Road Tripping (5 page)

Ethan nodded
distractedly, pulled out his billfold, and handed her a fifty-dollar bill. “Get
stuff for me too, will you?”

She stared at
him. “I don’t know what you use.”

“Just get
whatever,” he said impatiently. “It’s hardly going to matter for one more day.”

She shook her
head and trudged toward the drugstore.

Since he had
given her fifty dollars, she assumed she could use it all. So she merrily
filled a basket with toothbrush, tooth paste, deodorant, soap, shampoo, comb, razor
(since she was going bare-legged) and cheap pressed powder and mascara. She
managed to resist the base makeup, lip-gloss, and hair spray, but she was
sorely tempted by the hair dryers. Particularly after Ethan’s remark about her
hair, which was admittedly not looking good.

She glanced at
the row of sanitary products, and quickly counted back the days of the month.
She sighed with relief when she realized she still had at least two weeks
before she would need any of those supplies.

She didn’t know
if she could deal with Ethan paying for her box of tampons.

She grabbed
some stuff for Ethan, although for most of it, she was guessing. It felt
strange, since she wasn’t used to buying men’s toiletries. Then she tried to
rack her brain, thinking if they needed anything else. If only they sold
panties at the drug store. She would really like to change hers, and Ethan
probably wouldn’t go for a stop at Victoria’s Secret.

She walked back
to the medicine aisle and picked up some aspirin. Headaches were a very real
possibility on this trip.

After picking
up a few more items, she paid for her loot, using up most of the bill Ethan had
given her. When she returned to Ethan, he was staring at the floor glumly.

“What now?” she
asked, lowering herself into the chair next to him. “No car?”

“Maybe a car.
But we can’t see it until first thing tomorrow morning.”

Ashley groaned.
“So we’re stuck in this horrible city for the rest of the day?”

“Unless you
have any better ideas.”

She shook her
head. “Stealing cars didn’t work out too well for us. We’ll try to get one in a
legitimate way. So it’s another motel tonight?”

“It’ll have to
be a cheap one, and I hope you don’t mind sharing a room. We’ve got to conserve
our cash. Where’s my change, by the way?”

Ashley told him
cheerfully that there wasn’t any change from the fifty and tried to stifle her
laughter at his outraged expression.

***

That evening, Ashley jumped into
her bed and pulled the covers up to her neck. Then she pulled off her shirt.
She only had one outfit, and she refused to sleep in her top. She kept her
skirt on however. It was already wrinkled, and she didn’t have any panties on.

She had rinsed
out her panties before she got into bed, and they were now hanging in the
shower to dry. She briefly wondered what Ethan had thought when he saw them,
but—privacy be damned—she wasn’t going to go around in dirty underwear.

Ethan had been
in the bathroom. When he came out, he had taken off his shirt but not his
pants. She didn’t know about his underwear. He turned out the light and got
into the other bed.

The afternoon
had been uneventful. Almost boring. And they had finally ended up in this very
cheap motel after a greasy supper at the diner next store.

“Surely
tomorrow will be better,” Ethan said into the dark room.

“It has to be,
doesn’t it?” she responded gloomily. “These have been the worst two days of my
life. And I’ve had a lot of very bad days.”

Ethan didn’t
respond for a long time. She was starting to think he had fallen asleep when he
finally said, “I’ll get you back home as soon as I can. Then you’ll never have
to see me again.”

She should have
been happy about it—to get rid of Ethan and all of the mess and trouble he
invariably brought into her life. She couldn’t be the good daughter her parents
needed if she was with Ethan—in any way. But the words didn’t make her feel
relieved. In fact, something about them made her chest tighten painfully.
Because of this inexplicable reaction, her words were crisper than they would
normally have been. “Good. I can hardly wait to be rid of you.”

They were both
silent for a long time, just lying in the dark.

Then Ashley
said randomly, “I don’t think ‘slunk’ is a word.”

“What the hell
are you talking about?”

“Slunk,” she
repeated. “You said yesterday you’d never slunk in your life. I don’t think
that’s really a word.”

Ethan let out a
muffled bellow. “Of course it’s a word. It’s the past tense of slink. Today, I
slink. Yesterday, I slunk.”

Ashley snorted
and then said just to annoy him some more, “I thought you said you never
slunk.”

He growled. It
was definitely a growl.

She wasn’t sure
she liked the effect the sound had on her body. She peered over at him and could
just see him in the faint light from the clock. He was lying on his back with
his hands linked behind his head. The sheet was down around his waist, so she
had a good view of his very nice chest. His skin almost seemed to be glowing.

It was all very
surreal. What was she doing here? In a cheap motel room in West Virginia?
Sharing a room with Ethan Moore? And they were arguing about grammar? And his
growly sounds were kind of turning her on?

It was all so,
so wrong.

He turned his
head and noticed her staring at him. Then he silently rolled over onto his side
with his back to her.

So Ashley
rolled over herself.

Think, she told
herself. Think of all the reasons she had to resent him. He had gotten her brother
arrested. He’d turned his back on all of them. He was the antithesis of the
nice, clean, stable life she wanted to build for herself.

He was bossy,
and arrogant, and infuriating, and condescending, and presumptuous, and smug,
and without compassion, and bossy…

And he had looked
so funny in that cowboy hat. And he had the most delicious laugh she had ever
heard. And sometimes, like when he’d fake-kissed her earlier, there was a
warmth in his eyes that was so unexpected, so breathtaking…

She seemed to
be getting off track. Better to just go to sleep. Surely she wouldn’t dream
about Ethan.

