Cooper’s eyes came round, glancing at Lacey and then quickly at Anna. “Thank you,” he said and took the cookie. His eyes went to the mirror, looking back at Anna. He almost smiled, Lacey was sure of it.
When he’d finished the cookie, Lacey offered him a slice of the pecan pie. “It’s one of Gerald’s.”
“You got that in that bag?” he asked with surprise.”
Uh-huh. I cut it and wrapped each slice.” She was digging it out of the bag. She unwrapped it, set it on a paper towel and handed it across to him. He took it, a distinctly sheepish expression on his face.
He liked sweets, Lacey thought. Highly pleased with the knowledge, she turned her face out the window. She had something to work with now. Call it a bribe, but she thought it more a way to build a bridge.
Traveling Companions
As Cooper had heard predicted, grey clouds closed in as the afternoon wore on. Reports came in from fellow truckers that north of them a storm was wreaking havoc, covering everything with a thick layer of ice and dumping snow in the mountains. It appeared the storm would stay to the north. Cooper hoped so.
Though she sat up front in the cab, Lacey said little, and she didn’t have that friendly air she normally had. He guessed he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t been exactly polite.
But he didn’t think she’d had reason to say that she and the kids would return to Albuquerque by bus. If she thought that he was going to feel like the bad guy, she was mistaken. He was relieved. He was. But he was annoyed, too. He had put himself out for her, and he didn’t see that she had to go changing the plan.
All of a sudden he came out with,“Watchin’ t.v.?”
“What?”
“The kids...they’re watchin’ t.v.?” He felt around for his pack of cigarettes and kept his gaze steadily on the road.
“Yes. I think they’ll nap,” she replied. That was it, and keeping her gaze out the passenger window.
Fine. He liked quiet. He glanced down at his cigarettes and then over at her. He put the pack back into his pocket and reached for a bottle of water instead.
The next instant, he said. “You goin’ to see your folks in North Carolina for Christmas?” Damn. It was like there was some sort of short circuit to his mouth.
“Yes.” She nodded and hardly seemed to be looking at him.
Okay. He was not going to keep making an effort at conversation. He wasn’t any good at it anyway.
Then she said, “The children have never met my parents. It’ sort of a homecoming. I haven’t been home since before Jon was born.”
He glanced over to see a shy expression on her face. Her eyes met his for an instant, before they each looked away. Her eyes were very green, like rye grass in spring.
“Ah...”
And now inability to speak struck him. And he had the oddest sensation of being aware of her breasts gently moving as she breathed.
“Cooper?”
“Yeah?” Hey, okay, here she was talking to him.
“Is Cooper your first name, your last, or what?”
He felt a smile coming up and out. “You been wonderin’ about that, have you?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Barry B. Cooper is the name.”
He sent her a lazy glance. Her green eyes met his.
“Nice to meet you, Barry.”
“Call me Cooper. I hate Barry.”
Their eyes met again, and then each looked away out the windshield.
* * * *
“You like George Strait?”
“Yes...I’d better at Gerald’s.”
He chuckled, his grin a flash of bright, even teeth beneath his dark mustache. He slipped a compact disc into the player. They had made an unspoken truce and fallen into actual conversation. With George Strait’s voice in the background, they exchanged casual facts of their lives: Lacey had been divorced over five years—“Oh, yes, married only once,” and Cooper the same. “Once was enough.” Lacey came from North Carolina and had ended up out in New Mexico because of her ex; Cooper actually and surprisingly had been born in eastern Tennessee, but had left there as a kid and lived all over the West.
They talked of Gerald’s restaurant, and Cooper said he’d been stopping there somewhere around ten years; he had begun driving a truck twenty years before, at the age of eighteen. He’d known Pate almost that long.
“Pate came along, picked me up, dusted me off, and set me on my feet.”
