Anything You Want (2 page)

“Sabrina, what is going on?”

“I’m…stranded.”

He frowned. “Did you say stranded?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean you’re stranded?”

“I’m in Muddy Gap, Wyoming…”

“Muddy Gap?” he interrupted. “Seriously?”

She sighed over the phone. “I don’t think I could make that up.”

“Why are you there?” Why would anyone be in a place called Muddy Gap?

“My car broke down and I don’t have enough money to fix it. I’m…stranded.”

Of course she was. She did need something. She always needed something from Luke. And he had never in his life said no to her.

“How can you be stranded?” he asked. “Get on a bus, buy a plane ticket.”

“This is a smaller town than Justice,” she said. “They don’t have an airport or a bus station. I’m not sure they have a grocery store. The closest airport is Laramie or Casper, which is about an hour and a half away. By car. Which I don’t have. And I don’t have any money, anyway. I’m serious. I’m broke. I called Kat but she didn’t answer her cell phone.”

This was fantastic. Marc shoved a hand through his hair and dug his fingers into his scalp. Sabrina was stranded in Wyoming with no car and no money and she was calling Luke. Who would jump in the car in thirty seconds and head out to get her. Even to a place called Muddy Gap, Wyoming.

“Kat’s at a conference.”

“I know. Do you know when she’ll be home?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

He hated that defeated tone in her voice. It wasn’t something he’d heard before. She was full of spunk and fight. The more challenging things were, the tougher she got. He’d always grudgingly admired that about her. It was what made her dependence on Luke and his willingness to always jump on her command so damned frustrating…and pathetic. Sabrina didn’t need anyone. Except Luke.

Except that she didn’t even truly need Luke. But she liked making him jump through hoops for her. It was a ridiculous, sorry excuse for a relationship but it had functioned that way since they were toddlers playing in the backyard together. Luke and Sabrina had grown up as neighbors and had been inseparable.

Marc didn’t want to help her. That probably made him a jerk, but he didn’t. At least, part of him didn’t want to. The part that knew her as the manipulative bitch who’d broken his best friend’s heart.

But another part of him, that was evidently bigger, couldn’t help but prolong the conversation.

“What are you doing in Wyoming?” he asked.

“Just passing through.” According to the post cards she sent to Luke from all over the country, that was all she did anymore. “I was on my way home when the car died.”

Home
. The word echoed through his head.

“Home?” he asked sharply. “As in Justice?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was quiet. “As in Justice.”

“You were on your way back
here
?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

His caustic tone obviously took her back. “For… Because… I…need to.”

It was a vague answer, on purpose. Fine. The less involved he got, the better. Marc stomped into his office and jerked open his middle desk drawer where he’d thrown his wallet.

“How much to get your car fixed?” he asked, pulling a credit card out.

“I’m not sure. Too much. I don’t want you to pay for my car, Luke. It’s not worth it.”

Luke. Right. She thought she was talking to Luke. Marc threw the card down on his desk. “Then what do you want?”

“I…I guess… I was going to ask Kat for…a ride home.”

He closed his eyes.
She was coming here. This was a disaster just waiting to happen. Luke had been broken-hearted and Marc knew that his friend wasn’t over Sabrina, but with her thousands of miles away he could at least
try
to move on, to get a life—the life he wanted and deserved. If she came back here, even temporarily, Luke would be a mess all over again.

“Why are you coming home?” he asked again.

“Things have changed,” she said after a pause. “A lot of things.”

“And suddenly you want to be back in Justice?” He was sure his skepticism was obvious.

“Yes.”

Right. Something was going on. And he needed to know what it was. Sabrina was trouble for the man Marc loved like a brother. The man he would do anything for. Including protecting him from himself. Luke had never realized how bad she was for him and Marc had no delusions that Luke had wised up in the time she’d been gone.

He couldn’t hang up on her either. She’d call back anyway. Or she’d finally get a hold of Kat. Or someone else. Somehow she’d make it to Justice and turn Luke inside out.

