by Anna Argent
"What's your name?" he asked as she made her way out of the thick mud.
"Hanna."
"That's it? No last name?"
"Do you need one?"
Another sign of her mistrust. "Guess not."
He really hated her fear, but he wasn't about to leave her out here alone. With those two constraints, there was only one more thing he could think to do.
He dialed his sister. "Hey, sweetie. I could use a hand."
The sound of the diner chimed in the background—silverware hitting plates, ice tinkling in glasses, the music of voices raised in friendly conversation.
"Is it important?" Flora asked.
"Yes. I know you're busy there. I wouldn't have called if it wasn't urgent."
"Where are you?" she asked, not even asking what he needed. She was good like that.
"Just past the sharp curve heading east out of town."
"I thought you had that big meeting tonight with some fancy restoration specialist."
"I did. Guess I'll have to reschedule."
"Wow. This must be important. Be there in ten."
Nate hung up and tucked his phone away to save it as many raindrops as possible.
Hanna had walked around to the back of the truck while he was talking. She'd watched him the whole time, as if expecting him to pull out a mask and chainsaw.
"Inviting company to the party?" she asked.
"You're afraid of me. I thought if I asked a woman to drive you into town you'd be more at ease."
Her shoulders lowered slightly. The duffel bag on her shoulder shifted, pulling her white T-shirt tight against her full breasts.
With the fabric wet, Nate could see right through it and the thin white bra she wore. Her nipples were a dark shadow, puckered tight against the chill.
His mouth watered, and he had to shove his hands in his pockets to hide the way they flexed against the need to touch.
She really was cute. Bright gray eyes. A dusting of freckles across her pink cheeks. A single dimple in one cheek. Her hair was a soft, light brown with just a hint of gold to it. She was bit shorter than his usual type, but for some reason, he found it appealing on her. Maybe it was her shape, all perfectly proportioned with rounded hips and tits, and a small waist to bridge between them. Her wet clothes clung to every curve and hollow, showing off lines that would make any pinup girl jealous.
Her hair was tied up in a messy knot, slumping to one side in a soggy pile. She kept biting her bottom lip in anxiety, and now it was all swollen and deep pink.
He wondered if he kissed her if she'd forget all about her apprehension and quit gnawing on the tortured bit of flesh. At this point, he didn't even care if she slapped him so long as she let go of that poor bottom lip.
He must have been staring at her too long, because she frowned and wiped her mouth like she thought she had some food there.
Usually he was smoother with women, but this one seemed to be impervious to his chivalry and his charm. She was all bristles and self-defense, which made him wonder what she'd been through to make her that way.
The rain's speed picked up as the storm grew to its full fury. Wind whipped the high branches of the trees. A steady downpour chilled his skin, and Hanna's arms were covered with goosebumps big enough to see from where he stood, several feet away.
"Get in the truck, out of the rain," he said, holding out the key fob. "My sister will be here in a minute to take you into town. I'll wait out here. You can lock yourself in so you don't have to worry about me doing nefarious acts to you before witnesses arrive."
"I don't want to mess up your seats. I'm soaked to the bone."
His patience was nearly gone now. She was shivering, probably both with cold and fear, and neither of those things was okay with him.
Nate kept his tone even, but used the stern voice he reserved for unruly employees. "Get in the truck, Hanna. Or I'll put you there."
Finally, she snatched the key away and started moving in the direction he wanted. Instead of getting in the front, she opened the rear door and climbed into the back seat.
He moved to stand under a tree to keep the worst of the shower off of him. As it was, he was already soaked, but at least he might save his cell phone.
Flora drove up a couple of minutes later. The shiny red Mustang was her baby, and there was no way she was letting Hanna in it dripping and muddy.
He jogged to Flora's window, which she rolled down just enough to hear him. A pair of Grace green eyes the same color as his own peered out of the crack. "What's up?"
"There's a girl in my truck. Her car broke down up the road. She's afraid I'm going to rape her and wear her skin like a cape. Can you run her to the motel for me? I've got one vacant room left she can use."
"If she's half as wet as you are, she's not getting in my ride."
"Take my truck. You can come back for me."
Flora snorted. "Two trips? That's silly. Didn't you tell her you wouldn't hurt her?"
"Yes."
"So? What's the problem?"
"She's not from around here. I guess she thinks I'm lying."
Flora's eyes widened with outrage. "She called you a liar?" She unfastened her seatbelt, clearly preparing for war. "Where is this woman? I'll straighten her out."
Nate put his weight against the Mustang's door to keep it shut. "You're not going to do any such thing. She's a scared, cold stranger who needs our help. Just take her to the motel. Please."
Flora blew out a harsh breath. "Fine. But only because you said please. Girl needs to learn some manners."
"Just ask yourself what would Mom do when faced with a cold, wet, frightened stranger?"
Flora gritted her teeth. "I am not Mom."
"Can you at least pretend? Just for the next fifteen minutes?"
"You're going to owe me," Flora said.
"I know. With interest. Now go, before I melt."
Flora grunted. "You're not that sweet, brother."
"I'll wait by the Mustang for you."