There was a quality in his voice that again drew Lacey’s curiosity about the entire story, but he didn’t elaborate, and she wasn’t about to ask—at least she stopped herself before doing so. Her mind, however, was putting pieces together based on her own experiences and on all the stories that she heard as a waitress in a busy truck stop. Listening to Cooper, she had a glimpse of a very lonely man, and she saw a reflection of her own well-deep loneliness. She guessed neither of them were rare cases.
The tires hummed along the highway, a second George Strait disk played, and they talked of baseball (a fondness they both shared), thick or thin pizzas, and dog breeds (as children, each had possessed beloved dogs). Lacey looked at Cooper’s profile. She watched his capable hands caress and maneuver the steering wheel—and imagined what those hands would feel like on her body.
In a flash of sudden awareness, she realized she had not thought of a man in such a way since well before Shawn had left.
Then she was looking into his dark eyes, and she had the embarrassing inkling that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. That perhaps he had been thinking along the same lines himself.
George Strait sang out about eyes that can see.
Lacey turned to look out the side window.
* * * *
They were one third of the way across Oklahoma when they stopped for dinner.
“I’m gonna check out the truck...you go on ahead,” Cooper told her.
She herded the children, running and jumping in euphoria to be free, on into the restaurant. At the door, she looked back, wondering if he again would sit separately from them. She didn’t suppose it mattered.
In the ladies room, she combed her hair and put on fresh lipstick. Then she looked down to see Anna gazing up at her with large, dark, speculative eyes.
When they came out of the ladies room, Cooper and Jon were waiting, side by side.
“It sure takes women a long time in the bathroom,” Jon said.
To this Cooper drawled in a low voice, “Well, bud, they’re a mite different, in case you didn’t know that.”
Jon rolled his eyes, and Lacey hid a smile.
They took a booth, Cooper and Jon sitting on one side, Anna and Lacey on the other. Cooper appeared only mildly ill-at-ease, bouncing his knees and holding on to his napkin, then dropping it and picking it up again. Jon’s natural conversational ability took over, though, and soon the two were carrying on a conversation about cars and trucks and engines and racing, while Lacey and Anna were content to simply listen. Lacey was made aware of what her son missed by not having a man in his life. Very often Pate took them out to eat, yet, for whatever reason, Jon did not seem to relate to him in the avid manner that he related to Cooper.
Things seemed to be going great for the first time since they’d started out—until Anna spilled her cola down the back of a man in the adjoining booth.
They were preparing to leave, and Anna had been trying to move across the seat on her knees while carrying her glass. She bumped her elbow, sloshing the crushed ice and cold liquid, which came up in a perfect arc through the air and went neatly down the big man’s collar.
The man let out a resounding holler. “What the hell...”
Lacey’s waitressing instincts set her to grabbing napkins from the stubborn dispenser, which insisted on hanging on to them.
“Oh, I’m so sorry...so sorry.” She began dabbing his neck and shirt, even as he moved out of the booth.
But then she looked into his face. Oh, dear.
She extended the wad of napkin
s and took a step backward.
Ignoring the napkins, the man rose from the booth, seeming to unfold into an enormous, red-headed giant, who was shaking the back of his shirt and sending little bits of ice clicking on the floor. Then he began bellowing words fit only for ships at sea.
Anna cowered behind Lacey’s leg, sobbing. Lacey was about to fly at the man, when a hand pressed her aside.
Cooper stepped in front of her. “That’s enough.” His command cut the air. “It was an accident. And you owe these ladies an apology.”
The man, who had shut his mouth, peered at Cooper and then around him at Lacey and down at Anna. Then he glanced around the restaurant. Lacey looked, too.
Everyone was staring.
“Huh,” the man said with disgust and began lowering himself back into his seat.
“I believe you forgot somethin’,” Cooper said.
The big man’s eyebrows shot up. Lacey, still behind Cooper’s shoulder, tugged on his coat. But Cooper stayed planted.
“Pardon me...la-dies,” the big man said in a low voice and with a bare glance, as he lifted a coffee mug to his lips.
