The Bride, The Trucker And The Great Escape. Suzanne McMinn
She noticed that no one seemed concerned about her. Apparently, it hadn’t even occurred to anyone yet that she might have been abducted.
Tears pricked her eyes. She fought them. Her heart felt all pinched.
“Gretchen! Gretchen!” She struggled to break into the housekeeper’s excited conversation. “I’m not coming home today. And I’m not going back to the church! I need some time away, to think. Tell my parents I’m sorry, and that I’m fine. But I can’t—”
Andie glanced surreptitiously at Troy. He was staring out at the highway in the distance, but she sensed he was listening all the same. She twisted around and presented him her back and spoke in a low tone. Emotion lurched close to the surface. “I can’t marry Phillip. I don’t love him. I’ll be—” She had to stop for a second to steady herself. “I’ll be back in—”
She had to look at Troy for help. His eyes met hers.
“Ten days,” he supplied, revealing he was, indeed, following her conversation.
“I’ll be back in ten days,” she told Gretchen as she turned away from Troy once more.
She hung up, and the hurt broke free, despite all her efforts to contain it. A tear slid down one cheek.
“Andie?”
She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t let him see her. She’d been so much trouble, and now she was crying. Men hated that.
Her father became steely-hard and angry whenever she cried. Dry up! he’d demand.
“Andie?” Troy prodded again:
She was standing very still. He reached out to move her toward him and gently brought her face up to his with the nudge of two fingers beneath her chin. That was when he saw her tears.
Tears that made him want to run, not walk, as fast as possible in the opposite direction. He wasn’t comfortable with so much emotion. Not one bit.
“You’re crying,” he stated the obvious, at a loss for any other comment.
“Thanks for that perceptive commentary,” Andie said tightly, swiping roughly at her eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” Andie said, beginning to cry again. Her next words came out in ragged hitches between sobs. “I—I’m standing in the middle of a tr-truck stop in my w-wedding dress, that’s all. What c-could possibly be wrong?”
She started crying in earnest.
Troy stared at her. “Aw, geez,” he breathed.
Denying his survival instinct to head straight for the hills, he wrapped his arms around her slender shoulders and held her.
Chapter Three
She smelled so sweet, Troy could have buried his face in her hair forever and been a happy man. He held her as she trembled beneath his touch, her chest heaving with small sobs.
He forgot about everything. His schedule, her mysterious past, their surroundings, everything evaporated for a magic moment. He was supposed to be comforting her but he couldn’t help noticing the way her body felt petal-soft, small and curvaceous and desirable, as it molded to his.
How had he ever thought he might be able to ignore her? He couldn’t look at her without wanting to touch her. He couldn’t touch her without wanting to kiss her.
And if he kissed her, heaven help him for what he’d want to do then.
Andie lifted her head from his shoulder. She raised huge, tear-filled brown eyes, swiping at her cheeks with both hands as she stepped back, placing physical and emotional distance between them.
He saw something flicker in her eyes—hurt, anxiety, embarrassment—then she took a deep breath and it all disappeared, shuttered away somewhere inside.
Somewhere private.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” Andie worked up a wobbly smile. “Really.”
Troy was still looking at her as if he thought she might break. The tenderness with which he’d held her just then had been so unexpected.
No one had ever held her like that. Not her parents, with whom she’d had a distant relationship all her life. Not Phillip, with whom she’d had practically no relationship at all if one ignored the little matter of their engagement. And as for other men—there hadn’t been any. None with whom she’d had serious relationships, anyway.
The fact that Troy, a total stranger, could make her feel so comforted and supported was as wonderful as it was unexpected.
And a little frightening.
“Are you sure?” Troy asked, then berated himself for pressing the issue. He wasn’t supposed to be getting involved. Well, not any more than he had to be involved, anyway. She just looked so vulnerable.
“No, really,” Andie insisted. “It’s no big deal. Just forget it. It’s my problem.”
She gave him another smile, as if determined to show him she was okay. With hands that barely trembled now, she smoothed her dress at her sides and glanced out at the rows of rigs in the parking lot.
Troy frowned, feeling awkward, uncertain, and completely irritated with himself as a result.
“Okay, well, if you’re ready, I’m behind schedule as it is,” he said briskly. He needed to get his focus back where it belonged—on taking care of business.
A beefy guy in a black T-shirt, revealing mammoth tattoos on each bicep, strode past them toward the truck-stop restaurant. The man shot Andie and Troy a curious glance, then kept on going.
A bell on the diner door diner as the trucker breezed inside.
Troy saw Andie follow the man with her eyes. He spied the longing in her gaze as she looked toward the diner. Then, he watched as she hitched up the train of her gown and headed for the midnight blue tractor-trailer at the far end of the parking lot.
She wanted to eat, but she wasn’t going to ask. He looked at the truck, then at her with her slender shoulders, held straight with such brittle fragility...
“Wait.”
Andie stopped and turned around.
Troy jerked his head toward the diner, wondering when he’d become such an idiot. “Let’s go ahead and eat. It’s almost dinnertime.”
It was only four-thirty in the afternoon.
“But you just said you’re behind schedule,” Andie argued, looking surprised.
“I am.” Troy wouldn’t deny that. He’d have to drive later into the night than he’d planned, to make up for the lost time. “But we might as well eat now, then we won’t have to stop again.”
Actually, he hadn’t anticipated stopping to eat until he was ready to quit for the night. He had some food in the truck, and throughout the trip he expected to picnic at rest areas or eat as he drove.
But they were just outside the city, and it was obvious that Andie could use a square meal and a chance to catch her breath. A little ray of hope sliced into his thoughts. She might even reconsider this little expedition by the time she was through.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” he pressed.
Hungry? Andie figured she could eat two horses. “Yes, but—”
“Then no buts. Come on.”
Andie gave up. For some reason, he was determined they were going to eat, and she was too hungry to question why he was being so nice all of a sudden.
Maybe she’d question it later, after her stomach was full.
She let Troy take her