The Trouble with Josh. Marilyn Pappano
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ground.
“Well, hell.” She maneuvered back onto her knees, brushed grit from her left arm, then gazed up at him. “If there’s a secret to this, now would be a really good time to share it.”
He held out his hand, and after a moment she gave him the wrench. “No secret,” he said, kneeling and manhandling the nuts loose. “You’re just not strong enough.”
He didn’t miss the face she made at him but ignored it. “You just want to loosen the nuts, but don’t remove them yet. If you do, the tire could come off when you jack the car up.”
After laying the wrench aside, he moved the jack into place, then reached for her hand. Her fingers were slender and cold, and the contact startled her—he could feel it in how stiff she’d become. It wasn’t a good idea—he could feel that in how stiff he was becoming.
He moved her hand along the undercarriage of the car. “Feel that? That’s where you want this part of the jack to go.”
He wasn’t sure if she pulled away or he let go, but suddenly they weren’t touching anymore and she seemed to concentrate unusually hard on positioning the jack. He moved back, then stood up and backed off a few more steps just to be safe.
Safe from what? he wondered cynically as he watched her. She was six inches shorter than him, slender and delicate, like a fragile little china doll that belonged on someone’s shelf. She was beautiful, sure, but that didn’t count for much, considering that she’d betrayed Natalie’s trust and broken her heart.
That was a lot to forgive, and Rawlinses didn’t forgive so easily.
Following his directions, she removed the flat tire, put on the doughnut, then let the jack down. After she tightened the lug nuts, he tightened them another half turn, then lifted the flat tire into the trunk while she got the jack.
When she closed the trunk lid, she was wearing a self-satisfied grin, as if she’d succeeded at something really important. “I know you wish it had been anyone but me, but thank you.”
“Yeah.” He picked up his lug wrench and took a few backward steps toward his truck. “Get that fixed first thing in the morning. That doughnut’s not safe.”
“Okay.”
He was halfway to the pickup when she spoke again. “Hey…I’m staying right up the road, at the campground, if you’d…if you’d like to dry off a bit or…or have a warm drink or…” She shrugged as if she’d run out of words…or courage.
The answer was an easy one. No, he didn’t want to dry off, and no, he didn’t want to share a drink with her. Easy, easy answer…so why didn’t he just say it? Why did he have this feeling that if he opened his mouth, the wrong words would come out?
After a long moment in which he said nothing, she shrugged again. “It’s okay. Thanks. I, uh, appreciate…” She grabbed the umbrella from the roof of the car, then slid behind the wheel and started the engine. By the time he climbed into his truck, she’d already backed up a dozen feet and was easing onto the pavement.
Turning around, he headed for Tulsa once again. Then, for reasons he couldn’t even begin to understand, when the convertible turned off the highway onto the campground road, so did he.
A quarter of a mile in, the road branched, the right fork going to the old Conway house, the left curving another half mile to the lake and a dozen RV sites. Only one was occupied, by a small motor home bearing Georgia tags. Candace parked beside it, in the pool of light cast by a nearby streetlamp, got out and waited for him in the rain as if it were a warm, sunny afternoon.
Obviously, she wasn’t as delicate as she looked, he thought as he followed her to the RV. This was hardly his idea of a good safe place for a woman alone to stay. With no neighbors for more than a half mile and only two street-lights burning, it felt isolated, lonely and spooky. All kinds of things could happen out here, with no one ever the wiser.
She unlocked the door, then stepped inside. When she closed the door behind him, she noticed his duffel bag. “You have some dry clothes?”
He nodded.
“I’ll get some towels and you can change out here.” She headed toward the back of the motor home, turning on lights on the way. A moment later she was back with two beach towels, then she disappeared again.
Josh stripped down, dried off and dressed in clean clothes from his bag. Leaving his shoes near the door, he used one of the towels to dry his hair while he looked around the place.
It was small, cramped, comfortably cluttered. Books were scattered over the dining table—mostly fiction, women’s stuff—and on the built-in sofa across the narrow aisle was a quilt tied with pink ribbons. There were pillows, too, and a small tape player, along with a stack of tapes. He picked up the top one, Becoming the Best You Possible, then laid it down again.
He was standing in the aisle, listening to the rain drum on the roof and thinking he’d be better off going home and giving Tulsa a try the next day, when she returned. She didn’t make any noise that he recalled hearing. He just knew she was there. And when he turned, sure enough…
She wore plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top. The bra strap that edged out from beneath the fabric was pale green and made him wonder why she bothered. Her hair stood on end, as if she’d just crawled out of a bed where she’d done everything but sleep, and her feet were bare and somehow sexy.
She stopped in front of the compact refrigerator and pulled open the door. “I have bottled water, caffeine-free pop, and I can do hot chocolate.”
What kind of woman invited a man over for a drink, then offered him hot chocolate? he wondered, then answered his own question. The kind who didn’t have anything else on her mind. And that was good, because he damn sure didn’t need to have anything else on his mind, either. Not with this woman.
“Hot chocolate’s fine.” He sat down on the couch and watched as she fixed the chocolate. Her toenails were painted red, he noticed, and she wore a ring with a silver heart on the middle one. It was silly and something of a turn-on, and he was starting to think he really should have invited Theresa along this weekend.
Grateful that her hands weren’t shaking, though she could pass it off as a chill if they were, Candace carried the two mugs to the couch. She handed one to Josh, then sat on the bench across the aisle. After one awkward moment, then another, she grasped the first topic to come to mind, gesturing toward the bag next to his shoes. “Were you going somewhere?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. If you need to call someone—”
“No.” After a moment he shrugged. “No one’s expecting me. It wasn’t a sure thing.”
Well, that was the extent of her small talk. It amazed her that a reporter who’d asked a lot of tough questions and written a lot of powerful pieces could find herself so completely at a loss for words. But what did she expect? Except for her friendship with Natalie, she’d had no personal life to speak of. If she were interviewing Josh for a story, she would have more questions than he wanted to answer.
But she wasn’t interviewing him. She was quietly admiring him, and maybe even lusting after him, just a little bit, and those weren’t easy for her, particularly when she knew what he thought of her.
At least that gave her something to say. “Why did you come back to help me?”
He glanced at her, then away, sipped his chocolate and plucked at a ribbon on her quilt. After a time he shrugged as if his actions were unimportant. “Around here that’s what we do.”
“So if it hadn’t been you, some other properly raised Oklahoma cowboy would have stopped.”
He nodded.
“So…why did you come back? You didn’t need to, if you knew someone else would help.”
His brow drew together in a frown. “Lucinda Rawlins has certain