The Bride Wore Starlight (13 page)

“Excuse me?”

“Truck's right here. Climb in.”

He pointed to a gorgeous, royal blue, Ram pickup. With an extended cab, polished aluminum hubcaps, and a luxury trim package, it was enough to make any cowgirl who'd ever pulled a horse trailer catch her breath. Joely's caught and stuck as she imagined this beauty smashed to oblivion on the highway.

“No way,” she said.

“Just sit in it.”

“No. Because I know what would come next. One little push after another until you make me try and drive. I'm not ready.”

“Stop your whining and just get in.”

“Arrogant, egotistical—”

“Stubborn, mean, rude. Yeah, I've heard them all. Look, you stood up to Gucci Tim. It's time to stand up to yourself and stop getting in your own way. You've gotten this far. I'm not about to let you give up.”

She stood still, confused. “What exactly are you doing here this morning?”

“Mia called me last night. She said you needed something distracting and annoying to get your mind off moving, and she thought of me.”

Joely bit her lip to keep back a grin. “She actually said that?”

“She absolutely did. So how could I resist? I clearly love being somebody's most annoying person. Then I walked in, and you were wrestling with Mr. Wonderful. The rest just happened.”

“I was not wrestling!”

He shrugged. “He had his hands where you didn't want them.”

“True.” A pang of sadness for what she'd believed had once been lanced through her heart, and the failure of it all struck her again.

“Hey.” He surprised her by touching her on the cheek. “Don't mourn him.”

“I'm not.” She brightened with effort.

“Good. C'mon, let me help you into the truck. Give it a try.”

Her pulse zigzagged anxiously through her body. “Alec, I don't think I should. I haven't been behind a wheel since . . . ” She bit her lip again.

“Since the accident,” he said for her. “And you're scared. That's normal.”

“And my legs don't move fast.”

“We aren't going anywhere but mostly empty roads. Come on, Joely. Be brave. For ten minutes face your fear.”

“I'm not brave.”

“You're wrong.”

She closed her eyes and tried hard to conjure up her annoyance at him, but it had driven off with Tim. Now it was Alec she wanted to convince she wasn't a wimp. When had she transferred that need to him? With a deep breath, she nodded.

“Do you want me to help you in, give you pointers on climbing up, or just figure it out yourself?” he asked at the door of the pickup's cab. “No wrong answer.

“You're asking? I thought you just jumped in and took over.”

“Normally.” He laughed. “But I remember how I hated being treated like a mindless two-year-old when I was learning to walk again. I wanted constructive help, not coddling.”

Her gratitude notched upward. The man was two-sided—an arrogant guy who had a true underlying layer of nice. She didn't know what to do with that. He could bowl her over and then cheer when she got angry and picked herself back up.

“Good leg on the running board,” she said. “Then bad leg. Good leg in. Then bad leg.”

He nodded. “Give it a go.”

The hardest part was holding all her weight on the injured leg for the first step up. After that her body didn't move elegantly, but she managed to stuff herself into the driver's seat. She looked to Alec for approval, and he gave her a modest, cheerful thumbs-up. To her surprise, she found the simple acknowledgment more satisfying than the enthusiastic praise she was used to getting from her physical therapists. She hadn't climbed Denali after all; she'd gotten into a truck.

A moment later Alec slid into the passenger seat.

“Take me for breakfast dessert,” he said and dangled the keys.

She almost protested again. Instead she met his gaze, and something inside gave a little twist. Unexpected courage flowed directly into her veins—maybe because he sat beside her so nonchalantly, as if she'd never crashed a car and now hadn't driven in close to a year. She took yet another deep breath, accepted the key slowly, and put it in the ignition. Before she turned it, she moved her right leg several times between the accelerator and the brake.

“You'll be fine,” he said.

Her racing heart slowed a tick.

