Authors: Glenna Sinclair
Dare
Copyright © 2016
All Rights Reserved
. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
The only thing I noticed about the car as its side crunched and dragged across my front left bumper was that it was nice. It had a midnight black paint job and dark tinted windows to match, and it was small enough to serve no real purpose other than show off, spinning its wheels and revving its engine and glinting in the sunlight as it got smaller in the distance, a shiny speck in the faraway road.
This car did no such thing. Its driver blared the horn even though it was the one at fault, cutting across all the lanes to make a try for the exit we just passed.
“Asshole!” I cried, pressing my forearm against my beloved truck’s horn as I fought to keep it on the road. The sound of metal on metal was awful, making me cringe and wish I had another pair of hands to cover my ears. I shuddered at the damage evident as the sports car fishtailed in front of me and wondered if the truck was just as bad.
The truck was my baby. More importantly, the truck was Dad’s baby. I was responsible for its general upkeep and cleanliness because I used it the most, but I never missed his nostalgic gaze as I pulled it out from the barn, loaded with produce, for a delivery into the city. If he could have afforded to retire this truck and buy a new one, he would’ve. I frequently teased him that he wanted to put the old thing out to pasture, to let it roam and romp in the fields, and live out its days as a pampered stud.
It was Dad I thought about as I pulled the shuddering truck to the shoulder of the highway, my heart galloping in my chest. The other driver had done the same thing, just a few yards ahead. I wondered if the other driver was hurt, and only assessed myself belatedly for damage. No, the only thing that was pricked on me was my sense of outrage. Hadn’t the other driver seen me? The truck was massive, impossible to miss. Was the other driver blind, distracted, or just plain stupid?
I hadn’t realized how badly my hands were shaking until I put the truck in park, turned the keys in the ignition, and missed the handle of the door four times. Vehicles whizzed by on the highway, most of them giving us wide berth. It was my first wreck, which was probably more of a testament to how infrequently I got off the farm than to my safe driving skills. I was a good enough driver though, and this hadn’t been my fault. I hoped the insurance company would believe me. Hell, I hoped Dad believed me.
I finally managed to get the door open, easing myself onto the ground and keeping my body flat to the truck as car after car sped by. You never realized just how fast someone was going until you slowed down. A passing motorist beeped at me rapidly, a staccato tune of horn blasts that faintly gave off the impression of “ha-ha, sucks to be you.”
Yes, it did suck to be me. I was going to be late to the delivery, late getting back home, and when I did get home, I’d have terrible news for Dad.
I shielded my eyes with one hand and straightened my button-down shirt with the other, before hitching up the back of my jeans. I scuffed at the gravel and pebbles of glass that populated the shoulder with the bottom of my boot. The other driver hadn’t gotten out of the car yet, which was just as well. I needed to see what kind of damage the truck had sustained.
My teeth clamped down on my lower lip automatically, and I sucked in air, dismayed. I’d hoped that the blemishes would be minimal. It wasn’t as if the truck were made of fragile Plexiglas. This bad girl was a classic, every inch of her covered in real steel. Despite that, the left front headlight glass was broken. I cleared what I could out of the cavity with my hand, careful not to cut myself, and sighed. The bulb was broken in its socket, too. That would be a pain in my ass.
The other car had hit me at such an angle that it tore the bumper from the body. It hung comically, as if someone had walloped the old truck in its jaw. No, there would be no chance of hiding this from Dad. He would have to be informed. I sighed and jiggled the bumper, trying to judge if it would hold for the rest of my commute. It was awfully loose. I made a snap decision and moved to the other side, kicking downward with the heel of my boot until the entire thing clattered to the ground noisily.
“Now, you can’t pin that one on me.”
I whirled around, out of breath from my efforts, and my eyes widened in spite of the sun beating down on us. Standing in front of me was the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on. His dark hair was trimmed and parted sharply on the side, and he pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead to look at me. His brown eyes were rich, like chocolate, and amused. He cut a trim figure, his sleeves rolled up, suit jacket draped over one shoulder, and he gave me the same impression his car had—all for show. That was fine. I’d stare at him all I liked, if that was what he wanted. He was a whole head taller than I was, but that was pretty typical of most anyone. I’d gotten my height from Dad, who liked to point out anytime the issue came up that he was just as tall as he needed to be, thank you very much.
