Karen Templeton - Everything but a Husband

“Ah, hell—you’re white as a sheet. You gonna lose it again?”

She couldn’t tell if he sounded more annoyed or worried. She sucked in a slow, steadying breath. “No,” she said tightly. “I’ll be okay as soon as we get out of here and into some real air.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t need to be coddled,” she bit out, hot, dumb tears needling her eyes. “I just need some air, okay?”

His skepticism practically vibrated between them, but he slowly completed the maneuver, carefully driving the truck out of the garage and, within a minute or so, onto the highway. At the moment, despite the heavy, solid clouds still crouched overhead like a huge cat waiting to pounce, the bad weather had called a truce of sorts. She cracked the window, breathing in the damp air. Willing herself to feel normal again.

To feel safe.

“You can open it more, if you want. I don’t mind.”

She did, afraid to speak, to admit the air wasn’t helping at all. To admit she felt, again, like a helpless child, alone and ill in a stranger’s truck.

She heard Del chuckle, which she might have enjoyed, actually, were it not for the fact that she really felt like yesterday’s garbage and that she had the definite feeling the chuckle was aimed at her. But the words that followed couldn’t have been more gentle.

Like Vinnie’s used to be.

“Okay, since my pointing out that you’re being stubborn would probably only make you feel worse, I’m just gonna say that anytime you want to stop, you only have to say the word, okay?”

Her stomach heaved. How, she didn’t know, because there wasn’t a blessed thing inside it. She rolled down the window some more.

“How long did you say until we get to Spruce Lake?” she managed, inexplicably angry. At her body, for betraying her in a hundred ways. At herself, for feeling petulant. At Del, for reminding her of Vinnie.

The Vinnie she’d thought she was marrying, anyway.

“Little less than an hour.”

An hour? Her eyes burned. How on earth would she make it that long? Oh, why had she let Cora talk her into this? A chill raced up her spine, exploding into a cold sweat at the back of her neck, her forehead.

“Stop!”

Del pulled smoothly up onto the shoulder, was out of the truck and to her side before she even got the door open. Then she was on her knees in the wet winter weeds by the side of the road, Del holding her shoulders as she heaved to the sound of traffic whizzing by them.

Could the gauge on her mortification scale possibly sink any lower?

“Better?” she heard in her ear.

Well, apparently, since she started to bawl, there was indeed another point or two left on the bottom of that scale. About what, she had no idea. Nothing. Everything. Barfing in public and losing her grandmother and having no family and embarrassing herself in front of a complete stranger and realizing how really, really bad she was at being alone. And how she had no one but herself to blame for getting herself into such a sorry state.

“Hey, hey…c’mere, honey.” Squatting beside her, Del tucked her under his chin, one arm still clamped around her shoulders. “These things happen, y’know? Nothin’ to be embarrassed about.”

“Oh, right,” she said on a shaky breath, not liking how much she liked the way his chin nestled on top of her head. How good it felt to have a man’s arm around her again. How this whole man-woman thing was such a crock. “I suppose this kind of thing happens to you all the time.”

“Actually, you might be surprised. I do have a four-year-old, you know.”

At that, she drew away enough to look up into his eyes. And immediately regretted it. Not because she didn’t like what she saw, but because she did. Not just the way the skin crinkled around his eyes when he smiled, or even the profound goodness she sensed behind the smile. No, it went far, far deeper than that, because she suddenly figured out another reason why this man reminded her of Vinnie. Actually, of every man she’d ever known.

Del Farentino, she realized with the force of a thunderclap, was a Protector. Too. The kind of man whose mission, as he saw it, was to take care of all the females in his life, to ensure their health, safety and well-being. On the surface, a desirable enough trait, until the down side of having a man look out for your every need smacks you between the eyes. Until you wake up one day and realize you’ve never made a single important decision on your own.

Heck, that you’ve barely made any little decisions on your own.

And that, because of what you’d allowed to happen, you weren’t considered capable of handling what should have been yours by right.

Vinnie had been a Protector. As had her grandfather. Granted, they had different ways of carrying out their mission, but the message was the same: a woman needed a man to take care of her, to give her what she needed, to guide her through life, to protect her from…herself. Maybe Vinnie had been a kinder, gentler example of the species, using sweet talk and presents to get his way, but get his way, he did. In everything. And how the heck was a completely sheltered eighteen-year-old who’d never even dated another man to know how detrimental such an attitude could be? That her husband’s outdated ideas about men’s and women’s roles, his determination to shield her from the worries and cares of the everyday world—in other words, life—had also created the woman who now couldn’t take a simple little trip without becoming violently ill?

She scrambled to her feet then, throwing off both Del’s concern and his arm. True, she wobbled for a second, but ultimately forced everything to settle down.

Her body hadn’t gone haywire because of the plane, or the exhaust smells or anything else physical. Not really. She was sick because she was petrified. Of being alone. Of being on her own. Of being unable to handle decisions other people—other women—handled without a second thought. With the money her grandmother had left her, she really could do pretty much whatever she wanted…and the prospect of being the only person responsible for her life absolutely terrified her.

The prospect, however, of being sucked into another relationship, of falling under another man’s protection, terrified her far more.

Still, even though the men in her life could be, in large part, credited for the state in which she now found herself, she wasn’t dumb enough or naive enough to consign the entire blame to them. For thirty-five years, Galen Volcek Granata had let men boss her around, one way or another. Strip her of her autonomy, her ability to function as a complete human being. For ill or good, she had made her own choices, all along.

Now she had the opportunity to fix things.

She stomped over to the truck, yanked open her own door before Del could, climbed in on her own steam.

“I guess that means you’re ready to go?” he said at her window.

“More than I’ve ever been in my life,” she said, chin raised, and the nausea simply vanished.

Del ordered pizza—extra cheese, black olives, pepperoni—then turned to the stack of dirty dishes patiently waiting for him on the counter beside the sink. God bless Pizza Hut. What with having to pick Galen up at the airport and all, he’d had no choice but to drag Wendy along on his last-minute check-ins. But all was finished, all was fixed, all was well, and now he had five whole days with nothing to do but rest, watch TV, and play with his daughter.

Notice, he did not include thinking about Galen Granata on that list.

He rinsed off the last Corelle bowl from breakfast, slowly set it in the drainer. Of course, trying not to think about the redhead was like trying to ignore a mosquito bite. The woman was, without a doubt, the strangest creature he’d ever encountered. Whatever was going on in that gal’s head, it was definitely scary. One second, she’s looking at him like a lost puppy; the next minute, like he’d just threatened to sue her. Or she, him.