In the dark. In the rain. Missing the appointment that had taken him three months to schedule. All so he wouldn't scare one young girl.
He was such a sucker.
***
Hanna watched the woman driving Nate's truck from the back seat. In the rearview mirror, she could see the tight set of the woman's jaw, as if she were angry.
"I'm Flora. Nate's sister," she said as she pulled the big truck around to head west.
Flora was young—early twenties—with shiny brown hair worn in a tight French braid. She was beautiful in a girl-next-door kind of way, with the most stunning green eyes Hanna had ever seen. Next to Nate's.
Flora smelled of coffee, bacon and something clean and citrusy, like orange zest. She wore a red apron around her waist, and pinned to her red-and-white checked shirt was a nametag.
"Hanna," she supplied.
Flora nodded once, that anger still riding her chin. "My brother's a good guy."
Of course she'd say that. Sisters tended to have blind spots where their brothers were concerned—a fact Hanna knew all too well.
She gave a noncommittal grunt.
"Where are you from?" Flora asked.
"East." And because that sounded evasive and it didn't really matter if she told this woman the truth, she said, "Cincinnati."
"Traveling for business or pleasure?"
"On my way to start a new job."
Flora's gaze lifted to the mirror briefly, but it was enough for Hanna to see the serious light in the woman's pretty green eyes. "If there's anything I can do to speed that process along, you can find me at the Dockside Diner."
In other words, get the hell out of my town and away from my brother.
Message received.
"Don't worry," Hanna said. "I'll be out of this town as soon as humanly possible."
Because if she didn't leave soon, Jack might find her. And if he did, she wasn't sure which one of them would suffer more.
Hanna thanked Flora
for the ride and went into the motel office as was expected of her.
The Moonlight Oasis Travel Lodge was a long, low building with an office in the center. Two rows of twenty rooms spanned out in matching wings, angled slightly like arms waiting for a hug. From the architecture, she guessed that it had been built in the 1950s, but the place looked too perfect to have survived more than half a century of guests. There was no wear on the floors or the rich wooden desk that had greeted countless travelers. The musty smell of old buildings she'd come to know so well was missing. There wasn't even a layer of dust over the quaint lake decorations and historical photos lining the walls.
It was almost like this building had been perfectly preserved at the time of its completion—vacuum sealed and tucked away in bubble wrap until the very moment of Hanna's arrival.
Maybe someone had just built it, designing it to look like a classic 1950s travel lodge.
She waited just inside the glass door until Nate's big white truck drove away. As soon as the red glow of taillights was no longer gleaming off raindrops, she leaned into the door to make her escape from the motel.
She couldn't afford a room—not if she wanted to have any chance of paying for her truck repairs. And even that was going to depend on how much fixing Rex ended up costing.
There was less than three hundred dollars left to get her to Oklahoma, and most of that she would need for gas for Rex.
She was just about to leave when a lanky teen came out from a room behind the gleaming wooden counter and asked, "Can I help you?"
Busted.
Since she sucked at lying, she opted for evasion. "Can you tell me where the closest mechanic is?"
"Sure, that would be Declan's place. It's down two blocks, turn south, and it's right there on the left."
"Does he have a tow truck?"
The kid nodded. "I think so. Want me to call him for you?"
"You know the man?"
He stared at her like she was a fool. "It's a small town, ma'am. Everyone pretty much knows everyone."
If she got Rex towed tonight, maybe this Declan guy could start working on it first thing tomorrow. She could be out of here by lunch and back on track to her new job.
"That would be great. Thanks," she said.
The kid placed the call. After a few minutes, all the arrangements were made.
Now all she had to do was hope this mechanic would leave her truck outside tonight, rather than in a locked shop, so she'd have someplace dry to sleep.
Chapter Three
"What do you mean she didn't stay here last night?" Nate asked as soon as he showed up at work the next morning. He'd thought about checking on her last night, but worried she'd think he was some kind of creeper, so he'd kept his distance until the first light of day.
"Where else would she have gone? Her truck was at Dec's and there are no other hotels in walking distance. There's no way she could have made it out to the cabins by the cave in the dark, unless she got a ride."
Eddy, the high school dropout who served as night clerk at Nate's motel, shrugged his scrawny shoulders. "I don't know where she went. All I know is that Declan picked her up in his tow truck and left. She didn't come back."
She wouldn't ride with Nate, but she got in a truck with Declan? What the hell? Nate loved his cousin, but the man looked like a freaking convict, all scruffy and tattooed.
Irritation heated his skin. "When was that?"
"Around ten last night."
Nate walked away before he accidentally took out his frustration on the kid. Eddy wasn't Hanna's keeper.
Then again, neither was Nate. Too bad he couldn't convince his brain of that fact. He'd been up half the night, thinking about her, wondering if she was settling into the motel okay, holding himself back from checking on her so that he didn't scare her again.
He'd worried about her.
Fantasized about her.
He didn't even know the girl. And while his sexual fantasies needed no familiarity to fuel them, why he would worry about her was a mystery.
As soon as he was out of the office, he dialed Declan.
"Did you pick up a tow last night?" he asked his cousin.
