Leigh Michaels - Backwards Honeymoon

She unfolded the map. “Don’t tell me,” she said as she buried her nose in it, trying to make out the fine print. “In your day job, you’re a spy. Right?”

“Darn, you guessed my secret. Now the director will have to assassinate us both.”

She put the map down. “You’re excited about this,” she accused. “You’re enjoying it.”

“Well…yeah, I suppose I am. Come on, Katie, this is an adventure we can tell our kids about.”

Kathryn gulped.

He shot a look at her. “What’s the matter? Hadn’t you thought that far ahead yet?”

“I guess not,” she admitted.

“Well, you’ll have at least twenty-four hours to think it over before it’s too late to change your mind,” he said easily. “Probably more like thirty-six.”

She turned back to the map, but she hardly saw it; the lines appeared to be squiggly.

Kids, she thought.

She and Douglas had never talked about the subject, but somehow she knew that they would have discussed having children, not kids. She’d never thought about the difference before, but suddenly it loomed as wide as the Gulf of Mexico. Having children with Douglas would have seemed almost clinical. Having kids with Jonah, on the other hand….

Would be one heck of a lot of fun, whispered a wicked little voice.

But she’d think about all that later. She ran a finger across the map. “This would have been easier if we’d started out in the right direction, you know.”

“Well, if I’d realized when we left Duluth that we weren’t headed for the Cities…” He sounded a bit absentminded.

“Okay. There’s a place coming up where we can turn onto highway—”

But Jonah was obviously not listening. His gaze was fixed on the rearview mirror. “Damn,” he said under his breath. “I didn’t think even Jock could move this fast. But I’m not speeding, so—”

Kathryn twisted around to look. Behind them, precisely keeping pace, was a highway patrol car with the emergency lights running. And as she watched in disbelief, the siren began to wail, and the officer flashed his headlights, signaling them to pull off to the side of the road.

JONAH fumbled for his wallet and extracted his driver’s license. “Don’t say anything, Katie. Keep your head turned away—but not completely, because that looks suspicious.”

She gave him an innocently wide-eyed look. “And I suppose you don’t want me to make jokes about kidnappers, either?”

Jonah rolled down the window as the officer approached with his flashlight playing over the car.

“Good evening, sir,” the officer said pleasantly. “Your driver’s license and car registration, please.” He took the documents, and his gaze slid easily from the photo on the license to Jonah’s face and back. “Thank you, sir. I’ve been following you for a while. I presume you’re not aware that your taillights are working only intermittently.”

Taillights? This was only about taillights? Kathryn tried to choke back a gasp of relief.

“I certainly wasn’t, Officer,” Jonah said.

“I’ll have to issue you a ticket for driving with defective equipment, of course. I’ll be right back with the paperwork for you to sign.”

“That was lucky,” Kathryn breathed as he walked toward the cruiser.

“Don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“But if he stopped us because of the lights, then he couldn’t have been looking specifically for us.”

“Don’t bet on it. Maybe he made up the bit about the lights as an excuse to check us out.”

“How could he just make it up?”

“It’s the ‘working intermittently’ part that makes me suspicious, because that’s not easy to check. The lights could be working perfectly right now, but I can’t exactly argue about something he says happened ten minutes ago and miles down the road.”

The officer returned with a ticket pad in hand. “If you’ll sign here, sir.” He tore off the top layer and handed it to Jonah. “You realize, of course, that the law says the car cannot be driven further until the defect is fixed.”

Jonah sounded calmer than Kathryn felt. “I suppose that means we’ll have to get a tow truck out here. Since we are sitting on the edge of the highway—”

“You’re actually in luck, sir. It could take an hour to get a tow truck out here.”

“That’s lucky?” Kathryn said under her breath.

“But the rules do allow me some discretion. Since you’re only a couple of miles from a truck stop, my best judgment is that it would be better to let you drive that far than to leave you here on the side of the road for an hour or more to be a hazard to other traffic.”

“I guess it is lucky,” Kathryn muttered.

“If you’ll proceed straight ahead to the first stop sign, the truck stop will be on your left at the junction with the main highway. They have some good mechanics in the garage there, and I think they usually have someone working on Sunday to handle emergencies. I’ll follow you in, so you don’t need to worry about traffic coming up behind you.”

“That’s very kind of you, Officer.” Jonah’s voice sounded a bit hollow.

He started the engine and waited till the officer was back in his patrol car. Then he pulled onto the highway and cautiously accelerated. The patrol car fell in behind them, emergency lights still running.

“A police escort into town,” Kathryn said. “Just what we wanted. So now do you believe the lights aren’t working right?”

“It doesn’t matter much what I think, because that ticket says the wiring will have to be checked out by an approved mechanic before we can go anywhere. And that means we’re stuck till at least tomorrow morning. Just keep your fingers crossed that we’re the only emergency repair waiting when the garage opens.”

Kathryn groaned, then brightened. “There’s the stop sign. So that must be…” She looked across a complex of buildings, lit by a glare of high-powered street lamps. “The truck stop,” she said faintly. “But where’s the town?”

“Probably a few more miles down the road. Truck stops have a habit of locating where there are trucks—on the highways, outside the towns.”

“Thank you very much for that lesson in economics, Mr. Clarke. I can’t be seeing right—does that sign really say this place is called West Podunk?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. There’s one in Iowa called Boondocks. This is actually a pretty big one. Restaurant, gas station, motel…”

“Jonah,” she said with a tinge of panic. “The restaurant is a Katie Mae’s.”

“Honey, they’re in every third town in the entire country. We were bound to run into one sooner or later. That set of doors must be the garage.” He took a parking spot outside and got out of the car, leaving the engine running.

The officer pulled alongside, called a cheerful goodbye, and was gone.

Kathryn scrambled out, as well, and joined Jonah at the back of the car. “It’s pretty dark back here,” she pointed out.

“I noticed.” Jonah jiggled the fender, and the taillights flickered on and back off as if on command. He shook his head. “He’s right, there’s a short somewhere. Dammit, I’d have sworn this thing was in first-class condition.”

“And that’s why you were under it this afternoon, I suppose. Because it’s in such good shape.”

“I was changing the oil.”

Kathryn refrained from further comment, but only by biting her tongue. “Now what do we do?”

“We pool our resources, go into the restaurant and order a meal, and hope that we can afford to check into the motel. Then we’ll work on figuring out how we’re going to pay the mechanic.” Jonah shut off the engine and locked the car. “I suppose things could be worse.”