Lacey turned Jon and took Anna by the hand.
The next instant, Cooper was beside them and scooping up a wide-eyed, sniffing Anna to carry her grandly from the room.
“Stop in here,” he said in the lobby outside the restrooms, where he lowered Anna gently to the floor. “All of you. I don’t want to have to stop again ten minutes down the road.”
* * * *
The incident had brought all sorts of uncomfortable memories. Cooper didn’t like to have memories. He tried to leave them behind by walking quickly away from Lacey and the kids. He tried to focus on checking out the rig again, walking around it and hitting the tires with the stick, hard.
But still, the memories swirled around him.
“Boy, you’re gonna learn not to be stupid.” “I’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut.” “Kids are meant to be seen and not heard.” The faces changed, but they all were big and threatening, and Cooper had been small for a child, like Anna. He had always seemed to be clumsy. Until he turned fifteen and suddenly he had muscles. He had been on his own since then.
“Hey, buddy.”
Cooper was bending over, checking the cables. He looked over his shoulder and knew he had made a clumsy error in not paying more attention. The red-headed giant bore down on him. He barely had time to straighten, before the man swung, his fist plowing into Cooper’s cheek.
It didn’t last long, and Cooper got in a few licks of his own before the hulk sent one final blow to the solar plexus that knocked Cooper sprawling on the pavement. Satisfied, the man hitched up his pants and lumbered away, leaving Cooper watching after him and trying to get a breath.
He was picking himself up when he heard Lacey’s voice and running footsteps. “Cooper? What…”
He held up a hand and tried to quickly straighten his shoulders, though the movement hurt considerably. Tentatively, he felt the already swelling skin beneath his eye. He licked blood from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, goodness…” Lacey, hovering, pressed a tissue to his mouth. Her eyes were close enough for him to fully see her long eyelashes. Her womanly warmth drifted out and around him. He enjoyed her ministrations for a brief moment, then came to himself and pulled away.
“It was that big guy from the restaurant, wadn’t it, Coop?” the boy said. “How’d you do?”
“Well, he doesn’t look too good, either.” Cooper managed to get out. He wasn’t about to tell the kid, or Lacey, that about the best he’d done was give the hulk a split lip.
“Here...put this on your eye...come on now.”
He took the tissue she handed him and dabbed at a sore place near his eye. He remembered the contact with the pavement. He said, “Let’s get in the truck.”
“Cooper, maybe we should go to a hospital.”
“Aw, Mom, Cooper don’t need no doctor.”
“Just get in the truck,” he said, his breath giving out on him. He jerked open the driver’s side door and hoisted himself up, leaving her standing there. She was still there looking up at him. He closed the door.
Seconds later she and he kids were crawling in the passenger side.
When the little one, Anna, passed through to the sleeper, she touched his shoulder. Her brown eyes were large and wet. “I’m sorr-y, Cooper.”
“It’s okay, kid.” He winked with his good eye. “Everybody has accidents. That fella had no call to talk to you like he did, you hear?”
A spark he liked seeing came into her eyes, and she nodded.
Then he turned quickly away to focus on the gauges, which he didn’t really see. No one had cared about his welfare for a long time. It made him as confused as a bear walking down a city street to see the kind of looks these three were giving him.
Cooper wasn’t about to say he hurt all over, but Lacey saw it in his careful movements and the fleeting wince. She remained quiet, which seemed the safest course. But she felt so horribly responsible. Because of her, Cooper was likely having the worse trip of his entire life.
Fifteen minutes later, when they were well down the road, she brought a slice of pecan pie from her tote and offered it to him. A grin flashed, followed by a wince.
“Oh, dear.”
“I can manage.” He wasn’t giving up the pie. He took it as his reward.
* * * *
They continued across Oklahoma, through several long sections of cold rain, and stopped for the night at a motel just off the interstate in Henryetta. The clerk naturally assumed they were all together, husband and wife and children. Confusion ensued when Lacey and Cooper, instantly and talking at once, with interjections by Jon, tried to explain.
