"You're heading to Green Valley then?" he asked, opening the driver's side door of his truck and leaning against the frame.
I slicked my tongue over my teeth, cursing that little slip. "Why do you need to know?"
"So suspicious," he mused. "I'm heading that way myself, since that's where I live. If that's your destination, I can give you a lift into town. Drop you wherever you need to go."
I eyed his truck, then his carefully smooth facial expression. It was like he knew the emotional tightrope I was walking.
He didn’t know the half of it.
"You could walk, if you wanted to," he said, "but it's about a twenty-minute drive, so you'd be good and tired by the time you got there. Your stomach would probably be crawling out of your own body to find some food, if you think you’re hungry now.”
I cocked my head. "You know, Ted Bundy would've used the same logic on someone like me."
With the patience of a saint, he reached into his pocket, fished out his wallet and then leaned forward to hand me his driver's license.
"Go ahead," he said. "Snap a pic, send it to your aunt, it'll go through eventually, and even if it doesn't whoever finds your hypothetical body will have a record that you were with me."
I scoffed. "Sure, until you steal my cell phone and delete the outgoing text while it's sending."
But did I snap a picture? Sure as shit did.
Tucker Ames Haywood, age twenty-six, from Green Valley, Tennessee.
Huh. Exactly the same age as I was. Actually, our birthdays were two days apart.
I ignored his expression when I handed his license back, pivoting quickly to yank the keys out of the ignition, grab my laptop bag, my camera, and purse from the floor of the passenger seat, slam the hood of the car down, and then lock the doors. I hit the lock button again, waiting for the reassuring beep of the horn to let me know it was secured.
I lifted my chin and walked to the passenger side of the truck, keeping my eyes forward while I hooked the seatbelt. The truck smelled like him, clean and masculine, and I vaguely wondered if I could make it the entire drive to Green Valley without inhaling a single time.
"Where we headed?" he asked, turning the key and sliding his sunglasses back onto his face.
For some reason, I felt better when his eyes were covered. Like my body could relax, just a little bit.
I rattled off my aunt's address.
A smile broke over that face again. "Fran and Robert's place? Francine Buchanan is your aunt?"
I turned and eyed him. "Why?"
"I work with your uncle from time to time." That stupid smile widened. "I was just there for dinner a couple nights ago."
My jaw dropped somewhere around the vicinity of my ankles.
"Careful there, Angry Girl, wouldn't want to catch any flies with that mouth open."
When I snapped it shut, he chuckled, low and slow, the sound catching on his southern accent in a way that I did not appreciate.
Tucker Ames Haywood hooked a wrist over the top of the steering wheel as he started in the direction of town.
I already kinda hated Green Valley.
Chapter 2
Tucker
About a year back, I had to deliver a stray cat back to its owner in Maryville. Someone found it sitting on the base of the tree in front of work, and I was volunteered by my father to bring it back to its distraught owner.
It was a Red Ragdoll named Angel, with a beautiful coat of golden hair, and greenish hazel eyes that looked straight into my soul. That's what it'd felt like, at least, when I tried to pet Angel, reaching out carefully where he sat regally in the passenger seat of my truck. His eyes watched me warily as my hand made slow, steady progress in his direction.
Right before the tips of my fingers stroked the top of his head, I saw them narrow ominously. His lips drew back in a snarl, the white tips of his teeth shining in his mouth. That cat hissed something fierce, but it wasn't until he took a swipe of my hand and drew blood, that I knew I was better off keeping my hands to myself while as I got him back to his home.
As I navigated my truck back to Green Valley, my newest reluctant passenger might've been of the human variety, but she'd taken a hit at me nonetheless. And as she currently sat, long legs tucked up against her chest and her eyes trained straight ahead on the tree-lined roads that would lead us into town, I got a vivid flashback of Angel the cat.
Miss Big City, with her heavy black combat boots and short shorts, had the same color hair, golden and wild, as the cat did. Same color eyes too, I thought with an amused smile, thinking about how she'd swatted and hissed in much the same way as the forgotten feline.
I’d done road trips before, and I remember that edgy frustration of being trapped in a small space for too long. But not once could I remember snapping at the first person I saw.
I eased my foot off the gas when a combine harvester appeared in front of us over the slope of a hill and brought our forward progress to about twenty miles an hour.
There was a heavy, irritated sigh from the person next to me, who probably wasn't used to farmers taking up road space. I waited for a black Chevy to pass in the opposite direction before I pulled around the harvester, and something unfamiliar rose up inside me, the insane desire to see what would happen if I tugged on her tail, so to speak.
“Frank,” I yelled as I slowed my truck to match his speed. My passenger gaped at me, when I leaned forward to see the farmer in the cab. He lifted a hand.
“Tucker, what’s the word?” he yelled over the rumble of the engine.
“Your wife feeling better?”
He nodded. “Much, thank you. Tell your momma thank you for the soup she brought over.”
My passenger pinched the bridge of her nose and took a few deep breaths.
“Will do. See you later.”
I pressed down on the gas and pulled in front of him, trying incredibly hard to keep the grin off my face when I noticed her foot jittering impatiently.
"Where you driving from?" I asked, risking a small sideways glance at her profile.
Her lips rolled inward, like she was trying to keep words stuffed inside. All it did, quite inexplicably, was make my smile stretch even wider. I'd never met anyone like this, so tightly wound, claws out like a weapon. And I'd definitely never met anyone who, apparently, hated me on sight. Made for quite a quiet truck, and yet, I couldn't dig up a shred of dislike for her.
Nothing about this made a single lick of sense.
"Thought you already had me pegged," she said under her breath, like the words came out against her will. "Foul-mouthed woman from New York or LA, right?"
I shrugged, making careful, deliberate movements given that her claws were sheathed enough that she was willing to speak to me. "I can manage some pretty terrible language when I've had a bad day too. I've got no plans to hold that against you."
"Gee thanks."
I'd tasted pickles less sour than she sounded.
I felt those golden-green eyes hit the side of my face like she'd punched me, and I shifted in my seat from the force of them.
"What's so funny?" she asked, turning slightly in my direction.
I sighed and gave her another quick look, even though she couldn't see my eyes from behind my sunglasses.