The guy outside her window looked around, straightened, and turned to give her a view of the back of a pair of tan canvas work pants with “Carhartt” stamped onto a leather badge on the back pocket. The very nicely shaped back pocket, because that was some rear view. Well, she could hardly miss it, not right outside her window.
She buzzed her window down the rest of the way, the cold instantly rushing into the car, and watched the—officer?—walking up in his reassuring dark-gray Smokey Bear hat and uniform. Thank goodness, help at last. Help she could trust for sure, because his big, broad frame inspired nothing but relief. Wait for the police. And here they were.
“Hey, Cal,” she heard him say as he approached. “What’s going on?”
“Happened to be passing by, saw this lady hit that ice and slide right into the ditch,” the guy—Cal—answered.
“Ma’am?” The officer bent to look into the car, and she saw his “Deputy Sheriff” badge. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Zoe said, still upended in her little car and trying not to shiver in the frigid air, wishing she’d thought to tug her skirt down while Cal’s back had been turned. “I’m just waiting for Triple A.”
“What, Cal didn’t offer to give you a tow? Losing your touch, man,” Smokey said over his shoulder to Cal.
“I offered,” Cal said in what Zoe was beginning to recognize as his amused drawl. He crouched down again beside the other man, and Zoe fought back a sudden, horrifying urge to giggle at the ridiculous picture they all made.
“The lady’s from California,” Cal went on. “She thinks I’ve got designs on her virtue. Wants to wait for her tow.”
The deputy laughed. “Take an hour, maybe more,” he told Zoe. “I’d take Cal, if I were you.” He winked at her, to Zoe’s outrage. “Gotta go. Bound to be more than one unprepared Californian spinning out today, weather like this. See you, Cal.”
And he left her, just like that.
A PRETTY NICE ARMFUL
“So . . . am I taking off here, or what?” Cal asked again, wondering why he was pushing it. Not like he was dying to crawl under a car in the snow. Not like he didn’t have things to do.
Well, yeah. But driving to town for replacement scraper blades for the soil saver wasn’t exactly urgent, not with the cold keeping him from plowing anyway. And besides, she was cute. Great legs, and he admired the spunk that had kept her from tugging her skirt down. He could tell she’d wanted to do it, but she’d refused to show weakness. Good for her. Not easy to be on top of the situation when you were sitting ass-over-teakettle in the ditch, but she’d managed to act that way.
She cocked her head, the cloud of shoulder-length dark-brown hair a little disheveled, or maybe that was her normal style. He liked it. She stared at him out of round, thick-lashed brown eyes, chewed on a plump pink lower lip, and distracted him. “How do you know him?”
“Huh?” She was doing the lip thing again.
“The cop. How do you know him?”
“Oh.” He smiled. “My cousin.” He put out a hand to shake hers, careful not to breach the sanctity of the car’s interior. “Cal Jackson.”
She didn’t react to his name one little bit, just reached her own hand out, with the nails he’d noticed weren’t painted, and shook his. She had a firm grip, and he liked that, too. “Zoe Santangelo.”
Pretty name, and it suited her. “Well, Zoe Santangelo,” he said, and tried another smile, “what do you think? Want a tow?”
She smiled back, finally, and it lit up her eyes, accentuated the high cheekbones he’d already noticed in her round face, and she looked better than ever that way. “You think you’re trustworthy?”
Ah. Sass. He loved sass. He especially loved it in a woman who should be crying, or begging, right about now. He wouldn’t mind hearing her beg, come to think of it, but he could live without crying.
“Hey,” he told her, “you just heard a cop vouch for me.”
“A cop who was your cousin.”
“Yeah. Well.” He grinned. “I’ve got lots of cousins. Want a county commissioner? Got one of those, too. Or do you just want a tow?”
“Yes,” she said, and damned if she didn’t have two dimples, one at either corner of that luscious mouth. “Yes, please. I want a tow. What do I do?”
