Stop The Wedding!: Night Driving / Smooth Sailing / Crash Landing

5

Wednesday, July 1, 6:55 p.m.

WELL, BOONE’S APOLOGY was unexpected. She hadn’t known the man was capable of remorse.

“And thank you,” he added.

She eyed him suspiciously. He didn’t look like he was being sarcastic. Still, he had the power to crush her to dust with his biting commentary, so she didn’t trust his earnest tone.

“I was acting like a tool.”

“Yes, you were. A right contentious hammer. Bam, bam, bamming me flat as an innocent nail.”

“I could blame it on my military training, but I won’t.”

“Contrite and taking responsibility? I guess this means I have to forgive you,” she answered, softening already.

She was so easy. She had every right to stay mad at him, but the truth was she hated hanging on to resentment. It was so much easier to forgive than pout.

“You’re right,” he conceded. “I do have control issues.”

She fake-gasped. “Shocker.”

His lips pulled straight back in a wry smile. “The army psychologist said it was because my mother abandoned me, but I don’t believe in that blame-it-all-on-your-mother mumbo-jumbo. Fact is, I can sometimes be hard to handle when things don’t go my way.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“I’m working on it. Forgive me?”

Hey, if he had the guts to admit when he was wrong, she had the grace to accept. “Water under the bridge.”

They were traveling deeper and deeper into endless cornfields and they hadn’t passed one single vehicle in the past fifteen minutes they’d been on the one-lane road. The sun was slipping toward the horizon. She suppressed the urge to turn around and go back the way they’d come. Only road construction waited for them back there. This was her bluff to snap Boone out of his grumpiness and she was stuck with it.

Hell, she wished she could turn the car over to him. Give the man the control he longed for. Sit back, relax and not have to worry about the trailer she was hauling behind her. But that was out of the question.

“How’s the knee?” she asked.

“You don’t have to keep asking about it. You’re not my mother or my nursemaid.”

“Don’t get all defensive. I’m asking because I feel guilty for bouncing you all over the interstate.”

“I’ll live.” He shifted in his seat.

She sneaked another quick glance at him. He looked amused and that surprised her. “What is it?”

“You should have seen the expression on your face when you left that highway.” He chuckled. “All iron will and sheer determination, plowing over that median come hell or high water.”

What do you know? She’d made him laugh. It hadn’t been her intention, but she’d managed to make him laugh. Pleased with herself, Tara returned his grin.

“You’ve got spunk, Duvall. I like that about you.”

“Wow. Another compliment. I’m stunned.” She was teasing, but her heart gave a little hop.

“I’ve got a few more,” he mumbled.

“How lucky can a girl get? What else do you like about me?”

“Your smart mouth. That’s another thing.”

“You like my smart mouth?”

“Oh, yeah.” His gaze was fixed on her lips.

Her gaze was fixed on his eyes fixed on her lips. She wasn’t watching where she was going, didn’t see the board lying in the middle of the road, but she heard it.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Felt a jolt.

Followed by a rapid-fire popping sound. Once. Twice. Three times.

The car lurched, swerved. Startled, it took a moment for Tara to figure out what had happened.

Blowout.

Fudge crackers! She’d had a blowout.

Boone swore under his breath and he was already unbuckling his seatbelt.

Tara pulled over as far as she could on a one-lane dirt road with cornfields on either side. Simultaneously, she and Boone opened their car doors, but she was out before he was. He had the metal knee brace to contend with.

She walked to the rear of the car. Not one blown-out tire. Not two. But three flats. Both back tires of the Honda and one of the tires on the U-Haul were swiftly going flat. Hands on her hips, she went to investigate the heavy board lying behind the trailer and discovered a heavy two-by-four studded with nails.

Boone swore. He’d come around the opposite side of the trailer looking completely disgruntled. “Is the whole damned world against me?”

Tara shrugged.

He held up a finger. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me Jupiter is in retrograde or—”

“Mercury,” she said. “It’s Mercury.”

“I don’t give a damn if it’s Pluto. The planets did not cause this.”

“Then what did?”

“A board with nails in it.”

“That’s small-picture thinking.”

“What?” He shoved angry fingers through his hair, managing to appear both disgruntled and devastatingly sexy.

“On the surface, it appears that a board with nails caused our misfortune, but how did that board get here? On this particular one-lane road, just when we happened along? I mean, what are the odds?” She argued. “Bigger forces are afoot.”

“You really believe in this zodiac stuff?”

“I do.”

“What the hell does retrograde even mean?”

“Moving backward.”

“So Mercury is moving backward?”

“Exactly.”

