Gayle Wilson - Wednesday's Child

Not from him or anyone else. The aura that surrounded her was one of unapproachability. Even now.

“They said it would be about an hour.”

Obviously not local. “They’re coming from Pascagoula?”

She nodded, pushing her dripping hair out of her eyes with the spread fingers of her right hand. Through her thin cotton shirt, he could see the outline of lace on the top of her bra. And under it, the too-rapid rise and fall of her breasts. As if suddenly aware of how revealing the wet fabric might be, she put that hand on its opposite arm, running her palm up and down.

Despite the Indian-summer temperatures of the morning, this rain felt winter cold, and she was soaked to the skin. He needed to get her somewhere warm and dry, or she was liable to end up with pneumonia. If she did, he’d never hear the end of it from Lorena.

“Come on,” he said, turning to head back to the pickup. The cab should still be fairly warm.

“Where?”

“To Lorena’s.” As he looked back at her, he raised his voice to make sure she could hear him over the downpour.

“What about the wrecker?”

“Leave them a note. Tell them they can take the car to Reynolds.”

“Reynolds?”

“It’s the service station on the square. He’ll pay them tonight. You can pay him tomorrow.”

“But…will he be open on a Sunday night?” she asked as she walked over to where he had stopped.

Probably not, Jeb realized. Like it or not, they were stuck here until the tow truck from Pascagoula showed up.

“I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s a lot dryer inside my truck than it is out here.”

He automatically put his hand in the small of her back, urging her toward his vehicle. This time she cooperated, walking ahead of him as he made his slow and careful way over the uneven ground. As he neared the passenger side, he looked up to find she’d been watching him as she waited. Without meeting her eyes, he reached out and opened the passenger door.

“There’s a handgrip,” he said, gesturing toward it. Although she was tall for a woman, probably five-seven or five-eight, she used it to climb up into the high cab. As soon as she was settled, he slammed the door and started around the back. Now that he knew she couldn’t see him, he held on to the enclosed bed of the truck for balance.

The dull, familiar ache in his leg had already started. Susan wasn’t the only one who needed to get in out of the cold.

He opened the driver’s-side door and, gritting his teeth against the pain, climbed into the seat. As soon as he closed the door, killing the interior light, he became aware of the intimacy of their situation.

The intensity of the rain would hold them prisoner as they waited for the arrival of the wrecker. Something over which they had no control.

“Did Lorena send you to find me?”

He debated telling her the truth. His great-aunt’s anxiety had been a factor, of course, but she would never have asked him to go out in this, no matter how worried she was. That had been his decision. Given what he’d discovered, it was one he couldn’t regret, even knowing what it would cost him tomorrow.

“Lorena takes her responsibilities seriously,” he said. “You’re her guest. That makes you hers to look after.”

Her laughter was a breath of sound. “I was thinking on the way home how unaccustomed I am to having someone worry about me. And how welcome her solicitude would be,” she added softly. “I didn’t expect it to extend to rescue missions, however.”

“Did you need rescuing?” He hadn’t forgotten that she’d been hiding when he’d arrived.

“A figure of speech. I didn’t mean to sound melodramatic.”

“It’s obvious you weren’t trying to avoid the tow truck by hiding in those bushes, Ms. Chandler, so I’m curious as to who you were avoiding.”

The rain seemed to beat down with renewed force as he waited for her answer. Or maybe in the sudden silence after his question he was simply more aware of it.

“Someone in an outsized pickup,” she said finally.

Since the description was a little too apt, he turned to look at her. She was staring out the windshield, so that he could see only her profile. Despite the darkness, he could discern the delicate shape of her nose and the slight upward angle of her chin. Its tilt was almost challenging.

“Are you talking about…my truck?”

Despite the fact that he hadn’t been particularly welcoming last night, he didn’t believe that anything he’d said would be grounds for trying to avoid him. Besides, she couldn’t have had any idea he would embark on this knight-errant foolishness.

Susan turned at the question, meeting his eye. “I’m talking about the truck that ran me off the road.”

The truck that ran me off the road…. There was only one possible interpretation of that.

“Are you saying someone forced you off the road?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but…that’s what he did.”

“He?”

“I guess I just assumed it was a man, maybe because of the size of the truck. I didn’t actually see the driver.”

“But you’re sure he deliberately ran you off the road?” Jeb made no attempt to hide his skepticism. That kind of thing didn’t happen around here.

“Yes.” She offered no explanation for her certainty. And made no defense of it.

“Why would someone run you off the road?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was impatient because I was being careful. Or because I blinked my lights to get him to turn his down. All I know is he headed directly toward me, and that he was flying.”

When she’d mentioned the driver being impatient, he had pictured someone coming up behind her as she was negotiating an unfamiliar highway in the rain. The part about blinking her lights didn’t seem to fit that scenario.

“He was behind you? Or approaching you?”

“Both. Actually…” She took a breath, seeming to gather control. “He approached a couple of times. During the last one it was obvious that if I didn’t move over he would ram my car. Since he had a distinct size advantage…”

“You’re telling me someone went past you and then turned around and came back in order to force you off the road.”

“Or maybe he just made a U-turn,” she said.

As he had done. Which meant she’d been watching his arrival from her hiding place. And if what she had just claimed happened really did take place, it was no wonder she hadn’t wanted to be waiting inside her car when…

“You thought I was the person who ran you off the road.”

“I thought it was a distinct possibility. He’d already made a couple of passes at me.”

“After you went off the road?”

“I didn’t mean that. He passed me coming from town and then turned around and came up behind me. When he went around my car, he sat on his horn. Then the next time…That’s when he came at me. When I saw you go by, all I knew was that the size and color of your truck were the same as the other.”

He couldn’t tell from her tone if she still suspected he might have been its driver. Of course, she had responded to his call once she’d recognized him.

“I can’t believe anybody around here would do that.”

“I thought it might be kids. Showing off. Terrorizing the tourists.”

He thought about the possibility. His few encounters with the local population during the months he’d spent here hadn’t extended to any of the teenage population. Judging by the acts of violence the papers reported in other places, he supposed it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that some local kids, drunk or stoned, might have pulled this kind of stunt.

“You are going to report what happened to the sheriff?”

“I don’t have a lot to tell him. I doubt big, dark pickups are all that rare in this area.”