into doing what you should have done right away?”

No one had ever called her a nut job, but since the insult came from him, she didn’t take it to heart. “You were hoping when I saw the contrast between you and Ted, I’d realize what I’d given up and go back to Wynette.”

“Something like that. Ted’s a good guy, and he was obviously in love with you. I was trying to do him a favor. I stopped when I realized the biggest favor I could do him was to keep you from going back.”

That was true enough to hurt, and they finished the run in silence.

When they returned to the house, he pulled his sweat-soaked T-shirt over his head, grabbed the hose, and doused himself. His hair clung to his neck in wet black ribbons; the sun poured over his face as he tilted his head to the sky.

He finally set the hose aside and used his palm to sluice the water from his chest. His swarthy skin, blunt-tipped nose, and wet, big-fisted hands made an unsettling contrast to Ted’s perfect male beauty. Panda might not be as crude as he wanted her to believe, but he still existed completely outside her realm of experience.

She realized she was staring and turned away. Her female body was clearly drawn to what she saw. Fortunately, her female brain wasn’t nearly as foolish.

ONE DAY DRIFTED INTO ANOTHER until they’d been at the lake for a week. She swam, read, or baked bread, one of the few foods that tasted good to her. What she didn’t do was call Ted or her family.

Each morning after their run, Panda appeared in the kitchen, his hair still wet from his shower, his curls temporarily tamed, although she knew they’d quickly reassert themselves. He picked up what she suspected would be the first of several warm slices of the oatmeal bread she’d just taken from the oven, tore the bread neatly in half, and spread each piece with a spoonful of orange marmalade. “Did Ted know about your baking skills when he let you dump him?” he said after he’d swallowed his second bite.

She set aside her own piece of bread, no longer hungry. “Ted doesn’t eat a lot of carbs.” That wasn’t true, but she wouldn’t admit that she’d never gotten around to baking for her fiancé.

She’d picked up her adult cooking skills under the funnel-shaped stainless steel lights that hung in the White House kitchen, the place where she’d escaped when her siblings’ squabbles had gotten on her nerves. There, she’d learned from some of the country’s best chefs, and now Panda, instead of Ted, was the beneficiary.

He twisted the lid back on the marmalade jar. “Ted’s the kind of guy who was born under a lucky star. Brains, money, polish.” He slapped the jar in the refrigerator and shoved the door closed. “While the rest of the world screws up, Ted Beaudine sails free.”

“Yes, well, he was trapped in a pretty big screwup last weekend,” she said.

“He’s already over it.”

She prayed that was true.

NEAR THE HOUSE, CADDO LAKE was shallow with a muddy bottom, so she couldn’t swim there, but when they were on the lake, she swam off the small outboard that came with the rental house. He never went in the water with her, and eight days after their arrival-eleven days since she’d fled-she asked him about it as she swam alongside the drifting boat. “Odd that a tough guy like you seems afraid to go in the water.”

“Can’t swim,” he said as he propped his bare feet on the boat’s splintering rail. “I never learned.”

Having observed his love of being on the water, she found that strange. And what about those jeans he always wore? She flipped to her back and took another approach. “You don’t want me to see your skinny legs. You’re afraid I’ll mock.” As if any part of his body could be less than muscular…

“I like jeans,” he said.

She dropped her feet and treaded water. “I don’t get it. It’s a sauna around here, and you’ll take off your shirt at the drop of a hat, so why not wear shorts?”

“I’ve got some scars. Now shut up about it.”

He might be telling the truth, but she doubted it. As he leaned back against the stern, sunlight gilded his swarthy pirate’s skin, and his half-closed eyes seemed more languid than menacing. She felt another of those unwelcoming stirs of… something. She wanted to think it was merely awareness, but it was more than that. An involuntary arousal.

So what? It had been almost four months since she and Ted had made love, and she was only human. Since she had no intention of giving in to her wayward thoughts, what was the harm? Still, she wanted to punish him for making her mind wander where it shouldn’t. “It’s strange that you don’t have any tattoos.” She dog-paddled next to the stern. “No naked women dancing on your biceps, no obscenities etched on your knuckles. Not even a tasteful iron cross. Aren’t you worried you’ll get kicked out of the biker club?”

The flickering light coming off the water softened the hard edges of his cheekbones. “I hate needles.”

“You don’t swim. You hate needles. You’re afraid to show your legs. You really are sort of a mess, aren’t you?”

“You’re not exactly the person to call anybody else a mess.”

“True. Deepest apologies.” She managed something almost approaching one of his sneers.

“When are you going to call your folks?” he said out of nowhere.

She went under and didn’t come up until she had to. “Meg lets them know I’m safe,” she said, even though she knew that wasn’t the same as talking to them herself.

She missed Charlotte and Holly’s spats, Tracy’s dramas, Andre’s rambling accounts of the latest fantasy novel he’d read. She missed Nealy and Mat, but the idea of picking up the phone and calling them paralyzed her. What could she possibly say?

Panda gave her a none-too-gentle assist back into the boat. Her cheap one-piece black swimsuit rode up, but he didn’t seem to notice. He fired up the outboard, and they chugged back to the dock. As he killed the engine, she gathered up her flip-flops, but before she could climb out of the boat, he said, “I have to get back to work. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

She’d known this limbo couldn’t last forever, but she still hadn’t made plans to move ahead. Couldn’t make them. She was paralyzed, caught between the focused, organized person she’d been and the aimless, confused woman she’d become. The panic that was never far away kicked up inside her. “I’m not ready.”