For the Love of God (2 page)

Abbie couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirror-like finish of his sunglasses, but she liked the strong angles and planes of his male features. She felt that instant pull of attraction to the opposite sex and experienced a twinge of regret that the man was no more than a passing stranger. There wasn’t exactly a surfeit of good-looking, single men in Eureka Springs.

“Hello.” His lips parted in a brief but friendly smile that showed an even row of strong white teeth. “It looks like you have some car trouble.”

“‘Fraid so,” Abbie admitted.

In spite of the futility of it, her interest in the man mounted as he lifted a hand to remove the sunglasses. She found herself gazing into a pair of arresting blue eyes. Their depths held a warm gleam that had a dancing charm all its own. Awareness of his sexual magnetism quivered
pleasantly along her nerve ends. It had been a long time since any man had fully aroused her mating interests. The few times she had gone out on a date since her return, the desire had been mainly for companionship.

“What seems to be the problem?” As the stranger bent to look under the hood, Abbie observed the flexing muscles in his tanned arms.

Even though the busted hose had stopped spitting hot water, Abbie still advised, “Be careful. Mabel sprang a leak.” The curious glance he slanted at her made Abbie realize she had referred to the car by its pet name. “That’s what I call her,” she explained lamely, and felt slightly foolish about it.

An interest that had not been present before entered his look as he briefly skimmed Abbie from head to foot. She was tall, nearly five foot seven, with a model’s slimness—except she had curves in all the right places, although no one would ever describe her as voluptuous. Her light red hair had a gold sheen to it—strawberry blond her mother called it. Abbie would have been less than honest if she didn’t acknowledge she was more than reasonably attractive. A country freshness kept her from being striking.

The stranger seemed to like what he saw without being offensive about it. Then his attention was swinging easily back to the split in the radiator hose. He tested the hose, bending it a little to discover the extent of the rupture.

“I might be able to patch ‘Mabel’ up.” He used
her pet name for the car. The faint smile that edged the corners of his mouth seemed to share—or at least understand—her personification of the car. “Would you happen to have a rag—or an old towel?”

“Sure. I have one under the front seat,” Abbie admitted. “Just a second and I’ll get it for you.”

Rather than use the driver’s side with the road traffic to watch for, Abbie walked through the tall grass along the shoulder of the highway and opened the passenger door. It was a long stretch to reach the piece of old flannel tucked under the drivers’ seat. Her elbow bumped some of the jars on the floor, rattling them together. Like a row of dominoes, they began toppling over just as her groping fingers found the rag under the seat. Abbie closed her eyes, expecting to hear one of the jars break and bracing herself for the sound, but it didn’t come.

The rag was in her hand and she was half lying on the seat, preparing to push out of the car when Abbie heard the swish of footsteps in the grass. There wasn’t much room on the seat for maneuvering with the two sacks of vegetables and peaches. Abbie was forced to crane her neck around in an effort to see behind her.

“Are you all right?” The man was standing on the inside of the opened car door, eyeing her with concern.

She was conscious of being in a vulnerable and ungainly position with no graceful way to alter it. “Yes. I just knocked over some jars.” She pushed backward off the seat and out of the
car. Her face felt red but it could have been caused by the blood rushing to her head when she had been half hanging over the seat to reach the rag.

When Abbie turned to give him the old cloth, she discovered how close she was standing to him. The cotton fabric of the mottled gray T-shirt was cleaved to his wide shoulders and lean, muscled chest. His maleness became a potent force Abbie had to reckon with, especially since she was standing nearly eye level with his mouth. Her pulse just wouldn’t behave at all.

“Did you break anything?”

She watched his lips form the words but it was a full second before his question registered. Abbie pulled herself up sharply. What was the matter with her? She was reacting like a love-starved old maid who hadn’t been near a man in years. A little voice argued that she hadn’t—at least not with a man the caliber of this one.

Her hazel-green eyes darted a guilty look upward to meet his gaze. There seemed to be an awareness in his blue eyes of what she was thinking and feeling. It really wasn’t so surprising. Experience with life—and women—was etched into the male lines in his face.

“Nothing was broken.” Abbie remembered to answer his question. Her crooked smile held a measure of resignation. “Grandmother Klein loaded me down with her homemade jams and pickles before I left.”

