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“I’m not seeing him—”
Sam laughed again and she wanted to scream.
“Karen, what is going on—”
“I hate to interrupt,” Karen said, not really minding at all, since it was the only sure way to get her mother’s attention. “But I really should help Sam watch the road.”
“You do that, honey,” her dad said, adding, “you and Sam take care now.”
“That’s right,” her mom said briskly. “Now, I’ve lived through my share of those hurricanes—which is one of the reasons I left the East Coast—so I know what it’s like. You get inland and call me when you can. The phone lines will probably go down and—”
“Martha…” Stuart Beckett’s voice became a bit sterner.
“I know, I know. Okay, honey, now don’t you stop until you’re safe.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Karen smiled into the phone. Despite the fact that her parents, like any other set of parents, could drive her insane at a moment’s notice, she did love them dearly. Missing them was the only hard part about living so far away. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”
After another round of “Be carefuls,” she hung up and tucked her cell phone back into her purse. Listening to the whine of the tires on the slick highway and the rumble of raindrops hammering the car, Karen turned her head to stare at Sam.
“Why would you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make sure my parents knew that you were in the car with me?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t know I was supposed to be hiding.”
“You’re not,” she grumbled. “It’s just that now they’ll want to know what’s going on and—”
“And you don’t want to tell them any more than you wanted to tell me, is that it?”
She stiffened slightly at the sting in his tone. “Sam, I told you I had reasons for breaking up with you.”
“Yeah, so you said. Unfortunately, you didn’t feel the need to tell me what they were.”
“Does it matter?”
“Hell, yes, it matters!” he nearly shouted, then caught himself and lowered his voice again. “You know something, I really don’t want to do this again.”
“You think I do?”
He shook his head. “I guess not.”
The tension in the car was nearly palpable. Karen’s stomach twisted and her heart ached. Once things had been so good between them. Now…
“So,” Sam said, abruptly changing the subject a few moments later, “how’re your folks?”
Okay, she thought, she could do courteous. She could do polite. After all, they were stuck together for who knew how long; there was no point in being snotty. No point in causing each other more pain than they already had.
“They’re fine,” she said, studying him. In the glow of the dashboard lights, his profile looked hard, as if it were chiseled out of stone. But she remembered all too well how easily his rigid expression could slide into a smile. Suddenly nervous, she reached for another chocolate, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth.
“Your mom still buggin’ you to move back to California?”
Karen smiled. “She’s getting better. It’s only every other phone call now.”
He nodded, and keeping his gaze locked on the rainswept road in front of him, he said, “I thought maybe after we broke up, you might just do it. Move, I mean.”
Oh, those first few days after she’d ended it between them, she’d wanted nothing more than to find a place to hide. But she’d refused to run away again. She’d done that once, running from California to South Carolina, and in the process, she’d run smack into the very thing she’d been running from.
So hiding wasn’t the answer. Her only choice left was to stand her ground and try to forget what she and Sam had had so briefly. Fat chance.
“So how come you didn’t go back home?” he asked.
“Because,” she said, taking a deep breath, “this is home now. I like living in the South. I like small-town life. Besides, I don’t believe in going backward.”
“Me, neither,” he said, shooting her a quick glance.
“Good,” she said, guessing that he meant he had no interest in reviving what they’d once shared. “I mean, we’re stuck together for a while, but this really changes nothing.”
“Agreed.”
“Then we understand each other.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and she watched him take a deep breath as if purposely calming himself. “Yeah,” he said finally, “we do. And you can relax. I’m not interested in lining up to have my heart ripped out again.”
Karen sucked in air as if she’d been slapped.
He shot her another look, then swerved the car around a fallen tree branch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not,” he said quietly. “You did what you had to do. I can appreciate that, even if I don’t understand it.”
Guilt swirled in the pit of her stomach. She knew she’d hurt him. But she’d had to break up with him before he’d become important enough to her that the loss of him would have killed her.
God, that sounded stupid, even to her. Which is why she’d never given him a reason for the breakup. She was sure he’d have fought her. Argued her out of her decision, and then one day, they both might have regretted it.
The miles flew past. Sam kept his gaze on the road and his mind on the problem at hand. Finding shelter. If he’d been by himself, he’d have pulled off and parked by now. All he really needed was a place to pitch his tent and ride out the storm.
But with Karen along, things were different. He needed to find a motel. Something sturdy enough to stand up to the growing winds. The trees on either side of the road bent nearly in half, stretching out their twisting limbs as if trying to grab the car hurtling past them.
He had passed exit after exit, knowing they were still too close to the coast and determined to get far enough inland that Karen would be in no danger. But judging by the strength of the wind, he was running out of time.
And then he saw it. A squat cinder block motel at the side of the highway. A dozen or so cars sat nestled in its parking lot, but the broken green neon sign out front still blinked VA C NCY.
“The Dew Drop Inn?” Karen asked as he took the off-ramp and headed for the place.
He grinned. “Sounds cozy, doesn’t it?”
“Cozy?” she repeated, staring through the rain-swept windshield. “It looks like it’s a hundred years old.”
“Good. Just what we need.”
“Huh?”
He parked in front of the office and turned off the engine. Facing her, he shrugged and said, “If it’s that old, it’s survived a lot of hurricanes. It should make it through this one.”
Sure, Karen thought, but the question was, would she?
Three
She watched him through the windshield. Waves of rainwater made his image blurry, as if this was all a dream and she was really safe at home in her own bed, with her mind tormenting her with visions of Sam.
