Tall, Dark and Cowboy (7 page)

“I’ll take you.”

Lacey smiled sweetly. “Thanks, but if you don’t mind, I wanted Chase to do it.”

Krystal glowered. She might not have Lacey’s firepower when she smiled, but her scowl practically dimmed the lights.

“I figure he probably knows more about engines and stuff like that,” Lacey said.

“Good point.” Chase held out his hand for the keys. “The truck has a lot of four-wheeling features, Krystal. Remember, I was going to explain those to you, but you didn’t have time?”

He stifled a smile. Krystal had evaded his attempts at on-the-job training over and over, changing the subject every time he tried to talk about trucks or farm machinery. It was almost like she didn’t want to know any actual facts so she could lie her little heart out to the customers and fake innocence later on.

She dangled the keys at arm’s length, forcing him to step up and grab them, then held onto them a moment too long, meeting his eyes with an obvious threat glinting in her own. He tugged them away, and she plopped down behind the counter and crossed her legs, pulling out the latest issue of
People
.

“I’ll be
waiting.
”

That was all she’d be doing, he knew. She never did a lick of work when he wasn’t around.

Chase’s sales banter dried up like usual as he and Lacey approached the Dodge. He should be pointing out the truck’s virtues—the add-on cast steel bumpers and fog lights, the almost-new Goodyear tires—but he had to stifle the urge to tell her all its faults instead. It had an awful lot of miles on it, and it pulled to the right a little when you braked.

He was the worst salesman in the world. He hated to see someone buy something that wasn’t right for them. But this was a nice truck. Reliable, as far as he could tell, and the body was in great shape.

The
body.

He resisted the urge to help Lacey hike herself into the driver’s seat and handed her the keys, watching her brows arch in concentration as she fitted them in the ignition and scanned the controls, biting her lower lip. It was all he could do not to lean over and nibble it himself. He’d pictured Lacey naked so many times, he felt like he could see through her clothes—although he had no way of knowing if his vision of her body was accurate.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he just needed to confirm the picture in his mind. He needed resolution. Closure.

Sex.

Hell, he needed to get a grip on his runaway imagination. That’s what he needed. Nothing was going to happen between them. Nothing. This was business. Strictly business.

“It’s an older model,” he said. “A ’99, but cherry.”

Cherry.
Shit. Why did everything he say around Lacey turn sexual? Hell, everything he thought around her turned sexual. He needed to get ahold of himself.

Either that, or he needed to get ahold of Lacey.

She cranked the key and pressed the accelerator to the floor, nodding in appreciation of the pickup’s throaty roar. “What kind of engine is it?”

“V-6.” He cleared his throat. “You going to trade in that Mustang? ’Cause I gotta tell you, I can’t give you much for a car that doesn’t run. You’d be better off getting it fixed first.” He swallowed again, wishing he could get his voice to cooperate. Tension was making it sound strangled and weirdly high-pitched, and judging from Lacey’s smile, she’d noticed.

***

“She’s definitely made for rocky terrain,” Chase blurted out. Lacey couldn’t figure out who he was talking about at first. Certainly not her. She was made for smooth sailing. Things had been a little choppy lately, though, and she was hoping to find a harbor in Grady. But maybe not.

“The previous owner really knew what he was doing when it came to four-wheeling,” he continued.

Oh. The truck
. “I’m not really into that stuff. What I wanted to ask was…”

“He put on a Skyjacker suspension and Magnaflow exhaust. Super Swamper tires—top-of-the-line. He switched out the transmission, too.”

Couldn’t he tell she didn’t care? She’d told him she wasn’t buying the truck.

“And he took good care of it.” He pointed to a sticker on the windshield. “You can see the last oil change was only a thousand miles ago. Brakes are almost new, and you’ll notice when you look under the hood that he gave this baby a lot of tender loving care.”

Maybe she should ask him who had owned the truck and track that guy down instead. She could use some TLC herself, and it was becoming painfully obvious she wasn’t going to get it from Chase.

“Baby’s got a Duratec power train. Tons of towing capacity.”

Lacey nodded, despite the fact that she had no idea what any of this meant and had zero interest in buying the truck, even if she could.

“Chase, listen. I really need to talk to you.”

“What’s unusual is the power. The acceleration feels like a sports car on the highway, but what you really need that kind of torque for is mud. Between those tires and the extra horsepower, you should be able to drive this baby through quicksand. It’ll handle just about anything.”

