One Night (5 page)

“You want me to come back later?” Carrie asked stiffly, slowing her steps. She did this thing with her eyes that made them incredibly round, as if to say she was impressed that he’d managed to pick up a woman while in a jail cell.

“Don’t you dare leave,” Kyle snapped, more to hide his guilt than from any real irritation. “Mary Lu was just about to go, isn’t that right, Mary Lu?”

“You can give me a call over at Billy Bob’s Café if you—”

“Billy Bob’s!” Carrie cried, at the same time as Kyle did.

Mary Lu leaped back a step. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Kyle assured her gently. They’d frightened the girl out of five years of her life.

Carrie waited until Mary Lu had gone before she walked over to the table. She lifted the linen napkin and viewed the contents of the meal the apparently love-starved waitress had delivered.

“What’d you find out?” Kyle asked.

“The bailiff won’t accept the money until eight o’clock in the morning, so you’re stuck here for the night.” She pulled back the pink napkin and glanced his way. “Are you going to eat this?”

“Is your stomach the only thing you can think about?” The words came out like bits of chewed-off steel. He was incarcerated and would be for several more hours, and all Carrie was interested in was dinner.
His
dinner, he might add.

She ignored him and wolfed down the biscuit. “I have some other news, but I’m not going to tell you if all you can do is bite my head off. It wasn’t me who chose to flagrantly disobey the law.”

“I jaywalked.” He regained his composure by degrees. For all her talk about him liberating his anger, one would think she’d appreciate the fact he had vented his frustration. Doing time tended to do that to a man, he decided.

By now Carrie had pulled her chair up to the table and had helped herself to his chicken-fried steak. Looking at her, one would think she hadn’t eaten in days.

“I thought you had some news,” he said, irritated and not bothering to hide it.

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” she managed between bites. She wiped the corner of her mouth with the napkin and set the fork aside long enough to give him the news. “The car will be ready first thing in the morning, and it isn’t going to be the least bit expensive. I had Matt put it on my VISA card.”

“Matt?”

“Matt’s the guy who’s putting your car back together. He moved to Wheatland about three years ago and had a rough time of it in the beginning, but the townsfolk have mostly accepted him now.”

So she was on a first-name basis with the mechanic. That didn’t take long, he noticed. “I take
it you came up with the necessary cash to post bail,” he said, needing to change the subject. If he didn’t know better he’d think he was jealous of this faceless mechanic.

Carrie patted her hip pocket, the very one she’d taken pains to entice him with earlier in the day. “It’s right here. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”

The fear she might lose it or someone might steal it sent a shot of adrenaline rushing through him, but he knew better than to suggest she put it somewhere for safekeeping. The mere idea would insult her, and at the moment she was his only link to the outside world.

Several questions hovered in the back of his mind, but the feared asking them might alienate her. He knew that she’d pawned something, but he hadn’t a clue what. Then he noticed her opal ring was missing.

“You pawned your ring,” he said softly, astonished that she’d willingly part with something she clearly prized.

“I didn’t have any other choice.” She stopped eating long enough to answer him and then returned to the steak with gusto. Kyle hadn’t a clue how she managed to maintain her small frame. He’d known women twice her size who ate less.

“Mr. Dillon, he’s the pawnshop owner, promised on his mother’s grave he wouldn’t sell that ring. I explained the circumstances and—”

“You told him about me being in jail?” Kyle didn’t know why that offended him, but it did. He didn’t like the idea of Carrie reduced to pawning her valuables for anyone—including himself, he guessed.

“Oh, no.” Carrie was quick to correct his assumption. “I told him about Grammy, and how the ring had been in our family for years and years and handed down to the oldest daughter on her twenty-first birthday.”

“I see,” Kyle murmured. “I feel bad about all this.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said, waving her hand. Then, as if she’d forgotten something important, she added, “I got a hotel room for the night. In case you’re interested, that’s what took me so long. It seems everyone in town’s heard about the two of us and assumes we’re hardened criminals.”

“Wouldn’t you know it? All of a sudden every hotel in town is booked solid,” he supplied. “But you found something?”

