by C. L. Roman
Yeah, well proud or not, I wasn’t going to have beautiful Lacey muss up her clothes by sliding up into my old diesel.
Aunt Betty dropped her keys into my palm just as Lacey came out of the bathroom, her expression uneasy to say the least. She went straight up to my aunt, wringing her hands in front of her. “Listen, Betty, I really appreciate your concern, but I can’t let Luke drive me to Lafayette.”
“Of course, you can, dear…”
“No, I can’t. This is just silly. All I need is to rent a car. It’s very kind of you to be worried, but I can and will take care of myself.”
Aunt Betty put her hands on her hips, and I raised my eyebrows in anticipation of her response.
“Now, young lady, what would your mother say if I let you just go rent a car and drive all that way by yourself? I mean, can you even imagine what she would tell me?”
“But I was driving there all by myself in my own car!”
“That is different. Besides, everything is all set up. I’ve taken care of clearing Luke’s schedule and even arranged for him to borrow my car. And you don’t want to insult me by saying no, do you?”
Oooh, I thought, The guilt trip. I could see the moment Lacey was defeated. Her shoulders dropped, and she took a deep breath before turning to me. I’d gone over to the cash register and was reclining back against it with my elbows as I waited. When she approached me, I pushed away and motioned my hand to the door in a broad sweep.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Don’t really have a choice, do I?” She repeated my earlier words.
I grunted a laugh as I followed her out of the door. I’d moved her car around to the side of the store where I sometimes did auto work, and my truck was parked beside it. She headed in that direction.
“We’re taking Aunt Betty’s, remember?”
“Yeah, but I need to grab a few things from my car,” she replied without looking at me.
Her backside was a sight to behold so I just stood there and watched the way her hips moved left and right with quick, measured steps. I let her get to the car and reach for the door, then I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled loud. She did a one-eighty to face me, and I tossed her keys to her. I was more than a little impressed when she raised her hand and caught them in her palm.
“Good job.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, opening the car and rifling around until she had all she needed: a notepad, a stack of papers, and a phone charger. When she was done, she locked the doors, then swung underhanded to throw the keys back to me. I had been so busy watching her that I wasn’t expecting the move and fumbled around a bit to catch them. Lacey snickered.
We were on the road about for twenty minutes when I finally got tired of the silence and reached for the radio. I glanced over at her.
“Mind?”
Lacey shrugged but didn’t look at me. She was too busy staring out the passenger window, watching the scenery turn from beach to swamp grasses. The drive took us along the coast for about fifteen minutes before we hit Highway 27 towards the interstate.
I hit some buttons until I found a station that had potential. Satisfied, I leaned back and tapped my thumbs on the steering wheel to an old John Michael Montgomery song. After a few minutes of lip-syncing in silence, I suddenly let my torso lean in her direction before belting out the chorus to the “Grundy County Auction” song.
Her brown eyes cut slowly towards me, her lips twitching a little. I sang the words as if I were bidding my heart goodbye to Lacey and her alone. Finally, a laugh burst out of her lips and a beautiful pink blush bloomed on her cheeks.
“So, you like blondes, huh? With blue eyes?” she asked, referring to the woman in the song.
“I’m actually partial to brunettes. With brown eyes. But that’s not how the song goes so…” When she looked over at me again, I winked.
She was still grinning, but she rolled her eyes and turned back to face the road ahead of us. “You know that song came out like ten years ago, right? Are you that old?”
I turned the knob to adjust the volume. “I have a question for you.” I decided to dive right in now that I had her attention. “Where were you coming from that driving through Simoneaux Bayou to get to Lafayette seemed like a good idea?”
“There was a big eighteen-wheeler accident on I-10 just east of Beaumont. Reports were that it wasn’t going to open for a while, so I asked my phone GPS for an alternate route.”
“Through Simoneaux Bayou? It’s pretty far out of the way. And in the middle of nowhere.”
She put a hand to her forehead and hid her eyes. “Geez, you sound like my mother.”
I snorted a laugh then started beating my palms up and down on the steering wheel when a Toby Keith song came on next.
“So you’re a shitkicker, huh?”
“Wow.” I put on a fake expression of shock. “I don’t remember you using that language with Aunt Betty.”
“Hard to get a word in with Aunt Betty,” she murmured, and I cut my gaze over to her. Her eyes turned wide as if she was horrified by what she’d said, that expression alone making me burst into guffaws.
I slapped my knee, then shook my head at her. “She’s a piece of work, that’s for sure. But damn it all, I love the crazy woman.”
Lacey’s expression softened a little. “I can tell. And actually, I like her, too. My mom would love her.”
Wonder what your mom would think of me? I thought.
“So do you live there? At Simoneaux Bayou?”
“Oh.” I punched the off button on the radio. “No, I don’t live there. I’m across the state line in Texas. But I spend almost as much time there as I do at home. Aunt Betty owns the store and a few rental cabins.”
“I see. And shes wants me to stay in one of the cabins?”