Marc couldn’t let that happen. “How far is it from Muddy Crack to Justice?” he asked.

“Gap,” she corrected. But she didn’t answer his question.

“How far?”

She hesitated and he braced himself. Where the hell was this place?

“About three hundred and fifty miles, give or take.”

“Three hund—” He recovered and quickly figured in his head that it would take him between five and a half to six hours to get to her.

Was he willing to spend, essentially, most of a workday on the road for Sabrina?

And that was one way.

But the answer came quickly. Yes. Not for her so much, but for Luke.

They needed to talk. He needed to make sure she understood a few things—like the fact that he would
never
let her hurt Luke again—and then give her whatever she needed to keep her as far from Justice and Luke as she could get. Money he could give. Transportation he could give. References, a down payment, a fake ID. Whatever it was that she thought she needed to come to Justice for he would find a way to provide.

And then send her off in the
opposite
direction.

“I’m on my way.” He tucked his wallet was in his back pocket, then grabbed a pen from the middle drawer.

“You’re coming to get me?”

She didn’t sound as surprised as he would have liked. But then, she knew as well as he did that Luke would have agreed to drive six hours to come and get her.

“Yes. I’m coming to get you.” It was nine seventeen in the morning. He’d be there by four o’clock.

“You don’t have to,” she protested.

“Oh, but I want to.” Marc knew his voice sounded ominous.

“Oh.”

Was that a touch of nerves that he heard again? He hoped so.

“Where are you, exactly?” he asked, already scribbling instructions for the kitchen staff for that night.

“A mechanic’s shop. I’ll get the address, hold on.”

He stopped writing. “Hold on. You’re just sitting in a shop?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He’d dearly love to make her sit in a hot, smelly shop waiting on him for six hours. In fact, he could easily stretch it into seven if he thought she was sitting on the hard pavement by the roadside choking on the dust kicked up by the passing cars.

But he wasn’t fooling himself for a moment. He wouldn’t do something like that. “Ask the mechanic where the closest motel is.”

“Motel?” she repeated.

“Yes, a motel. You know. A place where they let you sleep in their beds and use their showers for a nightly fee.”

He knew that she’d been traveling and staying in some low-budget places in the past few years. Kat had kept Luke informed once she found out where Sabrina was and what, precisely, she was doing, even after Marc threatened to never let her drink for free at The Camelot again if she didn’t shut up. Kat had ignored him, knowing he’d never follow through on a threat like that. So Luke got to hear regular reports on Sabrina’s life. Which kept him thinking about her. Which kept him from totally getting over her.

Marc reigned in his thoughts before he could work up a good, healthy anger. Again. He had time for that later.

“There’s only one motel in town,” she said a moment later.

“How close?”

“Four blocks.”

Four blocks. Hmm.

“You have luggage?”

He could make her walk four blocks dragging her luggage along, probably in high heels. Was it as hot in Wyoming as it was in Nebraska in late June?

“Not a lot. I sold a bunch of stuff before I left.”

“You sold your clothes?”

“Some of them.”

“Why?”

“For money.”

Marc rolled his neck, listening to the cracks and pops. Her situation couldn’t be any more pathetic if she’d scripted it. And who knew? Maybe she had. He wouldn’t put it past her. Still, the whole thing made it tough to be mean to her.

“Get me the number for the motel. I’m going to call and make a reservation for you with my credit card. Tell the guy there at the station that I’m on my way and I’ll swing by and give him twenty bucks if he’ll give you a ride to the motel.”

“You don’t have to do this, Luke. I know I’m imposing. I know you’re surprised to hear from me.”

What he was surprised about was that she hadn’t realized she wasn’t talking to Luke yet. But it had been a long time and maybe the phone reception in BFE, Wyoming wasn’t so good.

Besides, the other emotions he had about her calling were much too strong to let something as mild as surprise really surface.

“It’s done. Don’t worry,” he interrupted, thinking that she should worry the whole time she was waiting for him to show up. “Get me the number and get down to the motel.”

