Breaking the Rules (7 page)

“And if I do, you’ll leave me alone?”

He lit his cigarette. “If you want me to.”

There was that arrogance again, in the sure tilt of his head, the half smile on that sensual mouth. The expression said no woman ever refused him anything. She crossed her arms. “Mattie.”

He raised his chin, considering. “Matilda?”

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Fair enough.” He grinned. “Hop on. I’ll give you a ride.”

“Not in this getup.”

“Oh, who’s gonna see? I won’t peek.” Restlessly, he flicked his wrist on the accelerator and the bike growled.

The dress was an excuse. No way, after that kiss in the bar, that she wanted to climb up behind him and lean into that long, muscled back. “No.”

He shrugged and continued to walk the bike alongside her. For one whole block, neither of them said anything. Mattie would never have admitted it to him, but she liked the low purring of the bike and the lighted path its headlight made. “I can’t get over how dark it is here,” she said at last.

“Yeah. Makes me think of where I grew up.”

Not home. Where he grew up. “Where is that?”

“Little town near Clinton, Mississippi. How ’bout you?”

Without even thinking, Mattie said, “Kansas City. Missouri side.”

As soon as the words were out, a stab of cold terror struck her heart. How could she be so careless?

All at once, the evening overwhelmed her. Zeke had unnerved her with his pool game, his kiss, his big motorcycle and lazy drawl. Close to tears, she said, “Will you please just leave me alone?”

“Mary—Mattie—I’m sorry.” He touched her arm, but she jerked away. “You see what I mean, honey? If I can trip you, someone else can, too.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Do you think this is normal for me?” She struggled to hold on to her disintegrating emotions, but felt the losing battle in the trembling of her arms. “All I’m trying to do is stay low, stay out of sight and keep moving. And I’d have been able to if you hadn’t kept sticking your big nose in where it didn’t belong.”

They had reached the driveway of the motel. “I don’t mean you any harm, Mattie,” he said, his voice deep and quiet against the vastness of the night.

Mattie clenched her jaw. “I know.” There was a quaver in her voice she loathed—and just the sound of it almost unleashed her tears. Urgently, she stared at the green neon tubing on the office door: Shady Pine Motel. The letters blurred, then cleared as she gained control.

Zeke hadn’t moved. If only she could turn to him the way she longed to, finally tell someone all the terrible things she’d seen, release her horror somehow. If only she could tell someone, she wouldn’t feel so lonely.

He took her hand. “Take care, Mattie. I won’t bother you again.”

Something touched her hand, but before she had a chance to see what it was, he’d roared off, taillight blinking red in the darkness.

Mattie opened her palm and saw the neatly folded twenties she’d given him.

Z
eke didn’t sleep well or long. By seven, he was up and dressed and headed over to the café, breaking not only several of his own rules—namely to leave good girls alone and to mind his own business—but also his promise to Mattie.

But his instincts were screaming. Rules didn’t hold much weight against that.

The café was busy with the breakfast rush, but already the road crews and park police had begun to clear out. Zeke took his customary place at the counter, setting a long white envelope with Mattie’s name on it beside the napkin.

“Morning, gorgeous,” Roxanne said, automatically filling a heavy ceramic mug with coffee. “How you doing today?”

“All right. Is Mary here?”

“It’s her day off. You’re stuck with me.”

He scowled. Mattie was probably long gone by now. “Damn,” he said aloud.

Roxanne lifted an eyebrow. “Come on, now. I’m not that bad a waitress, am I?”

“That’s not what I meant.” He touched the envelope on the counter. “I’ve got something for her. She forgot it last night.”

“She kicked your butt, too, huh?”

Zeke couldn’t tell if she was pleased or annoyed. “I guess.”

“I’ve never seen a woman play pool like that.”

“She’s good, no question.” He sipped his hot coffee. “Where did you go, anyway?”

Roxanne shrugged, and this time, it was plain she was miffed. “As long as she was playing, there was no point to my hanging around.”

He chuckled. “Turnabout is fair play. I’ve seen you hog the attention of every man in the room on more than one occasion.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t do it on purpose.” She shook her head, giving him a rueful grin. “Meow.”

