What a Woman Should Know

by Cara Colter

  So now he found himself with Tally in the center position on the bench seat, wedged tightly against his shoulder, his thigh touching hers. She had to dodge the stick shift every time he put the truck into fourth gear or reverse. The dog was on the floor, whining piteously and trying to climb into the car seat with Jed.

  After fifteen minutes, just as they had left Dogwood Hollow, and were settling in to the trip, Jed began flapping his arms and legs. “There yet?”

  “Don’t look so glum,” J.D. said, deliberately putting a little more pressure on her thigh. “We’re going to have some fun. Do you know what that is?”

  She gave him a withering look and moved her leg as much as she was able. He chased it until they were touching again. “Of course I know what it is!”

  “Give me some examples then.”

  “Sitting curled up on my couch with a good book. That’s what I had planned for the first two weeks of summer holidays.”

  J.D. shot her a pitying look. “I knew that was the problem. Too much reading.”

  “Reading is a good thing,” she said tersely. “All the experts agree that early reading skills are a precursor to lifelong success.”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s read about people having fun instead of actually going out and doing it. And what the hell is a precursor? The word you say before you curse? In this case that would have been the the before the hell, am I correct little Miss Schoolteacher?”

  She chose to ignore him, and rustled through a big bag of entertaining items she had brought for Jed.

  J.D. didn’t have any intention of being ignored. That was the advantage of being trapped in the truck with her. That, and the way her leg felt pressed against his. “And what’s this lifelong success stuff? You’re not planning Jed’s whole life out for him, are you?”

  “Of course not. I’m just providing learning opportunities.”

  “You’re planning his whole life out for him,” J.D. said darkly. “What have you decided. Doctor?”

  “Are you insinuating there would be something wrong with your son becoming a doctor?”

  “Terrible hours,” J.D. said. “Inside work. Frankly, I don’t think it’s very manly.”

  “I’m sure I don’t even want to know what you think manly is.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he muttered. “You’re going to find out.”

  She shot him a look, fished a storybook from that over-flowing bag. She began reading it to Jed as if J.D. wasn’t even there. But he noticed she wasn’t trying very hard to escape the pressure of his leg.

  It was a truly dull story about a little boy’s day at the beach. The next one was about a pony.

  J.D. rolled his eyes when she was finished. “See? Just like I said. Stories about someone else having fun. Wouldn’t a real trip to the beach have been better? A real pony?”

  “We are a long way from the nearest beach in case you haven’t noticed!” she said.

  “Pony?” Jed said hopefully.

  “And your idea of having fun would be?” she said, arching her eyebrows at him.

  Having you down on the ground on a blanket, and kissing you senseless. The black dress would be a nice touch.

  “Being spontaneous,” he said. “For instance, see that dirt road over there? Don’t you wonder where it goes?”

  “No.”

  “For someone who reads a lot, you have a limited imagination. Let’s go see where it goes.”

  “No.”

  “May I remind you, you are not in charge?” And he stomped on the brake and turned the wheel so fast his truck skidded around in a half circle and they were bouncing down a dirt road in the blink of an eye.

  He felt her fingers dig into his arm. Her leg pressed tighter to him.

  “You are going too fast,” she said.

  He deliberately flexed his arm under her fingers. She sighed almost inaudibly.

  Jed screamed happily. “Go fast, J.D., faster.”

  The way he said J.D. made it sound suspiciously close to Daddy.

  J.D. obliged.

  “Stop it,” she bit out. “Stop it. We are going the wrong way. At this rate we will never get to Dancer.”

  “So? If it takes us a couple of days to get there, big deal. The object is for Jed and I to get to know one another.”

  “You are driving insanely! What if another car came along this road?”

  “This is the prairies. You can see another vehicle coming for twenty miles.”

  He soared over a little rise in the road, and the truck took air. They landed so hard, her head fell against his shoulder, and the first little hairs began to escape the bun. Jed screamed with delight, and the dog howled.

  “This holiday officially started the second we got out of that stuffy apartment,” J.D. informed her.

  “Stuffy? My apartment? I have placed myself in the care of a madman,” she decided out loud.

  The truck took air again. She screamed.

  Jed and J.D. laughed. And then the breakthrough happened. She laughed, too. She actually laughed out loud as they raced down a deserted dirt road in the middle of nowhere, grabbing air and careening through puddles.

  “That’s better,” J.D. said, glancing at her.

  “I am not happy!” she said. “It’s nerves.”

  As they came across the next rise, they surprised a herd of antelope. J.D. stopped the truck and they watched awe-struck as the amazingly graceful animals bounded away. Jed clapped and crowed.

  J.D. watched Tally’s face as she watched the beauty of the animals. She looked like she was going to cry.

  “There’s always a reward when you follow your heart,” J.D. said.

  “No, there isn’t,” she said. “There’s always a heartbreak when you follow your heart. Elana chased impulse after impulse and it led to her doom.”

  She was crying now, but she wiped impatiently at the tears.

  “You need to learn that it’s safe to let loose every now and then,” he told her gently. “You need to learn that for Jed.”

  “You need to learn not to tell me what I need to learn,” she said.