“Sort of.” She paused and stared into space. “You have to understand this isn’t the type of place I’d normally choose. It’s outside of town.”

For the life of him if she told him it was a chicken ranch, Kyle wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. He’d always thought of himself as a calm and collected person. Over the years he’d carefully trained himself to conceal his emotions. In the span of a single day that had all changed.

At the moment he felt downright explosive. “How far outside of town?” he asked with forced calm.

Carrie paused, the fork lifted and poised in front of her mouth. “Less than a mile, I’d say. It’s a weird-looking place.”

“Weird-looking,” Kyle echoed, uncertain how to translate that.

“Yes, the first time I saw it, I thought it was the
original Bates Motel. It reassured me when I discovered the proprietors are a middle-aged couple whose children have grown and left home. It’s a bed-and-breakfast place now.”

“I see.” Kyle relaxed somewhat. Was he going to get a minute’s sleep, worrying about Carrie? Somehow he doubted rest was an option.

“I brought you some dinner,” she informed him, standing and handing him the white sack. “I didn’t know about sweet Mary Lu.” She pressed her clenched hands to her breasts and her shoulders rose with a dramatic sigh.

Kyle chose to ignore her. “I’m not hungry,” he announced.

“Trust me, you will be.”

“What is it?”

“A club sandwich, potato salad, and two large oatmeal cookies. I had Mrs. Johnson from Bates Motel make it up for you.”

Kyle peeked inside the sack and reached for the sandwich. Maybe he could eat something, after all.

“Where’s Sheriff Collins?”

“Probably home watching television,” Kyle muttered as he peeled the cellophane wrap away from the sandwich. It astonished him how loosely run the jail was. If he was intent on breaking out, he’d wager money all he’d need do was ask Carrie to search through a few drawers for an extra set of keys.

“I suppose I’d better get back to the Johnsons’ place,” Carrie said.

Kyle wasn’t keen on having her leave, but he couldn’t think of an excuse for her to stay. He never thought he’d feel that way about Carrie Jamison.
Usually a fifteen-minute dose of the deejay was enough to last him for weeks. All at once he was frantically searching for something that would keep her with him. Kyle would like to believe this was due to his incarceration, but he doubted it.

She was almost to the door when he stopped her. “Carrie.”

Eagerly she whirled around, as if she too were reluctant to part. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

He wasn’t sure where to start. His indebtedness was multiple. “For everything, but mostly for pawning your ring on my behalf.”

“No problem.”

“I’m sorry it came to that. I’ll get you the money the instant we get our traveler’s checks replaced.”

A slow, easy smile spread across her features, lighting up her eyes in such a way that seemed to reach across the room and touch him.

“You owe me big-time for that, fella.” She blew him a kiss and was gone before she could see him catch it in his right hand and hold on to this imaginary part of her with a tight fist for several moments.

A deputy arrived shortly afterward with an older man who’d obviously been arrested for being drunk in public. At least the man was a happy drunk, who insisted on singing something about Tom Dooley and hanging down his head.

The officer placed the guy in the cell next to Kyle. The drunk waved to Kyle and fell onto the bunk. “Howdy.”

“Hello,” Kyle responded cautiously.

“I’m drunk.”

“I noticed.”

“You be quiet and sleep it off, Carl,” the deputy instructed.

“You be quiet,” Carl shouted, and thinking himself inordinately clever, he laughed.

“What’d they get you for, buddy?” Carl asked, sitting up long enough to pose the question and then promptly falling back onto the cot.

“Jaywalking,” Kyle admitted sheepishly.

Carl let loose with a loud screech and leaped off the bed. He hurried to the cell door and gripped the bars. “I ain’t stayin’ in a cell next to a jaywalker! What kind of place is Sheriff Collins running here?”

“Shut up and go to sleep, Carl,” the deputy advised again, sounding bored.

“I ain’t safe. You put me next to a…a jaywalker.”

“You know what a jaywalker is, Carl?” the deputy asked with infinite patience.

“You think I’m dumb? Of course I know. He walked all over those pretty blue birds. You put me in jail next to a bird killer. I don’t have to take this.” He braced his hands against the bars and rattled them with the full force of his strength. “I want out of here.”

