Still, her heart thundered and the need to run burned through her veins. As the vehicle pulled alongside her, she whirled to plow through the trees no matter what horrors might await.
“Hey,” a male voice said. Not Max. Starla turned, wide-eyed. Not a car. A pickup. A dually, actually, huge and high off the ground due to its mud-grip tires. From what she could tell, it was red. A country song drifted mournfully from the interior. What she couldn’t tell was much about its driver in the darkness, especially since he appeared to wear a cap pulled low over his eyes. “You having trouble?” he asked, and the song’s volume decreased as he turned it down.
“You could say that.” When wasn’t she having trouble?
He leaned his head out a little farther, looking back at the road he’d just traveled. “Are you broke down? I didn’t pass anything.”
“Did you by any chance meet a black Mustang?”
“Yeah, I did. Nearly ran me into the ditch.”
“That’s the trouble I’m having. Or rather, the idiot driving it.”
To her surprise, he opened the driver’s door. A heavy work boot came down on the truck’s single step, and he easily boosted himself down.
Out here, standing just at the edge of the shine of his headlights, she could see better. Tall. Broad shoulders that almost stretched the dark plaid of his shirt. Built. A scent wafted toward her, not cologne but hay, cut grass, fresh air, and hard work.
And, hello, beard.
He tipped his cap back a bit and appraised her closely with eyes of an indiscernible color. Whatever color it was, it was light.
Please, God in heaven, don’t let them be blue.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his assessment apparently yielding him nothing alarming.
“Oh yeah,” she said quickly, glancing down self-consciously at herself. “Nothing much happened. I just made him let me out. Jerk. I did break my phone, though, so I can’t call anyone to pick me up. I was going to walk.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment, debating. Not wanting to ask outright for any help, no matter how badly she needed it.
“I’m on my way into town. I can give you a ride if you want.”
Hmm. Punishment and blisters and achy feet versus heat and the comfort of a seat under her butt. No brainer. And she’d bet the meager contents of her bank account that this dude wasn’t a machete-wielding maniac. Although he could probably wield a machete, which would come in handy with idiots like Max.
Of course, stubborn thoughts like that were what always got her into these situations.
Chapter Two
Jared Stanton glanced over at his charge for the next few miles and puzzled over where he’d seen her before. She sat demurely against the passenger door, but he’d bet there really wasn’t a demure thing about her. She wore a black top with cut-out shoulders, enough to show that both her arms were covered with tattoos, and her jeans were ratty and torn enough to reveal her legs were no different. Shimmering blonde hair with pink and turquoise streaks spilled in large curls over her shoulders. She stared out the window, elbow propped on the door, silver-ringed fingers pensively at her lips.
Silence had filled the air ever since she’d hoisted herself into his truck. Ordinarily¸ he had no problem with silence, but this was a girl who looked like she had a lot to say. He only needed to look at her to see the tension thrumming under her skin.
“You really look familiar,” he said at last, then wanted to cringe at the banality of it. It was enough, though, to bring her head around. Feeling her stare him down, he figured it was no less than he deserved. He’d been doing the same to her.
“Now that I think about it, you do too.”
Interesting. But this wasn’t a big town, after all; he might’ve only seen her in passing. “What’s your name?”
“Starla.” She sat silently for a moment, but he still felt her gaze boring into him. “Oh. Oh shit. I think I just figured out who you are.”
And that was even more interesting, though he should have guessed what she was going to say before it came out of her mouth, should have prepared for the teeth-grinding misery of it. “You’re Macy Rodgers’s ex.”
Yeah. That was what he was known for, it seemed. Macy Rodgers’s ex. Since the catastrophe that relegated him to that position in life, he’d married someone else, had kids, divorced, and still, Macy Rodgers hung like a damn thundercloud over his head, forever to rain on his life. He and Macy had been an inseparable unit for so many years, though, with so many people expecting them to be together forever, he supposed that was inevitable.
