Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [43]
“Hey! Watch out!” A horn blasted, and she jumped back, stumbling on the curb, her drink cup slipping and falling to the pavement, as a canvas-topped Jeep ran a red light and turned the corner, missing her by inches. Coke splashed up her bare legs. She nearly twisted her ankle as she fell backward.
“For Christ’s sake, watch where you’re going!” The paper cup was squashed by a thickly ridged tire laying down rubber as the driver gunned the engine.
“Bastard,” Maggie grumbled under her breath. She felt sticky, hot and ugly as a toad. What was she doing thinking about Mary Theresa and Mitch? She had to turn her mind to other things. Any other things.
Paying more attention to traffic, she walked through the business district that blended into a residential area where the houses were small and the grass dry and patchy. Chain-link fences kept dogs and kids in the yards while deterring strangers from entering the domain of small stucco cottages with wide porches and planters overflowing with bright blossoms.
Within a few blocks the city gave way to a more rural area where apple and pear orchards competed with chicken ranches. Maggie angled off the main highway to a road that led upward again, through the hills where neatly tended rows of grapes grew in the surrounding vineyards. The traffic lightened, the air seemed cleaner, and the bottom of Maggie’s feet burned in her worn shoes.
Trucks, vans, and cars whizzed past as she stuck to the gravel-strewn shoulder of the road and ignored the constant pestering of flies and gnats that swarmed in these last waning days of summer.
She heard the rumble of an engine, a truck from the sound of it, driving on the opposite side of the road, heading in the same direction she was going. She didn’t bother to look but couldn’t mistake the sound of the tires slowing as it approached, and she braced herself for some kind of catcall.
“Need a lift?” the driver, a man in his early twenties, asked. Positioned behind the wheel of an ancient truck that had obviously seen better days, he flashed her a smile that was a little off center, on the wicked side, and sent a warning to her brain. Whether the grin was sincere or just well-practiced she couldn’t determine because of the mirrored sunglasses that served as a shield for his eyes.
“Nah, I can walk.” Her first, natural, do-the-safe-thing response. But she lifted one hand to shade her eyes and squinted to get a better look at him.
“Sure?” He had thick, straight hair, dark brown, streaked with gold and a day’s worth of stubble that couldn’t quite disguise the square angle of his jaw. He wasn’t all that handsome, well, not really, but there was a rugged edge to him that she recognized, an innate sexual energy he possessed and probably used to his advantage. Without knowing anything more about him, she realized he was trouble, the kind of trouble good girls avoided.
“I’m fine. Really.”
“If you’re sure.” He didn’t bother to hide his disbelief.
“I am. Really.”
His smile was mockingly amused. “Your funeral.”
“I doubt it.” Was he flirting with her? This older guy in a faded T-shirt with a few holes around the collar? She felt warm inside, a kind of push-me-pull-you kind of fascination with his devil-may-care attitude.
“Just tryin’ to be chivalrous.”
“Yeah, right.” He was about as far from a knight in shining armor as he could get. What kind of con was he running? “And I’m Joan of Arc.”
“Thought I recognized you.”
Sending him a “drop-dead” look, she started walking again.
“If that’s the way you want it. See ya, kid.” With a glance in his rearview mirror, he stepped on the gas, and the truck shot forward.
Kid? Kid? Her ego deflated. The Coke was suddenly sticky on her legs again, her hair pulled back into an ungainly ponytail, her cutoffs frayed.