Chasing a Dream (3 page)

He checked the mirror on the passenger-side door. “Yeah.”

“That’s my parents,” Tess lied, causing an uneasy quiver in her stomach. The fib chafed her conscience. “They just saw you get in my car, and they’ll be behind us every inch of the way.”

The cowboy faced her with a keen gaze, and Tess’s heartbeat stumbled. Could he tell she was lying?

“So they’d know, right off, if I tried to rape or murder you.” His expression remained impassive. “Is that what you’re saying?”

His blunt reply startled her, but she straightened her spine. “Yes.” It bothered her that he’d read her motives so easily. But she was, admittedly, a horrible liar. Coupled with her distaste for dishonesty, she had little experience with this type of deceit, flimsy as it was.

Turning his gaze toward the windshield, he wearily rested his head on the seat. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So where are you going?” Tess repeated tightly. His insouciance and evasive answers chafed. His casual manner seemed to mock the urgency of her situation.

He regarded her silently for a moment before answering, his expression inscrutable. “Nashville.”

He returned his gaze to the rain and the road.

“Nashville? That’s got to be a two-day drive from here. Were you really planning to walk the whole way?”

Arching one dark eyebrow, he gave her a brief, sideways glance. “If I couldn’t get a ride from a considerate stranger.”

She heard a note of challenge in his voice, as if he dared her to belittle his intentions.

“Well, I don’t necessarily plan to go that direction.” Flexing her fingers then wrapping them back around the steering wheel, she peered across the front seat and met a level gaze.

The corner of his mouth lifted, and an unexpected warmth lit his eyes. “I didn’t think you were. I appreciate the ride as far as you’re willing to take me, just the same.”

His unwavering politeness and calm in response to her coolness plucked at her conscience. Despite her nervousness, she had no reason to act rude.

Dividing her attention between her passenger and the road, she assessed him more carefully. A couple days’ growth of black beard shadowed his cheeks, giving his boyishly handsome face a manly edge. The mellow scent of damp leather from his hiking boots and the clean aroma of June rain clung to him, blending with the new-car smell of her Jimmy.

Noticing her appraising gaze, he stretched his right arm across his chest to offer his hand. “Justin Boyd.”

She glanced down at his hand before giving it a quick shake. “Tess Carpenter.” She used her real name without giving it any thought. Randall had insisted she take his name, for business appearances, even though they’d never legally wed.

“Nice to meet you, Tess. So, where are you folks headed?”

Tess pondered his use of the plural “you folks” before she remembered her story about the occupants of the camper behind her. “Uh, camping.”

She winced at the lame response that sprang to her lips.

“Anywhere in particular or just wherever the mood strikes you?” Humor laced his tone.

“Colorado.” She blurted the first state that came to mind. “In the mountains.”

“Never been there. I bet it’s beautiful.”

Tess, who’d only seen the Colorado Rockies in pictures, bluffed again. “It’s our favorite camping spot.”

“Where are you from?”

Clearly he felt it necessary to make small talk, but she grew increasingly uncomfortable with the lies that tumbled unbidden from her lips each time she answered one of his questions.

“San Antonio . . . uh, formerly,” she amended, realizing she shouldn’t give away too much information about herself.

Confusion darkened his expression. “Formerly? Where do you live now?”

“I . . . uh, nowhere . . . yet.” When his puzzled frown deepened, she added, “I’m looking for a new job and . . . I’ll move wherever the new job takes me.”

“Ah.” He nodded his understanding. “Same here. When I get to Nashville, I plan to take any job that will pay the bills while I work toward my ultimate goal.”

“Which is?”

“A recording contract,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he’d just told her the sky was blue.

“What?” A tiny laugh of disbelief bubbled from her.

The warmth in his expression faded, and his stony reserve made her swallow her laugh with a twinge of regret. Determination blazed in his eyes then, and he set his jaw with a stubborn rigidity.

“You’re not the first person to laugh, but you won’t be the last. I will, when my name’s at the top of the Billboard Hot 100.”