“Jared Stanton,” he said, if only to prove to himself he had a name. He glanced at Starla again, the colorful hair, the tattoos, the little flash of silver he’d noticed on her tongue when she’d spoken to him outside his truck. “I take it you’re acquainted with…” He trailed off, not wanting to give voice to the guy’s nickname. It sat sour and unsaid on his tongue.
“Ghost,” she supplied. “Yeah. I work with him.”
Jared sat in silence, white-knuckling the steering wheel as the muscles in his chest tightened. It wasn’t that he could really blame Ghost for taking Macy and running. How could he? He’d tried to do the same, not once but twice. It was just that if Ghost hadn’t come along when he did, forever with Macy might have finally happened.
“He’s a good guy, you know,” Starla said, probably sensing his own tension had ratcheted up tenfold. “Don’t let him fool you with the crazy act. That asshole I was with tonight? That’s a bad dude. Ghost, he’s pretty awesome.”
The last thing he needed was to hear the guy’s praises sung in his own truck. But he had to admit it was nice to hear Macy would be okay from a more objective source. She’d promised Jared that herself, but she was biased. Her parents had even promised him, but did they really know that guy? Ghost would be on his best behavior around them. Hearing that a coworker—whose opinions could run good or bad—thought highly of him was slightly more comforting.
“That’s good,” he said, hearing the strain in his words. “So you’re a tattoo artist, then?”
“At Dermamania, yeah.”
“How’d you get into that?”
She cleared her throat and rubbed her palms on her jeans while he wondered what about his question made her nervous. “The guy who owns it, Brian? I’ve known him for…God, so many years. He kind of got me into it because I was always into art. Then he got me the job at Darwin’s old shop, you remember that place? And when he struck out on his own, he took me with him.” She shrugged. “Dermamania put Darwin’s out of business. That was never the intent. But here I am, still with it.” She lapsed into silence for a moment. “Do you have any tattoos?”
Jared chuckled. “No. No inclination either.”
“To each his own.” She sighed at her shattered cell phone, then tossed it to the side. “And I suppose you don’t smoke either.”
“No.”
“Damn. I could really use one. I left my purse in Max’s frigging car.”
“If it’s any consolation, I would’ve asked you not to smoke in my truck anyway. Sorry.”
“Oh. Right.”
He shrugged. “My little girls are in here a lot, you understand.”
“Can I use your phone?” she asked, nearly cutting off his explanation. “I need to call off the dogs. I probably have a posse searching for me after the last text I sent my friend.”
Jared plucked it from his shirt pocket and passed it over, then sat in dumbstruck awe as the strangest one-half of a conversation he’d ever heard played out.
“Jan… Yeah, I’m okay. I got a ride from someone, and I’m on his phone… Hell if I fucking know, or care… I made him let me out of the car… You. Did. Not… No, you did not! Oh my God. Oh, my fucking… I’m gonna cut your ass tomorrow, you realize that, right?… You told him?… No, they should leave it alone… Am I not humiliated enough for you already, you have to do this to me?… Jesus. Just let everyone know to stand the hell down. Bye.”
As she hung up, she dropped her arm in her lap and the back of her blonde head met the seat. She banged it there a few more times with a groan of anguish. He caught himself stealing glances at her shadowed profile as the road allowed. Following the graceful curve of her forehead, down to the straight little nose, and finally the subtle pout of her lips. Sweet and classic, but with an edge.
“Everything okay?” he asked cautiously.
“Can you keep driving? Can we just, like, keep going forever so I never have to face anyone again in my life? Start completely over, no past, no labels, no mistakes to haunt us?”
No Macy Rodgers’s ex. Snickering, Jared adjusted the bill of his cap and gave her another sideways glance. It was a silly thought, of course, but he might as well humor her. “Well, you’d have to face me.”
“Sure, but you aren’t privy to most of my fuckups. Just this one.”
“We all have fuckups.”
“Mine are just more colossal than most, I suppose. At least to me they are. Where would we end up if we kept driving, anyway?”