I side-eyed her, trying to gauge her thoughts. “Yeah, and you might as well resign yourself to it. She always gets her way.”
“I’m beginning to get that.” She leaned into the door, propping her elbow against the window. “I’ll find some way to repay her for the cabin, but I really do appreciate it. Renting a place to stay was going to pinch my budget. I hadn’t counted on being gone several days.”
“You never said where you’re from.”
“Santa Fe.”
With a lopsided smile, I remarked, “I’m guessing Texas and not New Mexico. I know a Texas girl when I see one.”
She didn’t turn to me, but I saw her pretty pink lips curl. “Right.”
“Anything else you want to tell me?”
Turning sharply, she shot me a look of confusion. “About?”
“Where we’re going? What we’re doing? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Chapter Five
Lacey
I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it. My face was getting hot, and I wanted to put my cheek against the cool glass of the window, but I thought that would be a little obvious. Instead, I forced a giggle that I intended to be smooth but sounded more nervous, as I reached over and adjusted the A/C vent on my side.
“I’m going to meet a woman by the name of Lydia Bennington. She contacted me a while back through a genealogy forum about my family tree. She’d been looking for someone in my family for years, and you wouldn’t believe what she… oh, well, let me back up a little.” Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself to slow down. I tended to talk a mile a minute when I was nervous or excited. “It all started a few years ago when I got interested in genealogy and family history. Then my dad died in a car accident and…”
“Oh,” he said low, rolling his shoulders a little before muttering a simple sorry. I’d seen that reaction before. Especially among my peers, it seemed. I mean, how many of us wanted to think of losing one of our parents at twenty?
People just didn’t know what to say about death. And I couldn’t blame them, really, because no matter what they said, it wouldn’t help. If they offered too much empathy, it made me cry. If they shrugged it off, it made me feel stupid for br
inging it up and taking them down into the doldrums with me. They weren’t wrong. There just really wasn’t a right way.
“But after he died, I got even more interested in digging into his family history. My family history too, I guess. Anyway, before we lost him, he’d been really enthusiastic about what I found, and so I kind of felt like I owed it to him to see it through as far as I could. I spent most of my free time searching this genealogy site. I posted queries and followed leads. Sometimes I felt like an amateur sleuth.” I laughed. “And then one day, I found a cross-reference to the historical society in Lafayette. Apparently, Mrs. Bennington had put some items on long-term loan in their museum, but she’d also left strict instructions about locating me.”
“You? Why?” He’d perked up, and I could see his interest was piqued.
“I guess not really me, but my family. See, the items were passed down in her family. Heirlooms, I guess. But one of the requirements she gave the museum was that she wanted the items to be returned to the family of their original owners, provided they could be located.”
He puckered his lips out in an expression of grudging understanding. “And she thinks that’s you.”
“Apparently.”
“Seems a little weird to me.”
I laughed again, pivoting in my seat to face him and bringing one of my legs up under me. “It did to my mom and brother, too. They weren’t real keen on my making this trip. Daddy always said I was strong-minded. I like to think I’m just adventurous. And this seemed important.”
“I see…”
“Said the blind man to his deaf daughter on the telephone,” I giggled.
Luke shot me a shocked and confused glare.
“Just something my dad always said.”
With a nod he faced the road again. “So, what are they? The heirlooms, I mean.”
I tugged my brows into a frown and bit my lip. When he glanced over at me in question, all I could do was shrug my shoulders. “I have no idea.” I watched him cock his head a little to the side, blue eyes confused. “She hasn’t told me what the items are. Or even which member of my family they belonged to. She wants to tell me the story in person.”
“You’re kidding, right? You’re driving all this way without even knowing the details? What if it’s just something stupid, like a… I don’t know, like a corncob pipe or something?”
“So what? If it’s a corncob pipe one of my ancestors used, I’d cherish it.”
He was silent a few minutes, and I got the impression he was considering my story, trying to decipher if I was a nut job. Not the least deflated about my mission, I turned around in my seat and reached over to turn the radio back on. His hand met mine at the control, fingers pausing my action. I glanced over at him, and he looked at me so long my mind screamed at me to remind him to watch the road, but I couldn’t say anything. I was riveted by those baby blues.
“I’d probably cherish it, too.”
My mouth curled into a great big smile. “Right? No matter what it is, it will be totally cool.”
“Unless…”
I puckered my lower lip out. “Unless what?”
“I mean, some things might not be cool.”
I grinned. “A spittoon.”
“A set of wooden dentures.”
“A box of used toothpicks.”
“A chamber pot.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Gross.”
He pinched his nose, and the two of us fell into peals of laughter. It was the silly sort of laughter, the kind that nearly stops, but ramps up again. Then after about the second round, I got carried away with a new wave of giggles and let loose with a little snort.
Covering my flaming face, I watched as he laughed even harder, slapping his hand on his knee, before clutching his chest as he struggled to breathe. His baby blues were bright, and the little crinkles at the corners framed them in a way that made him look young, more like a teenager.
When we’d both recovered ourselves, I turned to him again. “How old are you, Luke?”