“You want a separate room for the children?” the clerk asked, when he could get a word in. His gaze moved rapidly from herself to the children to Cooper, pausing curiously on Cooper’s black and blue eye.
“For the three of them.” Cooper wagged his finger.
The clerk shot Lacey a questioning look. “Yes, one for me and the children.”
“You got it now?” Cooper said sharply enough that Anna jumped.
“Yes, sir.”
The clerk looked down and wrote on a card. “Just sign in here, ma’am. And here’s your key. Room 154.” He slid a key across the counter and then held one out to Cooper. “Here’s yours, sir. Room 155.”
Lacey marched the children down the row of doors to their room, which was the second from the end. The last one was Cooper’s. Right next to theirs.
She unlocked the door for the children, then went to the truck to get their bags. Five minutes later she found herself standing in front of her room, Cooper beside her, in front of his room. For some reason she didn’t understand in the least, it was a very awkward moment.
Cooper twisted his key in the lock; Lacey pushed open her door. They paused and looked at each other. The flesh surrounding Cooper’s left eye was the color of roiling thunder clouds.
“I’m so sorry about what happened back at dinner,” Lacey said. “Does it hurt terribly?”
“It hurts, but I’ll live.” His dark eyes searched hers, as if seeking answers to something that puzzled him.
Anna called, “Mama, do I have to take a bath?”
“Good night,” Lacey said to Cooper.
“Good night.”
They each entered their own rooms. The two doors clicked closed at the same instant.
Needing time alone, Lacey got Jon and Anna into bed before taking her shower. After having risen so early, the children fell asleep as soon as they had settled who got which pillow. The ensuing silence was more than golden—it was heaven to Lacey.
As she leisurely undressed, she could hear the muffled sound of the television on the other side of the wall in Cooper’s room.
She wondered what he was watching.
Was he a late-night or early-morning person? Did he like showers or baths? She continued to wonder as s
he stood beneath the massaging heat of steaming water. Would he think she had a good body?
Just as she turned off the water, she heard a peculiar knocking. Someone rapping on the wall, she realized, as she stood in the tub, rivulets of water running down her skin. Cooper? Knocking out a rhythm on the wall?
Hesitating only one self-conscious second, before throwing caution to the wind and rapping back, imitating his rhythm. Then she held her breath.
The knock came again.
Lacey clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling her laughter. Fine thing it would be to wake the children and have to explain herself to them.
But it was hilariously funny. Two grown people engaging in a childish stunt. She couldn’t believe Cooper would do such a thing. Not solemn, gruff Cooper, who’d spent most of the day treating her as if she wasn’t there.
Suddenly curious, she knocked again and waited expectantly.
But no more knocks came from his side. Only silence.
Lacey was suddenly exhausted, and very lonely. When she crawled into the double bed beside Anna, she brought the extra pillow and hugged it tight to her chest.
* * * *
Morning came much too early. Immediately upon turning off the alarm, Lacey discovered that the rumbling she heard was the Kenworth engine—already running. How revolting. It was still pitch black, for heavensake.
Allowing the children a few minutes’ extra sleep, she threw on her clothes and ran across the parking lot to the large gas station-minimart to get sweet rolls and milk to tide them over until breakfast. At the last minute, she bought a sweet roll for Cooper, too.
Cooper knocked at their door while Jon was still dressing. “Come on, let’s go.” He definitely sounded testy.
Lacey didn’t bother to awaken Anna enough for her to dress but gathered her up in her arms and carried her to the truck. Without speaking, Cooper helped get Anna into the sleeper in the back, then slipped into the driver’s seat, while Lacey and Jon threw their baggage into the sleeper.
When Cooper shifted the truck into gear without as much as a “good morning,” Lacey wondered if the knocking she had heard the night before had happened at all. Had she imagined it?
Miracle on I-40 Page 6
