Shannon Waverly - Three For The Road

She glanced at her odometer several times, and when she was satisfied she’d covered more than the requisite distance without finding the motel—or any other signs of civilization, for that matter—she decided to turn around.

Almost too tired to see anymore, she swung the camper across the road, her headlights cutting a white tunnel into the trees. She shifted and carefully backed up, red brake lights casting an eerie glow over the roadside brush at the rear.

Given the length of her vehicle and the narrowness of the road, however, Mary Elizabeth was forced to go through the maneuver again, cutting across and backing up. Still, the turn wasn’t complete, and she wished she’d waited until she’d come upon a driveway or crossroad.

This time would do it, though, she was certain. Forward. Back. Back a bit more...

Without any warning, the rear end of the motor home dropped with a thud. Mary Elizabeth’s teeth banged together, while somewhere in the nether regions boxes tumbled. “Oh, God!” she whispered as the engine stalled.

With fingers that quivered, she turned the ignition key and pressed her foot to the gas pedal. But even as she was doing so she knew she was wasting her time. The back tires spun futilely, kicking up dirt and pebbles that hit nearby tree trunks like buckshot. The RV didn’t budge. Panic flooded her as she gripped the wheel. Her blood pounded. What was she to do now?

After turning off the engine, she found a flashlight and slipped outside to investigate. Just as she’d suspected, she’d backed the RV right into a roadside ditch. She clutched the top of her head as if it might blow off. How could she be so stupid?

Okay, don’t panic. This isn’t a problem, she assured herself. You’ve got AAA, and they come to the rescue anywhere, any time. Right? Right. All you have to do is find a phone.

She peered up the road one way and down the other. All black. Just cricket chirps and bullfrog noises mixed with the thick, woodsy smell of humus. This was definitely not her idea of New York. Or was she back in Connecticut? Well, it wasn’t her idea of Connecticut, either.

She climbed into the motor home again, brushed her hair, put on lipstick, found her purse, stepped outside, locked the door and, with a shuddery sigh, pocketed the keys.

The solution was easy, she told herself. She’d simply walk back the way she’d come and phone for a tow truck from the restaurant she’d passed just off the exit.

But when she stared down the dark empty road and remembered she’d be on it for more than three miles, her heart grew faint. She reminded herself that every journey, no matter how daunting, begins with a single step. She pulled in a breath and set off.

When she finally reached the restaurant, her legs were ready to give out. But what was worse, now that she’d gotten a good look, she realized it wasn’t the sort of establishment she’d ever walked into before. It wasn’t the sort she ever wanted to walk into, either.

It was low and dark and seedy-looking. The gravel lot surrounding it teemed with pickup trucks and motorcycles glinting lurid neon color from the beer signs flashing in its windows. Over the door a string of multicolored Christmas lights outlined a peeling sign left over from happier or more hopeful days. Starlight Lounge it read. The I was dotted with a star.

Mary Elizabeth looked across the road to the lone cottage huddled beneath a dense grove of pines, pines that made an almost human sighing, and her mind filled with visions straight out of a Stephen King novel.

She glanced from the cottage to the restaurant and back to the cottage again, feeling truly caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. She decided on the restaurant. At least it was a public building.

As soon as she opened the door she was hit with a wall of country music and cigarette smoke. The next moment she realized she’d made a serious mistake.

PETE GOT A BAD FEELING the moment she opened the door.

He was sitting along the far leg of the U-shaped bar, near the back exit where he could keep an eye on his bike and still watch the room. He was trying to mind his own business, catch a little of the American League play-off, finish his beer and ribs, and be on his way. He still needed to check into that motel he’d seen up the road. His body ached and his eyelids felt like sandpaper despite the protective glasses he’d worn while riding.

Still, it had been a good day. No, make that a great day. He’d traveled some of the prettiest country he’d ever seen, the weather warm and dry and sweet. But even better was the riding itself, the sense of freedom that came from the open road, a motorcycle, and no agenda to meet. Time seemed to peel away from his thirty-six years as he’d ranged the wooded hills out of New Hampshire and down the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. By early evening, when he’d reached Connecticut, he’d felt eighteen again. Had the urge to buy a pack of Lucky Strikes and try out a few lines from Rebel Without a Cause.

Stifling a grin, Pete picked up his thick glass beer mug and took a cool sip.

Over the rim of the mug, his glance returned to the young woman at the door, poised on the threshold, surveying the clientele. His good humor dissolved. Damn! What was she doing here? He lowered the mug and gave serious thought to slipping out the back door.

It wasn’t such a bad place, really. A working-class bar, unapologetically masculine. The patrons seemed to be mostly regulars, guys from the nearby town, here to kick back with a cold brew, watch the game on the big-screen TV and gripe about their jobs to somebody other than “the wife.” Pete felt comfortable enough here; at least he didn’t feel threatened. And the ribs were good, just as the guy at the gas station up the road had said.