A man called for more coffee. Roxanne lifted a finger to tell him to wait a minute. “You want something to eat?”

Zeke shook his head. “Just the coffee right now.”

“All right.” With a quirky smile, she added, “If you need anything, just whistle.”

There was coffee in his cup, so he might as well drink it. He knew he wouldn’t find Mattie and it depressed the hell out of him. She couldn’t have had more than two hundred dollars in that shoe of hers, and how could she get by with that? He’d gone back to the bar and collected the money he’d tossed at her, planning to slip it under her door. At the last minute, he’d decided to wait until he could give it to her face-to-face.

Wished he hadn’t waited now.

Damn. He’d worried about her all night long, tossing and turning as he tried to figure out how he knew her, and what she was afraid of.

The pieces just didn’t hang together. Even given the fact that somebody, somewhere had taught her to hustle pool, Zeke would bet she really was exactly what she seemed, a nice woman from the Midwest who’d done exactly what she was supposed to do all her life. And yet, now she was in enough trouble she had to change her name and hide out in a little town a long way from home.

What kind of trouble could a woman like Mattie possibly find?

There was an easy answer to that question. The only obvious answer: an abusive husband. He thought of her burned hands and the sad story she’d told about them, but he’d told a lie or two about his own scars. No one wanted to admit to having been abused. There was always sick, secret guilt attached.

Restlessly, he stirred his coffee and tapped the spoon on the edge of the cup.

Maybe it wasn’t a husband. Maybe it was something else and he just filled in the abusive angle from his own experience.

Whatever it was, it was bad. And whatever Mattie thought, she didn’t have the tools to stay hidden long. It wasn’t as hard as most people thought to find somebody you really wanted to find. Most folks, and he’d bet a dollar to a doughnut that Mattie was one of them, left clues in a bright red trail behind them.

Damn.

The old need filled him, near to choking. It had grown in childhood, when he was the only one his sisters had. Grimly, he tapped the spoon, watching fat brown drops of coffee fall to the pool below, fighting memories of a cruel and brutal man.

His instincts told him she was in deep trouble. But what had his instincts ever got him? The last time he’d stepped into someone’s life like this, it had ended up costing him nearly everything.

Leave it alone.

That would be the smart thing. Unfortunately, smart never seemed to enter into many of his decisions. Impulsively, he asked Roxanne, “What time does the bus come in?”

“About ten or eleven, I think.”

He nodded. Probably wasn’t any other way out of town for Mattie. Maybe he could still catch her.

And maybe he ought to listen to sense just once in his life. Mattie herself had made it plain she wanted him to mind his own business.

He didn’t like trouble. There ought to be a limit, after all, to how much trouble one man had to manage in one lifetime.

As he argued with himself, two men came in and sat at the counter. One was tall, redheaded, with the freckled, wholesome good looks of a popsicle man. The other, though just as well groomed, carried a faintly greasy aura. His hooded eyes scanned the room. Both men wore city ideas of camping gear: chinos and flannel shirts with creases in the sleeve sharp enough to cut bread. Zeke looked at their boots. Clean soles.

They made small talk with the waitress, Cora, an older woman who filled in only on the main waitress’s day off. Redhead ordered a cup of coffee and raved about the beauty of the area in a hearty tone. Zeke couldn’t say why the man’s praise rang false, but his nerves prickled.

Warily, he shifted on the swivel stool and glanced through the plate-glass window at the front of the diner, looking for the car the pair had driven. A fancy El Camino, not a rental.

It had Kansas plates.

Affecting carelessness, Zeke turned back and waved for a refill on his coffee. Redhead kept talking. “You know,” he told Cora, “we’re not really on a pleasure trip. We’ve been looking for someone…my sister. Maybe you’ve seen her.”

Zeke lifted his cup, keeping his eyes on the pass-out bar as if what they said made no difference to him.

“You got a picture?” Cora asked.

“Sure do. Right here.” He pulled out his wallet.

Zeke glanced over, feigning idle curiosity. Redhead wore a guileless expression, a smile so innocent it practically shone. The picture he tugged from a cellophane sleeve was too small for Zeke to see from three stools over.