“Nothing yet. I got it. Hang on.” He was back at his rig in a few quick strides, hopping up in the cab and pulling forward, turning on the flashers so, he hoped, he’d be seen through the light snow that was still falling, and maneuvering so he was nose-to-nose with her car. He’d tow her from the front, where he had the weight for leverage, because it was going to be a slippery son of a bitch in the snow, with her wedged into the ditch like that.
He yanked his cap off, tossed it onto the seat and pulled on his wool watch cap instead, grabbed the coat he was glad he’d thrown in, and went around to get a tow strap from the box in the bed, then tugged on a pair of heavy leather work gloves.
When he turned around, she was struggling out of the car despite his words. She was wearing heels, low ones, but not shoes you got out of a snowy ditch with. Her feet started to slide out from under her just as she got vertical, and he raced for her, saw her flailing for the top of the open door, and starting to go down all the same.
She didn’t fall, because he was there, grabbing her under the arms, pulling her upright. And then, all right, maybe he held on to her a moment too long, because she felt good there.
She wasn’t tall, that was for sure. She barely topped his shoulder. But she was a pretty nice armful all the same. Not skinny, which was good, because he liked girls with curves, and she had some very nice ones, although the severely cut black jacket and skirt and the blue blouse beneath weren’t exactly showing them off.
“Whoa there, darlin’,” he said, setting her carefully back against the door. “You might want to stay in the car, like I said.”
She wrapped both arms around herself. Tightly, which pushed her breasts up to the neckline of that boring blouse in some very interesting ways. Don’t look down, he told himself.
“I thought,” she said, through teeth that had begun to chatter, “that you might need my help. To . . .” She gestured to the tow strap. “Fasten it on. And please don’t call me darlin’.”
He couldn’t help smiling, even though he probably shouldn’t. “I’ll try to keep it in mind. And nope, I got this. Anyway, were you planning on crawling under the car in your good suit, Miss Zoe? Before your class? You a student?”
“No. I’m the professor. It’s Dr. Zoe, actually. I mean, Dr. Santangelo.”
“Whoa, a doctor and everything? Well, then, Professor, I think you’d better just let me do this. That way you won’t be dragging in there all wet and muddy.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Now, why would I do that?”
“You—” she said, then stopped herself and laughed. “I’m some grateful victim, aren’t I? I’m being rude, when here you are stopping and helping me and everything, and about to crawl under my car. Either I have no manners, or you’re pushing my buttons. I’m not sure which.”
“Oh,” he said, “I’m probably pushing your buttons. It’s been mentioned. I’m button-pushing, and helpful, and all that good stuff. And if you’ll get back in the car, I’ll be the guy who got you out of the ditch, too.” He dropped his tow strap across the hood of the little hatchback—hell of a car for an Idaho winter—and got a hand under her elbow to help her back into the car, and enjoyed it.
The rest of it wasn’t nearly as much fun, but he’d been under a fair number of vehicles in his thirty-two years on the planet, and once he was back in his rig, it was as satisfying as always to feel the big Cummins diesel growl out its full-throated roar as he eased down on the accelerator, kept it steady and smooth, backed it up, and saw the little hatchback clearing the ditch and co
ming to rest on the snow-covered asphalt shoulder again.
He maneuvered both vehicles off the roadway and then, keeping the flashers on, jumped down and unhooked the strap from both ends, and ended up looking in her window again at a considerably more vertical Ms.—Dr.—Zoe Santangelo. Whose skirt, unfortunately, was all the way down over her thighs again, but then, you couldn’t have everything.
“Do you think my car is badly damaged?” she asked, serious now, unable to keep the edge of anxiety out of her voice, and he guessed that somebody driving what he’d estimate was about $2,000 worth of metal probably couldn’t afford much of a repair bill. Professoring must not pay that well.
“Nah,” he said. “Not too bad. Got a pretty good dent in the back bumper, and you’ll want to take it in. You may have a couple hundred bucks’ worth there, but I don’t think you’ve done much more than that.”
