A Coventry Wedding. Becky Cochrane
and said, “You can call him. Give him my business name and tag number. Or I can tow you back to Tucson. Or you can call somebody else to tow you somewhere. Makes no difference to me. I’ll be glad to stay with you until someone else comes to tow you.”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” she said sweetly, “since you cheated me out of a dog and couldn’t be bothered to offer me a drink of water.”
“Haven’t you ever watched a movie on Lifetime Television for Women? Never take a drink from a stranger.”
Since his words merely repeated her own thoughts, she decided to ignore him and focus on her truck dilemma. Tucson seemed like the best choice. At least she’d be heading in the right direction. If a city offering no job, a sterile new apartment, no wedding, five hundred disappointed wedding guests, and a hostile mother could be considered a place she wanted to go.
She sighed. She’d feel better after a night’s sleep. Once Sam located a garage for the pickup, she could manage to find a motel, a phone, a bathtub, and a bed without his help.
Before she could suggest as much, Sam said, “If it’d make you feel safer, there’s a gun in my glove box that you can use if I try to take advantage of you.”
She couldn’t decide if he was teasing her or not. She’d always heard Texans were gun-crazy.
“Is it loaded?” she asked, attempting to sound nonchalant, as if she handled firearms every day of her life.
“I have no idea,” he said. “It doesn’t belong to me. Since I don’t hunt—hunting is stupid when there’s Kroger—I don’t do that manly gun thing.”
A window in her brain opened and she saw the light—or else she was overdosing on sunshine. He was the kind of man who got all sappy about an abandoned dog. It was possible that his fingernails had been manicured. The cab of his truck was spotless. He didn’t seem to be interested in females unless they were canine. He watched Lifetime. Plus the more she looked at him, the more his appearance improved.
Sam wasn’t a looker like Hud. He was just a regular guy. But his brown hair was shaped in a cute, short cut. He had a little stubble that gave him a scruffy appeal. And if she wasn’t sure he was laughing at her, she would have liked the way his eyes danced with humor. He might think she was dumb, but he really wasn’t at all threatening, even if he was pretending to be a mechanic. Her brilliant deduction: Sam Revere was gay.
Then again, the hair peeking over the collar of his shirt gave her pause. Hud was ordered by the suits at Sweet Seasons to keep his chest shaved. His character was forever removing his shirt, and apparently the show’s viewership of teen girls and gay men liked their soap studs with hairless chests. Did the presence of chest hair mean Sam was straight? Things would be so much clearer if he was wearing one of those ball caps with an equality symbol on it, or a necklace with rainbow rings. Or if he was sporting a big sticker on the back of his tow truck with some slogan like “I Don’t Even Drive Straight.”
Since the lack of a wedding ring meant nothing, she decided to test her theory and asked, “What about your wife? Would she want you driving”—she had no idea how far it was to Dallas, but at the very least, they had to get through New Mexico—“hundreds of miles with a strange woman?”
“You don’t seem that strange,” he said. “And I’m not married.”
Gay. She was sure of it.
She relaxed and thought things over. Why not go to Coventry, Texas? She had no reason to rush back to L.A. She had money. She could get Grandpa’s truck fixed—by someone who knew more about engines than Sam—then drive back to California at her leisure. Instead of feeling like she was in the middle of a disaster of her own making, she could consider this the getaway that Hud had urged her to take. An adventure. For a few days, instead of being Stan and Carol Halli’s disappointing daughter, January, or Hud Blake’s friendless fiancée, Jane, she could be Jandy. The name made her sound like someone fun, almost jaunty. Being Jandy for a few days could make her a more interesting person.
The decision was made. From that moment on, she would maintain her carefree Jandy persona. She would introduce herself as Jandy, even think of herself as Jandy. When the truck was fixed, she could go back to L.A. and her identity as Jane Halli feeling rested, rejuvenated, and ready to set a new wedding date.
And with enough time and opportunity, she might even talk Sam out of the dog. Or she’d become resigned to the idea that a dog was the last thing she needed.
“How much will a tow to Coventry cost me?” she asked.
“I was on my way there anyway. Maybe you could buy a tank of gas to make up for the extra weight.”
She frowned and said, “That dog probably weighs almost as much as I do.”
He laughed. “I wasn’t talking about your weight. I was talking about the weight of your vehicle.”
“Oh. Right. Fine. I’ll go inside the rest stop and call my husband while you load the pickup on your tow truck.”
“Technically, it’s not a tow truck. It’s a rollback,” he said.
Suddenly he knew the right name for everything. She just smiled, grabbed her purse and her useless phone, and headed inside to use the bathroom and get something to drink. It was none of his business if she didn’t really have a husband—or anyone else—to call.
By the time they were on the freeway, Jandy felt quite a bit better. Just being in motion helped. She tried to remember the last time she’d taken a road trip anywhere. When Hud had vacations, they usually flew to his sport resort of choice: Utah and Colorado for skiing and snow-boarding, Grand Cayman or Cabo for snorkeling or surfing, and places where he could play or watch golf while she shopped or sat next to a pool and slathered the highest possible SPF sunscreen onto her fair skin. Though she occasionally drove to Redlands to see Grandpa, most of her road time was just going to and from work. At least when she had a job.
She sighed, waiting for Pru to list all the careers she could have if she just applied herself. The voice would sound tremulous, like Sally Struthers on one of those late-night commercials: flight attendant, paralegal, welding, gun repair…
Pru’s nagging voice must have been lulled into silence by the cool air, however. Grandpa’s air conditioner hadn’t worked, which had made the drive through Arizona unbearable once the sun was high in the sky. When she’d finally used the bathroom at the rest stop, she’d used wet paper towels to give herself what Aunt Ruby called a whore’s bath, so she no longer felt quite as repulsive. It would be nice to have some toiletries and a change of clothes, but she could worry about that later.
She’d half-expected Sam to let Sue ride shotgun and make her sit behind him, but Sue was stretched out on the bench seat in the back and occasionally emitted a loud snore. After a few miles in the quiet, cool cab, Jandy realized she was struggling to keep her head up. Sam reached behind his seat to get a pillow.
“If you put this against the window and lean on it, you’ll stop giving yourself whiplash trying to stay awake.”
“Wasn’t Sue just drooling on this?”
“It’s either her drool or yours,” he said and waved the pillow in a final offer. She grabbed it and tucked it between her head and the door. She hated to admit it, but it felt wonderful. And it smelled good, too, clean like shampoo. It was a struggle not to close her eyes and just breathe, especially since there was nothing compelling about the scenery. Certainly nothing as interesting as the giant boulders at the rest stop.
“Where do you think those came from?” she asked sleepily.
If Sam said anything, she didn’t hear him. The next time she opened her eyes, the sun was dipping toward the horizon behind them. She was confused, hot, and fearful that she really had drooled on his pillow. She hoped she hadn’t also snored, but there was music playing, so maybe he wouldn’t have heard it anyway. She smiled as Paul McCartney crooned about the long and winding road.
“Why?”