As awkward as it would be, she would take Trevor up on his offer and leave tomorrow. First thing. Before she was in so deep there was no getting out.
A small voice seemed to whisper inside her that he was different. Did she dare hope it were so?
Chapter Twenty-One
I’ll wait to make sure you get your ticket okay.” Trevor shifted the pickup into park in front of the convenience store that served as a bus terminal. He cut the engine and jumped out of the truck before Maggie could stop him.
She jogged after him as he strode toward the building. “You don’t need to stay.”
He shrugged. “I don’t mind. Just till we make sure you can get a ticket.”
“Please, I’m a grown woman. I’m perfectly capable of purchasing my own bus ticket.”
“Yes, but are you capable of keeping track of your luggage?” He eyed the canvas bag slung over her shoulder, and a slow grin lit his face.
Wren had given Maggie the bag this morning—packed with sandwiches, fruit, and enough food for at least two days—along with two freshly laundered outfits. But she knew Trevor’s comment didn’t refer to this new “luggage.” He was talking about the bags she’d supposedly lost when the bus left without her. She looked down at the rummage-sale castoffs she was wearing. Everything she now owned had been given to her in sympathy—mostly for stories that weren’t even true. A phrase spooled through her mind: ill-gotten gain.
“It wasn’t my fault my luggage got lost.” Guilt made her bite out the words more harshly than she intended.
“I never said it was.”
“You implied it.”
“No, you inferred that I implied it.”
She rolled her eyes. “A woman needs a dictionary to have a conversation with you.”
He grinned like he’d won some prize.
“What?” she barked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Listen. I appreciate all your help—I really do—but please go now. I feel bad enough that you had to take off work to get me here.”
“There’s nothing at work that won’t still be there when I get back. Besides, it’s Saturday. I usually work a short day anyway.”
“Please, Trevor. I’ll be fine.” Frustration colored her words. She walked toward the station, hoping he’d give it up.
But he dogged her steps. “Sorry. I wasn’t raised that way.”
She kept walking. “What are you talking about?”
“My dad raised me to be a gentleman, and I intend to make sure you get safely on that bus. Besides”—he flashed a goofy grin—“Bart will give me what for if I don’t.”
“Fine.” She ignored him and headed for the ticket counter, praying he would stay back far enough that he wouldn’t hear the transaction.
She got in line behind a burly man in a Hells Angels jacket. When he turned to leave, he looked her up and down and wolf-whistled just loud enough for her to hear. She glanced back to see if Trevor had noticed the exchange. He watched intently from the edge of a booth bench and visibly relaxed when the bearded man left the building.
“May I help you?” The impatience in the clerk’s voice told Maggie she’d asked the question more than once.
She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I’d like to buy a bus ticket.”
The woman stared at her for an overlong second. “Your destination?”
She stole a glance over her shoulder. Trevor had settled in the booth with his elbows propped on the table, raking his hands through his hair.
“What’s the next stop west?”
“That would be Hays.”
“Hays?”
“Hays, Kansas.”
“Oh . . . still in Kansas? How far is that?”
“The bus leaves at 4:25 this afternoon and arrives at approximately 6:00 p.m.”
“How much is that?”
“A ticket to Hays is twenty-seven dollars.”
She studied a route map behind the counter. Hays was only a couple of inches from Salina. At this rate, she’d never make it past the state line. “What’s the next stop after that? Does that bus go on to Colorado?”
“Yes, Greyhound has service to Colorado.” The clerk’s voice rose a few decibels.
Maggie hiked Wren’s canvas bag up on her shoulder and reached into her pocket to finger the ever-thinning roll of bills. “What’s the farthest I could get on fifty dollars?”
The woman typed something on the keyboard and waited for the screen to change. “You could get to Denver for seventy-seven dollars.”
“I don’t have that much. Is there anyplace else a little cheaper?”
“Meg?”
She winced at Trevor’s deep voice directly behind her.
“Is everything okay? Do you need some money?”
She gave the clerk a long-suffering look. “Excuse me. Sorry.” She wheeled to face Trevor. “I’m fine. I said you didn’t have to wait.”
“Are you sure everything’s okay? I heard you ask—”
She turned back to the clerk. “I’m sorry. Hang on . . .” She stepped out of line to let two elderly women go ahead of her.
“I thought you were going back to California.” His tone was even, but his eyes challenged her.
“I am.”
“Then why are you trying to buy a ticket to Denver?”
“Denver is on the way home.” Why was she explaining herself to this man? She didn’t owe him any explanations.
“Come here, Meg.” He motioned toward the door of the convenience store.
“What?” She kept her feet planted.
“Would you please come here for a minute? I want to talk to you.”
Huffing out her frustration in a ragged breath, she trudged after him. He held the door for her, and she stepped outside. The sun was already hot and wavering off the asphalt parking lot. Exhaustion came over her like a gust of hot wind. She wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the soft bed at Wren’s Nest and burrow there until she figured out the rest of her life.