I was self-conscious. Everything about this stranger screamed money, and everything about me screamed thrift. A thrift store was exactly where I’d found these cowboy boots, the heel a little too high to make them legitimate work boots, but I made do. With all of my clothes faded, ripped, and stained from work on the farm, could I be blamed for wanting something a little fancier, something a little fun? They’d kicked the crap out of that messed up bumper and done their job.
“The bumper was too loose to safely drive the truck,” I explained, tucking an errant piece of my red hair behind my ear, aware that the man watched me do it like a hawk. “I’ve still got miles to go, as they say. Didn’t you see me?”
“Saw you going a full ten miles per hour under the speed limit,” the man said coolly. “You’re a danger to both yourself and other drivers.”
I huffed with indignation. “There’s no law against taking things a little slower. You’re the one who was driving like a lunatic.” Okay, and maybe I’d been singing along to the radio, thinking about things that had very little to do with driving when this jerk pierced my reality, but that was nobody’s business but mine.
“You know, people have places to be,” he said. “And you’ve made me miss a meeting.”
“Well, you’ve already missed it, so no need to be upset about it,” I retorted. “I guess I’ll call the police.”
“Why?”
“To make this little incident official,” I said, pointing at my poor, battered truck. “How else am I going to file an insurance claim?”
“Look, don’t call the police,” the man said. “Let’s handle this thing off the books, okay?”
“You got something to hide?” I asked, peering at him.
“No, nothing to hide.” He fumbled in his pocket until he withdrew a business card. “I’m just a busy man. It would take police forever to get here, and it would be dark by the time we gave them our statements and got off of the side of the road. I’ll take care of everything.”
I took the card he offered me and eyed it suspiciously. “What kind of name is Sebastian Clementine?”
He laughed shortly. “The one my parents gave me, unfortunately. What’s yours?”
“Rachel. Rachel Dare.” And there I was, ignoring every piece of safety advice I’d ever gotten from anyone, exchanging names with a stranger on the side of a busy highway, the sun looking awfully eager to start its march to the horizon.
“That’s a good name,” Sebastian remarked. “Strong. Honest. Not like my mouthful of a name.”
“You could always have your name changed, if you have that much against it,” I told him.
“Too much trouble,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve already built a life on this name, I guess. Shouldn’t be too angry at it.”
“So, our vehicles,” I said, coughing awkwardly, trying to stay on topic. “What do you mean, you’re going to take care of it?”
“You’re right. I was in a hurry. I cut things too close. And my car took the majority of the damage. I’ll take care of everything.”
“You’re not supposed to admit fault in an accident, you know.”
“I know,” he said, putting his sunglasses back down and looking down the road. “But I am running awfully late, so I’d like to skip as many steps as possible. I’ll be in contact with you, Rachel Dare, about getting your truck fixed. Though that bumper was intact when you pulled off to the side of the highway.”
“The bumper was hanging by a thread, Sebastian Clementine,” I said. “If I’d have tried to get on back home with it like that, it would’ve likely fallen off and caused another wreck you’d be held responsible for.”
“Whatever you say.” He sauntered back to his damaged car and got it started again, a testament to the fact that most of the damage was cosmetic. I watched him pick up speed on the shoulder and pull back out into traffic with a roar of his engine, joining the rest of the vehicles whizzing by. It was as if a strange being from another world had just dropped in on mine for a brief visit before flying back out of it again in some kind of spinning saucer. I felt strangely rootless, as if meeting Sebastian Clementine, whoever he was, would have a bearing on the rest of my life.
I scoffed at myself, kicking at the gravel dotting the asphalt, and looked down at the card. Sebastian Clementine of Clementine Organics. Ah-ha. That was the name he’d built his life on. The card listed an address and not much else.
It was then I groaned and hit my own forehead. Why was I such an idiot? Sebastian had given me his card, but he hadn’t taken any of my information besides my name. How in the hell was he going to contact me?
