One Night In Reno (5 page)

“Officers are misters.  I’m just plain Chief Petty Officer Garrett “Itch” Erickson.  I don’t expect anything from you, Jenny.  This doesn’t have to be a real marriage.”

Josh pressed his face against the backseat window.  No mistaking where he stood in all this.  For Josh she could do this.  She should do this.  Because if anything happened to her there’d be no one to care for him.  But it was also up to her to protect her son and too many questions remained unanswered.

“Why?” she asked simply.  “I mean I can see what Josh and I are getting out of this, but what about you?”

“What about me?” he shrugged off her question.  “I knew a woman in your situation once.”  He raked a hand through his hair.  “Got pregnant in high school, never finished her education--no help from the baby’s father or her parents, thought she could make it on her own.  She never did get on her feet.  She wound up on the streets and her son in foster care.”

That sounded too close to the truth of her situation.  Still, she didn’t want to believe it.  “I can make it on my own--”

“I know you can,” he said, matter-of-factly.  “I just want to give you that chance.”

Like the twelve hundred dollars she’d found in her purse and had no intention of keeping.  Money wasn’t the answer, was marriage? 

She didn’t know which way to turn, but Garrett, being Garrett, knew exactly what to do.  He stepped around to her side of the door and held her while she cried tears that soaked his shirt.  The easy part would be leaning on his broad shoulders.  The hard part would come later when she had to let him go.  When she and Josh had to let him go. 

“What happened to the son?” she asked, even though she already knew.

“He ran away from the system at fourteen.  Wound up in and out of juvie before the McCaffrey’s took him in and helped straighten his sorry ass out.  After he graduated from high school, he enlisted in the Navy.”  He held her away from him to meet her drying eyes.  “I’m not perfect, Jenny.  But I won’t let you down.”

She stole a glance at her son’s anxious face and smiled a reassuring smile.  No Garrett Erickson wouldn’t let them down.  What he was offering her might be temporary, but what he was offering Josh would last a lifetime.  Even when the marriage ended, she knew in her heart he wouldn’t be abandoning her son.  For Jenny
, that was a good enough reason to accept his offer.  “Yes, Garrett “Itch” Erickson, I’ll marry you for a year.  If you tell me what Itch stands for?”

“My specialty in the Navy is communications and computers.  Information Systems Technician, IT.”

“I get it--IT Chief--Itch.” 

“That and the Team likes to think of me as their conscience--only more annoying—like an itch that needs scratching.”

She wasn’t surprised his team turned to him for guidance.  He was one amazing man.

“Oh, boy, oh boy!”  Josh crawled over the front seat and out the open passenger door.  “We’re getting married!

#

The ceremony was as simple as the band he placed on her finger.  Garrett went ringless, which Jenny found bothered her more than it should have.  Josh, on the other hand, was ecstatic. 

Garrett stopped just outside the chapel door and nodded toward the phone booth at the side of the building.  “Excuse me while I make a call?”

“For a guy who carries a pager, a cell phone and even has a CB in his Bronco you sure use a lot of phone booths, Superman.” 

“Security habit.”  He looked like he wanted to say more, but then changed his mind.  “Privacy,” he admitted.

“Meaning, mind my own business.  Is there anything else I should know about you, other than you rescue people and they call you Itch?”

“There’ll be plenty of time to get to know each other.”

His words sent a little thrill through her.  A year wouldn’t be enough.  Why wasn’t he already spoken for?  Who said he wasn’t?  “Is there a Lois Lane?”

“I really should make that call.”  He’d just confirmed her suspicions.  But he wasn’t the only gambler in this town playing his hand close to his chest.  She hadn’t laid all her cards out on the table either. 

#

They’d decided to drive straight through to San Diego after the wedding and were making good time.  He’d gotten off I-5, taking the 405 around LA and skipping over to the Pacific Coast Highway to give Jen her first glimpse of the ocean at night.  The closer they got to home the more he wanted to break through her silence.

Garrett didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts right now.  He’d tried making his call, again.  He’d gotten the same, we’re sorry...your number had been disconnected message.  That could mean only one of two things...

His house had burned to the ground.  Or Tess had followed through on her threat to leave him.  He’d broken down and used his cell phone to leave a message on hers.

He clicked a country station on low.  Josh had filled the void with his nonstop chatter until he’d fallen asleep.  His wife of less than ten hours stared out the window at the night shrouded California coastline. 

Checking the headlights in the rearview mirror, he switched to the far right lane.  “Josh ever been to Disneyland?” he asked as they passed another sign for the amusement park. 

“No.  I’ve never been either.” 

“We’ll have to make a point to go sometime.” 

“That would be nice.”

He checked the side view mirror.  The headlights stayed right behind him.  “Now would be a good time to tell me who or what you’re running from.”  He shifted his gaze from the road to her.  “We’ve picked up a tail.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“
What?”  Jenny swiveled in her seat to get a good look at the only other car on their stretch of road.  “Maybe he wants to pass.  Let him pass,” she pleaded as the bright lights came right up on their bumper.

The highway narrowed to two lanes up ahead.  With peeling tires, the SUV pulled up along the driver’s side.  Between the tinted windows on both vehicles, she couldn’t see into the other car.  “Nobody I know could afford a new car like that.” 

Except, of course, her new husband. 
Her husband.
 

It could be a rental. 

“Slow down,” she urged, squeezing his thigh as he negotiated a curve.  Headlights from a big rig rounded the bend.

Garrett slowed.  So did the SUV.  Without warning, the other car banked a hard right into the Bronco.  Her seat belt grabbed.  Tires squealed.  Metal scraped.  Crumpled. 

