“Letting me?” Gracie asked, voice dangerously quiet. “You bought me lunch. You gave me a drive. I appreciate it. That doesn’t give you rights, or any say in what I do or where I go.” She set her knapsack on the ground on the far side of a Dumpster, where she could hide from the prying eyes of anyone walking past.
Austin followed her. “You can’t sleep here.”
“I can and will. It’s a warm night.” Although the sky had darkened on the drive and thunder rumbled in the distance. Gracie walked to the back door of a store that fronted onto the street they’d parked on, where bales of compacted cardboard had been put out for recycling.
Taking a folding knife from her back pocket, she slit the baling wire and dragged a couple of large boxes to set up a bed for herself.
“You’re going to sleep out in the rain when I’m offering you a place to stay, free of charge?”
“That’s right. I’ll cut your hair in the morning. That’s for lunch. I can’t afford to pay you back for a hotel room.”
He stood arms akimbo and brow as thunderous as the approaching storm. “I’m not asking for payment.”
“I know, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t give you something in return.”
“You don’t like taking.” His quiet tone said he understood too much.
“No,” she answered. “I don’t like owing anyone anything. Not one dime. I like my independence.”
Fat drops of rain fell, settling the dust and the stench of garbage. She ignored the rain. What Gracie couldn’t ignore, though, was the cramping in her gut. At that moment, it returned with a vengeance. It wasn’t going to be vomit this time. She could vomit in an alley, but the runs were another thing altogether.
Crap. Double crap.
When another sharp pain hit, she suppressed a groan. More than shelter from the rain—she had spent many nights exposed to the elements—she needed a washroom. She wasn’t going to have a choice. The cramps in her stomach became fierce. She would have to take a hotel room and figure out later how to pay Austin back.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll take the room.” She picked up her knapsack and quick-stepped out of the alley.
He didn’t question her change of heart. Maybe he thought it was his manly powers of persuasion. “Wait in the car,” he said. “I just have to pick up a few items.” He stepped into a pharmacy just down the street.
Gracie climbed into the backseat. Hurry, she thought, squeezing her knees together.
Tension sizzled between her and Finn.
“You don’t like me, do you?” she asked.
“I don’t like what you represent.”
“Which is?”
“People looking for a handout.”
“I told Austin I would cut his hair for the food he bought me for lunch. It wasn’t my idea to get a hotel room. I tried to sleep in the alley tonight, but I’m learning he’s persistent when he’s got his mind made up.”
Finn snorted. “Yeah, he’s stubborn.”
He turned around in his seat to pin her with a glare. “I’m giving you fair warning—you hurt my buddy and there won’t be a truck stop in the States where you’ll be safe from me.”
Finn might look easygoing, but he had a sharp edge. She didn’t blame him. If she had friends, she would be just as fierce in her defense of them.
“Warning duly noted.” Not that she needed it. She had no intention of hurting Austin because they would be parting ways tomorrow morning.
An itchy silence reigned until Austin returned and dumped a plastic bag onto the backseat.
They stepped into the foyer of a small hotel and the heavens opened up behind them, rain drumming hard on the sidewalk, Gracie secretly glad she’d agreed to stay in the hotel. She would have been drenched sleeping outdoors.
Austin and Finn went to the desk to sign in. Gracie shifted from foot to foot. Her stomach hurt. She couldn’t wait for a room.
“Excuse me?” she asked the clerk, who checked out her old clothes, her dirty backpack. Yeah, yeah, she knew how bad she looked. “Is there a washroom on this floor?”
He pointed down a hallway. “Past the elevators.”
She managed to make it to a toilet before her stomach voided.
* * *
AUSTIN STOOD AT the front desk and watched Gracie run for the washroom. She couldn’t even wait until he rented her a room.
He tried not to shoot her an I-told-you-so look as she ran off. Putting all of that food into a severely empty stomach had been a bad idea.
It took him a moment to catch what the desk clerk was saying.
“What do you mean you don’t have rooms with singles?”
“There’s a ranchers’ conference in the area this week. Rooms are booked for miles around. We have only two small rooms left, both with only a double bed.”
“Okay,” Austin said to Finn. “I’ll get one for us and one for Grace.”
At the thought, a shiver ran through Austin. He could imagine the two of them sleeping like a pair of two-by-fours clinging to the edges of the mattress. There weren’t many limits to their friendship, but this was one of them.
They were both big men and a double bed wouldn’t hold them. Austin had a double all to himself at home and spent most of his nights sprawled across the thing.
He shivered again. He couldn’t sleep with Finn.
Apparently, it weirded out Finn, too, because he stared openmouthed. “Are you nuts? I love you, man, but there’s no way I’m sharing a bed with you.”
“Is there any way you can set up a cot in one of those rooms?” Austin asked the clerk, thinking that Gracie could sleep in a bed and he could take the cot. Or vice versa.
“We’re all out. You’re lucky to get these rooms because of a cancellation we received ten minutes ago. This is a small hotel. We don’t usually see this volume of traffic.”
The clerk waited for his decision.
“There are two rooms,” Finn said. “One for you. One for me. Leave that woman to find her own accommodations.”
Aware of the clerk listening in, and probably speculating, Austin pulled Finn aside. “I can’t leave her to sleep outside. Listen to that rain.”
“So what? She smells like she’s been doing exactly that for a while. Maybe the rain will clean her up.”
“And give her pneumonia.”
“She’s not your responsibility.”
“She’s in the washroom right now probably puking up her guts. She’ll be weakened and unable to defend herself if she needs to. She could get robbed or raped.”
“Seems capable of taking care of herself.”
Austin’s anger flared. Finn didn’t have a clue. “You’ve never gone hungry. You’ve always had a good home. You’ve never slept in dirty sheets let alone outside with nothing over your head. You’ve never even camped without a tent. Am I right?”
Finn had the grace to look sheepish. “I know. I get how fortunate I am. I really do.” He pointed at Austin, nearly jabbing him in the chest. “But you’re getting sucked in again.”
“No. I’m not.”
Finn held up his index finger.