“Twenty-two this month.”
“Oh, wow, I turned twenty-two in January.”
“You’re an old lady, then.”
I made a stabbing motion at my chest. “Ouch...”
He reached over and brushed my hair back without touching me but in a way that was still profoundly intimate. “Prettiest old lady I’ve ever seen.”
My insides did a little belly flop, and I smiled. “Thanks, but I don’t know about that. Anyway…” I wasn’t sure what to say or do, and I thought maybe he didn’t either because a pregnant pause filled the space between us. I gazed out the window again, pressure building in my chest as I tried to come up with something clever. Funny how I could chatter along most of the time, but when I needed to find my tongue, it disappeared on me.
“So, what do you do? For a living, I mean?”
“Oh.” I took a deep breath, feeling more at ease now that he’d managed to get us back to small talk. “I’m a payroll manager for Genevere’s Department Store. The central office is in Lake Jackson.”
“Wow, payroll manager. That’s pretty important, huh?”
I laughed. “I guess. It pays the bills. And I kind of like it. The people I work with are good people. We’re tight, you know. I used to work in one of the stores, out on the floor. I liked that a lot. Interacting with folks. Customer service is a different animal than being in an office.”
“Did you go to college?”
“I’m taking some classes now.”
He chuckled, nodding his head. “Yeah, I figured.”
“I skipped the first year after high school. Didn’t really know what I wanted to do. To be. Actually, I still don’t. I guess in some ways, I’ve been kind of content with how life is.”
“Except you’re driving to another state to get a glimpse at something, even though you don’t know what that something is. Sounds like a little adventure in you. Some might even call this—” He motioned between us with his hand. “—a little bit crazy.”
I looked at my fingers as I thought about that, scratching at a little flake of pink nail polish on my thumb. “Why’d you figure?”
He didn’t seem to know what I meant, shooting me a confused glare.
“About college,” I elaborated.
“Oh. You’re the kind of girl who goes to college. Smart. Savvy.”
“You know what’s funny?” He took his eyes off the road and turned to me, eyebrows raised in question. “Here I am, driving to Lafayette, Louisiana with a guy I don’t know because my car broke down, and I keep thinking this is the dumbest thing ever, and that my mom is going to kill me. And I don’t think I’m really savvy or smart or anything. And I lied to you earlier, because I’m not the kind of girl who goes on adventures or does crazy stuff either. As stupid as it sounds, I’m here just because… just because I had a feeling there was something special I was going to find.”
The car was quiet again, and I was feeling especially silly for all the things I’d just told him. Maybe for the entire situation. Finally, I felt a little tap on my arm as he patted me with the back of his hand to get my attention.
“It could be something really cool, though. Like…” He shrugged. “Like some priceless piece of jewelry that was once owned by Princess Grace or something.”
I giggled and peeked at him through my eyelashes, but he wasn’t laughing. Just looking at me with a serious smile.
“I mean it. It could be something really worth it.”
Chapter Six
Luke
God, she was sexy. I couldn’t help that my eyes kept turning in her direction, lingering a little too long as I took all of her in. From the red strappy flats on her little feet, to the slightly chipped nail polish she kept worrying after on her thumb. She puckered those plump lips and frowned at her fingers silently, and all I could do was think about kissing the look off her face.
But it was more than all of that. She was smart. I knew that right off. A college girl. A man
ager at a big department store. Christ, the woman actually had employees working for her. I mean, sure, I had Felix, but I almost couldn’t pay him most of the time. I was barely eeking by.
I hadn’t been happy about Aunt Betty sending me on this errand, but there was no denying I liked being around Lacey. Still, I couldn’t help but think about a girl I’d gone out with in school. She’d helped me through some of my classes, ensuring I could keep my grades high enough to play football. And we’d had a good time together too. But it didn’t take long for her to get tired of me. I mean, it wasn’t like I had much stimulating conversation to share with a smart chick.
But looks and brains weren’t all that Lacey had either. No, she was funny and easy to be around. I’d delved into a story about one of the boats I was working on, and she’d listened intently, even asking a few questions. Good questions, too. Not the silly kind most girls I knew would ask. She listened closely, and it was clear she at least had a working understanding of engines, which impressed the hell out of me.
“I have brothers,” she shrugged. “And I’m a middle child, so I either learned about all that stuff right along beside them, or I was left behind. And I certainly wasn’t going to get left out.”
I’d snorted a little chuckle, and she shot me a smile. It was a damned pretty smile, too. Slow down, son. Gettin’ in over your head if you aren’t careful.
“So, we’re just outside the city limits. Do we know where we’re going?” I asked her after passing a sign for Lafayette.
“Oh, crap. Yes. Give me a minute.” She started tapping at her phone. “Okay, they said we can meet them at the historical society’s working center, so you’re going to take a left up there at the light.”
A little indentation appeared just above the bridge of her nose as she studied the map on her phone and squinted a little. It was one of the cutest things I’d ever seen, and the grin I’d been wearing most of the day lifted into a bigger smile.
