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He shoved open the cab door and jumped out, grabbing Dog’s leash off the dash as he went. Dog bounded out after him. Attaching the leash onto the animal’s collar, Troy looped it around the cab step and secured it with a snap.
After removing her headband with its attached veil—which was starting to pinch her head—Andie deposited it on the seat and pushed open the door on her side. She noticed for the first time how genuinely high off the ground they rode. She’d been so panicky when she’d jumped into the truck in the first place, she’d practically flown up into it, not realizing how awkward it was.
Troy appeared on the asphalt below. He hesitated just long enough before stretching out his arm that she knew he’d rather not help her but was too much of a gentleman not to.
Andie slipped her fingers into his hold. His hand was big and warm and made her feel tingly all over.
She stepped down, clutching at the long train of her gown with one hand while grasping Troy’s hand in the other. Once she found herself secure on terra firma, he released her instantly, and she felt unaccountably disappointed.
Almost as if some part of her had wished he wouldn’t let go....
Troy jerked his head toward a phone booth in front of the truck stop’s gas station. “Go make your call,” he said gruffly. Holding her hand had reminded him why he shouldn’t be touching her at all.
He hadn’t wanted to let go, and that was definitely a bad thing. A real bad thing.
Andie just stood there, staring at him.
“Well?” he prodded.
“I, uh, don’t have any money,” she said.
Troy rolled his eyes. He poked his hand in his pocket and came up with a coin. Andie took it, and he followed her past the rows of big rigs, to the phone booth. Her small hips swung in time to her stride.
By the time they reached the pay phone, Troy’s senses were in a sorry state.
Whoever had decreed that white wedding gowns were maidenly and chaste sure hadn’t seen this one. The way Andie’s concoction of lace and satin melded to her slender form sent his pulse off the Richter scale. The off-the-shoulder gown clung to her back and waist, then slid temptingly off slender hips down to the ground in a froth of material. What that material hid was even more erotic, somehow, than what it revealed. He imagined her legs, long and shapely...soft and touchable...
Troy swallowed hard. He leaned against the phone booth and glared out at the road, deciding that ignoring her for the next ten days might be his best option. If he could do it.
Andie jabbed in the numbers to her parents’ home in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. “Gretchen?” she said when the housekeeper answered.
Gretchen immediately began a high-pitched babble. William and Lillian had already phoned the house, looking for their wayward daughter. They wanted to find her, talk sense to her, get her back to the church. Her father was furious, her mother was humiliated. What about his colleagues, their friends, the society columnists, Phillip!
Andie held the phone a few inches away from her ear while Gretchen rattled on with excitement. She noticed that no one seemed concerned about her. Apparently, it hadn’t even occurred to anyone yet that she might have been abducted.
Tears pricked her eyes. She fought them. Her heart felt all pinched.
“Gretchen! Gretchen!” She struggled to break into the housekeeper’s excited conversation. “I’m not coming home today. And I’m not going back to the church! I need some time away, to think. Tell my parents I’m sorry, and that I’m fine. But I can’t—”
Andie glanced surreptitiously at Troy. He was staring out at the highway in the distance, but she sensed he was listening all the same. She twisted around and presented him her back and spoke in a low tone. Emotion lurched close to the surface. “I can’t marry Phillip. I don’t love him. I’ll be—” She had to stop for a second to steady herself. “I’ll be back in—”
She had to look at Troy for help. His eyes met hers.
“Ten days,” he supplied, revealing he was, indeed, following her conversation.
“I’ll be back in ten days,” she told Gretchen as she turned away from Troy once more.
She hung up, and the hurt broke free, despite all her efforts to contain it. A tear slid down one cheek.
“Andie?”
She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t let him see her. She’d been so much trouble, and now she was crying. Men hated that.
Her father became steely-hard and angry whenever she cried. Dry up! he’d demand.
“Andie?” Troy prodded again:
She was standing very still. He reached out to move her toward him and gently brought her face up to his with the nudge of two fingers beneath her chin. That was when he saw her tears.
Tears that made him want to run, not walk, as fast as possible in the opposite direction. He wasn’t comfortable with so much emotion. Not one bit.