Kyle lay down on the lumpy cot and tucked his hands beneath his head. “My sentiments exactly,” he muttered.

“
We’re asking that you
contact the Secret Service if you run into Max Sanders a second time,” Richards instructed them as Sheriff Collins unlocked the jail door. With a dignified gait, Kyle stepped out of the cell.

Personally, Carrie would welcome the opportunity to tangle with that scoundrel Sanders just so she could tell him what she thought of him. The man had caused her and Kyle nothing but grief.

Kyle accepted a business card from Richards and studied the phone number as if he intended to memorize it then and there. “Is that what this is all about?” he asked quietly.

Carrie wasn’t deceived by his docile manner. Kyle was furious, and doing a marvelous job of restraining his irritation. But just barely. She’d seen him in this mood before, and if Richards knew what was good for him, he’d tread lightly.

First thing that morning, Carrie had gone over to the mechanic’s and picked up the BMW. She’d guessed correctly that Kyle would be eager to be on his way.

The minute Kyle tucked Richards’s card in his wallet, he strode purposefully toward the door. Carrie noted that he made no promises one way or the other to contact the Secret Service. Nor did he wait for her. Instead he left her to traipse obediently after him.

She scurried toward the door, then paused and turned defiantly back to the sheriff and the government agent.

“I think you should know I intend to write my United States congressman over the way we’ve been treated.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Richards murmured, but he didn’t reveal the least bit of concern over her threat.

“I will, you know.” She waved her index finger at them as positive proof. “Mark my words, this is no idle threat.”

Kyle was in his BMW and had started the engine by the time she slipped into the seat next to him.

“You want to head back to the interstate?” she asked, clicking her seat belt into place, certain he cursed the day he’d followed her recommendation to travel off the main road.

“No,” he answered shortly, not bothering to explain his reasons. In one word he made it clear he wasn’t in the mood to talk.

So this was the way it was to be. Carrie realized that Kyle intended to give her the silent treatment. That was dandy with her. She’d spent a miserable
night sleeping in Mrs. Johnson’s cotton robe. The woman had insisted on washing Carrie’s clothes so she had something clean to wear in the morning. She would have picked up a few things for herself if she hadn’t been so involved in getting Kyle out of the slammer. Now it would have to wait.

They traveled for half an hour without a word passing between them, but it wasn’t a companionable silence. Carrie wanted to talk, but it was plain Kyle didn’t.

Sometime later, he finally spoke. “The delay in Wheatland shouldn’t cause much of a problem. We can stay overnight in Paris and still be in Dallas early tomorrow.”

“Perfect,” she said agreeably. She wasn’t planning to meet Tom Atkins until the evening cocktail party, and that was her only concern. How she would miss the beautiful red-sequined dress! But she’d have time to visit her sister, who lived near Dallas, and Cathie could lend her something.

“Perfect,” he repeated after her. She noticed how he purposely relaxed his fingers. Until then he’d gripped the steering wheel as though he were driving the Indy Five Hundred.

“How was your night?” she asked, making polite conversation.

“Miserable. Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?”

“All right.”

“How about you?” he asked.

Carrie opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a word, Kyle’s radar detector started beeping loudly.

Kyle immediately removed his foot from the gas pedal to decrease their speed, but it was too late. The blinking red-and-blue light of a state patrol car was flashing in the rearview mirror.

Kyle mumbled something unrepeatable under his breath, pulled over to the side of the road, and stopped the car. “I wonder if I can manage to stay out of jail this time,” he muttered.

Carrie squeezed his arm reassuringly. Kyle was as stiff as a three-day-old corpse.

The patrolman climbed out of his car and stepped up to the BMW. With a casual air, Kyle rolled down his window.

“Hello, officer.” His tone was cheerful, albeit strained.

“Hello. May I see your driver’s license and the car registration, please.” The officer was brisk and businesslike.

“Was I speeding?” Kyle asked. Carrie knew full well that he had been.

The officer was intent on reading over Kyle’s license and didn’t respond to his question. “I see you folks are from Kansas City.”

“That’s right.”

Again Carrie left the talking to Kyle. The less she opened her mouth, the better. At least that was the way Kyle would view it.