She followed Trevor across the lot where a row of cars had lined up next to his pickup. Just then the sun caught a familiar flash of white, and Maggie recognized a Honda Civic parked at the end of the row. It took a minute for the significance of the vehicle to register.
Kevin.
Her heart lurched. Her hands turned into clammy appendages. She forced herself to step closer and examine the back of the vehicle.
The car had Kansas plates—and pinstripe detailing that didn’t match Kevin’s Honda. Relief flooded her.
She was being ridiculous, and she knew it. But even the thought of him tracking her down had left her lightheaded and trembling.
She felt Trevor’s hand on her elbow and turned to face him. He seemed oblivious to the terror that had just coursed through her.
He squinted against the sunlight, the silvery blue of his irises flashing through the narrow slits. She squirmed under the intensity of his gaze. His touch was exquisitely tender, yet his fingers seemed to burn into her flesh. “What? What do you want?”
“Something is wrong here.” He dropped his head briefly, scuffing the toe of his tennis shoe on the asphalt before meeting her eyes again. “It’s none of my business, Meg, but I . . . I get the sense that you’re in trouble. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
She glared at him, silent, intent on keeping the rise of emotion within her at bay.
“Well? Am I totally wrong about that?”
She wriggled out from under his hand. Yet, even when she’d removed herself from the heat of his touch, something about his expression made her want to pour her heart out to him. She braced herself against the thought. All that would accomplish would be to make him feel guilty.
“Meg, please. Would you tell me what’s going on? Maybe I can help.”
Her brain told her to turn back toward the building. But she stood rooted in place, unable to make herself move. Emotional walls, once so tightly erected—and higher t
han she could have imagined—were beginning to crumble. She was a little girl again, and they were taking her mother away, then separating her and Jenn. Then Kevin was destroying the few good things left inside her—her self-worth, her talent as an artist, her dignity, her good judgment.
She looked into Trevor’s kind eyes, and the dam finally broke inside her. She couldn’t stop the outpouring of her fears. Barely able to stay on her feet, she dropped her face to her hands and felt tears slip through her fingers. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I . . . don’t even have enough money to get to Denver.”
“Meg.” Trevor lifted her chin and forced her to look at him. “Why didn’t you say something?”
She wanted to run away as fast as her legs would carry her, and at the same time, she wanted to fall into the shelter of his arms and stay there forever.
Then, immediately, she hated herself for the thought. For being so weak. She’d fallen for Kevin just as quickly, and look at the abyss that had plunged her into. But there was something about this man. A small voice seemed to whisper inside her that he was different. Did she dare hope it were so?
“How much do you need?” Trevor dug in his back pocket and brought out his wallet. “Where is home?”
She drew back and stared at him.
“What city in California are you trying to get to?”
She wagged her head. “I-I can’t pay you back. I don’t know when I’d be able to—”
“No. This isn’t a loan. I want to help, Meg. Tell me where you’re going.” He started walking toward the convenience store, steering her along beside him with a light touch to her elbow. “Let’s go see how much a ticket would be.”
She stiffened and stopped walking. “Trevor . . . I’m not going to California.”
He dropped his hand from her shoulder and took a step back. “You’re not?” He hesitated, studying her, as though waiting for her to tell him something he already knew.
She felt his eyes on her and wanted to offer him the truth. But she didn’t know where to start. Or if she could fully trust him.
For a long while he said nothing. Just stood there, waiting. Finally he spoke. “So where are you going . . . Meg?”
The way he said her name made her wonder if he knew even that was a lie. She rubbed her brows with the tips of her fingers. “I don’t know. I need to get away.”
“Away from what? What is going on, Meg? I can’t help you if I don’t know the truth.”
“I need to get away from someone who . . . isn’t good for me.”
“Your husband?”
She lifted her head, surprised, and watched a shadow play across his face. Why had he guessed that? She shook her head, then dropped her chin to her chest, her face burning with shame. “No . . . we’re not married. But I can’t go back to him. I can’t go back.”
“Back to where?”
She shook her head. She wanted desperately to trust Trevor. But if Kevin tracked her down, or if he—or any of the people she’d lied to along the way—had the police searching for her, she didn’t want them to be tempted to rat her out.
“Then where will you go?”
“I don’t know. West, I guess.”
“West isn’t a destination. You can’t just buy a ticket ‘west.’” His lips curved in a quick half smile before his expression turned serious again. “Why don’t you come back to Wren’s? Stay there, at least until you know what you want to do. Where you want to end up . . .”
Oh, how wonderful that sounded. How safe. Absently she touched the roll of bills through the fabric of her pocket. “I don’t have enough to pay for last night, let alone stay another night.”
“We’ll worry about that later. You don’t have enough to stay anywhere else either. At least this way you’ll be with people you know. You’ll be safe.”
She tried not to let him see the relief that flooded over her. “Do you know someplace I could get a job, even for a little while? Until I earn enough to . . .” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Didn’t know what was next for her. “Maybe I could help Wren out at the inn?”
