“Lane Stewart,” he said, then nodded toward the woman, his expression a blend of exasperation and amusement with which Sam was all too well acquainted. “My daughter, Carly. To whom a certain squirrel owes its life.”
That got an indignant roll of those clear blue eyes, the gesture not unlike Libby’s. Her outfit, too, was straight out of the Young and Reckless catalogue, complete with baggy, low-riding drawstring pants—revealing a small tattoo above her left hip—the filmy overshirt billowing out behind her in the breeze doing little to hide the expanse of midriff visible underneath her cropped tank top. But this gal was no teenager: telltale age lines fanned from the corners of her eyes, had begun to dig in on either side of a full mouth glistening in one of those no-color lipsticks. And whereas most teenagers seemed to think good posture somehow violated their right to free expression, Carly stood as though tied to a ladder, shoulders back, practically nonexistent—and unconfined—breasts thrust forward. Her feet—knobby, used-up looking things in lime-green, ridiculously high-heeled sandals—pointed simultaneously to the north-east and south-east, as if undecided which way to head. And yet, pissed though she was, bony though she was, she moved with an almost hypnotic grace that had Sam thinking things not normally associated with helping out strangers with car problems.
Right. Car problems.
“Think you can move your truck?” he asked Carly’s father, as Travis and Radar hopped out of Sam’s, the dog bounding off into the weeds to chase something or other. That squirrel, most likely.
“Have no idea,” Lane said, which Sam took as an invitation to join the older man in the ditch to check underneath the vehicle. A minute later, having agreed that, yep, the axle was bent, all right, Lane called Triple A on his cell phone as Sam took in Carly and Travis standing four feet apart, sizing each other up. Neither one seemed quite sure what to make of the other.
Since apparently nobody’d yet answered, and to distract himself from staring at the man’s daughter as much as anything, Sam said, “Mostly likely, they’ll send out Darryl Andrews. Since he’s the only mechanic in town.”
“And what town might that be?”
“Haven. Oklahoma,” he added, since you could never be too sure with tourists. Then Lane said “Hello, yeah, I’ve got a broken down vehicle here, I need a tow” into the phone and Sam went back to watching Carly and his son, who appeared to have started up something resembling a conversation.
The kid was kind of cute, Carly supposed, if you were into that sort of thing. Like the way the sun glinted off his hair, fine and white blond like peach fuzz, the pudgy little tummy pooching out his sweatshirt, his scuffed Spiderman sneakers. He was subdued but not shy, which she found nearly as disconcerting in the preschooler—when did kids start losing their baby teeth, anyway?—as she did in grown men.
Like the lanky one with the honeyed gaze currently talking to her father.
“That’s my daddy,” the child said, and Carly forced herself to look away from whatever she found so fascinating. Because other than a slight hitch in his gait which raised the question How? there was nothing remarkable about the man. Just a country guy in jeans and plaid shirt worn open over a T-shirt, sun-baked features shadowed by the brim of a Purina ball cap. Nothing noteworthy at all. But her eyes would keep moseying back over there, wouldn’t they?
Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t had breakfast.
“I kind of figured that,” she said to the kid, thinking maybe she should smile or something. “What’s your name?”
“Travis. How come you got so many earrings?”
Carly’s hand lifted to one ear, touching the dangling strand of beads hanging from her lobe. A pair of studs kept it company, while farther up a small gold loop hugged the rim. “’Cause I like ’em,” she said. “And this way, I don’t have to narrow it down to a single choice every morning.”
Travis seemed to consider this for a minute, then said, “My sister, Libby, has holes in her ears, too. But only one set. Does it hurt?”
“No,” Carly said as the dog—a mottled gray and black thing with enormous ears and a toothy grin—exploded out of the weeds in front of them, dancing around the boy for several seconds before realizing he’d been remiss in not acknowledging the other human standing there. The beast plopped his butt down in the dirt, his wagging tail stirring up a dust cloud as he woofed hello.
“His name’s Radar,” the boy said. “He likes everybody. Daddy says he’s nothing but a big ol’ pain in the butt.”
The dog woofed again, and Carly laughed, which the dog took as an invitation to jump up and plant his paws on her thighs.
“Radar! Down!” “Daddy” said, striding over to grab the dog’s collar, even as Carly said, “No, no—it’s okay, really,” and then she looked up into his face and damned if she didn’t forget to breathe for a second or two. Because there was a substance behind those brandy-colored eyes that she hadn’t seen in an extraordinarily long time. If ever. Something that went beyond the surface friendliness, or even the shrewd intelligence that masked—barely—a simmering sensuality that made her slightly dizzy.
It was honesty, she thought with a start. The completely ingenuous openness of a man with no hidden agenda, with nothing to hide.
Or to lose.
“Shouldn’t be more’n ten, fifteen minutes before Darryl gets here with the wrecker. Hey,” he said when she swayed slightly. “You sure you’re okay?”
“What? Oh, yes, I’m fine. Just, um, hungry. I skipped breakfast,” she hastily added, thinking, Oh, brother.
The crumples now rearranged themselves into a grin, one which created not a few wrinkles around his eyes and mouth and made her realize this was not a man in his first—or second—blush of youth. Either.
“Well,” she said. “Thanks for stopping. But there’s no sense in your hanging around any longer, since you said the tow truck would be here pretty soon….”
“And only one of you can fit in Darryl’s cab for the ride into town, so I guess that means the other one gets to ride with me.” Despite the man’s grin, Carly got the weirdest feeling he wasn’t all that happy about this turn of events.
Travis tugged on Sam’s shirttail. “Did you see all her earrings, Daddy?”
“Yeah,” he said, staring hard at the side of her face. “I saw ’em.” Then his gaze swept down and she realized that wasn’t all he’d seen. Or, she guessed, approved of. Well, that was his problem, wasn’t it?
Travis and Radar wandered over to watch her father assess the damage to the camper’s interior. Brave souls, the pair of them.
“You really swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel?” Sam asked.
She looked back at Sam. “I really did. Although my guess is he probably darts out in front of cars on a regular basis, just for the hell of it. Squirrel ‘chicken,’ or something.”
“Dangerous game.”
“Guess he figures what’s life without a little danger to make it interesting? Crap,” she said on a wince as her knee tried its level best to give out on her.
Sam’s hand instantly cupped her elbow, followed by a heart-piercingly gentle, “What is it?”
“My knee. Or what’s left of it. I need to sit.”
“Can you get up into the truck?”
She nodded, and Sam put an arm around her waist and helped her over to his truck, then boosted her up into the passenger seat. It smelled very…male, although she couldn’t have possibly said what she meant by that.
“I’m not playing the damsel in distress, I swear,” she said, lifting the hem of her pants to massage the muscles around her Ace-bandaged knee.
“Didn’t