She sighed. “Okay. Thanks, Luke. You’re the best.”

Her words sent a jolt through him that literally stopped him in his tracks. He stood in the middle of the hallway outside of his office, his car keys gripped tightly in one palm, the phone in the other.

Anger tightened his chest and his throat.

You’re the best, Luke.
She always said shit like that to him. That was what kept him holding on, kept him hoping they could be more than friends. But
no one walked away from the best. People
wanted
the best, they
demanded
the best. They didn’t leave it behind without a look back.

Luke wasn’t the best anything in Sabrina’s eyes—unless she was in trouble and had nowhere else to turn. Which didn’t make him the best at all.

It made him her last resort.

This same scenario had repeated itself too many times. She fell back on Luke because he was there—unassuming, easy, comfortable, totally infatuated with her, whenever she needed him.

Marc didn’t want her waltzing back into Luke’s life every time she ran out of options. He didn’t want any more phone calls out of the blue. Or any other time for that matter. Especially when he couldn’t ensure that he would intercept them all. It had been four years and Marc had stupidly begun to believe she might be gone for good.

And now she was on the phone.

If he had anything to say about it, this would be the last time.

And he intended to have everything to say about it.

“I’ll be there in a few hours.” He disconnected before she could say one single thing more to raise his blood pressure. There was plenty of time for that later too.

Sabrina stood in the doorway to the motel room and felt tears well up. No one was around, so she let the drops fall. It was a simple mom-and-pop roadside motel, but she didn’t care about the lack of neon or a chain-name.

It was a clean, comfortable, secure room.

She had no idea that it would mean this much. She was tired. She was fed up. She was scared. She was pregnant and the victim of fraud.

Almost worse, she’d slept the last two nights in her car in truck stop parking lots.

She owed Luke big time.

Nothing new about that.

She tossed her purse on the small round table near the window, lay back on the closest bed and stared at the white textured ceiling.

Luke.

He was an average-sized man, about six-two, muscular and slim, but to Sabrina he’d always seemed large. Some of that was because of her own small frame, but more it had to do with the fact that Luke had always been her hero. Luke did the right thing and he made no excuses or apologies for it.

And now he was on his way to get her. It was ridiculous, of course. But typical. He always wanted to save her and he did a great job at it. Way above and beyond.

They hadn’t seen each other in four years. The last time she’d seen him was the night he’d proposed and she’d asked him to run away with her.

They’d both said no.

She pushed herself up to sitting on the edge of the bed. There wasn’t anything she could do about it. Luke was on his way and she was going to have to face him…and try to act naturally. Whatever that was.

A shower. That was what she needed before she shared the close confines of a car with her almost-ex-fiancé.

As she started the water and shed her clothes, she hoped that at some point in the next few hours she could stop thinking about Luke as the guy whose heart she’d broken and remember that he was the boy who put dead spiders in her sock drawer when she was eleven.

As she lathered her hair with the complimentary shampoo from the basket by the sink, she thought about dead spiders. That would definitely do it. Dead spiders,
not
gorgeous engagement rings,
not
hopeful smiles. Dead spiders,
not
hopeful smiles drying up like those spider carcasses, replaced by resentment and hurt.

Yeah, this was working just great.

It had been four years and she could still see Luke’s smile die as if he were standing in front of her now.

They’d been at the Grand Opening for The Camelot, Luke and Marc’s restaurant—Luke’s dream. He’d been smiling, laughing, surrounded by family and friends, full of confidence and energy and excitement, and as he’d walked toward her from across the room it struck her that she should be desperately attracted to him.

Not just that he was a great guy. Not just that she really cared about him. But she should
want
him. He knew her—the good and the bad—she could always count on him and he always took care of her. She never worried about making the wrong decision when Luke was around. He’d bailed her out of everything from traffic tickets to bad dates and given her everything from money to advice. He enabled her to feel secure, even brave, because he was always there to catch her if she screwed up.