  He threw back his head and laughed, and she actually saw the humor in it and smiled.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready to try it.”

  “Letting loose?”

  She nodded and held out her hand.

  “What?”

  “I’m driving.”

  “You’re going to learn to let loose on my truck?” he asked with fake trepidation, handing her the keys, feeling secretly delighted that the woman in the black dress had been hiding very close to the surface.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Her eyes were shining, and bobby pins were sticking out of her hair at odd angles.

  J.D. resisted the urge to reach over and help those bobby pins out of her hair. He had a feeling, if he wasn’t careful at this stage, this could become the wildest ride of their lives. And it had absolutely nothing to do with driving a truck fast down a rutted road in the middle of the prairies.

  “Get out,” she ordered, “and take Jed with you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not endangering the lives of others while I let loose.”

  J.D. obliged her by going and setting his son free from the car seat. A moment later he and Jed and the dog stood in a cloud of dust as she took off. She hit the gas so hard the back of the truck slid sideways.

  “Way to go, girl,” he said.

  A small hand crept into his. “Where auntie?”

  “Oh, she’s learning to let her devil out. Or swiping my truck. Either way, I’d say it’s a great improvement over the impression of my maiden-aunt Matilda that she was doing earlier.”

  “Auntie Debil,” Jed said approvingly.

  “Oh,” J.D. said, “with a little practice we could make your aunt really happy. Say it again. Auntie Devil. Good boy.”

  Chapter Six

  Tally pulled away from them slowly. When J.D. and the dog and Jed were no more than three small specks o
n the prairie, she put her foot down a little harder on the gas pedal. The truck leapt forward, and she felt a little sensation of excitement and fear in her stomach. She went a little faster. The road was straight and uncomplicated. She went faster, still.

  Then the truck rose over a little bump in the road, and crashed back down it.

  She let out a little whoop, and slowed down long enough to unroll her window all the way. She could feel strands of hair being tugged out of the tight bun she had forced her hair into this morning as she picked up speed again.

  She began to relax and then laughed at the sensation of power that coursed through her. “I embrace freedom,” she yelled out her open window.

  She felt instantly embarrassed and checked in her rearview mirror to see if anyone could have possibly heard her. When she realized they couldn’t, she still felt embarrassed, but faintly elated at the very same time.

  She felt so alive. The wind wafted a scent in her window of earth and sun and grass. In the distance, she could see the antelope herd, and a red-tailed hawk circled lazily above the prairie.

  It must have been the fact that she was focused on the hawk, that made her miss the fact the road had changed, and was like a washboard underneath her tires. She could barely feel the ripples on the road in the cab of the truck, so when the bed began to sway dangerously it took her by surprise. She had no idea the horizontal ripples across the road would effect the performance of the truck! She tried to correct the sway with the steering wheel, but that only seemed to increase the snaking of the back end of the truck.

  In desperation, she slammed on the brakes, and the truck heaved itself off the dirt road, spun one hundred and eighty degrees and stalled facing the way she had come.

  Her heart was racing madly in her throat. She rested her head on the steering wheel and then shakily got out of the truck and leaned against the door, taking deep, steadying breaths.

  “You,” she told herself, “are not the adventurous type. A leopard cannot change its spots.” Well, she was probably more like Bitsy-Mitsy than a leopard, but the idea was the same.

  What she had needed, when she had taken those truck keys, was not to learn to drive fast. No, she had accepted J.D.’s challenge because she had needed a break from the pressure of J.D.’s leg against hers. That sensation had been overwhelming: the heated steel of his thigh muscle beneath faded denim, the masculine power that radiated from him, Tally becoming more and more aware of the raw sensuality of the man. Nothing in her world had prepared her for the fact a man’s leg touching hers like that could make her feel…hungry.

  A deep-down wild hunger like nothing she had ever felt.

  A hunger to tangle lips and touch skin and undo buttons and run your fingers through hair the color of loam, that promised to feel like silk. A renegade hunger to be touched by strong male hands, touched on her cheeks and earlobes, and her throat and her shoulders, and yes, in all those places where she had never been touched.

  It made her blush just to think about it. How on earth was she going to get herself to Dancer without giving in to the wild temptation J. D. Turner posed? Six hours she might be able to manage, if she divided her time between reading to Jed and keeping her nose in her own book. But side trips? Unpredictable moments? Embracing freedom?

  She looked at her watch. They had been embarked on this journey for less than a full hour.

  It was her second full day of being out of control. Okay, she had survived, but her near incident with the truck had been a chilling reminder that her survival, thus far, might have been just luck.

  In two days she had broken her building’s rules, worn a black dress that was completely unsuitable for the occasion and stolen a man’s truck. She was an engaged woman who had kissed a man who was not her fiancé three times. And now she was feeling complicated little stirrings in her stomach from the mere touch of his leg.

  If she was smart, she would head that truck back around and follow that red-tailed hawk to who knew where. But that was no more in her nature than black dresses, stealing trucks, fantasizing more kisses. And what about Jed? She had to go back for Jed.

  “You have no choice,” she told herself, firmly and contemplated her dislike of those words.

