I-40-New Mexico
Mirabella was hearing voices. Mostly men’s voices, but now and then a woman’s, too-strange voices, mumbly and scratchy at the same time, sometimes far away and crackly, other times loud and clear, as if whoever it was talking was standing right next to her. At first she ignored them, hearing but not really registering the sounds, the way you do when you fall asleep with the TV or radio on. Gradually, though, words began to filter into her consciousness, then string together in a way that made some kind of sense.
Along with a return of familiar discomforts, full awareness brought the realization that, yes, she was in a bed in an honest-to-God truck, a huge blue eighteen-wheeler belonging to one Jimmy Joe Starr, a genuine Georgia redneck who happened to have healing hands and dimples and a smile like an angel’s, assuming the angel spoke with a Southern accent and looked like a young Robert Redford.
And what she was listening to wasn’t a TV, but a CB radio. Which meant, since she hadn’t heard a peep out of it last night, that Jimmy Joe must have turned it on. And since she couldn’t imagine he would turn it on without a reason, that meant he must be listening to it. Out there, right now. He was here in the truck with her, just beyond the curtain.
That thought zapped through her with a tingle that must have been adrenaline, because she felt the way you do when you’ve been jolted awake too suddenly-weak and trembly, heart beating way too fast. She was lying there blinking, thinking about that, trying to make sense of it and feeling scared and disoriented, when the reason for all her inner turmoil stuck his hand through the crack at the edge of the curtain and knocked on the side of the sleeper.
“Hey,” he called softly, “you awake in there?”
“Yeah, I’m up,” she called back in a husky, too-eager voice that betrayed that for the lie it was, struggling to get her feet around so she could at least make a stab at sitting up.
“Mornin’.” The curtain was pulled back and Jimmy Joe’s face appeared like a ray of sunshine. “How you doin’?”
“Okay,” she responded airlessly; in her present position even sarcasm was beyond her.
He drew a small plastic bottle from a pocket in the sleeveless, down-filled nylon vest he was wearing over his Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirt and held it out to her. “Thought you could do with an eye-opener. Get your blood sugar pumpin’.” He was wearing his heart-melting smile, which Mirabella, not being a morning person even at the best of times, was in no mood to appreciate.
“I don’t know where I’d put it,” she muttered, eyeing the orange juice with revulsion. She felt like a dead whale that had lain out in the sun too long-in other words just about ready to explode. Plus she’d slept with her contacts in, so her eyes felt like two tennis balls, and her tongue was so furry she knew she must have a horrendous case of morning breath. The last thing she wanted was a sexy, adorable guy anywhere within ten yards of her, so she was not thrilled when Jimmy Joe plunked himself down beside her, completely ignoring warning signs that were usually sufficient to send close family members diving for the nearest cover.
“Just a sip,” he said, as if he were addressing a three-year old. “Then I’ll walk you in so you can wash up, if you want. Come on, now-upsy-daisy.”
How does he do it? she wondered as, groaning, she allowed him to hoist her upright.
She sipped orange juice on autopilot while her analytical mind chewed on that anomaly. She knew it couldn’t just be his kind eyes and sleepy little-boy smile; she’d never been vulnerable to that sort of thing, and in fact usually found extremely handsome men to be pretty much of a turnoff. More likely, she thought, it had something to do with him being way too young for her, and therefore no threat to her sexually-rather like a lioness’s tolerance of the immature males in her pride. That, combined with her own vulnerability in her present condition, and the uniqueness of the circumstances.
Yes, she thought, satisfied with her conclusions. That would explain it.
It did cross her mind that she just might have come up against a man with a will equal to her own, but she rejected that idea. As far as Mirabella was concerned, such a man did not exist.
How does she do it? Jimmy Joe wondered, gazing at her as she drank and then licked the juice glaze from her lips.
He’d sat and watched her long after she’d fallen asleep literally under his hands, finally free to marvel all he wanted to at the old-Burgundy shine of her hair, the delicacy of her bones, the way her skin seemed to glow from inside like his mama’s good china when you held it up to the light. Free to touch, with a mettlesome finger and breathing temporarily forgotten, one strand of hair that lay along the curve of her jaw and pooled in the hollow of her neck, and daringly lift and stroke it behind the fragile sculpture of her ear.
She’d stirred, then, so that his fingers had brushed against her warm cheek and intersected the flow of her breath as it sighed from between her barely parted lips, and he’d been shocked by the stirring of response in his own body.
He’d squelched it immediately. It had seemed wrong to him; a violation not only of her trust in him, but of some indefinable quality-he wasn’t sure what it was-something about the way she looked with one childlike hand pillowing her cheek and the other resting with maternal protectiveness on the side of her swollen belly.
Which was confusing, because while part of him had been ashamed of his body’s jolting acknowledgment of that femininity, something else in him had found it downright exhilarating.
He’d pulled the comforter over her and left her then, but hadn’t gone back to the truck-stop cafe, although he knew he would have been more comfortable there. Instead, unable to bring himself to leave her, he’d turned off the light in the sleeper and drawn the curtain and settled into the passenger-side seat with a book and a pillow. He’d made pretty good headway in the new Tony Hillerman mystery he’d picked up in L.A., even dozed some off and on before full daylight and the comings and goings of his neighbors had roused him.
On a quick trip into the truck stop for a cup of coffee and to use the John he’d heard rumblings about the road opening up, so he’d made the coffee to go, picked up the bottle of orange juice for Mirabella and hurried back to his truck to see what he could find out from the CB. He’d expected she would wake up, with all the noise from the radio and slamming doors and all, but she hadn’t, and he’d listened for a good half hour before he was convinced the news coming out of Tucumcari was more than just wishful rumors, and he knew it was time he was going have to wake her. Wake her, say goodbye and send her on her way.
Now, sitting beside her, watching her drink the juice he’d brought, he felt the same protective feelings welling up inside him that had kept him watching over her all night. Last night those feelings had made a certain sense to him-enough so that he hadn’t thought to question them, anyway. This morning, though, they were doggone confusing.
“No more,” she said, shoving the juice bottle blindly in his direction. “I really have to go
“Okay, easy now, I’m gonna get you there,” he said soothingly, reaching past her to set the bottle on the recessed shelf at the head of the bed. “What’d you do with your shoes?”