“You’re crying,” he stated the obvious, at a loss for any other comment.
“Thanks for that perceptive commentary,” Andie said tightly, swiping roughly at her eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” Andie said, beginning to cry again. Her next words came out in ragged hitches between sobs. “I—I’m standing in the middle of a tr-truck stop in my w-wedding dress, that’s all. What c-could possibly be wrong?”
She started crying in earnest.
Troy stared at her. “Aw, geez,” he breathed.
Denying his survival instinct to head straight for the hills, he wrapped his arms around her slender shoulders and held her.
Chapter Three
She smelled so sweet, Troy could have buried his face in her hair forever and been a happy man. He held her as she trembled beneath his touch, her chest heaving with small sobs.
He forgot about everything. His schedule, her mysterious past, their surroundings, everything evaporated for a magic moment. He was supposed to be comforting her but he couldn’t help noticing the way her body felt petal-soft, small and curvaceous and desirable, as it molded to his.
How had he ever thought he might be able to ignore her? He couldn’t look at her without wanting to touch her. He couldn’t touch her without wanting to kiss her.
And if he kissed her, heaven help him for what he’d want to do then.
Andie lifted her head from his shoulder. She raised huge, tear-filled brown eyes, swiping at her cheeks with both hands as she stepped back, placing physical and emotional distance between them.
He saw something flicker in her eyes—hurt, anxiety, embarrassment—then she took a deep breath and it all disappeared, shuttered away somewhere inside.
Somewhere private.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” Andie worked up a wobbly smile. “Really.”
Troy was still looking at her as if he thought she might break. The tenderness with which he’d held her just then had been so unexpected.
No one had ever held her like that. Not her parents, with whom she’d had a distant relationship all her life. Not Phillip, with whom she’d had practically no relationship at all if one ignored the little matter of their engagement. And as for other men—there hadn’t been any. None with whom she’d had serious relationships, anyway.
The fact that Troy, a total stranger, could make her feel so comforted and supported was as wonderful as it was unexpected.
And a little frightening.
“Are you sure?” Troy asked, then berated himself for pressing the issue. He wasn’t supposed to be getting involved. Well, not any more than he had to be involved, anyway. She just looked so vulnerable.
“No, really,” Andie insisted. “It’s no big deal. Just forget it. It’s my problem.”
She gave him another smile, as if determined to show him she was okay. With hands that barely trembled now, she smoothed her dress at her sides and glanced out at the rows of rigs in the parking lot.
Troy frowned, feeling awkward, uncertain, and completely irritated with himself as a result.
“Okay, well, if you’re ready, I’m behind schedule as it is,” he said briskly. He needed to get his focus back where it belonged—on taking care of business.
A beefy guy in a black T-shirt, revealing mammoth tattoos on each bicep, strode past them toward the truck-stop restaurant. The man shot Andie and Troy a curious glance, then kept on going.
A bell on the diner door diner as the trucker breezed inside.
Troy saw Andie follow the man with her eyes. He spied the longing in her gaze as she looked toward the diner. Then, he watched as she hitched up the train of her gown and headed for the midnight blue tractor-trailer at the far end of the parking lot.
She wanted to eat, but she wasn’t going to ask. He looked at the truck, then at her with her slender shoulders, held straight with such brittle fragility...
“Wait.”
Andie stopped and turned around.
Troy jerked his head toward the diner, wondering when he’d become such an idiot. “Let’s go ahead and eat. It’s almost dinnertime.”
It was only four-thirty in the afternoon.
“But you just said you’re behind schedule,” Andie argued, looking surprised.
“I am.” Troy wouldn’t deny that. He’d have to drive later into the night than he’d planned, to make up for the lost time. “But we might as well eat now, then we won’t have to stop again.”
Actually, he hadn’t anticipated stopping to eat until he was ready to quit for the night. He had some food in the truck, and throughout the trip he expected to picnic at rest areas or eat as he drove.
But they were just outside the city, and it was obvious that Andie could use a square meal and a chance to catch her breath. A little ray of hope sliced into his thoughts. She might even reconsider this little expedition by the time she was through.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” he pressed.