His shoulder brushed her forearm as he bent to set the jars upright. With his large hand, he
was able to right them two at a time, sometimes with a thumb on the third to push it up. In next to no time, all the jars were standing again.

“Thank you. You really didn’t have to do that,” Abbie said when he had finished.

He raised his eyebrows in a kind of shrugging gesture. “I remember my grandmother used to make the best wild-raspberry jam. She knew it was my favorite and always made sure to have a couple of jars for me whenever I visited her. Grandmothers are like that. They either try to fatten you up or marry you off.”

“That’s true,” Abbie agreed dryly, and resisted the impulse to look at his left hand to see if his grandmother had succeeded in the latter. “Here’s the rag you wanted.” She gave it to him and followed when he walked around the opened passenger door to the front of the car. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Wrap the rag around the hose and use it as a bandage?”

“No.” He appeared amused by her suggestion, but not in a ridiculing way. “I doubt if it would hold. I have some electrical tape in my car. Once I get the hose dried off, I’ll wrap a few lengths of that around it. It’s only a few miles to Eureka Springs, and the tape should hold until you get that far.”

Abbie bit her lower lip, remembering. “Except most of the water boiled out of the radiator.”

Using the rag as a protective pad, he unscrewed the radiator cap. “I always carry a gallon jug of drinking water with me. Between it and a gallon of antifreeze-coolant in my trunk,
we should be able to get you temporarily fixed up.”

She shook her head in a gesture of bewildered amazement at how smoothly he was handling the breakdown. “I’m certainly glad you came along,” Abbie declared openly. “I thought I was going to have to walk to a phone, and this isn’t exactly the coolest day for walking, not to mention the tow charges you’re saving me. Thank you for stopping.”

“Just being a Good Samaritan,” he replied, that easy smile coming again to his mouth.

With the coolant, water, and tape from his car, he patched the hose and partially filled Mabel’s radiator. “The old gal ought to make it now,” he said as he closed the hood and made sure it was tightly latched.

“It isn’t enough to say ‘thank you,’” Abbie insisted. “You not only fixed it but you used your tape and water and everything. Let me pay you for it.”

He opened his mouth to refuse, then suddenly smiled. It seemed to take her breath away as her heart started thudding crazily. Love wasn’t something that happened at first sight but physical attraction could. It was often equally potent, however, and Abbie knew she was suffering from a severe case of it.

“Were those fresh peaches I smelled in the sack on the car seat?” he asked instead.

“Yes.” Abbie nodded while she studied the way the afternoon sun intensified the burnished gold color of his hair, antiquing it.

“If you insist on paying me, I’ll take a couple of those peaches. Homegrown fruit has a taste all its own,” he said.

“Okay, it’s a deal.” She laughed and walked to the passenger side to retrieve the sack through the opened car window. “Help yourself. You can have the whole sack. Grandmother Klein will just give me more next weekend.”

“Two’s plenty.” He randomly picked two from the sack. “I’ll follow you into Eureka Springs to make sure you don’t have any more trouble with Mabel. I’ll be stopping there, and I advise that you stop at the first garage and get a new hose put on.”

“I will.” It was a somewhat absentminded agreement, because her attention had been caught by his statement that he’d be stopping at Eureka Springs. “Eureka Springs is a quaint town. Will you be staying there awhile?”

“Yes, I plan to,” he admitted, and she was conscious of his gaze running over her again.

“You’ll like it,” she rushed, only half-aware that he had been going to say something else. As a rule, she didn’t socialize with summer tourists. A holiday romance was even more of a dead end than any other kind. But there was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to see this man again. “By the way, my name’s Abbie Scott. You’ve already met Mabel.”

“Abbie? Short for Abra?” He arched an eyebrow.

Abbie was dumbfounded. “How did you know that? Most people think my name is Abigail.”

One muscled shoulder was lifted in an expressive shrug. “It just seemed appropriate. Abra was the favorite of Solomon in the Bible. A lucky guess.” He extended a hand to complete the introductions. “My name’s Talbot. Seth Talbot.”

“That’s a biblical name, too.” Abbie was reluctant to admit she hadn’t known anything about her namesake. Since he seemed so knowledgeable about it, she didn’t want to reveal her ignorance.

“Seth was the third son of Adam,” he informed her. “Not quite as well known as his older brothers, Cain and Abel.”

