Batteries Not Required (4 page)

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Authors: Linda Lael Miller

BOOK: Batteries Not Required
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I was starved, and the only other place I could get food was the supermarket. That would mean going back to the motel for my rental car, shopping for cold cuts and chips, and huddling in my room to eat.
No way I had the strength to do all that.
I needed protein. Immediately.
So I forced myself to go in.
The diner hadn't changed much since the last time I'd been there. Red vinyl booths, a long counter, a revolving pie case. There was no hostess, and all the tables were full.
I took a stool at the counter and reached for a menu. I could feel people staring at me, but I pretended I had the restaurant to myself. Oh, I was a cool one, all right. Unless you counted a tendency to boink Tristan McCullough on a pool table with little or no provocation.
“Help you, honey?”
I looked up from the menu and met the kindly eyes of an aging waitress. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I didn't recognize her name, even when I read it off the little tag on her uniform.
Florence.
“I'll take the meat loaf special,” I said, looking neither to the left nor right. “And a diet cola. Large.”
“Comin' right up,” Florence assured me, and smiled again.
I relaxed a little. At least there was one person in Parable who didn't think I ought to be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail. Make that two—Nancy Beeks, over at the Lakeside, had been friendly enough.
The little bell over the door tinkled as someone entered, and the diner chatter died an instant death. I knew without turning around that Tristan had just walked in, because every nerve in my body leaped to instinctual attention.
Damn him. He wasn't going to leave me alone. He'd gotten past my well-maintained defenses without breaking a sweat. He'd made love to me in an empty tavern. What more did he have to prove?
He took the stool next to mine, reached casually for a menu. He'd showered, too, I saw out of the corner of my eye, and put on fresh clothes—Levi's and a blue chambray shirt. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, without looking my way.
“Like it's a surprise,” I retorted.
Florence set my diet cola down, along with clean silverware. “That special will be ready in a minute, sweetie,” she told me, before turning her attention to Tristan. “Hey, there, handsome. You stepping out on me, all slicked up like that?” she teased.
To my satisfaction, color pulsed in Tristan's neck. “Would I do that to you, Flo?”
She laughed. “Probably,” she said. “Who's the lucky gal?”
“You wouldn't know her,” he replied, smooth as could be. “The meat loaf sounds good. I'll have that, and a chocolate milk shake.”
Flo glanced at me, then looked at Tristan again. Somehow, she'd connected the dots. She smiled broadly and went off to give the order to the fry cook.
“How long are you going to be in town?” Tristan still wasn't looking at me, but I figured he wasn't asking the customer on the other side of him. The man had the look of a long-time resident.
“As long as it takes to finalize the sale of the Bronco,” I answered, because I knew he wouldn't leave me alone until I did. Tristan was a hard man to ignore. The reference to the tavern made me squirm, though, because I couldn't help remembering how many orgasms I'd had, and how fiercely intense they'd been. I hadn't exactly kept them to myself.
“Shouldn't be long,” he said, still staring straight ahead, as if he'd taken a deep interest in the milk shake machine, already churning up his order. “The other owners are eager to sell, and the buyer is ready to make out a check.”
“Good,” I replied, and took a sip of my diet cola. At the moment, I wished it would turn into a double martini. I could have used the anesthetic effect.
He turned his stool ever so slightly in my direction, but there was still no eye contact. Like everybody in the diner didn't know we were talking. “I suppose you've talked to Bob by now,” he said.
Bob was in my dresser drawer, under four pairs of panties. “Of course,” I said lightly. “Bob and I are honest with each other.”
“Right. By now, he's probably on his way here to punch me in the mouth.”
“Bob isn't that sort of man.” Bob, of course, wasn't
any
sort of man.
“I'd do it, if I were him.”
I smiled to myself, though I was shaken, and there was that peculiar tightening in the pit of my stomach again. “He's not the violent type,” I said.