After the mirrors had been adjusted, the seat put perfectly in the right place, and her surroundings thoroughly checked, she couldn't procrastinate any longer. She put the truck in reverse, looked in the mirror, and shot backward like a bullet. With a squeal and a hard stomp on the brake, she came to a jolting halt.

“Oh, jeez,” she cried.

He didn't twitch a muscle. “Nice start.”

“Alec, I don't want to do this.”

“Too late, you've already done it. You're fine.”

“How can you be so frickin' calm? What if I smash up your truck? What if I smash you up?”

“I've ridden horses
trying
to smash me up with a lot less protection than I have in this truck. I'm not worried. And I have insurance.”

He could not be this calm. It wasn't natural. Still, she remembered what a master performance he'd given this morning in front of Tim. The man must have nerves of steel.

She got out of the parking lot with only a few more jarring stops. The accelerator pedal took the lightest touch of any vehicle she'd ever driven, and combined with her unease, their forward progress would have made the rawest of student drivers look accomplished. Through it all Alec remained unperturbed.

She turned out of the VA center complex and relaxed slightly on the paved county road. A few moments of driving brought her away from the medical center's traffic, and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. It was seven miles to the small town of Wolf Paw Pass. She could do this. Suddenly, she was flying. In a truck, on the ground, at forty-five miles per hour, she was free as a falcon let loose to hunt.

“You're smiling.”

“I'm driving,” she replied.

“You are. Pretty amazing right?”

“You've been here, too, haven't you? Feeling this.”

“Took me six months after the accident. I had a six-speed Mazda, and I had to give it up because of the clutch. That was a big hurdle for me. I still miss driving a manual transmission. I could, but it's just not as slick or quite as quick and safe with no feeling in the foot. I finally chose to compromise. And that made the difference. I found out that being able to drive is a big step in recovery.”

She could definitely see that. If she could drive, she could—

She cut off her thoughts. She had no vehicle. She had no way to pay for insurance even if a car magically appeared in front of her. And just because she might be able to drive somewhere didn't mean she could do anything once she arrived. This was jumping far ahead of herself.

Nonetheless, the feeling of having wings made her just a little bit high.

The semi appeared in front of her after she rounded a gentle curve in the mountain road. With a screech she slammed the brake and banged forward into her seatbelt. Beside her, Alec's torso took a similar jolt.

“Whoa!” He gave the first sound of surprise since they'd started.

There was more than plenty of room between her and the big truck, and she managed to keep from stopping fully, but the calm joy she'd begun to feel vanished, replaced by a white-knuckle grip caused as much by embarrassment as fear.

“I'm so sorry,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“You know why that happened, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, her voice sharp. “Because I'm not ready for this.”

“No.” He returned to calm. “This would have happened even six more months from now. Your brain has to remember that bad things don't happen every time there's traffic. It's trying to protect you—just tell it you're fine. You'll remember now that semis and trailers appear.”

“You're making this pop psychology crap up,” she said.

He grinned. “But it makes perfect sense, right?”

She blew a huge breath slowly through her lips. “Yeah. I admit it. I saw logs rolling at me.”

“Don't bury the fear—recognize it and move on.”

“What fear did you have to move on from?”

“Same things. Vehicles appearing from nowhere. People jumping out from places I didn't expect. Loud noises.”

“That's awful.”

“It's what professional help is for. War sucks, but soldiers don't have to stay damaged.”

“I will try to be more like you.” She fixed her eyes on the road, humbled and slightly overwhelmed by his attitude. How did you get through trauma like his with such a perfect attitude?

“Oh, honey, don't do that. Be more like you.”

That was good advice, too, she supposed, but too easy to say. She didn't bother telling him that her very few marketable skills had been taken away in the accident. What did a barrel racing former Miss Wyoming turn to when she'd turned to rodeo and beauty pageants in the first place because her childhood dreams were unrealistic?

Whatever it was, she had to find it soon—or live off her sisters' good will for the rest of her life.

Melodrama. She'd always been told she was good at it.