Dang. Maybe business was a little slow. Chase seemed awfully anxious to make a sale. Either that, or he was avoiding a real conversation on purpose.

“Chase, I don’t want to buy a truck.”

“Then why are we going for a test drive?”

The minute he asked the question, he wanted to take it back. The answer was obvious: She wanted to be alone with him. Probably just to talk, but maybe…

Maybe something more.

But nothing was liable to happen if he made her say it out loud.

“Never mind.” He faked absorption in the process of fastening his seat belt. “I don’t need to know.”

“Yeah, you do. We’re going for a test drive because your sister wants us to talk. She’s worried about you. She says all you do is sulk about stuff.”

“I don’t sulk. I-I brood a little, that’s all.”

“What, like a chicken? A broody hen?” She laughed. “That means you want to have babies, right?” She slid her gaze toward him, and suddenly his breath was stolen by a whiff of the perfume that curled through the truck cab like a twining vine on a current of steamy summer air. He wanted to
make
babies, that was for sure.

He opened his mouth but nothing came out. When he tried again, he realized he was sitting in the passenger seat gasping like a fish. He needed to change the subject. Fast.

Fortunately, Lacey did it for him. “Never mind. I wish I could buy a big ol’ truck like this, though. I thought driving a muscle car would make me feel tough, but I don’t know.”

“You’re not tough?”

“Oh, I’m tough.” She smiled that secret smile again. “But I’m not sure it was the car. I think I’m just toughening up from being on my own. I’m so used to people looking after me—Daddy, and then Trent. Now I don’t have anyone to rely on but myself.” Her head toss was casual, but her knuckles whitened on the wheel. “I’m never letting a man tell me what to do again.”

He gave her a sharp glance.
Never?
Did
she
really
mean
that?

One
way
to
find
out.

“Go ahead and put it in reverse.”

She took her hands off the steering wheel and crossed her arms over her chest, flashing him a hard look.

Yup. She meant it.

“Uh, whenever you’re ready,” he said.

She considered him a moment longer before turning her attention back to the truck and shoving the gear shift over and back. She turned her head and backed out of the space at warp speed, missing the rear fender of the truck to their right by fractions of an inch. He tried not to react. He’d been on test drives with worse drivers.

Maybe.

Pushing the shifter into first, she popped the clutch and launched them toward the lot’s exit. Chase tried not to crush the door handle in his panicked grip as she rounded the curb and hit the empty expanse of Main Street, the engine growling into a powerful crescendo.

“Sorry.” She pressed the brakes. “I didn’t expect it to go like that.”

“It’s geared low for off-road driving. You ever handle a stick before?”

There it was again. Everything he said sounded sexual. He needed to think before he spoke—think about cars, engines, transmissions. Anything but sex.

“I had a Beemer at home.” Lacey seemed oblivious to the innuendo. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

He cleared his throat. “Must have been nice, driving a Beemer.”

She shook her head. “Not really. Nothing back home is nice. Not anymore.”

How could it not be nice? Bradford had made a fortune by dividing up the Caldwell land into dozens of suburban lots. He’d done it with a score of other farms too. The guy was rolling in misbegotten gains.

“BMWs are nice cars,” he said. “Expensive.”

“Yeah, well, I paid a pretty high price.” She stared ahead and downshifted, then accelerated into a curve. “So did a lot of other people.”

***

Lacey lost herself in the rumble of the truck’s engine and the smooth glide of the gears, downshifting to skim the curves as she sped along the blacktop road out of town.

She wished Chase hadn’t brought up Trent, or Trent’s money, or the car Trent had bought her. She hated to admit she’d been a party to preying on her hometown, even unintentionally. But she needed to clear her conscience, and maybe talking about it would help Chase get on with his life, like Pam said.

“Chase, I didn’t know what Trent was doing. I really didn’t. And when I came here, I didn’t realize you were one of the—the victims.”

“I’m not a victim.” He kept his eyes averted and stared moodily out the windshield. She wondered if the grim set of his mouth had anything to do with her or if he was always like that.

“I didn’t know until I talked to Pam that he’d taken your land. I came here because I thought we were friends—friends forever. You know, like you wrote in my yearbook.” She smiled tentatively. “I thought I could depend on you, like the sign says.”