My shoulders sagged, and I walked back to the truck, squinting against the glare of the sun against the bumper I’d kicked off. I picked it up and tossed it in the bed of the truck. It was a good thing I was headed back to the farm and not into the city, or else the bumper would be riding up front in the cab beside me. And that was the only good thing about this ridiculous situation. That I’d already made my delivery and didn’t have to spend too long in the truck by myself, considering how stupid I was.
Sebastian had asked me not to call the police, and now there wasn’t any way to get the money I’d need to make the repairs to this truck. I had a lot of explaining to do when I got home, and I didn’t look forward to a second of it.
If that was how city boys acted—quick talking, dishonest, contemptuous—then give me a country boy any day by God.
“Rachel? What in the sweet hell have you done to my truck?”
I sighed as Dad approached, already setting into me before I even got a chance to get fully out of the cab. I’d hoped he'd be occupying himself elsewhere on the farm—there was enough to do, after all—but he’d been waiting for me, eager to talk about how the delivery went. It was a new client, a new venue we were trying out, one that he’d seemed excited about. Our produce was good, but it was small batch. We couldn’t match the kind of output competitive farms had, but we more than made up for it in quality.
At least, that’s what we wanted our clients to understand.
“I’m fine, Dad, thanks for asking,” I sighed, shutting the door to the truck. “And last I heard, this truck was mine.”
“Not if you don’t take care of her, she’s not.” Dad bent and squinted as he examined the damage in the fading sun.
“Her? She? Really, Dad?” The truck was an antique, sure, but not one that deserved a gender. It was old enough to be crotchety and occasionally unreliable, but not so old as to deserve tender loving care and membership into the antique registry of vehicles.
“What happened?” he demanded. “And where’s the bumper, for God’s sake?”
“It’s here, in the back,” I sighed, heaving it over and out of the bed. “It was just hanging, and I was afraid to drive with it like that, so I kicked it off.”
“Kicked it?” His tone was as if I’d just admitted to kicking a baby animal. “You kicked off the bumper?”
“I was on the side of the highway. I didn’t have a choice. Some jerk cut me off. Hurt his car more than it hurt the truck.”
“I certainly hope so!” Dad declared, taking the bumper back from me and examining it. “You’re going to file the insurance claim first thing, before dinner. We gotta get this taken care of.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” I said, my uncertainty making him look up at me, his mouth set in a straight line.
“Rachel…”
“Dad, the guy was driving a really nice car,” I said. “It was his fault. He told me he’d take care of everything, and he gave me his…contact information.” That was false. All I had was a business card and an address for God knew what, but Dad was already red in the face.
“Rachel, damn it, you weren’t born yesterday. You know what you’re supposed to do in case of an accident—call the police so you can file an insurance claim.”
“I know that,” I said quickly. “But this guy knew it was his fault. He cut me off. That’s why he said he wanted to handle it off the books. Said he’d make sure I had the money I needed to make the repairs.”
“How can you even be sure that he’ll get in contact with you?” Dad asked. “You have no guarantee except for his word. No guarantee whatsoever.”
“He looked like an upstanding guy,” I lied. “I think he’ll be in contact very soon indeed. And I have his contact information, too.” Dad had voiced my biggest fear—that even though Sebastian knew my name, he wouldn’t bother getting in contact with me. What was I supposed to do then? Go to the address and shake him down for however many hundreds of dollars I’d need? The thought made me shudder.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Dad huffed, setting the bumper down so he could demonstrate to me how exasperated he was by throwing his hands up into the air. “This is a disaster, Rachel! Think of how it looks to clients when we deliver their produce in an old hunk of junk truck that’s missing its bumper.”
“Now you’re overreacting,” I said, skeptical. “You love this truck more than you love me, old man?”
In spite of his outrage, Dad cracked a smile, and I knew I’d defrayed his anger. “Now I
know
you were born yesterday.”
“Can we focus on the fact that this is my very first accident, and it wasn’t even my fault?” I asked. “That has to say something for a twenty-two-year-old, doesn’t it? Six whole years out on the road, burning rubber, and this is the first fender bender I’ve had.”
