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“I’ll let you know.”
The morning passed quickly. Although the weather reports remained dire, the pavement was dry when they reached Wichita Falls. However, the clouds were a deep, troubling gray-white.
Luckily, the trees were unloaded quickly and Amy was paid.
By three that afternoon, they were on their way back.
Shortly after, the rain began.
“Maybe we should just err on the side of caution and get a room somewhere,” Teddy said, studying the sky.
“And get stuck here for who knows how many days if this turns to ice? I don’t think so. We’re moving away from the storm. I think we should continue. Besides, it’s just rain.”
“Now.” Teddy pointed to the digital numbers on her dashboard that indicated it was currently thirty-three degrees outside. “If the temperature dips a point or two, we could be dealing with freezing rain or sleet.”
“By the time that happens, we’ll be well out of harm’s way,” Amy predicted.
Not necessarily, since the storm was moving in a southerly direction, from the west, and they were headed southwest.
“At least let me drive,” Teddy said, aware they were still a good five hours from home.
Amy gripped the wheel with both hands, her attention firmly on the road. “Your job is to ride shotgun. That’s it.”
Was this what it was going to be like to be married to her? Amy seemed to be holding on to her autonomy with all her might. And while Teddy understood that—he, too, had an independent streak a mile wide—he also knew that marriage required compromise. Thus far, Amy hadn’t demonstrated much of an inclination to meet him halfway on anything, never mind allow him to protect and care for her in the traditional way husbands cared for their wives.
He found that frustrating as hell.
“Don’t worry,” Amy promised, completely misreading the reason behind his concern. “We’ll stop and get some dinner when we get far enough away from all this.”
TWO HOURS LATER, AMY GLARED at Teddy from across the table. He’d barely spoken to her since they entered the restaurant. Worse, he was so edgy he was making her tense. “Would you stop fidgeting and looking at your watch?” she asked irritably.
“Can’t help it.” The look he gave her mirrored her mood to a T. “I’d rather be driving. Actually—” he held up a hand and corrected before she could comment “—I’d rather be checked into a hotel room.”
That was the last thing they needed. Especially when the idea of the two of them sequestered in a hotel room together, waiting for the winter storm to pass, immediately conjured up forbidden images of hot, passionate sex….
Forcing herself to stop her wayward thoughts—hadn’t notions like that gotten her into trouble in the past?—Amy turned her gaze toward the Christmas tree in the lobby of the truck stop.
Although carols were playing on the sound system, and peppermint ice cream pie was on the menu, it still didn’t feel like Christmas to her. Amy forked up some turkey and dressing, glad for their first hot meal of the day. “Hold on to your britches,” she grumbled. “I’m eating as fast as I can.”
He brightened. “You could take it with us and eat it in the truck if you’d let me drive.”
It would be so easy to lean on him. It would also be a bad precedent to set, unless she wanted him telling her what to do, every day for the rest of her life. Amy went back to glaring at him. “Just because I don’t inhale my food at the speed of light the way you do…”
He arched a brow, obviously fed up with all the waiting around, even though they’d only been in the restaurant for twenty minutes or so.
“I’m going to get some coffee for our thermos.” He left the table.
Amy looked out the window. It was raining pretty hard. Now that the sun had gone down, the temperature was dropping, too. She hurried up, despite her early admonition not to be worried by all the alarmist predictions on the airwaves. By the time she emerged from the ladies’ room, the check had been paid. Full thermos in hand, Teddy was ready to go.
As they walked back out to the truck, icy rain pelted their faces.
It hadn’t been coming down anywhere near this hard when they had stopped for dinner half an hour ago. In fact, it had barely been raining at all.
Her foot slid on the slick pavement as she approached the driver’s side. He caught her.
She had only to look into his eyes to know what he was thinking.
They could spend the night here.
They wouldn’t have a bed, or any privacy, but they’d have heat, food, bathrooms. And he’d be looking at her with that I-told-you-this-was-a-bad-idea gaze all night long.
“I want to keep going.”
His expression remained impassive. “You’re the boss. It’s your call.”
Amy didn’t like the sound of that. There weren’t supposed to be any bosses in their marriage between friends. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her down jacket. “No need to be sarcastic.”
He kept the steadying hand on her elbow and gave her a chivalrous boost up into the cab. “Be grateful I’m still this circumspect.”