“That’s not good,” she said, “but I guess I’ll just be glad it’s not worse. And thanks. Really, thanks.” She put out a hand, and he reached to shake it again, then realized that it held a twenty.
“No,” he said, putting a gloved hand firmly around her own and closing her fingers over the bill. “This is what we call being a neighbor. It’s what we do. And I don’t need your money.”
“Oh.” She looked confused. She made to stuff the bill into a pocket that didn’t exist, and he got the feeling she usually wore pants. Which was a real shame. “Sorry. I thought . . .”
“Yeah. Never mind. I’ll wait for you to get on the road, follow you into Paradise, if that’s where you’re going, make sure I’m not wrong about that damage.”
“Oh,” she said again. “No, that’s all right. I’m fine.”
Did she think he would be following her? As in, following her?
“Staying a careful distance away.” He measured the words out, scratched the idea of asking for her phone number right off his list. “Turning off at the Deere dealership on the highway. I won’t even wave good-bye.”
“I didn’t . . . sorry. It’s just . . . being careful, you know.”
“Yeah. Well. You might be able to ease up on that. I think you’ll find that we have a distinct lack of serial-killer types in Paradise. We kinda pride ourselves on that.”
THE ROCK LABELED “A”
Amy fought down panic for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. Think. Go. Write something.
She couldn’t think, though. She couldn’t concentrate. The clock on the wall was ticking remorselessly, clearly audible in the nearly silent room. That damning tock each time a minute clicked over, the sound competing with nothing but the scratch of pens on the flimsy pages of blue books, the shuffle of feet, the occasional sniff from somebody’s autumn cold. And the periodic, maddening disturbance of another student getting up, grabbing his stuff, and walking to the front of the room to set the blue book on Dr. Santangelo’s desk and leave the room.
She hadn’t done too badly with the multiple-choice part. But after that, everything had gone downhill.
Give the names of the rocks labeled A, B, and C, and explain the environments that led to their creation.
She’d managed that one. Barely. She thought. But when she’d been staring at a sketch of a rock marked with all sorts of lines and zigzag marks, with arrows pointing to randomly placed spots labeled A, B, C, D, and E, and asked to identify what was going on . . . she’d gone into overload, and she’d blanked. And from there, it had just gotten worse. How did she know which layer was older? They were all mixed up!
The worst part was, she knew she knew. But it was all lost in the fog of anxiety. She was stumbling around blind, the tears choking her throat. She was going to flunk the test. She was going to fail the class, and it was too late to withdraw and change to something else she could pass, and her dad was going to tell her that was it. Her chance at college was going to be gone, and she was going to be working at the dime store in Wilson’s Ferry all year, not just during the summer, until she got married just because there was nothing else to do. She was going to be stuck, and it wasn’t even her fault.
“Five minutes,” Dr. Santangelo called out, and there were only four students still working. There were three questions she hadn’t even started, and she raced through, putting down answers at random. Folding. Faulting. Sedimentation. Pressure.
“Time’s up,” Dr. Santangelo said. “Pens and pencils down.”
Amy couldn’t look at her as she shoved her pen back into her backpack, slid the Scantron form into the blue book with shaking hands. She forced herself to walk to the front of the room, set the book on the desk. She was the last to finish. The last one, and the worst one. She had flunked the test.
“All right?” Dr. Santangelo asked her.
Amy nodded, gulped, and opened her mouth to tell her. “I was . . .” She had to stop, get hold of herself, or she was going to cry in front of Dr. Santangelo, who was always so cool and smart and in control. She probably thought Amy was an idiot. An idiot who hadn’t even tried. But she had.
“Remember,” her professor said with a gentleness Amy would never have expected, “you’ll get another chance. On the essay part of the midterms, once we’ve gone over the answers in class, you can redo the ones you missed, turn them in again, and get half credit. This isn’t about flunking you. It’s about teaching you.”
Amy bobbed her head in a jerky nod. The tears were escaping despite herself, and she just wanted to leave before she lost it entirely. “I know. I will.”