“I guess that’s true,” he said. “I know sixteen-year-olds who have totaled their parents’ cars not a month after getting their permits.”
“And was I one of those sixteen-year-olds?”
“Of course you weren’t.”
“I’ll take care of the truck, Dad,” I said. “I promise. It’s my responsibility, and I know that. And I’ll make sure that guy pays. You don’t worry about this. You have enough to worry about.” That was true. Dad ran this place, and running a farm was a hell of a thing. When your livelihood depended on the whims of both the weather and the economy, it was a tough pill to swallow. Sometimes, I wondered why he did it at all. He spent so much of his days stressed out, sometimes shouting at the sky to rain or stop raining, kicking the wheels of the tractors that refused to start, or bemoaning a misshapen pepper. I couldn’t see what kind of pleasure he derived from it, but it was his greatest passion. I guessed you couldn’t deny a man his greatest passion, no matter how much pain it dealt to him.
“Did I ever tell you this here truck was my best friend as a young man?” Dad was saying as I ruminated.
“Many, many times,” I sighed.
“Well, you’ll listen to me tell it to you again,” he said. “This here truck was my best friend. Dependable. More reliable than any person I’ve ever known. And that’s why I always wanted to treat her right. To thank her for taking care of me. And now, to thank her for taking care of you. I’m glad you weren’t hurt, Rachel.”
“It was minor, Dad,” I assured him. “Just a bit of a shock. Didn’t see the other guy coming.”
“Well, are you hungry?” That was Dad’s peace offering. We’d hashed out his feelings over the car and now we were on to more important things—sustenance.
“I guess I am,” I allowed. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Oh, I already fried up some chicken,” he said. “Biscuits are cooling.”
“Dad, now I told you I’d make dinner tonight. You can’t run a farm and do everything around the house, too. It’s too much. You’ll run yourself into the ground.”
“I like cooking for you,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to cook all the time.”
We walked arm-in-arm to the house, a two-story affair that stood on a small hill overlooking the fields, barn, and small collection of other buildings. Our property abutted a small river and was bordered on its other two sides by other farms. I’d grown up here my entire life, and it meant everything to Dad. All of my childhood memories were formed in the mud of the fields or the dimness of that big barn, playing when I was supposed to be working, distracting those there to work. Being out in the sun all day made freckles burst out over my fair skin, which always burned instead of tanned, and I couldn't seem to keep a hat on my head.
I let Dad talk and talk at the dinner table, making noises of agreement or dissent where they were warranted, my mind on one Sebastian Clementine. It would be easier just to hate him outright for complicating my day—and my life—if he hadn’t been so damn sexy. If I’d been immune to his charms, then maybe Dad wouldn’t have nearly blown a gasket over the truck. I supposed that I’d just have to rely on the inherent good in people—whether I really believed that or not—and give him time to get in contact with me.
“I’m going to turn in,” Dad said, making a move to carry a couple of plates to the sink.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned him, making a grab for the plates and succeeding in snagging them away from him. “You can’t cook and clean the dishes afterward. You have to leave something for me to do.”
“I don’t mind doing it, Rachel,” he reasoned. “I know you work hard.”
“Not as hard as you do.” I gathered all of the plates and glasses and utensils on the table and carried them to the sink.
“You’re an important part of this operation, you know that?”
“I know, Dad.” I scraped the food from plates into the garbage can we used for biodegradable items. Before bed, I’d empty the can into our compost pile out back. That rich material would go toward growing our own small vegetable patch, apart from the other fields. It was easy to embrace the ethics and practices of our farm in our own day-to-day lives. We’d seen how much better food tasted and just the kind of impact we were having on the environment after changing our practices. Organically produced food was just as important to Dad and me as it was to our customers.
“I don’t know how I’d do it without you,” Dad was saying, as I filled one side of the sink with water. “You’re one of the most important parts of the operation, transporting our produce to the vendors in the city. I know it’s not easy driving all those hours alone out there.”