His expression turned skeptical. “Business hasn’t been too good lately. I don’t think they have funds to spare.”
“But all that remodeling. I thought—”
“I think that’s wishful thinking on their part,” he said. “But hey, Bart and Wren would probably let you stay at the inn for a while. They have plenty of extra rooms.”
“I’d help out any way I could.” She tried not to sound too eager, but hope swelled her throat. She swallowed hard. Oh, please, God . . . if you’re really there . . . ? She started inwardly at her own words. Did she really think God might hear her? She had to admit there was a strange comfort in the mere utterance of the words, the . . . Was it a prayer?
Trevor reached out a hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
The smile she gave him through the pickup window did strange things to his insides.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bouncing along the country roads back to Wren’s Nest, Trevor kept both hands on the pickup’s steering wheel and sneaked a peek at Meg in the seat beside him. Conversation was apparently the last thing on Meg’s mind. She sat staring out her window, her shoulders hunched and angled away from him.
He turned on the radio to drown out the silence that hung between them. A Mozart violin concerto filled the cab, and Trevor willed the beauty of the chords to work their soothing magic on the woman beside him.
They were halfway back to Clayburn before she finally spoke. “I’m sorry you had to make this trip for nothing.”
He turned down the radio. “It was no big deal. I didn’t have anything more important to do.”
She gave a cynical little laugh. “I know better than that.”
“No, I mean it, Meg. I’m glad you didn’t get on that bus. And it wasn’t for nothing.” If her situation was as he was beginning to suspect, he meant every word. The stooped shoulders and the pale blue eyes that were so often downcast made sense now. Anger rose in his throat. What had some nameless man done to Meg to cause her such pain?
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t quite realize he’d spoken the words aloud until she looked up, her brow knit in a question.
“For whatever he did to you, I’m sorry.”
“Why should you be sorry?”
He harrumphed. “Because men can be real jerks sometimes.”
She shrugged in seeming agreement with his statement.
He waited an awkward moment for her to say something, but she turned back to stare out the window instead.
Watching her surreptitiously, he couldn’t help but compare Meg to Amy—and be glad he’d never seen the dull glaze of sadness in Amy’s dark eyes. No, his Amy had always worn a knowing smile, as though she carried all the secrets of the universe in her heart. Even at the funeral home, people had commented how Amy’s expression in death was beatific, as though she’d seen her eternal destination a split second before she became absent from her body.
Amy. Sometimes he was utterly overwhelmed with the longing—the ache—to hold her just one more time. He shook off the thought. Amy was okay now. This woman was not. Maybe he could help her find a place to belong.
He turned off the road, taking a shortcut into town. A blanket of shadows fell over them as they passed under the canopy of Dutch elms that grew on either side of Bill Wyler’s pastureland.
“Oh.” Maggie strained against the seat belt and peered intently through the windshield at the trees overhead. “This is the road I came in on the other day—well, night, actually. A woman picked me up here. Kaye somebody. She had a bunch of kids.”
“Probably Kaye DeVore. Her mother lives east of town. Had surgery last week, I think. Kaye’s probably been taking care of her.”
“What a coincidence.”
A coincidence? He gave her a questioning look.
“That you just happen to know her.”
He shrugged. “I don’t re
ally know her that well. I went to school with her husband. She and Danny have half a dozen kids and one on the way, I hear.”
“You know an awful lot about her for not knowing her very well.”
He laughed. “You’re definitely not from around here, are you? Clayburn is a tiny town. And this is Kansas. Everybody knows everybody.”
She shook her head as if she didn’t quite get it. “Seven kids? Really? Can you imagine?”
“Well, I might be exaggerating a little. But I know they have at least four or five. A set of twins, I think.”
“Yes, I remember the twins. A handful.” She smiled. “Did you grow up in a big family?”
“No, I’m an only. You?”
The sadness crept back to her eyes. “I have a sister.”
“I always wished for a brother. Are you and your sister close?”
She seemed to think about the question for a minute. “We are now. We . . . we didn’t grow up together.”
“Oh?”
“We were raised in foster homes—after our mom—” She fanned a hand in front of her face, as if swatting away a gnat. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does. It’s your history. Your story.”
Again that self-deprecating shrug. “I guess.”
He fumbled to think of something pleasant to say. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk about herself. “Once you get settled at Wren’s, do you want to have lunch with me? My treat,” he added quickly, remembering her financial status. “I can show you around Clayburn.”
She eyed him, as if deciding what his intentions were. “Okay . . . thanks. I’d like that.”
Apparently he looked safe—either that or she decided to risk him for the free lunch. Either way suited him fine.
He glanced at the clock. “I have a couple things to take care of at the print shop, but I’ll come by the inn around eleven-thirty. We can beat the lunch crowd that way.”
She giggled.
“What’s so funny?”
She covered her mouth, stifling more laughter. “I’m sorry, but is there really such a thing as a lunch crowd in this ‘tiny town?’” She drew quotations marks in the air.
Remember to Forget Page 12