“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Redhead said. “My sister, Mattie O’Neal. She left her boyfriend standing at the altar and we just want to find her and let her know everything is okay.”

Cora patted her apron pocket for glasses. “Poor thing,” she said.

“You can’t tell it in the picture,” Redhead said, “but she has the most gorgeous hair you’ve ever seen. Way past her hips, kind of wavy.”

With a sudden flash, Zeke remembered why Mattie looked so familiar—and understood why he couldn’t place her. He also realized Redhead was lying. Moving as lazily as possible, he stood up, dropped a dollar on the counter, picked up the envelope full of money and waved to Roxanne.

As he headed for the door, he heard Redhead say, “Her hands are scarred, too. Burned them with paraffin making candles when she was sixteen.”

Zeke walked faster. Just as he reached the front door, Roxanne said, “Burned hands? Mary’s hands are burned like that.”

The hairs on the back of his neck stiff as teeth, Zeke shoved open the door. Coming in were two guys from the road crew. Both had been in the bar last night.

They trapped him with the open door in his hand. “Zeke Shephard, you dog! Did you manage to beat Mary’s game last night?”

Zeke glanced over his shoulder just as Redhead and his sinister pal came to their feet. They stared at him. Redhead’s expression was considerably less guileless now.

Zeke pushed through the two men and hopped on his bike, hauling it upright as he turned the key. The engine lit just as the two men came out of the restaurant. By the time Zeke cleared the parking lot, they were in the El Camino.

* * *

Mattie rolled her change and stuck it in a sock at the bottom of her huge leather purse, the only thing she had left from her old life. In bills, she counted nine twenties, six fives and twenty-three ones—the spoils of her pool games last night. $233. Not a fortune, but enough to get her out of Kismet.

In a small tote bag were her meager clothes and a bag of toiletries. She added oranges, cheese crackers in little packets, two Butterfingers and a family-size pack of gum. Last was a battered paperback copy of Collected English Poets that she had found in the thrift store when she’d bought her shorts. She touched it lovingly as she settled it in the tote.

A small part of her mourned her personal library back home, the well-tended, lovingly preserved books she’d been collecting since high school. A friend had built special shelves for her in the living room of the small apartment. Mattie wondered what would happen to that library now. It wasn’t, with its sonnets and poetry and literary criticism, the sort of collection many people would care about.

With a small sigh, she brushed the thought away. The lost library fell into the realm of things she could do nothing about. No point in moaning and groaning about it.

After double-checking to make sure she’d forgotten nothing, she stood by the window of the cheery cabin, visually embracing the view of ferns and pines and majestic red rocks one more time. Before she’d come here, she’d had no idea the world could be so still and quiet a thing; had never dreamed nature offered such a bounty of sensual pleasures. She’d spent her entire life within the confines of Kansas City.

Damn Zeke Shephard, anyway. If it weren’t for him, she might have made some kind of life for herself here, far away from anyone she’d ever known. If not for him—

No, it wasn’t his fault. She had to be honest enough to admit she had wanted to spill her secrets to him, take him into her confidence.

A pang shot through her chest. In leaving Kismet, she’d be leaving Zeke, too. A part of her knew she would always wonder what it might have been like to let herself go, just once, and experience the promise of dangerous pleasure he exuded like musk.

A wisp of poetry floated through her mind: How arrives it joy lies slain, and why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

The extreme melancholy of the quote surprised her. She hadn’t realized she felt so strongly about leaving, and even now, she didn’t know if it was Zeke or Kismet she would miss. Both.

She wasn’t meant to be on the run, transient and alone. All she had ever wanted—ever—was a quiet, safe, simple life with people she loved around her. A family of her own.

Suddenly, into the still golden morning came a sound, a deep growling purr. Coming fast. Mattie moved to the screen door, half annoyed, half distraught. She didn’t want to say goodbye to him in person. He’d see straight through her coolness to the silly crush she had on him.

Intolerable thought.

Deciding to take the offense, Mattie opened the door and stepped onto the porch just as Zeke pulled up. His hair, unrestrained by the usual ponytail he wore when riding, was wild and tangled. He kicked off the bike, glanced over his shoulder and leaped up to the porch.