But, as the motel owner stepped up behind the counter, scratching his dirty-tank-top-covered hairy chest, the dream notion was shattered. An older man, he had a well-rounded stomach that looked as though he hadn’t missed many meals, and his gray hair stood out in spiky tufts all around his head. He grinned at Sam and turned the registration pad toward him.
“Oh, this place is obviously the Ritz,” Karen muttered as their host picked at his teeth with a thumbnail. Her gaze briefly strayed from the dimly lit office to the motel itself. It looked like something out of a fifties horror movie. Dingy block walls, stained with years of traffic exhaust and neglect. A solitary tree stood in the center of the parking lot and was now bent almost completely in half as the wind pushed and shoved at it, trying to rip it right out of the small patch of earth it claimed. Here and there a lamp gleamed from behind threadbare draperies, and the cars that huddled side by side looked forlorn and abandoned.
“Okay,” she told herself firmly, turning back to keep her eye on Sam, “now you’re getting weird. There’s nothing wrong with this place that a nice little A-bomb wouldn’t cure.”
In the office, Sam shook the other man’s hand and the two of them shared a jovial laugh. “Hmm. A meeting of the minds,” she said wryly.
A moment later, Sam was sprinting through the wind and rain toward the car. He opened the door, jumped inside and shook himself like a big dog coming out of a lake.
“Whew!” he said as Karen wiped droplets of water off her face. “Man, this storm’s really something.”
“So I noticed,” she said, and took the registration paper from him when he handed it to her. “Where are our rooms?”
He sniffed, scooped one hand across his militarily short black hair and turned to look at her. “Well, that’s the thing,” he said.
“What?” she asked warily as the broken vacancy sign blinked off and the motel owner disappeared into his own room.
“Jonas says it’s been a busy night.”
“Jonas?” Good heavens, had he really had time to bond with the man?
“Yeah. Jonas.” Sam looked at her and shook his head before reaching for the key and turning it. The engine leaped to life, and he dropped it into gear and steered the SUV down past the line of parked cars. In the last available slot, he pulled in, parked and turned the engine off again.
Rain hammered at the car and the wind shrieked around them as she waited for him to finish. She didn’t have long.
“Anyway, he only had the one room left,” Sam told her.
“One room,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he said, and, wincing slightly, added, “and, since this is a small southern town and since I didn’t much like the things Jonas had to say, I, uh…”
“You what?” Karen asked, giving him a wary look.
He shrugged. “Look at the registration slip.”
She tipped the paper up toward the stingy light of the dashboard and read it. Amazed, she read it again. Then, turning her gaze on Sam, she accused, “You registered us as Gunnery Sergeant and Mrs. Paretti?”
Well she didn’t have to sound so damned insulted, Sam thought. He hadn’t intended on registering them as man and wife, but seeing the leer in the motel owner’s eyes had decided him. He wasn’t about to let a guy like Jonas turn his sleazy imagination loose on Karen.
And what did he get for his protective instincts? A woman appalled at even pretending to be his wife.
Perfect.
“Relax, Karen,” he said tightly. “It’s not like I’m asking you to love, honor and obey.”
“I know, but—”
“It’s no big deal, all right?” Sam looked at her. “It’s a simple lie to make things easier.”
“For who?” she asked.
Frustrated now, he asked, “What happened to our truce?”
A long minute passed before she nodded and said, “Okay, you’re right. Truce. After all, how long can a stupid hurricane last, anyway?”
As she gathered her chocolates and her purse, Sam actually thought about that for the first time and realized that he and Karen would probably be together…alone…for the next three days. And nights.
Oh, man.
He had a feeling this hurricane was going to make boot camp look like a Tahiti vacation.
The inside of the place lived up to the promise of the outside.
Karen stood just inside the door and stared at it all in mute fascination. The walls were painted a soft orange and the rust-brown shag carpet set them off beautifully. Two lamps were bolted to tables on opposite sides of the one double bed. A closet with no door boasted three wire hangers on a bent rod, and the bathroom just beyond it looked small and seafoam green.
She plopped down on the edge of the mattress and heard the bedspread crunch beneath her. What did they make those things out of, she wondered, and gave the garishly flowered spread an amazed stare.
“Well,” Sam said, dropping her bags just inside the door. “It’s dry.”
“Mostly,” she said, and pointed to the far corner where a water stain had already begun to pool and spread across the ceiling.
He squinted up at the spot. “I can fix that.”
Naturally, she thought. That was his attitude about everything. If it was broken, Sam could fix it. Like he’d tried to fix what had happened between them. But that was the one thing no one could fix.
“Okay,” he conceded, “House Beautiful it ain’t. But it’ll stand up to the hurricane, and that’s all we should be worrying about.”
She looked up at him, and as her gaze locked on his strong jaw and slightly curved lips, she knew damn well that the hurricane wasn’t all she should be worrying about. Sharing a tiny motel room—and its one bed—with a man who could turn her inside out with a single touch scored pretty high on the worry meter, too.
He looked down at her, and it was as if he could read her mind. She saw the flash of desire spark quickly in his eyes, then disappear behind the wall of hurt she’d put there two months ago.
“This is only temporary, Karen,” he said, his voice gruff with an emotion she didn’t want to identify. “A few days of togetherness and we’ll be back to our separate lives. Just the way you want it.”
“A few days?” she asked. Good Lord.