Amy scowled and started the truck. To her relief, the dashboard indicated the outside temperature was still thirty-three degrees.
She went over to gas up, and then turned the truck back onto the two-lane highway. “It’s thirty-four miles to the next town,” she said. “If it looks any worse by the time we get there, we’ll stop there for the night.”
Teddy nodded.
To Amy’s relief, the next fifteen miles were fine, although she drove very slowly and carefully, just to be on the safe side.
It was only when they got into an area that was as desolate as the desert, that the temperature began to dip even more. And that was when the road got really slick.
One minute they were cruising along, easy as you please, the next they were skating across a sheet of black ice. Fishtailing, then spinning all the way around, before bumping across a cactus-riddled field and coming to an abrupt halt.
IT TOOK A GOOD FIFTEEN seconds after they stopped for Amy to catch her breath. Recovering, she gripped the wheel hard with both hands and stepped on the gas. The truck went exactly nowhere.
She tried again and was rewarded with a spinning sound and a sinking truck.
“Try rocking it back and forth,” Teddy suggested.
She did…to no avail.
She eased off the gas, frustration knotting her gut, and shifted the truck into Park. Swearing softly beneath her breath, Amy unfastened her seat belt and jumped down from the cab. Teddy followed her onto the ground. It took only a moment to see what the problem was. The truck’s front wheels were stuck in the mud.
Amy sighed, as the freezing precipitation continued to rain down on them. “We’re not going to be able to get out of this, are we?”
“Not until it stops. Which should be by daylight.”
“Lovely.”
She climbed back in the truck and turned off the ignition.
Silence surrounded them, broken only by the pelting sounds of the ice hitting the windshield and top of the cab.
Teddy reached around behind them. He brought out a couple of wool blankets and draped them over their laps.
He lit a candle, stuck it inside a hurricane globe and set it on the dash. “This candle will keep it fifty degrees in here, all on its own.”
The heat of his body would keep it warmer than that.
Amy ran a hand over her eyes and slumped down in her seat. “You can say I told you so any time now,” she grumbled, feeling incredibly foolish.
Teddy draped his arm along the back of the bench seat and turned toward her. Using the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, he urged her out from behind the wheel, not stopping until they were sitting side by side in the center of the wide bench seat. “When in our many years of friendship have I ever said I told you so to you?” he asked her in a deep, kind voice.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Amy replied miserably.
He shifted, getting more comfortable, too. His leg nudged hers beneath the blankets. “Are we talking about me now or your ex-fiancé?”
Amy shut her eyes and tipped her head back until it rested against the seat. “You know I don’t talk about that.”
He pulled her deeper into the curve of his arm. “Maybe it’s time you do.”
Needing to see the expression on his face, Amy opened her eyes and looked at him. “You first, then.’ Cause you never said why you and Vanna broke it off, either.”
For a long moment, Amy thought Teddy was going to put up the usual smoke screen into his most private thoughts about all members of the opposite sex. Then something in his gaze shifted, became more intimate still. With the change in his mood, a new peace stole over the cab of the truck. His sensual lips curving ruefully, he murmured, “Vanna said the thrill was gone. Our life together was too ordinary. I was too ordinary. Too nice.”
How could someone be too nice? Amy wondered, incensed.
“There weren’t enough fireworks. Vanna needed drama and I couldn’t…or to hear her talk—wouldn’t—give it to her. So she handed me back my engagement ring and left.” Teddy reached over and absently squeezed Amy’s hand.
“At the time I was pretty hurt,” he continued reflectively. “Now I realize she did us both a favor. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, Amy, is that I like ordinary. I probably even like dull as long as life is one smooth ride.”
Amy blinked. “Wow.”
He grinned, looking relieved to finally have that off his chest, gave her hand another squeeze and let it go.
He gave her another nudge. “Your turn.”
Hoping the candlelight hid her blush, Amy drew an enervating breath. “It’s embarrassing.”
Teddy scoffed, not about to let her off the hook. “And mine wasn’t?”
He had a point.
Reluctantly, Amy plunged into her own confession. “I found out I wasn’t Ken’s only fiancée. He had another one in his hometown of Boise, Idaho. And a third one in California, where he went to grad school.”
His eyes widened. “All at once?”
Amy scowled, wishing she still didn’t feel like such a fool for letting her romantic notions about the magic of falling in love with Ken overshadow what had really been happening. “That’s the beauty of life as a winery sales rep. Apparently, you can have as many lives as you want while you travel the world.”