Flo set my plate of meat loaf down in front of me. Hunger had driven me to that diner, but now I had no appetite at all. Because I knew Tristan and everybody else in the place would make something of it if I paid my bill and left without taking a bite, I picked up my fork.
“And I am?” Tristan asked tersely.
“You said it yourself,” I replied, with a lightness I didn't feel. I put a piece of meat loaf into my mouth, chewed and swallowed, before going on. “If you were in Bob's place, you'd punch him in the mouth.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“I told you,” I answered smoothly. “He's in electronics. Mostly, though, he just concentrates on keeping me happy.”
“I'll just bet he does.”
I wanted to laugh. I ate more meat loaf instead.
Tristan looked annoyed. His voice was an edgy whisper. “What kind of man doesn't mind when somebody else boinks his woman?”
“Bob gets a charge out of things like that,” I said. It wasn't the complete truth. I didn't have to plug him into the wall like I did my cell phone. He ran on Duracells.
“I can't believe you'd settle for a man like that,” Tristan snarled. He glowered at Flo when she brought his milk shake and silverware, and she retreated quickly, though she was grinning a little. “Don't you have any pride?”
The meat loaf turned to cardboard, and stuck in my throat. I took a gulp of cola to avert any necessity of the Heimlich maneuver. “Funny you should ask,” I replied quietly, “after what just happened at the Bronco.”
At last, Tristan turned far enough to face me. He looked straight into my eyes. “You don't love this Bob bozo,” he said bluntly. “If you did—”
At my panicked look, he stopped. For all I knew, the people on both sides of us were listening to every word we said.
Flo came back with his meat loaf, but he pulled some bills out of his Levi pocket and tossed them on the counter without even looking at her or the food. “Come on,” he said. Then he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the diner.
I dug in my heels when we hit the sidewalk. “I wanted to finish my dinner,” I lied.
“I'll fix you an omelet at my place,” he said. There was a big, shiny SUV parked at the curb. He opened the passenger door and practically tossed me inside.
“I am not going to your place,” I told him. But I didn't try to escape, either. Not that I could have. He was blocking my way. “What we did at the Bronco was a lapse of judgment on my part. It's over, and I'd just as soon forget it.”
“We need to talk.”
“Why? We had sex, it was good, and now it's history. What is there to talk about?” Was this me talking? Miss Traditional Love and Marriage, hoping for a husband, two point two children and a dog?
Tristan stepped back, slammed the car door, stormed around to the other side, and got in. His right temple was throbbing.
“Maybe that's all it means to you,” he bit out, jamming the rig into gear and screeching away from the curb, “but to me, it was more than sex.
Way
more.”
My mouth dropped open. We were hovering on the brink of something I'd fantasized about, with and without Bob—or were we? Maybe I was out there alone, like always, and Tristan was leading me on. It didn't take a software wizard to work out that he wanted more sex.
“Like what?” I said.
He turned onto a side street, and brought the SUV to a stop in front of a two-story house I used to dream about living in, as a kid. It was white, with green shutters on the windows and a fenced, grassy yard. There were flowerbeds, too, all blooming.
And the sign swinging by the gate read, “Tristan McCullough, Attorney at Law.”
“Never mind like what,” he snapped, while I was still getting over the fact that he was a lawyer. “Things didn't end right between us, and I'm not letting this go till we talk it out!”
I was a beat or two behind. Last I'd heard, Tristan was planning to major in Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. Instead, he'd gone on to law school.
Sheesh. A lot can happen in ten years.
I'd been into survival. He'd been making something of his life.
The contrast hurt, big-time. I sat there in the passenger seat like a lump, staring at the sign.
Tristan shut off the engine, thrust out a sigh, and turned to face me squarely. His blue eyes were narrow, and shooting little golden sparks.
“Impressed?” he asked bitterly.
I flinched. “What?”
“Isn't that why you left Parable? Because you thought I'd turn out to be a saddle bum, following the rodeo?”