The certainty in his voice and the fire in his eyes convinced her that he just might be right. She wished she had the same optimistic confidence in her future.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at your aspirations. I just didn’t . . . well, it just took me by surprise. It’s not every day you meet a rising star.”

He narrowed his gaze on her as if trying to decide whether to find any sarcasm in her last statement. “I know it won’t be easy. I’ll be one of thousands beating on producers’ doors. But unlike most of my competition, I have three things on my side.”

He held up his fingers as he counted them off to her. “Talent and time.”

“Time?” Tess shot him a questioning glance.

“I intend to stay in Nashville, beating on doors and playing my demo tape for anyone who’ll listen until I get what I want. I flat out refuse to give up.”

His dogged determination was the attitude she needed for her own mission. His optimism sparked an ember of hope in her, and the tension squeezing her chest loosened its grasp a bit. She smiled at him for the gift of reassurance he’d unwittingly given her. “That’s two things. You said three.”

“I did?” His eyes grew dark, and he turned his gaze toward the front to stare out the windshield. “The third one is kind of private. I don’t usually talk about it.”

“All right.” She understood painful secrets, private motivations for desperate acts. Turning her attention back to the highway, she acknowledged the escalating jitters inside her. The more she learned about Justin, the more the restless flutter grew. But why? Shouldn’t she feel calmer with more evidence of his harmlessness? In fact, her predicament posed him far more of a threat than he apparently posed to her.

A flash of understanding followed on the heels of that thought. Guilt yanked her gut in a knot. Her desperation to have a decoy, her selfish motivation for offering him a ride, didn’t justify putting this man in danger. She’d fled Randall because her morals and her deeply rooted ethics wouldn’t allow her to stay with a man so void of decency or conscience. She couldn’t live with the guilty secret he’d sprung on her. Literally. Randall would kill her to keep her silent.

The thud of her pulse echoed in her ears. Her conscience castigated her for putting Justin in harm’s way. A dull ache of remorse settled in her chest.

A moment of thick silence passed before he spoke again softly. “The third reason is an angel . . . named Rebecca. She’s with me. I know she is.”

He flicked an uneasy glance toward her. The fleeting smile she gave him seemed to reassure him.

“This was as much her dream for me as it was my own. She bought me the guitar when I was ten.” Affection, tinged by sorrow, filled his voice. The low, even timbre resounded inside her and increased the guilty ache in the center of her chest.

He’d trusted her enough to confide in her. His unwarranted faith in her made her selfish endangerment of him even more unconscionable. Though she knew that the anonymity of strangers sometimes made such openness easier, his honesty and trust in her created an unwelcome bond with him.

She saw pain in his eyes when he looked at her, and her heart wrenched. Then slowly, like the sun spreading its rays across the horizon in the morning, his lazy grin returned, and a gentle warmth shone from his eyes. “With Becca on my side, I can’t lose.”

His optimism calmed her. He’d managed, if only for a minute, to distract her from the daunting fear that had set her on the road, fleeing for her life. His easy-going charm made her smile, and his confidence and tenacity encouraged her. “You know, Justin Boyd, I believe you just might be a rising star at that.”

For a moment he appeared stunned by her compliment. Then he curled his mouth in a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I get a little carried away sometimes.” He lapsed into another brief reflective silence. “Nobody that I left behind shared my faith in my dream. Rebecca’s the only one who ever did. I tend to get defensive out of habit.”

Tess’s gaze drifted to him again before returning her full attention to the road. “No offense taken.”

In fact, she admired the conviction and aspirations of this blue-eyed, stubborn cowboy. That’s when the irony hit her.

He wanted fame, and she needed obscurity. He was aiming for the spotlight, and she had to find the shadows. While Justin chased a dream, she was running from a nightmare.

CHAPTER
TWO

Justin watched in the side mirror as the camper that had followed them for the last couple hours pulled off at an exit Tess didn’t take. She drove on, oblivious to the loss of her tail, and he grinned. He’d suspected she invented her tale of camping with her parents, but he now knew without a doubt that she’d lied. Not that he blamed her for devising a ruse to dissuade a would-be attacker.

The camper’s departure brought Justin back to his initial reaction when she’d offered him a ride.

Why?

