“I can’t.” Honestly, thinking about having sex with Wyatt kind of set her teeth on edge, and not in a good way. He was too much like a brother. If only his stepbrother, Drew, had caused the same reaction. Unfortunately with him, there had been fireworks. The kind that burned.
She pulled back and studied Wyatt. “Enough about me. You should get married again.”
He reached for his mug of coffee. “No, thanks.”
“Amy needs a mother.”
“Not that badly.”
“There are great women out there.”
“Name one that isn’t you.”
Nicole thought for a minute, then sighed. “Can I get back to you on that?”
CLAIRE ARRIVED at the SeaTac Airport early in the afternoon, feeling very smug about making her own travel arrangements. She’d even booked a car for herself. Normally she would have used a car service, but she would have to drive back and forth to the hospital, then to the bakery. Nicole might need her to run errands. Wheels of her own made sense.
After wrestling her two very large suitcases off the baggage claim belt, she grabbed one in each hand and dragged them toward the escalator. The catwalk to the parking garage was long and the bags heavy. She was breathing hard by the time she reached a bank of elevators she had to take down to the rental car place. By the time she got to the Hertz office, she was regretting the long wool coat she’d shrugged on. Sweat trickled down her back, making her cashmere sweater stick to her.
She waited in line, excited about being here, nervous and filled with resolve to do whatever it took to reconnect with her sisters. They were being given a second chance.
The woman at the counter waved her forward. Claire dragged the two suitcases along as she approached.
“Hi. I have a reservation.”
“Name?”
“Claire Keyes.” Claire handed over her driver’s license and her platinum credit card.
The woman studied the driver’s license. “Do you have insurance or do you want coverage on the car?”
“I’ll take your coverage.” It was easier than explaining that she didn’t own a car and had, in fact, never owned a car. The only reason she had a driver’s license at all was because she’d insisted on lessons when she’d turned eighteen and had studied and practiced until she’d passed the test.
“Any tickets or accidents?” the woman asked.
Claire smiled. “Not one.” Getting a ticket or an accident would require actual driving. Something Claire hadn’t done more than once or twice in the past ten years.
There were a couple of forms to sign, then the woman handed back the license and credit card.
“Number sixty-eight. It’s a Malibu. You said midsize. I can get you something bigger, if you want.”
Claire blinked at her. “Number sixty-eight what?”
“Your car. It’s in slot sixty-eight. The keys are inside.”
“Oh, great. I’ll pass on something bigger.”
“Okay. You need a map?”
“Yes, please.”
Claire tucked the map into her purse, then dragged her suitcases out of the glass structure. She saw rows of cars and numbers at the end of each parking space. Counting as she went, she found number sixty-eight and stared at the silver Malibu.
It had four doors and looked huge. She swallowed. Was she really going to drive? A question for later, she told herself. First she had to get out of the parking lot.
Challenge number one turned out to be getting her luggage into the trunk. There didn’t seem to be any way to open it. No buttons, no knobs. She pushed and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. Finally she gave up and maneuvered her two big bags into the backseat. Then she slid behind the wheel.
It took her a couple of minutes to get the seat moved up so she could actually reach the pedals. She managed to get the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine caught immediately. Claire carefully adjusted her mirrors, then drew in a breath. She was practically on her way.
Next she turned to the GPS system. It greeted her in French.
Claire stared at it. What on earth?
She pushed a few buttons. Yup, it was speaking French. Okay, sure, she also spoke the language, but not well enough to deal with it while driving. The potential to freak while on the road seemed big enough without adding a foreign language to the mix.
She punched buttons until she’d scrolled through Dutch and Japanese. Finally she heard the pleasant female voice in English.
The need to run screaming into the night faded slightly.
She continued reading the instruction card, then carefully punched in the address of the bakery. She’d forgotten to ask Jesse for the name of the hospital where Nicole would have her surgery, so the bakery seemed like the best place to start. Finally, she braced herself to drive out of the space.
Her chest was tight. She ignored that, along with the prickling that started on her back and moved over her whole body.
Not now, she thought frantically. Not now. She could panic later, when she wasn’t about to drive.
She closed her eyes and breathed, pictured her sister lying in a hospital bed, in desperate need of help. That’s where she needed to be, she reminded herself. With Nicole.
The sense of panic faded a little. She opened her eyes and began her journey.
The parking structure seemed dark and closed. Fortunately there weren’t any cars in the row in front of her, so she would have extra room to turn as she drove out.
Slowly, carefully, she put the car in Drive. It started to move right away. She jammed her foot on the brake. The whole car jerked. She eased up on the brake and it moved again. Moving six or eight inches at a time, she managed to make it out of her space. Fifteen minutes later she’d made her way out of the parking structure and onto the road that led out of the airport.
“In five hundred feet, stay to the right. I-5 is on the right.”
The voice from the GPS system was very commanding, as if it knew Claire was totally clueless about driving in general and where she was going in particular.
“I-5 what?” Claire asked before she saw a sign for the I-5 freeway. She shrieked. “I can’t go on the freeway,” she told the GPS. “We need to go on regular streets.”
There was a ding. “Stay to the right.”
“But I don’t want to.”
She looked around frantically, but there didn’t seem to be any other way to go. The road she was on just sort of eased into the freeway. She couldn’t move to her left-there were too many cars in her way. Cars that suddenly started going really, really fast.
Claire clutched the steering wheel with both hands, her body stiff, her mind filled with images of fiery crashes.
“I can do this,” she whispered to herself. “I can do this.”
She pressed a little harder on the accelerator, until she was going nearly forty-five. That had to be fast enough, didn’t it? Who needed to go faster than that?
A big truck came up behind her and honked its horn. She jumped. More cars came up behind her, some getting really, really close. She was so busy trying not to be scared by the cars zipping around her that she forgot about merging until the GPS system reminded her, “I-5 north is to the right.”
“What? What right? Do I want to go north?”
And then the road was turning and she was turning with it. She desperately wanted to close her eyes, but knew that would be bad. Fear made her sweat. She really wanted to rip off her coat, but couldn’t. Not and keep from crashing. She was clutching the steering wheel so hard, her fingers ached.
She was doing this for Nicole, she reminded herself. For her sister. For family.
Her lane merged onto I-5. Still going forty-five, Claire eased into the right lane and vowed to stay there until it was time to exit.