“I fail to see how that can affect us.”

“The moon affects the tides, right?”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“It’s because the Earth and the moon are attracted to each other like magnets.”

“If that’s possible, why not Mercury? When Mercury is in retrograde, it can force fate upon us, usually in regard to something in the past that we need to resolve. Like your relationship with your sister.”

“Let me get this straight. We have three flat tires because I have unresolved issues with my sister?”

Tara shrugged. “In a nutshell.”

“Whacked.” Boone shook his head, pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “The lemonade lady is whacked.”

“Your cell’s not going to work.”

He glowered. “And why not?”

“One, because we’re in the middle of nowhere and I haven’t seen a cell phone tower in a long while. Two, Mercury is in retrograde and it affects travel plans and communications.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.” She swept an expansive hand at him. “Be my guest.”

Boone punched in a number, put the phone to his ear. A few fleeting seconds passed. He swore under his breath. Checked for bars. “Zero,” he spat.

Tara pressed her lips together to keep from saying “I told you so.”

He turned away from her. Limped out of her line of sight behind the U-Haul.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Detour,” he called out.

Puzzled, she frowned, and then realized he was probably going to relieve himself, but didn’t want to tell her that. The man had a skewed sense of pride. “Everybody needs a bathroom,” she hollered after him. “It’s okay to say the word.”

A long moment passed. She leaned against the side of the U-Haul, crossed her arms over her chest and stared west out over the cornfield at the setting sun.

Reality sank in.

It was going to be dark before long. They only had one spare tire, and even if they’d only had one flat, Boone was in no shape to change a tire. There was no cell phone reception and it was a very long walk back to the freeway. Not a trek Boone could make. They were stuck here until someone came along. No telling how long that might be.

The sun slipped a little lower. The air smelled loamy. Somewhere in the distance, a cow mooed. Tara drew a circle in the sand with the toe of her sandal, clutched her arms behind her back and swayed, waited.

Boone sure was taking his time. Honestly, no one needed that much time to do what he was doing. Tara nibbled her bottom lip, edged toward the cornrow. “Boone?”

He didn’t answer.

The cornstalks threw eerie shadows across the road. She rounded the other side of the U-Haul, but he was nowhere in sight. Where had he gone?

“Boone? You there?”

Nothing. It was as if he’d simply vanished.

She thought of all the horror movies she’d seen. In horror movies, bad things always happened in cornfields.

“Boone?” she called again, surprised to hear her voice come out shaky. She wasn’t a scaredy-cat by nature, but what if something had happened to him? He could have fallen in a gopher hole. He could be out there in the field, alone in the gathering dark, his knee wrenched, in terrible pain.

Throwing caution to the wind, she plowed through the field. Cornstalks slapped against her shoulders. The setting sun blinded her. Panic built a dam in her chest. Why wasn’t he answering?

“Boone!”

“What is it, Tara?” His deep voice sliced through the shivery cool twilight.

She spun around. Spied him standing behind her. Relief spilled into her bloodstream. “I thought…” She paused to catch her breath. “I thought you got lost. You’re awfully stealthy for a big guy.”

“Military training.”

“Where’d you go?”

“I was looking for a place to set up camp.”

“Set up camp?”

“Clearly we’re not going anywhere anytime soon. It’s best to make camp while we still have daylight left.”

“Okay,” she agreed. He was much calmer than she expected. She thought he’d bust another gasket over this current snafu like he had over the traffic snarl.

“Let’s get some supplies.” He turned to head back to the U-Haul.

Forty minutes later, they had set up camp on fallow ground just beyond the cornfield. Boone used blankets and curtain rods gleaned from the trailer. Tara had to do much of the work requiring physical dexterity because he had trouble navigating the uneven terrain of the field. Boone was the tent’s architect. She was the builder.

He made a fire using a piece of flint and a folding knife fished from his pocket. He used the same knife to open a can of stew from the pantry items she’d packed for her move. If she had to get stranded, a quick-thinking soldier was the one to get stranded with. Boone was actually kind of fun when he had a mission. She even caught him whistling under his breath as he stirred the stew.

“Interesting,” she said.

“What is?” He glanced up, and the last rays of sunlight caught his cheeks, bathing him in a red-orange glow that accentuated his rugged masculinity.

“You’re not freaking out about this delay?”

“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me,” he said lightly. “Besides, it’s my fault that we’re here. If I hadn’t been complaining about the construction log jam, you wouldn’t have taken off down this side road to nowhere.”

“True,” she said, admiring his ability to admit his mistake. “But I’m just as much at fault. I let you get to me. I should have kept my cool.”

“I guess we both overreacted, huh?”