Hungry? Andie figured she could eat two horses. “Yes, but—”
“Then no buts. Come on.”
Andie gave up. For some reason, he was determined they were going to eat, and she was too hungry to question why he was being so nice all of a sudden.
Maybe she’d question it later, after her stomach was full.
She let Troy take her arm and guide her toward the restaurant. He opened the chrome and glass door for her.
“Thank you,” she said, and walked inside.
The place was packed, mostly with men, though a few women dotted the crowd. To say all heads turned at their entrance would have been an understatement. Andie felt a flush surge from the tips of her toes straight up to her forehead as a sea of eyes took in her bridal garb.
Troy shot a look at Andie, seeing her smile evaporate into stunned embarrassment. Then she lifted her chin a notch, resolved, and headed for the one empty booth.
She could have turned tail and run, and he was impressed that she hadn’t. Either she had a lot of guts, or she was starving.
The booth was rounded into the corner and made to fit a good four or five people, so there was plenty of room. Andie slid onto one end of the orange vinyl bench, arranging her gown. Troy seated himself on the opposite side, leaving them separated by several feet of empty, curved bench. The one-sided plastic menus were propped between the napkin holder and the sugar.
Troy pulled out two and handed one to Andie. She immediately bent her head to study it. He noticed that her cheeks remained unnaturally rosy.
He glanced around and saw a number of truckers still staring rudely toward her, and he glowered at them one by one until they looked away. Just because he thought Andie was strange didn’t mean it was okay for anyone else to.
He was starting to feel very protective of her. The realization made him edgy.
“Well, well, if we don’t have some newlyweds!” a bright voice chirped. A middle-aged woman in a pink waitress uniform, filled out rather lumpily by her generous form, approached their booth. “I just love a June bride. And you’re a real pretty one, honey.”
She beamed at Andie over her order pad.
Andie looked up, startled. “I—” Words choked in her throat. “Thank you,” she mumbled.
“We’ll need a few minutes to decide.” Troy tried his best to ignore the waitress’s comments. “Why don’t you just bring us a couple of sodas for now.”
The woman—Marge, according to the name tag pinned to her ample bosom—didn’t budge.
“I think it’s so romantic, traveling on the road together.” Marge displayed a beatific smile. “My Em was a trucker. A long-hauler. I always traveled with him—from the day we married till the day the good Lord took him home.” Her small blue eyes, set back in her puffy face, went dewy for a minute. “It’s a great life, honey.”
“Really?” Andie’s desperate gaze clung to Troy. He merely arched an eyebrow at her. Andie poked her nose back into the menu.
“You just love your man, that’s all it takes,” Marge went on, undeterred by the lack of encouragement she was getting. “Now, how come you two are sitting so far apart, hmm?” Andie looked up to see Marge’s eyebrows knit together. “You lovebirds haven’t had a little quarrel already, have you?”
She gave a disapproving tsk-tsk.
Lovebirds? Andie seemed to have had enough. “You don’t understand. We’re not—I’m not—” She stopped. Troy could almost see her thoughts spinning. How could she explain she’d run away from her wedding, and that she and Troy were total strangers?
He noticed several patrons from nearby tables were listening. Andie’s mouth snapped shut in defeat. Her cheeks pinkened.
Troy could see that ignoring Marge wasn’t helping, and he wasn’t any more interested in explaining the truth to the nosy waitress than Andie apparently was.
“We’re just a little tired,” he said. He stabbed his menu back in between the napkins and the sugar, his mind working double time as he came up with the fastest way to get rid of the woman. “And we’ve got a long way to go tonight, so we’d better get started.” He settled on the path of least resistance and looked at Andie. “I think I’m ready to order now, after all. How about you, sweetheart?”
Andie’s eyes widened. She looked at Marge, then back at Troy.
She felt her cheeks grow hotter.
“Uh, sure, dumpling,” she said tightly, annoyed.
Marge pursed her lips. “Come on, you two,” she chided. She made little coaxing motions with her hands, waving Troy and Andie toward each other. “You can’t fool me. Kiss and make up before I take your order.”