“You two been married long?”

Kyle exchanged glances with Carrie. “We’re not married,” he told the officer, whose name tag identified him as Andrew Lindsey.

“Take my advice and don’t do it.”

“Do it?” Kyle repeated.

“Get married.”

“You don’t need to worry,” Carrie said, leaning toward Kyle to get a better look at the patrolman. “We don’t even like each other. We just work together. For one reason or another, we’ve never quite hit it off.”

“I don’t think the officer is interested in listening to our differences,” Kyle said pointedly.

“Oh-oh.” Andrew Lindsey opened the door and slipped onto the back seat. He removed his hat and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “That’s the way it started with Gayle and me too. She was a secretary at the station, and the two of us couldn’t see eye to eye on anything. The next thing I know, we’re married.”

“Married.” Kyle laughed. “Trust me, officer, I’d rather eat skunk meat than marry this woman.”

Carrie shot him a hot look, her temper rising. He didn’t have to be so insulting. “I’d rather leap off a tall building than spend the rest of my life with this man!” she retaliated heatedly.

“You don’t need to worry, it isn’t going to happen.”

“You’re darn right it isn’t going to happen. I’d be crazy to marry anyone like you.”

“No more crazy than I’d be to marry you!”

“She left me, you know,” Patrolman Lindsey said, his shoulders sagging. Carrie guessed he hadn’t heard a word of their heated exchange.

“I’m sorry,” she offered sympathetically, twisting around in order to see the other man. “When did all this happen?”

Kyle muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t hear. Apparently he wasn’t keen on her feeding this conversation.

“Last week,” Lindsey answered. “It was totally unexpected. I left for work and couldn’t see that anything was wrong and returned to find a note. If she was going to leave me, you’d think she’d take the kids with her.”

“You have children?”

“Five.”

“Five!” Carrie and Kyle responded together.

“The two oldest are in school. It’s a good thing her mother lives with us, or I wouldn’t know what to do with the three younger ones.”

Carrie’s eyes locked with Kyle’s. “Her mother lives with you?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah. Gayle left me with the kids and her mother and a letter that claimed she needed to find herself. Hell, all she had to do was look in the laundry room. Everything else is in there.”

“Oh, my,” Carrie murmured.

“I haven’t heard a word from her since. For all I know, she’s off praying with some guru who wears thongs and eats sushi.”

“She’ll be back,” Carrie said, letting optimism flow through her words.

“That’s what I thought at first too,” he mumbled. “Now I’m not so sure.”

“Do you miss her?” Carrie could feel Kyle’s eyes boring into her. It went without saying that he wanted her to terminate the conversation, instead of encouraging the other man to talk about his problems.

This was the real difference between her and Kyle, Carrie decided. He held everything inside until the weight of hauling all his emotions around
bogged him down. She, on the other hand, freely spoke her mind. Of the two, Carrie considered herself by far the healthier one, emotionally.

“The real problem is we got along in bed better than anyplace else,” the patrolman continued. “We’d argue all day and make love all night. We never could seem to find a middle ground.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Kyle said impatiently.

Apparently his tone was enough to snap Officer Lindsey out of his depressed reverie. He looked up and seemed surprised to find himself in the back seat of Kyle’s vehicle. He reached for his pad and pen and climbed out of the car.

After making a couple of notations, he peeled off a sheet. When he spoke his voice was filled with authority. “According to the radar reading, you were traveling seventy-two miles an hour in a fifty-five-mile-an-hour zone.”

“Seventy-two?” Kyle sounded appropriately shocked.

“I’ve written out a warning,” he said, handing Kyle the pad to sign and then removing the sheet of paper. “I’d advise you to observe the speed limit.”

“And not to marry,” Carrie threw in for good measure. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, officer.”

He left them with a weak, embarrassed smile.

Kyle and Carrie sat motionless until Officer Lindsey had started his patrol car and driven away. Then, all at once, the tension was gone and Carrie started to laugh. Kyle glared at her disapprovingly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to stop. She swiped at her eyes. “His wife left him with five kids and her mother, and he thinks she should look to find herself in the laundry room!”

Kyle chuckled too. “Then he advises us not to marry.”