They reached Wolf Paw Pass five minutes later, and Joely let the self-pity go in favor of concentrating on small-town driving. She progressed to comfort more quickly than she had in the parking lot as she cruised down familiar Mountain Street, the town's main drag. Wolf Paw Pass had changed over the decades and grown from a tiny town of six hundred to double that thanks to the veterans' center complex nearby and a combined forces training grounds for military, police, and fire professionals.

Despite the influx of people and the transient nature of a military population, the town retained its secluded, rustic feel. The town council took great pride in maintaining original buildings and keeping the charm of the friendly little community intact. Many shop fronts had been there since long before Joely's time.

“Which will it be for breakfast dessert?” Alec asked. “Ina's or Dottie's?”

“Dottie's has amazing coffee cake. But Ina's has those scones she serves with one little scoop of ice cream.”

“Your choice. We're celebrating your wheels.”

“Hmmm.” She wrinkled her nose, contemplating two good choices. “Scones. Ice cream in the morning is too decadent to pass up. Plus. I can show you my digs.”

“Your what?”

“Two blocks over from Ina's—the little place I found that didn't require a huge deposit or the first and second months' rent.”

“That sounds minorly iffy.”

“Or serendipitous.”

He nodded his approval. “So Ina's is two blocks ahead. Can you parallel park?”

“Sheesh, Alec. I'd kind of like to shoot you all of a sudden. Haven't you tortured me enough and had enough excitement?”

He shrugged. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“That's very quaint.”

“I had a sainted grandmother a lot like yours once. She used to say that. But she was kind of a troublemaker.”

“Swell. That's where you got it.”

“Proudly. There.” He pointed at an empty spot half a block from the little shop that was their destination—Ina's with the pretty lilac-colored awning and red-and-pink curlicue lettering.

She stopped the big truck beside the car in front of the space and put it into reverse. With a jerk she backed up too far. She shifted and shot forward three feet. Alec began to laugh. With a rocking, jerky inefficiency, Joely worked to figure out the accelerator's true touch, and by the time she'd shimmied and jolted her way into the spot, she was choking on her own laughter. Alec sat back in his seat and rubbed his forehead.

He snorted. “That was like parking in a spinning washing machine. Did you learn to do that all by yourself?”

She wiped her eyes. “Crap. I'm sorry. I used to be able to back a four-horse trailer into a tight spot on a diagonal. Guess some things aren't like riding a bike. My leg didn't want to move back and forth the way it should.”

“We'll just make sure all your parking spots are straight from now on. You never have to do this again as far as I'm concerned.”

“Yeah? Well, whether I passed the test or not, I'm done parking anywhere for the day. You're driving home, Cowboy.”

“Okay.”

She frowned. “That was too easy.”

“Nah, I proved my point.”

“Yeah. With me, the poster child for unsafe driving.”

“You'll get better. You've got legs now. You can get where you need to go. A big first step.”

“Not a step at all. I have no car and no way to get one until all the insurance mess is settled. That could take another year I'm told. I'll be sticking around town pretty closely.”

“But wasn't the original plan for you to go to the ranch?”

“It was.” She pointed down the street to one of the oldest business buildings in town, the last on the block that could use a solid renovation. “But I decided that if I want any chance at earning my own money, I have to live where I can get to a place of work by myself. Believe me, it's not ideal, I know. Still . . . ” She trailed off with a shrug. “Nothing's ideal anymore.”

“Let's go see this new apartment.”

She swung slowly alongside him on the crutches, and although she tired quickly, the sense of satisfaction growing in her as they neared the place she'd rented kept her going. Her sudden buoyed spirits surprised her. The decision to move here had been another act of sheer stubbornness, and she'd spent the days since signing the one-month lease second-guessing the choice. But taking Alec to see it, on her own with no explanation or justification necessary, gave her a sense of independence she hadn't felt since the accident. If she was honest, she hadn't felt it in four years.