But Pete wasn’t about to stick around, either. He’d picked up a sense of the place early on and knew that, with just a touch of the wrong ingredient, it could become trouble.

He was pretty sure the wrong ingredient was standing at the door now.

She didn’t belong here. She was as polished as the chrome on a classic old Bentley. With her smooth-as-water natural blond hair and her peaches-and-cream complexion glowing only with health, she might as well have dropped in from Venus. The few other women in the joint looked thoroughly shellacked and frizzled.

Pete doubted any of them would’ve bought the outfit she was wearing, either. The neatly buttoned, maize-colored jacket and matching knee-skimming shorts, worn with tights and loafers, made her look like a model posing for a back-to-college spread in one of those wholesome fashion magazines his sisters used to read when they were teenagers.

His gaze returned to the young woman’s hair, those soft gleaming waves that fell from a side part to just below her collarbone. It was a timeless look, as in style now as it had been in the forties or would be again in the next century.

He focused on her face, a collection of refined features arranged with perfect balance in a perfectly oval setting. She had a small, straight nose and delicately sculpted cheekbones. Her neck was long and thoroughbred, and her eyebrows arched with just the right amount of hauteur. He couldn’t rightly judge her mouth—at the moment her lips were pressed too tight—but he thought it would be appropriately aristocratic. Yes, he decided, hers was unquestionably a face born of well-tended genes.

Pete watched her with more fascination than he usually allowed her type. She was on the prowl for something. A walk on the wild side? That was usually the case when a princess like her walked into a dive like this.

But Pete didn’t think so. Even from clear across the smoke-filled room, he could see how scared she was. When her large, worried eyes fixed on the phone on the back wall over behind his right shoulder, he put two and two together and came up with car trouble. Probably out of gas, or maybe a flat tire.

Damn! Where was her God-given common sense? There was a service station just a mile up the road. Better yet, why hadn’t she ever learned to change her own tires the way his sisters had?

His gaze swept over her fragile features and regal posture. But of course she wasn’t the type to change tires. Probably never pumped her own gas, either.

Or, he thought on an unexpected wave of sympathy, maybe she didn’t have any older brothers to teach her how. For a moment a picture flashed through his mind of his own sisters caught in a similar situation.

Pete shook his head fractionally. No, she was just a princess. Didn’t pump gas. Didn’t change tires. Thought she could sashay into any ol’ place and not suffer the consequences. No one would dare give her trouble.

From under his lowered lashes, Pete scanned the room and winced. Someone was thinking of daring.

He’d noticed the guy earlier, a muscle-bound, muscle-shirted big-mouth with a taste for Scotch, sitting on the other side of the bar. Pete swore under his breath, glanced over his shoulder at the exit again and began to wipe his hands.

* * *

MARY ELIZABETH SERIOUSLY considered retreat, just backing out the door and fleeing up the road to her RV.

But that would mean walking three miles in the dark again, this time with a stitch in her side. And worse, now there was the added risk she might be followed. A few of the men were giving her some decidedly unsettling looks.

In addition, retreat would solve nothing. Even if she did arrive at her motor home safely, it would still be stuck in a ditch. Besides, on the far side of the dimly lit room, beyond the pool table and drifting veils of smoke, hung the solution to her problem—a public telephone. All she needed was the courage to get there.

She pulled in a long breath, gripped the strap of her shoulder bag, and with eyes trained on the floor, made her way through the nearly all-male clientele. It seemed a gauntlet, but eventually she reached her destination.

With her back to the room, she set her purse on the ledge under the phone and took out her wallet. While conversations rose to their natural volume again, she flipped through her credit cards and various forms of identification, searching for the AAA phone number she knew was in there.

It eluded her. A fine tremor of fear shivered over her skin. She started her search again, aware of a sweat breaking out on her neck. Driver’s license, social security card, Visa, American Express...

Suddenly, the room dimmed to the degree where she couldn’t see the contents of her wallet at all. She turned and, with a jolt, realized it wasn’t the room that had dimmed, but only her particular corner of it. An immense pair of shoulders was blocking the light.

“Hi, how ya doin’?” For someone so big, the man who’d spoken had a remarkably high voice.

Mary Elizabeth could barely catch her breath, so acute was her alarm. “I’m fine, thank you. How are you?” Her eyes flicked upward to a square red face made even blockier by a flat-topped buzz cut. There seemed to be no demarcation between his head and shoulders except a pale border where the hair had recently been trimmed.

“I never seen you in here before.” The man inched closer, causing her to back up.

He wasn’t really bad-looking. He didn’t wear a leather vest or have sinister tattoos like those bikers playing pool, yet she still found him threatening. Something in his depthless, slitty eyes...and he smelled of hard liquor.

“Excuse me, I just need to make a phone call.” She attempted to turn and resume searching her wallet.

“And I just come over to help,” he said. “This isn’t the sort of place a pretty little lady like yourself ought to be wandering into alone.”