“Us!” she repeated, and they both doubled over. The idea of the two of them exchanging vows was ludicrous. They didn’t even like each other. They laughed, stopped and looked at each other, and started to laugh once more.

Carrie suddenly realized that she was leaning companionably against Kyle, and his arm had found its way around her shoulders. Embarrassed, she righted herself and made a show of looking at her watch. “My, my,” she said. “Time sure does pass when you’re having fun.”

“Fun,” he repeated, quickly retrieving his way-ward arm.

“Yeah,” she said brightly.

Seeming anxious to be on his way, Kyle started the car and pulled onto the highway. Neither spoke, and Carrie found herself nervously picking at the threads of her skirt. When she saw Kyle’s gaze move to her hands, she stopped.

Pulling out the map, she studied the route and mentally calculated how much longer they’d be stuck together in the close confines of the car. The space seemed to be evaporating, closing in on her, growing narrower with each mile they traveled.

Carrie found herself becoming aware of Kyle in ways that were completely foreign to her. Until now she hadn’t noticed how broad his shoulders were or how deep his chest was. His eyelashes were incredibly thick, the ends golden. He found her studying him, and she instantly returned to picking at her denim skirt.

“You need a break?” he asked, as they neared the outskirts of yet another small town.

“No, thanks,” she said, in a voice tight enough to cause him to glance her way.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

“It’s fine. I guess I’m a little tired is all.”

She
was tired? Between the drunk singing all night in the cell next to his and the deputy who listened to talk radio, he hadn’t gotten more than a couple of hours’ rest himself.

Kyle had never been comfortable defining emotions. He’d often envied women their ability to translate feeling into words. He sure as hell didn’t know what to say now.

“Do you know anything about the town of Paris?” he asked, as the silence started to concern him. If Carrie wasn’t talking she was thinking, and a thinking woman was dangerous.

“Just what it says on the map,” she said, reaching for the folded sheet. “Population twenty-five thousand. Big enough for the folks who issue traveler’s checks to arrange for us to pick up new ones. We should be able to do a bit of shopping there as well.”

“Great.” Kyle was more than ready for a fresh set of clothes.

“What time do you think we’ll arrive?”

“Another hour or two,” he said, guessing.

Actually he wasn’t that far off. They arrived in the farming community of Paris at two-thirty that afternoon. The sign outside of town boasted that Paris had the only stoplight in Lamar County, which gave them both reason to smile.

The main street resembled that of many of the
other communities they’d passed through: angle parking with a narrow island that ran the length of the street. Kyle pulled into a slot in front of the bank.

It didn’t take long for them to pick up their replacement traveler’s checks.

“We’d better see about getting hotel rooms,” he suggested next.

“Rooms already?” Carrie asked, blinking back her surprise.

“I suppose you’re hungry.”

“As a matter of fact, I am. In case you hadn’t noticed, we haven’t eaten today.” It went without saying that there was a very good reason. They’d had no cash and just enough gas to make it from Wheatland to Paris.

Now that she mentioned it, Kyle realized he was famished himself. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get something to eat first.”

They found a café and were coaxed inside by the delicious smells coming from the kitchen. To his surprise, the place was empty. This was exactly the kind of spot where town folks gathered for chitchat and to exchange gossip about their neighbors.

“Where is everyone?” Carrie asked.

“You folks sit anyplace you like.” A waitress wearing a badge that said T
RIXIE
greeted them, seated them, and brought them ice water and plastic-coated menus. She was near thirty, Kyle guessed, and not bad-looking.

“I take it you two aren’t from around these parts?”

“Kansas City,” Kyle explained.

“You ever heard of Bubba ‘Oink’ Corners?”

“Can’t say I have,” Kyle admitted.

“Well, he’s in town and most everyone’s out at the Grange listening to him.”

Bubba must be some country-western singer, Kyle thought.

“I’d be there myself, but I couldn’t find anyone to work my shift for me.” Trixie reached for the pencil that was positioned behind her ear. “The special today is stuffed pork chops, pork chow mein—or piggies in a blanket if you’re in the mood for breakfast. We serve it twenty-four hours a day.”