“I thought,” I said evenly, “that you would work on the ranch. Family tradition, and all that.”
He sighed again, rubbed his chin with one hand. He'd showered and changed clothes between the Bronco and the diner, but he hadn't shaved. An attractive stubble was beginning to gleam on the lower part of his face.
“I keep getting this wrong,” he muttered, sounding almost despondent. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me, or to himself.
I wanted to cry, for a variety of reasons, both simple and complicated, but I smiled instead. “It's okay, Tristan,” I heard myself say. My voice came out sounding gentle, and a little raw. “We never did get along. Let's just agree to disagree, as they say, and get on with our lives.”
“As I recall, we got along just fine,” he said. I could tell he didn't want to smile back, but he did. “Until one of us said something, anyway.”
I laughed, but my sinuses were clogged with tears I wouldn't shed until I was alone in Room 7, with a lake view. “Right.”
“How's Josie?”
The question took me off guard. “Fine,” I said.
“She was a kick.”
“Still is,” I said lightly. “She's into bikers these days.”
Tristan brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers, and I had the usual cattle-prod reaction, though I think I hid it pretty well. “Got to be better than Bob,” he said.
I felt a flash of guilt. “Listen, about Bob—”
Tristan raised an eyebrow, waiting.
I couldn't do it. I just couldn't bring myself to admit that Bob was a vibrator. It was too pathetic. “Forget it,” I said.
“Like hell,” Tristan replied.
A stray thought broadsided me, out of nowhere. Tristan was a lawyer, and most likely the only one in Parable, given the size of the place. Which probably meant he was involved in the negotiations for the Bucking Bronco.
“Who's buying the tavern?” I asked.
It was his turn to look blank, though he recovered quickly. “A bunch of investors from California. Real estate types. They're putting in a restaurant and a marina, and building a golf course across the lake.”
“Damn,” I muttered.
“What do you care?” he asked.
“You're representing them, and my mother knew it.”
“Well, yeah,” Tristan said, in a puzzled, so-what tone of voice.
“She
knew
I would have done anything to avoid seeing you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Well, it's true. You broke my heart!”
“That's not the way I remember it,” Tristan said.
I unfastened my seat belt, got out of the SUV, and started for the Lakeside Motel. By now, my phone would be charged. I intended to dial my mother's number and hit redial until she answered, if it took all night.
I had a few things to say to her. We were about to have a Dr. Phil moment, Mom and I.
Tristan caught up in a few strides. “Where are you going?”
“None of your damn business.”
“I did
not
break your heart,” he insisted.
“Whatever,” I answered, because I knew it would piss him off, and if he got mad enough, he'd leave me alone.
He caught hold of my arm and turned me around to face him. “Damn it, Gayle, I'm not letting you walk away again. Not without an explanation.”
“An explanation for what?” I demanded, wrenching free.
Tristan looked up and down the street. Except for one guy mowing his lawn, we might have been alone on an abandoned movie set. Pleasantville, USA. “You know damned well
what
!”
I did know, regrettably. I'd been holding the memories at bay ever since I got on the first plane in Phoenix—even before that, in fact—but now the dam broke and it all flooded back, in Technicolor and Dolby sound.
I'd gone to the post office, that bright summer morning a decade ago, to pick up the mail. There was a letter from the University of Montana—I'd been accepted, on a partial scholarship.
My feet didn't touch the ground all the way back to the Bronco.
Mom stood behind the bar, humming that Garth Brooks song about having friends in low places and polishing glasses. The place was empty, except for the two of us, since it was only about 9:30, and the place didn't open until 10.
I waved the letter, almost incoherent with excitement. I was going to college!
Mom had looked up, smiling, when I banged through the door from the apartment, but as she caught on, the smile fell away. She went a little pale, under her perfect makeup, and as I handed her the letter, I noticed that her lower lip wobbled.

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