  Of course she had a choice! Perhaps not over the circumstances but over the way she reacted to them!

  It had been childish and silly for her to let loose on the prairie with a truck. She was not a truck driver. She was not a speed demon! She was not an adventurer, or a dare-devil.

  From now on, she would be herself! Her reactions would be under control, if nothing else in her whole life was. With this new resolve, Tally climbed back in the truck and used the rearview mirror to fix her hair, sticking the pins in so viciously it hurt her own scalp.

  But as she headed back, despite the set of her shoulders, and her steely resolve, she felt as if she was driving straight toward the thing she was most afraid of.

  And suddenly she knew that wasn’t J. D. Turner.

  It was that hunger burning deep in her belly—the secrets within herself—that she was most afraid of losing control over.

  She drove back extra slowly, and finally saw J.D. and Jed in the distance. It was obvious they were having an absolute blast together. As she got closer she could see that Beauford had something between his teeth, and the boy and man were chasing after him trying to retrieve whatever it was.

  It was a joyous sight. The boy and man chasing the dog, the sun bright around them, last year’s grass mingled with new growth so high around them that sometimes the dog disappeared. It was a sight that made Tally yearn to lose control all over again.

  She got closer, and pulled over. She might actually have let herself feel some vicarious pleasure from this happy scene had it not been for the fact the dog veered close to the truck and she got a very good view of what he had clenched so happily in his big, slobbery mouth.

  The storybook about the beach!

  Here she had given J.D.’s idea of fun a fair chance—and almost been killed doing it—and he was showing nothing but contempt for her values and ideas!

  “Hi,” J.D. called to her as she got out of the truck, just as if his dog was not mocking her, “how was your wild adventure?”

  “I was almost killed,” she said. “I nearly had an accident.”

  He was at her side in one long stride, and she found her shoulders locked in his powerful grasp, his eyes scanning her face. “Are you hurt?”

  There was that tingle again. That awareness so strong it stung. He hadn’t even glanced at his truck.

  A woman embracing freedom, learning to love her adventurous side, might read something into that, but one committed to maintaining control could not afford to give up anymore of herself to his easy charm.

  “No, I’m not hurt.” She didn’t add, no thanks to you, but he seemed to hear it anyway.

  The audacity of the man. His facial expression changed from one of compelling concern to one of insulting skepticism. “What kind of accident could you have out here?” he asked, gesturing to the broad expanse of nearly flat land.

  “I went over some washboard. I lost control of the back end of the truck and spun around.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully, and waited. When she added nothing else, he prodded, “Are you getting to the nearly killed part soon?”

  “That is the nearly killed part,” she informed him.

  “Scared you, huh?” He was looking at her much too closely, seeing things she did not want him—or anyone—to see. Her vulnerability. She had the awful feeling he was going to put his arms around her. The thing she most needed to avoid if she was going to keep this hard-won control was any kind of physical contact with him.

  “It did not scare me!” she said, backing away from him. “It made me realize how absurd it was for me to be racing along some rutted road as if I was queen of the four-wheel drive crowd. What if the truck had flipped over? What if Jed had been in it?”

  He chucked her on the chin. “What if
is a bad question for the overly imaginative,” he said calmly.

  “You’re dismissing my very real concerns as imagination? And allowing your dog to destroy my property at the same time?”

  “You came back with your armor on. Every hair in place, too, I see. You really did put a scare into yourself. But I wonder if it was about the truck doing a little spin.”

  To be read so easily was humiliating! “It was not little,” she said through clenched teeth. “And I want my book back from that dog. That is no way to teach a child—or a dog—to treat books.”

  “We’ve been trying to get it back,” he said, not sounding properly contrite at all. “But old Beau has never had so much fun.”

  “Well as long as Beau is having fun,” she said sarcastically and gave him the Ms. Smith-is-displeased-look that worked so well on children. He grinned at her unfazed!

  She stepped sideways around him. “Beauford, come here.”

  The dog hesitated in his romping, gazed between her and Jed and back again, undecided.

  “This instant!” she said.

  Giving Jed a regretful look, the dog slunk over to her, his head down, his tail tucked tight between his legs, the book clenched between his teeth.

  “That’s a good dog,” she crooned, but when she lunged for the book, Beauford took a crafty step sideways. She took a faster step toward him, grabbed and missed again.

  She could see the merriment shining in that dog’s beady brown eyes. Well, she was not having a dog get the best of her. She lunged. The dog moved. And the next thing she knew she was chasing it, screaming.

  Out-of-control again, she realized, and brought herself up short while she still had a tiny bit of her dignity left untattered. She deliberately turned her back on the dog.

  “Jed, it’s time for us to go.” In an undertone to J.D. she said, “You get my book back right now.”

  “Oh, yes ma’am,” he said, snapping her an insulting salute.

  She took Jed’s hand firmly and ignoring his protests, strapped him back into his seat in the truck.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw J.D. walk right up to the stupid beast, give him a command with his hand to sit. Another hand command and the book was dropped neatly on the ground. J.D. stooped, picked it up and came over to her, handing it to her.