Garrett swore under his breath as he hit the brakes.  Buster yelped as she got bounced around in back.  Josh woke up with a strangled, “Mom?”  The Bronco spun out onto a wide sandy pullout, a breath away from the rocky precipice below.  The SUV passed to the right of the trucker with his blaring horn, and kept on going. 

When her heart jump-started again, Jenny collapsed back against her seat.  “Oh, my God.”

“Is everyone all right?”  Garrett asked.

“What happened?” Josh asked, fully awake now. 

“We’ve been in an accident.”  Garrett picked up his cell phone from the console.  For several seconds he hesitated.  “Is there any reason I shouldn’t call the authorities?”

Jenny met his gaze, but broke eye contact before shaking her head.  

The trucker had pulled off the road and ran back across the highway to offer his assistance.  He stuck around long enough to give the California Highway Patrol a statement.  The officers that arrived on the scene chalked the whole incident up to road rage. 
Road Rage.
 

After everyone left, Garrett continued accessing the damage to his Bronco.  Which was bad, but could have been much worse. 

“I’m so sorry about your car.”  Jenny rounded the hood to his side.

“What do you have to be sorry about?”  He stood there with the wind at his back and the roar of the ocean below as if he expected her to have an answer to that question. 

“I just meant it’s new--”

“Insurance will cover it,” he cut her off with a wave of the papers in his hand.  “I guess it’s a good thing all my policies are up to date.”  His normal easy manner seemed forced and his words only served to remind her why he’d married her in the first place.

“I suppose you’re wishing you’d never met us.”

“I’m not wishing that at all.”

She felt the familiar pang she’d come to associate with hunger, an emptiness that needed to be filled.  But this time in the form of an unfamiliar longing.  She wished she knew what he was thinking.  She didn’t dare ask. 

“I’m wishing you’d trust me.”  He responded as if reading her mind.

#

They drove the rest of the way to San Diego in silence.  Garrett pulled up to his beach view bungalow well after midnight to find lights on inside his half of the duplex and a U-haul parked in the driveway.  He got out of his car just as Tess stepped out his front door with her arms loaded.  He was sure he’d heard an expletive before she’d dropped the box.  She probably thought with him gone to
NAS Fallon for two weeks training she’d make a clean get away.  He rushed over to help her pick up the stuff that spilled. 

“I’m taking the webcam,” she declared.
                                         

“Okay,” he agreed, putting it back into the box.

“Okay?”  She pushed to her feet and placed her hands on her hips.  “Ask me to stay!”

He pushed to his feet more slowly.  “Stay.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

He hesitated.  “Things are complicated right now, Tess.  But I do mean it.” 

“If only.”  She shook her head sadly, and then kissed him full on the mouth.  "It’s over, Itch,” she murmured against his lips.  “It’s been over for awhile it’s just that neither of us would admit it.”

CHAPTER NINE

“
Jenny, meet Lois,” Jenny mumbled underneath her breath.  Great, she shifted in the passenger seat.  Her husband had a live-in, who appeared to be moving out and he didn’t seem too thrilled about it.  Something else Jenny could feel guilty about.

She looked away to give them privacy. 

“Mom,” Josh said from the backseat.  “I gotta go pee.”

“Can you hold it just a few more minutes, hon?”

“I gotta go bad.  Buster has to go, too.”  He stressed the urgency of the matter.  “Why is that lady kissing Garrett?”

Jenny almost sprained her neck trying to get a clear view around the U-Haul truck at the woman kissing her husband.  A husband she’d never kissed.  And wasn’t likely to.  So why should his kissing another woman bother her?

“Let’s go find a bathroom,” she said, unloading Josh and Buster from the back.  “I’m sorry,” Jenny apologized to Garrett as they approached his front door.  “We need to use your facilities.”

“Of course,” he said, nodding toward the house.  “It’s unlocked.”

“Another damsel in distress, Itch?”  The other woman raised a sculpted brow.

“Tess, this is Jenny, my wife.  And her son Josh.”

“Jenny, Tess.  My fiancée.”

“Ex-fiancée
.”  Tess stressed.

Garrett took a deep breath.  This was not how he wanted their engagement to end.  He’d been trying to salvage the relationship, not destroy it.  Although, he had to admit getting married to another woman was probably not the best way to go about it.  The women exchanged tight smiles as Jenny ushered Josh and the dog inside.

“Here.”  Tess bent to pick up the box of electronics and shoved it at him.  “Take back your webcam.  Take it all back as a wedding present from me.”  Removing the engagement ring he’d given her three years ago at Christmas, she dropped it in the box and left him standing on his front stoop.

“Tess!”  He followed her to the U-Haul.

She climbed into the truck, slammed the door and rolled down the window.  “I can’t compete with that.”  She nodded toward the house.

“What competition?”

“You’re a single mom magnet.  You couldn’t save your own mother--”

“Tess,” he warned.  “This is a temporary arrangement.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Itch.  What we had was temporary.  You couldn’t commit to a wedding date after three years, yet married a total stranger in a weekend.”  She turned the engine over.  “I’m just sorry this ends without the break-up sex.  So excuse me while I hunt down your best friend.”

“
You don’t even like my friends, remember?”  That she couldn’t make time to socialize with his kind had been another point of contention in a contentious year in which they couldn’t agree on anything outside the bedroom.

“Then I guess any SEAL will do.  What’s the name of that bar where you’re always hanging out?”

“Manny’s Dive,” he said, knowing she didn’t mean it.

“I’m not your plus one anymore, Itch.  You’re now a plus two.  And neither of us is as upset about this latest development as we should be.”  She reached for some papers on the seat beside her.  “Yes, I got your message.  Next time you want a background check on your wife ask someone else.”  She handed over the information he’d requested on Jenny.  “I can’t tell you how pissed I am you put your security clearance on the line by marrying a fugitive.”