Sympathy radiated in Teddy’s eyes. He took a packet of mints from his pocket, handed her one, took another for himself. “How’d you find out?”
Another ugly tidbit. “I surprised him on a business trip to Vermont. He was staying at this very posh bed-and-breakfast, where he’d told me he also had business, but he wasn’t in when I arrived. When I tried to check in as his fiancée, I was told that was impossible—his fiancée was already there. I thought it was a joke until I looked into the clerk’s eyes.”
“So you waited for him.”
“No.” Amy savored the flavor of spearmint melting on her tongue. “I told the woman at the front desk that it was all a terrible mistake, a last-ditch effort on my part to save a relationship that obviously could not be saved, and begged her not to mention it to Ken or his ‘fiancée.’ She seemed relieved—the last thing she wanted was some ugly domestic scene upsetting the other guests—and I left.”
“Did she tell Ken after you left?”
“Apparently not, because he showed up in Laramie two weekends later, as if nothing had ever happened. I acted like nothing was wrong, too, and sent him off on a fool’s errand. While he was gone, I checked out the travel logs on his laptop and read his e-mail.” The guilt Amy had felt about invading Ken’s privacy had been knocked out by her need to know the truth about the man she’d been planning to spend the rest of her life with. She sighed. “By the time Ken came back from town, I knew everything.”
“What did he say?” Teddy demanded gruffly.
“A bunch of bull. You know… It was really me he loved. He was going to break up with the other two fiancées. He just hadn’t figured out a way yet, because he didn’t want to hurt their feelings.”
The gleam in Teddy’s eyes told Amy he knew damn well how that had gone over. “What did you say?”
“Get out. Don’t call—and don’t ever come back. And then I picked up the phone and clued the other two women in. Turns out Ken wasn’t the guy any of us thought he was. And the worst part of it is, he’s probably out there with two or three fiancées right now, doing it all over again.”
Teddy studied Amy. Finally he said, “I’m not like Ken.”
“I know you’re not,” Amy huffed. “That’s why I married you.”
Something inscrutable flickered in Teddy’s expression.
“Because I’m the opposite of Ken?”
“Yes.”
“Not cover-of-GQ handsome and exciting?”
Amy wrinkled her nose in exasperation, irked by his baiting tone. “You’re plenty handsome.”
“But not exciting.”
Amy opened her mouth to reply, but then didn’t know what to say about that.
A determined glint in his eyes, Teddy shifted all the way toward her with a bad-boy smile that was enough to make her stomach drop. “Time we changed that, don’t you think?”
The next thing Amy knew she was all the way in his arms. His mouth was lowering to hers. She barely had time to brace herself and then his lips were locked on hers in a hot, passionate kiss that took her breath away. He caught her head in his hands, and she melted against him, completely overwhelmed by the minty, masculine taste of his mouth, the unhurried pressure of his lips and the gentle stroking of his tongue. And then there was nothing but the feel of his mouth on hers. Seducing. Evoking. Commanding. Her lips parted and she sighed in contentment as he deepened the kiss even more, first sweetly and then erotically. She felt the sandpapery rub of his evening beard against her skin, inhaled the scent of man that was uniquely him, and sank deeper into the comforting warmth of his arms.
Teddy hadn’t meant to kiss her this evening.
Oh, he’d known it was coming.
Living with her, being married to her, wanting a life and a child with her, had opened the door to all sorts of forbidden notions. At least in his mind. And he hadn’t been the only one rethinking their decision to try to remain platonic friends while settling into their new life together. He’d known, from the way she had been looking at him when she thought he didn’t see—and the way she had been avoiding being alone with him—that she was feeling the new tension between them, too.
But that knowledge was nothing compared to the experience of having her in his arms, feeling her cling to him and return his kisses with such sweet, torturous need. Amy might not be ready to acknowledge it yet, but she needed the comfort and satisfaction a real marriage could bring. She needed him. And he wanted to be there for her, he realized, as he felt her surrender to his will and surge against him. He wanted to honor and cherish her, in a way she had never been honored before. He wanted to give her all the tenderness and love she had obviously been missing. And he wanted to extract the same kind of devotion from her.
But that was going to take time, Teddy realized as her breasts flattened against his chest.