“That’s not one of the most important parts of the operation,” I said, laughing at him as I squirted some soap into the hot water. “I would say growing the produce is the most important part of the operation.”
“But if you didn’t deliver our produce, no one would buy it,” he said.
“Okay, fine, I accept it.” I raised my hands up like a champion, clasping my fingers together and pumping my hands up and down. “I am the most important part of this operation. In accepting this well-known fact, I require a raise immediately, and a tiara I can wear out and about on the farm so that all may know my new status.”
Dad just shook his head at me and took his leave. He went to bed early because he was the first one awake, making a pot of coffee and heading out to inspect the farm long before the sun peeked above the horizon. I didn’t get up as early as he did—I was more of a night owl than anything—but I tried my best. Most mornings though, I had to pour the coffee he’d made, which had turned lukewarm, into my mug and microwave it. It was never as good then as it was fresh, but it had to do. I’d pour it from the mug into a travel cup that I could tote along with the tasks I had to help complete, fuel to help me keep going…even when all I wanted to do was be in bed. I blamed it on college, where I’d learned to party or study all night. I was still trying to recover—even though it had nearly been a year since I’d done either of those things.
I liked nighttime. I liked that it was quiet, that the farm was asleep, and I had time to myself. I was covetous of nighttime because it was my time. Living on a farm gave me almost no personal time to myself. I was expected to be on hand for every emergency, every task, and every delivery, no matter where or when it was. As long as Dad was asleep and I was awake, however, my time was my own. I could do anything I wanted to do—read books that had precious little to do with farming, watch movies or late night television, learn new hairstyles from YouTube videos that loaded painfully slow on my computer, or paint my nails. Everyone would tease me about my nails, how it was a waste to slap on a layer of polish that would just be chipped off by nightfall, but I didn’t care. It was my mode of self-expression, my exploration of my feminine side. If I couldn’t wear heels and dresses in my daily life, then by God, I would wear nail polish.
Maybe I was shallow. I didn’t know. I liked beauty and fashion, and I liked singing and pop stars. If I could’ve gotten away with it, I would’ve spent my nights belting out the latest hits from all my favorite singers, looking up the lyrics online. But I knew that I’d wake Dad up, shock him with my predilections, make him worry that I was more interested in appearances than substance.
That I was more interested in a life off the farm than I was on it.
My thoughts drifted toward my mother, as they often did when I wasn’t busy for once. Out of some sense of loyalty to Dad, I never tried to contact her—which would’ve been a feat in itself. I supposed she’d understood quite some time ago that we were both pretty upset at her for running out on us, so it wasn’t as if she’d sent us her contact information.
What I did know—or what I thought I knew—was that she was in Las Vegas, a whole state away, because she hadn’t been able to bear living on the farm for a second more. The fields and barn and produce that we grew through sheer love of the process and the importance we placed in it failed to move her anymore. Maybe there were prettier places in California that we could’ve moved to, could’ve taken her to so we could’ve convinced her to transfer her dreams to us, to dream of something different, perhaps, and find it here on the farm, but we’d failed to do that. She left in the night, shortly after my twelfth birthday. What I remembered most was Dad’s grief the next day, but what I remembered second to that was that I might’ve been able to stop her.
She’d woken me gently, sitting on the edge of my bed, eager to impart some last piece of herself to me before leaving forever.
“Rachel, the biggest thing you need to understand is that dreams are so important,” she’d said softly in her musical voice. “Dreams are the essence of who you are, and if you don’t follow them, you betray your very reason for living.”
My twelve-year-old eyes had barely been able to stay awake. I’d gotten used to the idea that my mother wasn’t like my friends’ mothers who made them lunches and visited during the school day and nurtured them. My mother wanted me to realize and understand that there were things much more important than her adhering to a classical interpretation of what a mother was. I didn’t understand that point until years later. Until then, I just figured my mother was an odd bird.
“I have always wanted to be a dancer in Las Vegas,” my mother continued softly. “And if I keep pushing that away, keep ignoring that dream, I will lose myself. I will have lived my whole life ignoring what it is I really wanted to do, and my life will have been a waste.”