“That’s true.” She smiled. Her hand tingled pleasantly in his firm clasp. He had very strong, capable hands, but they were relatively smooth, without the calluses of someone who made his living with them. It didn’t really surprise her. Despite his hard physique and craggy good looks, there was the definite impression of a man who relied on his mental prowess and innate air of command for his living.

Then he was releasing her hand to gather up his empty jugs and roll of black tape. “If you start to have any trouble, just honk twice. I’ll be right behind you,” Seth Talbot assured her.

“Okay.” She watched him walk along the grassy verge to his car and stow the things in the backseat.

Oncoming traffic permitted her to observe him as he swung over the low passenger door and into the driver’s seat. Abbie waited until the road was clear to walk to the driver’s side of her
car and open the door. She set the sack of peaches on the seat and pushed it over to slide behind the wheel.

Mabel’s motor grumbled to life at the turn of the ignition key. As Abbie turned the car onto the highway she waved to the driver of the sports car. Within seconds, she saw the reflection of the dark green sports car in her rearview mirror, following a safe distance behind her.

It was an older model car, but Abbie suspected it had been an expensive one. She tried to guess what kind of work he did, speculating that he could be a lawyer or maybe a doctor. If he was a salesman, he could sell her anything, she thought with a little laugh.

The four miles to Eureka Springs seemed to flash by. Not once did Mabel even wink her red warning light. Abbie couldn’t make up her mind whether she was glad or sorry about that. Mechanical trouble would have given her an opportunity to find out more about Seth Talbot—essentials like where he was staying in Eureka Springs and some of the places he had planned to see while he was here.

Abbie couldn’t believe the way she was thinking. She was actually considering chasing a man. There was nothing shy about her, but she didn’t classify herself as the aggressive type either. Still, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like if he kissed her. Seth Talbot had certainly captured her fancy in a short time. Or maybe it was simply a sign that she was finally cured of her distrust for men after that disappointing
romance in Kansas City. That was probably closer to the truth.

When Abbie turned her car into the service station-garage she patronized, there was a honk and a wave from the sports car before it sped on by. Abbie couldn’t contain the sigh of regret that slipped out. It would be sheer chance if she ever saw him again and she knew it.

A portly, coverall clad man emerged from the service bay of the station and walked toward her car with an ambling gait. It was Kermit Applebaum, the owner of the establishment. He had serviced her parents’ vehicles ever since she was a freckle-faced toddler. Thankfully, the freckles had faded with the onset of maturity, but Kermit Applebaum still called her Freckles, a nickname no one else had picked up—and Abbie was eternally grateful for that.

“Well, hello, Freckles,” he greeted her as she had expected, and Abbie tried not to wince. “How’s old Gladys doing?”

“Her name is Mabel,” she corrected patiently, and stepped out of the car. “And Mabel has busted a radiator hose. I hope you have a spare one to fit her.”

“I’ll rustle up something.” He wiped his greasy hands on a rag before he lifted the hood to have a look. “You didn’t do a bad job of patchin’ this.”

“I can’t take the credit for that,” Abbie replied. “A tourist stopped when he saw I was broken-down and fixed it up for me, then followed me into town to be sure I made it.”

“That fella that just honked at you?” the owner-mechanic asked with some surprise. When she nodded affirmatively his expression became thoughtful. “I thought it was just some guy tryin’ to make time with you. I guess I did him a disservice.” He closed the hood with a decisive shove and turned to Abbie. “Drive your car over to that empty bay, and I’ll see what I’ve got for hoses to fit it.”

In all, it took the better part of two hours before he had it fixed with interruptions from customers and phone calls. It was nearly suppertime when Abbie turned her trusty car onto a winding street for home.

Her hometown of Eureka Springs was filled with quaint charm. The restored and refurbished Victorian structures clinging to the steep hills gave the city an ambience of the past, a nostalgic flavor. Some visitors considered it an oddity in the middle of the Ozarks, but Abbie had always regarded it as home. It had been dubbed “The Little Switzerland of America” because of the combination of its architecture and steep terrain and had been a highly popular vacation resort since the turn of the century. Then, its appeal had been as a spa. Now, it was the town itself and its many gift, antique, and craft shops. There was even a trolley car to ease the weary feet of those unprepared for the endlessly winding streets.