The milk of human kindness didn’t usually override the potential danger a hitchhiker posed to a woman traveling by herself. Most women would have passed him by without a second thought.

Something had her spooked. A simple flat tire couldn’t account for the tension that wound her tighter than a guitar string. Gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles blanched, sitting ramrod straight and checking her mirrors more often than a fashion model, Tess vibrated with enough anxiety to set him on edge as well.

As if to prove his point, her cell phone rang at that moment, and Tess jerked at the muffled trill. Her hazel eyes widened with apprehension, and she stared at the phone as if she’d discovered a rattlesnake in the truck. Catching her lower lip in her teeth, she glanced back at the road, ignoring the ringing phone. She’d already eaten off all her lipstick, chewing her lip until it looked ready to bleed.

“Want me to get that?” He aimed a finger at the persistent phone.

“No!” The alarm in her expression melted to chagrin when she met his puzzled gaze, and she took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through pursed lips. “I . . . I don’t want to talk to anybody right now. It’s—”

Before she could finish, Justin picked up the phone and punched the power button to stop the incessant ringing. “There. They can leave a message.”

As Tess turned her attention back to the road, she lifted a trembling hand to rub her temple.

“Are you all right?” He studied the harsh lines of worry that creased her otherwise attractive face. She nodded unconvincingly.

While she stared out at the road, her expression haggard, he allowed his gaze to linger on the comely woman. Other than the dark circles beneath her eyes and tiny worry lines at the corners of her mouth, her flawless skin radiated health and looked satiny soft.

His fingers itched for the privilege to comb through her mane of ashen brown hair or playfully tweak her pert nose. His lips twitched, longing for a taste of the twin chocolate brown freckles on the side of her slim throat. He wanted to sample her fragile, pink lips, as well, and soothe the irritation her nervous habit of biting them caused.

Having molded to her form as they dried from the rain, her silky blouse and khaki shorts hugged her slender body, revealing her graceful, womanly curves. Coupled with her obvious agitation, her petite size added a certain vulnerability to her appearance that disturbed him. Justin dismissed his uneasiness, loath to examine its source, and contributed his own disquiet to her jitters.

When he spotted the elaborately jeweled band on her hand, he sighed. She might be a common man’s lustful fantasy, but she was also some damn lucky man’s wife.

“So, why didn’t your husband come with you on this trip?”

To his amazement and consternation, Tess’s face drained of color, and her eyes darkened with what he could only call fear.

“Husband? Who says I’m married?”

“That rock you’re wearing was my first clue.” He tipped his head toward her left hand, which still squeezed the steering wheel for all it was worth. She raised her hand and stared at the ring for a second or two in silence.

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips before she tugged the band off her finger and shoved it in her pocket. Returning her gaze to the road, she stared ahead silently with wide, doe-like eyes.

He sat frozen, watching her while an eerie intuition prickled the back of his neck. Her obvious fear, her attempt to hide the evidence of her marital status, and her deafening silence prodded a dormant guilt and woke his protective instinct.

“Rebecca, you can’t ignore the problem and think it will just go away!” “Leave me alone, Justin. I can handle him.”

Shifting in his seat, he searched for a safe, lighthearted topic of conversation that would dispel both her anxiety and the flash of painful memories that unexpectedly haunted him. Distracting her from her troubles didn’t seem like much help, but he felt compelled to do something that would ease her palpable distress.

“So what line of work will you be looking for when you settle . . . wherever?”

A quick glance. Hesitation. A nibbled lip. “Marketing.”

“The research side or are you—”

“So, tell me, cowboy, where are you from?”

He heard the false animation she put behind the question, a cheer that didn’t reach her eyes. Clearly her life was not open for discussion.

“Cowboy?” Following her lead, he arched an eyebrow and gave her an amused grin.

“Yeah. You’ve got the hat, the guitar, the whole Nashville thing.”

“And that makes me a cowboy?”

Tess sighed. “Forget it.”

He sensed her withdrawal as he watched a shadow cross her face. Her reaction to his teasing stabbed him with guilt without fully understanding why. “I’m from a little town in west Texas that I’m sure you’ve never heard of.”