"Curvy little thing with a giant attitude and an ancient, piece-of-shit truck?" asked Dec.
"Yeah. That's her." Nate had driven down the road to find her vehicle as soon as Flora had brought his truck back. He'd wanted to make sure he didn't need to push it off the road so no one would hit it.
Calling Hanna's ancient truck a piece of shit was an insult to poo everywhere. It was a wonder the thing hadn't fallen apart on the highway, leaving her skidding along the pavement in a rusted seat.
"Why do you want to know?" Dec asked.
"Because I found her stranded on the road last night and wanted to make sure she was safe."
"You laying a claim?" asked Dec.
The blunt question jarred Nate stupid. "What?"
"You heard me. You apparently found her first. I thought I was the lucky one."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Dec sighed. "I don't know how to be any clearer than this: She's hot. I want to fuck her. But if you're calling dibs, I'll back off, seeing as how we're cousins and all."
Finally, Nate put the pieces together. Dec loved women. Lots of them. Frequently. If he was into Hanna, it was only a matter of time before he would be into her, literally.
The idea of the two of them together was appalling enough to make Nate's tone sharp. "Yes. I'm staking a claim. Back the fuck off."
"Whoa. No need to get your panties in a wad. I asked nicely, like a gentleman and everything. Grandad would be proud that I'm growing as a human being."
"Just as long as you keep your hands off of her, you can grow however, wherever you like."
"Got it. In which case, there's something you need to know."
"Know? About what?"
"Your curvy little friend," Dec said, as if Nate were a dim-witted child.
"What about her?"
"She slept in her truck last night."
A slow, icy rage began forming over the base of Nate's brain. "And how, exactly, would you know that?"
"I startled her out of her cozy hole this morning when I went to work on the truck. She was asleep in back under the camper shell, all bundled up in a sleeping bag, her hair still wet from the rain. She's hot first thing in the morning, all mussed and sleepy. That's a rare trait in a woman."
Now Nate was really pissed. He'd made sure she got back to town without the big, bad wolf riding along, even though it meant he now had to buy a new seat for his truck because his drenched clothes had shorted it out and no longer adjusted to his big frame. He'd arranged for her to be dropped off at the motel he owned so that she'd have a place to sleep. He'd even rearranged his day so that he could check on her and make sure she was comfortable and didn't need a ride. And what did she do?
She slept in her truck.
"Did you hear me?" asked Dec.
"No, sorry. What did you say?"
"I said that from the looks of the setup she's got back there, it wasn't the first time she'd spent the night in the old rust bucket."
"Well, for as long as she's in town, it's going to be the last time."
"As much work as this truck needs, she'll be here for a while."
"As long as it takes to do the job right, understand?"
Declan's tone was sharp with offense. "Of course. I wouldn't let a sweet, fuckable thing like her go down the road if I thought her ride would leave her stranded as rape bait."
"That's good to hear."
"So, what are you going to do with her?" asked Dec, sounding more nosy than merely curious.
"I'm going to find her and talk to her. Any idea where she is?"
"Not a clue. I suggest you use the Bat Signal."
The Bat Signal was the Grace family phone/text/email tree. It was fast and effective, but using it also meant that everyone would know Nate was looking for her. And then they'd want to
know why, which would lead to more questions than he wanted to answer.
As much as he hated involving his family, that was the quickest way to find Hanna and make sure she was okay. "Thanks for the info, Dec."
"Sure thing."
"And Dec?"
"Yeah."
"The bill for the repairs? If she can't pay, send it to me, okay?"
"Works for me. At least I know I'll get paid that way. Girl doesn't have two nickels to rub together by the look of things."
Nate hung up and pulled up the distribution list that sent a text message to everyone in his family. Within seconds, he got a flurry of questions about who she was, which he ignored. Then, finally, he saw the response he was looking for.
Flora's text read: Hanna is here at Dockside. Has been for hours.
Nate thanked his sister and headed for the diner she owned. He had no idea why he had such a strong compulsion to see Hanna again, but he did. He'd spent half the night dreaming that she'd been squished flat on the road and left lying in the ditch like a deer. The other half he'd spent with his subconscious filling in all the intriguing little details of her body that her wet clothes had left obscured. He'd woken both worried and horny, his cock hard and throbbing.
As soon as he walked into the Dockside Diner, he saw Hanna. Her back was to him, but there was no mistaking her shape from behind. That sweetly curved bottom was perched on a high chrome stool at the counter. Her shoes were still muddy, though not as bad as they'd been last night. She'd changed shirts, but her light brown hair was still worn in a sloppy knot on top of her head. The mass was so thick, he wondered just how long it would be if she let it fall loose around her shoulders.
His fingers itched to slide through the strands, seeking out the heat of her scalp. Once he got a nice, firm hold, would she fight him, or would her body soften into his hold, waiting to see where he led?
His cock twitched at the thought, and he knew right then and there that he was going to do what he could to keep her in town long enough to find out which way she'd lean.
His sister was making the rounds, refilling coffee cups and catching up on the morning news. As soon as she caught his eye, she came toward him.
