“Look,” he said, scanning the road ahead. “I’m on my way back to the job site to get my pickup. Let me call a tow truck from my cell. Then you can head back to your vehicle and wait out of the wind.”
“I’m all right,” she managed through stiff lips.
“You’re frozen,” he countered. “What the hell good will that do you if a real creep comes along?”
Touché. Her hands, face, legs were iced wood; it was a wonder she set one foot in front of the other.
“Fine,” the driver said. “You walk. I’ll drive alongside till we get to where you’re going.”
She stopped. He jammed the brakes. The truck ground to a halt, tire chains swinging, clinking below its undercarriage.
Five long seconds, the engine grumbled between them while she contemplated the situation and he contemplated her.
Should she take the offer? Get out of the cold wind? Stranger danger isn’t only for kids, Breena.
Scented of dead grass and diesel, the wind licked her face, stabbed through her frayed jeans; the bag rustled in her arms. She worked numbed lips. “Earth’s Goodness, do you know it?”
“Yep.” Again he studied the road. “Half mile off.” His scrutiny fastened on her. “Doesn’t it close at five?”
“I’m staying in a back room.” Far too much information.
But I’m frozen.
And a fool.
“Ah. You must be Paige Quinlan’s relative.”
So. He knew her. Benefits of small-town grapevines. “She’s my great-aunt.” Enough said. Her family wasn’t his business.
Shivers trilled her spine. Before she could think it through, she asked, “Your truck warm?”
“Like morning coffee.”
She clamped her rattling teeth. What she wouldn’t give for a Starbucks “tall with room.” Still, she debated.
The trucker rubbed a knuckle down his cheek. “Would it make a difference if I told you my brother’s the police chief here? You might’ve seen him around. Big, black-haired giant?”
“Jon Tucker?”
“That’s him.”
“He’s your brother?”
“All six-five of ’im.”
His dry tone had her frozen lips hooking a smile. The manager of the Sleep Inn Motel, where she’d first stayed after arriving in Misty River, cited Chief Tucker as the “biggest bugger you ever saw,” a titan who’d swept the town clean of its small-time pot growers last fall with what Breena thought must have been a Paul Bunyan-sized broom. She shifted the weighty bag. Could she go wrong with the sibling of such an icon?
People hailed John Wayne Gacy a pillar of the community. A construction man.
“Ma’am?” the trucker queried. “Call him on my cell, if you want. Or call your aunt—she knows me.”
“No, that’s fine.” Right or wrong she trusted this Tucker fellow’s words. Besides, what psychopath would ask a victim to call a cop? She crossed the pavement.
The driver’s door opened; he swung down.
He was tall. Maybe not as tall as his brother, but close—with shoulders that matched the powerful truck he drove. For three seconds, the interior lights marked dark, shaggy hair and a face sharpened by nature. Then he stepped out of the shadow of the massive vehicle toward her.
“Seth Tucker the trucker, ma’am.”
Ma’am. She fancied him saluting an eyebrow in chivalry: a shy Wyoming cowboy. Instead, he smiled, slow, crooked, nabbing her air. Extending a hand, he engulfed hers with blessed warmth.
“Breena Quinlan.” Never again Breena De Laurent.
He gave a polite little clip of his head. “Best get inside, Miss Quinlan, before you turn into an Alaskan icicle.”
“Breena,” she told him, slipping her hand away. The loss of warmth hurt.
He took the bag from her stiff, aching arms without hesitation and led her around the enormous, grinding motor to the passenger side. Gravel gnashed under his boots as he opened the door, set her groceries on the floorboard.
“Grab hold of the hand rail here,” he advised. “Careful, there are two stairs.”
She stepped onto the first of two-foot-high running boards, curved stiff fingers around the rung; a second later, he cupped her elbow, boosting her up into wonderful warmth. Behind her, the door slammed. The cab resembled the cockpit of a small plane. Dials and gizmos illuminated the dash; the steering wheel was the size of a car tire. Overhead, a pair of digital speakers offered soft oldies. Words to match her mood.
A man obviously born to big trucks, he leapt into the driver’s bucket seat, hit the control for the hot air, settled back, slipped the clutch. Glancing into both side mirrors, he shoved the stick into gear and edged onto the highway.
Against her legs vented heat chased chills.
“Rub your hands together, then rub your arms.”
“W-what?”
“Hands, arms. Rub them. You’ll warm up quicker.”
The meager exercise coaxed her blood to pump, her skin to heat. “Thanks,” she said when her lips softened and her teeth stopped clattering.
“Welcome.”
He maneuvered to an easy speed. She said, “Is this normal weather for Oregon?”
Again, the slow smile. “For October. You’re lucky it isn’t raining. Where you from?”
“San Francisco.”
“Just visiting?”
“In a way.” The decision to come to this northwestern part of Oregon on a year’s leave of absence had seemed reasonable three weeks ago. Buying into her great-aunt Paige’s shop, two days ago, suddenly seemed rash. What did she know about running a quaint, run-down, artsy shop like Aunt Paige’s, with its candles and chimes, pottery and potpourri? Its shell-framed mirrors and flower-shaped lamps, quilted bags and cloth pictures?
She knew about reviewing case histories. Drug and child abuse. Runaways. Severed homes. She knew about mending people’s broken hearts, their jagged lives.
Or she had, once. Before Leo’s betrayal.
Yet, it felt right, this decision. She would learn. The Ph.D. packed in a Frisco storage locker had taught her about hard work and sweat years ago.
And if you fall flat on your face? She’d return to Frisco, to her family therapy practice. Even if it killed her to live in the same city as Leo and Lizbeth. Oh, God. Even now, seven months after she’d seen them on that California beach, Breena felt the white jolt of shock. Her husband and her sister. Kissing. His hands caressing Lizbeth’s body.
Breena’s stomach lurched. She gripped the armrest, holding herself in place. Holding the hurt, the pain in place. She couldn’t, however, contain seven years of marriage. The past lived and breathed inside her, while the future spread out like a road meandering into a fire-blackened forest.
“You okay?” The man beside her stared down the dark highway, narrowed in the headlights. His hands—big, broad, long-fingered—lay relaxed on the wheel.
She sat back, curled her own hands into her lap. “Yes, I’m—fine.” Now.
“You run out of gas back there?”
“No. I think something broke in the engine. There was a lot of clanging.” She perused the myriad dashboard devices. “I’ve never ridden in a Goliath