Chase’s eye twitched just the slightest bit, telling her she’d hit a nerve, but he covered his reaction in an instant and shot her a cold stare. Then he looked away quickly, as if he was embarrassed by what he’d seen. She wanted to smooth her hair or run a finger over the delicate skin under her eyes to make sure her makeup hadn’t caked into her brand-new wrinkles. But she kept both hands resolutely on the wheel.

Chase cleared his throat. “How did you find me?”

“Facebook.”

“Facebook?” He looked confused.

“I needed to go somewhere new, start over. And wherever I went, I wanted to make sure I knew someone there, in case something happened. I saw you lived in Wyoming, so…” She concentrated on a curve, accelerating gradually as the arc tightened. “I didn’t friend you because I didn’t plan to ask you for help. I just needed to know I had someone around, just in case. Like a security blanket.”

She pictured Chase wrapping himself around her, holding her tightly to the solid plane of his chest. She wasn’t sure “security” really defined the way that would make her feel.

“God, I didn’t even remember I was on Facebook.”

“I know. It said you only had two friends. I figure one of them was Pam, and the other one was Mark Zuckerberg.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m still Mr. Popular. So how come you hunted me down?”

“What are you, a rabbit? I didn’t hunt you down; you were impossible to miss once I got here. You’ve practically got your name in lights with that sign and everything.” She sighed. “Besides, everything went wrong back home. I really didn’t know what to do, and when I thought of you, I remembered—I don’t know. I remembered you were always there for me. I guess I was hoping you still were.”

The grim set of his mouth softened slightly. He’d always been a sucker for a pity party. “I’m sorry about the divorce.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry about that. That was the one part that went right.” She tried to laugh, but it came out flat and insincere. “The day I signed those papers was the first time I had a say in my life since the time I had a temper tantrum in the Safeway when I was five.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You were head cheerleader. Prom queen. You ran the whole school.”

“By doing everything everybody wanted me to do,” she said. “It was nice, Chase, I admit it. I thought it was what I wanted. But when I walked out of that lawyer’s office, I wanted to fling my hat in the air like Mary Tyler Moore. I was finally free to be my own self.”

“So did you?”

“Fling my hat? Nope.” She shook her head regretfully. “Didn’t have one. All I could do was stand on that sidewalk and grin. Somebody walking by asked me if I was okay. I must have looked like an idiot.”

“No, I meant did you get to be yourself?”

“Not for long. Reality set in pretty quick. I didn’t want to live on Trent’s money, so I started looking for work. I was looking forward to it. I was going to go to school at night and get my real estate license.” She glanced over at him, biting her lip. “Not to do what Trent did. I wanted to find people homes. Maybe help revitalize Conway—you know, spruce up the downtown. Stuff like that.” She blinked a couple times, fast, as if fighting back tears. “I figured I’d finally get started on being
me.
My own self.”

“Which is who?” Chase asked.

Lacey pressed the accelerator hard, veering into a turn, fixing her eyes on the road. “I have no freaking idea. I’ve depended on other people all my life, Chase. I never realized it until I had to depend on myself. And I hate to admit this, but there’s not much there to depend on. Nobody in Conway would hire me. Everybody hates me.”

“Nobody could hate you.”

“
You
do.”

“No, I don’t.” He sighed. “I tried to. But I don’t.” He looked down at his lap, then up at her. “I can’t.”

She blew out a long breath. “Well, anyway, they froze Trent’s assets, which is fine with me. Like I said, I didn’t want to live on that money anyway. But the Mustang and the motel have just about eaten up all my cash. I have a credit card, but the limit’s two thousand dollars. It’s going to cost me more than that to fix the car. And meanwhile, Wade’s probably looking for me. Like I told you, he came to my house. He was always a problem, Chase. Remember back in high school?”

Chase nodded. Of course he remembered. He’d helped her out that night when Wade came on to her. She’d been drunk, and Wade had been persistent, and Chase had come along just in time. He’d been there for her, just like she said. The fact that he’d kissed her in the car didn’t change that.

“Well, he kept that up. He was always hanging around, always sucking up to Trent and then looking at me like—well, you know.”

He nodded.

“And once Trent got in trouble, it got even worse. It was like Wade knew there was nobody to stop him. He’d park across the street, watching me. And then he came over in the middle of the night, and I just…” She looked down at her hands “I’d rather drive off the face of the earth than be alone with him again.” She scanned the barren landscape through the windshield. “I guess I did drive off the face of the earth. But as long as he doesn’t find me, that’s fine with me.”