“Stress can make anyone cranky. Too bad we’re on a time crunch.”

“I did the math. Worse case scenario, even with taking a day out of our travel to deal with this situation, I should be able to make it to Key West by early Saturday morning. The wedding isn’t until the evening. That’s enough time to set Jackie straight and put a stop to the whole thing.”

She wondered how his sister was going to react to Boone swooping in and trying to stop her wedding. She started to say something to him, but it wasn’t any of her business, so she just clamped her mouth shut. The stew smelled good and she realized they hadn’t had anything to eat since they’d left the truck stop that morning.

Boone positioned a blanket on the ground near the fire and they sat side by side while he stirred the pot of food. He had his right leg stretched out in front of him and he’d taken off the heavy metal brace. Tara had her knees drawn up to her chest and she studied the dancing, orange-hot flames.

“This is nice,” she said. “In spite of our circumstances. I like camping.”

“Me, too. Or, at least I did before I went into the military.”

“That changed you.”

He shrugged. She could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, so she didn’t say anything else. Tara reached up to massage the kinks out of her neck. She was still sore from all that moving. If she was this knotted up, she could only imagine what shape Boone was in.

“Sore neck?” he asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“C’mere,” he said. “I’ll rub it for you.”

“Will you?” she asked gratefully, before she understood what she was getting herself into.

He patted the blanket in front of him.

Tara edged over and sank down between his legs. The fire was in front of her, Boone behind. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Then his big hands touched her shoulders and began a gentle massage. She melted at the very same time she stiffened. Part of her wanting to relax into the moment, the other part on guard against the way his touch made her feel.

His fingers hit a tender spot.

“Ooh,” she moaned.

“You’ve got a big knot there.” He pushed in deeper, probing her sore muscle.

All the air left her body in one swift whoosh.

“Too hard?”

She shook her head. “Hurts so good.”

“More?”

“Oh, yeah.”

He increased the pressure. “How’s that?”

“If it gets any better it’s gonna be illegal.”

His thumb made circular motions against her skin. “I can’t believe how tense you are. You seem so looseygoosey.”

Yeah, except for when a sexy man was massaging her neck. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

“You can say that again,” he murmured.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” she quipped, because his hands were moving lower, settling on her shoulders and she was getting some decidedly sweet sensations spreading over her.

“You’re irrepressible.”

“Like a wrinkled cotton shirt?”

“More like a bedspring.”

A wild thrill fluttered against her ribcage, her skin tingling everywhere his fingers caressed her. “Coiled and ready for action?”

His laugh was so deep and rich, the flutter turned into an avalanche. The sensation was more than she could handle. She scooted away from him. “The stew is bubbling. I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

“Okay,” he said.

Was it her imagination, or did he sound disappointed?

“I’ll get the bowls.” She returned with the mismatched bowls she’d dug from a box of kitchen supplies earlier.

He ladled stew into the bowls. “Spoons?”

She passed him an oversized spoon with an ornate handle, held a rounded soup spoon in her other hand.

“None of your dishes or silverware match,” he said. “I noticed that when we were packing up.”

“I buy them at garage sales. Cheap matters more to me than matchy-match.”

He chuckled.

“What’s funny?” Was he making fun of her frugality?

“Nothing.”

“Stop laughing at me.” She pretended to be miffed.

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“No?”

“None of my dishes match either. I do the very same thing. I thought matching silverware mattered to women.”

“Depends on the woman.”

“No doubt.”

She blew across the steaming spoonful of stew, but didn’t meet his gaze. Her insides felt hot and shivery, like when you have a fever, and she had no idea why. “I would have thought that since you’d been married once, you’d have things that match.”

“Naw. Shaina took the wedding gifts.”

“She didn’t leave you anything?”

“My freedom. Mismatched dishes. Small price to pay.”

“Yeah,” she said, as if she knew what she was talking about.

A long silence stretched between them. Tara felt the need to say something in order to keep from thinking too much. “You ever notice how food tastes better when it’s cooked over an open flame?”

“You’re just hungry.”

“Seriously, there’s something about the outdoors. The stars twinkling overhead. The smell of wood smoke…”

“We’re burning cornhusks.”

“The smell of cornhusk.” Balancing her bowl of stew in one hand, Tara leaned forward on her knees to poke the fire with a stick. The flame hissed, flared high. She didn’t know why she’d poked it, other than her restless need to move. It had nothing to do with the fact that Boone stirred feelings in her that no one else had ever stirred.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

The heat was so intense that she jerked back, dropping both the stick and the bowl of stew. She gasped, and toppled backward onto Boone.