“You came to the study session last week,” Dr. Santangelo said. “I thought you had a pretty good handle on it. What happened? Did you panic?”
It sounded so stupid. “Yeah. Because . . .” She ran her knuckles under her eyes, tried to get herself back under control. “I was ready. I just had to do some more studying, you know. Last-minute. Just to make sure. But then . . .” She swallowed. “This guy was following me. Last night, and I . . . I got so scared, I had to sleep at my friend’s, on her floor in her dorm, but I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t have my notes with me, and I was scared to go home to get them, and . . .” She trailed off, because she was crying again. “I know that sounds like an excuse, but it’s true, I swear. And I studied. I know you won’t believe me, but I did.”
“Sit down,” Dr. Santangelo said, and she was frowning. But not at Amy, at least Amy didn’t think so. “Tell me what happened.”
She was frowning some more by the time Amy finished her story. “Did you call the police?”
“No,” Amy admitted. “I don’t have any proof. I mean, yeah, somebody was definitely following me, but it could have been some kid playing a game. I mean, I realize that. It could even have been just a coincidence. That’s what they’re going to say, I know.”
“I think you should report it all the same,” Dr. Santangelo said. “Take it seriously. Sometimes our bodies know things that our minds try to reason away. And it could be that other women have been experiencing the same thing. If none of them report it, nobody will even know there’s a problem.”
“Maybe,” Amy said, unconvinced. “I’d feel stupid. I mean . . .” She laughed a little, although it was pretty watery. “I already feel stupid.”
Dr. Santangelo stood up. “You aren’t stupid, and I doubt you’re that easily scared. Go home, and don’t worry about this. You may not get an A, or even a B,” she said with a smile, “but if you’re willing to work, you’ll pass the class. Keep trying, keep working. And Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“Take care.”
Later that day Amy was grateful that somebody had believed her. Because when she told Bill over coffee in the student union, he wasn’t as easy to convince.
“I’m sure you saw something,” he hastened to say after she’d tried to explain, had seen his skepticism, and had gotten increasingly heated in response. “But don’t you think you’re being a little . . . hysterical? I m
ean, what happened?”
“Nothing,” she admitted, her hands twisting in her lap, tugging on her napkin. “That’s because I went back to the Co-op, though, don’t you think? I mean, because I got away, it was all right. But he was behind me. He was.”
“Did anybody follow you to Monica’s?”
“I don’t think so. But . . .”
“Then they weren’t really following you, were they? Not for more than a little while. Maybe the person was just going to the Co-op, too. It could be as simple as that. You were nervous about the test, and your fears got away from you.”
He stayed with her that night all the same. Which probably wasn’t any big sacrifice, because he took full advantage of the opportunity to hold her, but then, that was fine with her. She wished she could stay with him all week, because she’d have felt safer away from home, but he was in a frat, so it wasn’t possible. And her roommate was usually around during the week, of course.
As the days went by and nothing else happened—nothing but the vague sense of eyes on her—she started to doubt what she’d seen herself, what she still felt. Maybe she really had overreacted, had gotten an idea in her head from watching too many slasher movies, had spooked herself. She’d probably made a whole big deal out of something that wasn’t anything at all. Nothing like this had ever happened to anyone she knew, or even anyone she knew of, because it only really happened in those movies, or in the big city. It didn’t happen in Idaho. It sure didn’t happen in Paradise.
LADIES’ NIGHT
Zoe made an unsuccessful attempt to tug the yellow lace dress a little farther down her legs. “You sure this outfit works?” she asked her friend.
“I’m damn-straight positive it does. And quit messing up my dress. Here.” Rochelle took Zoe by the shoulders, spun her toward her, and attacked her with the eyeliner.
“I’m going to look like a raccoon,” Zoe complained.
“Will you stop? You’re going to look like a girl who just might want to get laid in this decade, instead of somebody who’s spent her Friday nights for the past two years working on her dissertation.”
Carry Me Home (Paradise, Idaho) Page 2