It was all so,
so wrong.

She might have
a few stray, soft feelings toward him, but she still didn’t like him at all.

She was in
Charleston, West Virginia. They had traveled only two and half hours of their
twenty-hour road trip. They had almost been caught by the police. They didn’t
have a car—again. She had blisters on her feet. And she was only a bed away
from Ethan’s bare chest.

And it was the
end of the second day.

Charleston,
West Virginia

Ashley woke up when she heard
someone come in the door.

She sat up
straight in her bed, startled and immediately terrified. It took her only a
moment to realize she was alone in the motel room. Ethan was nowhere to be
seen.

No, that was
wrong. Ethan was walking in the door. And he had—bless his dear heart—two cups
of coffee.

“Thank you!”
she said, stretching out both of her hands for her cup.

He shook his
head and handed her the coffee. “I decided not to risk your wrath this morning
and didn’t wake you up until I could face you with the appropriate provisions.”
He seemed to be avoiding looking at her for some reason, but she was too
absorbed in the caffeine to really care.

“Thank you,”
she mumbled again over the lip of the coffee cup. After a few sips, she
realized what she was wearing. Or not wearing.

She had taken
off her shirt the evening before, and so she was only clothed in her skirt and
bra. Since she was sitting up straight in the bed, the covers were very little
protection from Ethan’s roving eyes.

Not that they
were actually roving. In fact, he seemed to be looking everywhere in the room
except at her. Most guys would have at least snuck a few peeks. She supposed Ethan
was so uninterested in her as a woman that he couldn’t even be bothered to
check her out.

She pulled the
sheet up to cover her chest.

Then she noticed
the time. “It’s after 8:30. We were supposed to meet the guy about the car an
hour ago!”

“Already did
that.” He was focused on her now that he wouldn’t have to look at any
undesirable flesh. “The car is in the parking lot.”

Ashley almost
jumped up to look out the window, but decided to wait until she was more fully
clothed. “Why didn’t you wake me up? How’s the car?”

“You were
snoring away, so I didn’t feel intrepid enough to disturb your slumbers. And
the car is about what you would expect for $350. It does seem to move—for the
most part.”

“You got a car
for $350?” Her eyes widened, and she didn’t even object to his rude comment
about her sleeping habits.

“Oh, believe
me. It’s not worth any more than that. Anyway, we worked out an agreement. He
even let me keep the expired tags on the car, so we won’t have to drive around
without a license plate.”

This piece of
information required another gulp of coffee to absorb. “This isn’t sounding very
promising. What kind of an agreement did you work out?”

“A gentleman’s
agreement,” Ethan said obnoxiously, eyeing her as if from a great height. “And
since you are a woman, you don’t get to be in on it.”

Ashley was
about to give this patronizing, chauvinistic comment the vitriolic response it
deserved, but Ethan distracted her by pulling a breakfast sandwich out of a
paper sack.

“You brought me
food? Since when have you been nice and considerate?”

He certainly
wasn’t looking nice and considerate. He looked handsome, rumpled, and grouchy,
and he was giving her a mild form of his sneer. “It was purely for efficiency’s
sake. I don’t want to have to stop in two hours to feed you. We’ve got almost
eighteen hours to drive today in a dubious vehicle with a dwindling amount of
money.”

Ashley was
munching on her food, but after she swallowed a bite, she said, “I suppose
stopping at an ATM for more cash is not an option?”

“Your sheet’s
slipping,” he said curtly, glancing away until she impatiently pulled the sheet
back up over her bra. “They can track debit cards as easily as credit cards.”

“Yeah, I guess.
But surely there’s something we can do. You’re supposed to be the criminal
mastermind of the county. Why can’t you think of something?

She was
expecting him to give her a fine put-down—she was actually kind of looking
forward to it—but he was sidetracked when her sheet slipped down to her waist
again. “Ashley, would you please cover yourself up?”

Her feelings
were a little hurt at his angry tone when they’d just been beginning a
delightful argument, so she stopped laughing and pulled the sheet up again.
“Sorry. You act like you’ve never seen a woman in a bra before. I thought
I
was supposed to be the good one. Who knew a bad boy could be such a prude?”

He snarled and
then strode out of the room.

Sighing and
feeling a little glum, she was just about to get out of bed when Ethan poked
his head back in the room. “You’ve got twenty minutes to get dressed.”

She let out an
outraged wail. “But I haven’t even finished eating yet.”

“All right. Twenty-five.
Don’t waste your time primping. I don’t care how you look.”

When Ashley
went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, she was grumbling under her
breath and trying not to smile.

***

The car was a twenty-year-old
Thunderbird. Not old enough to be an antique, but too old to be much use to anyone.
It wasn’t in good shape. The seats were full of holes, rust adorned the body,
and neither of the windows shut all the way. Plus, the car was yellow—really,
really yellow.

Ashley had a
grand time mocking the car as they started off, but the reality of the
situation hit home when they pulled out onto the interstate.

They were going
to have to drive this car all the way to South Dakota.

“I think the
speed limit is 70,” she said, trying to speak over the mournful howl of the
engine.

Ethan was
manfully chugging along at about 48mph. “I know,” he said through his teeth,
shooting her a lethal gaze, although her voice had been perfectly benign and
helpful. “This is as fast as this appalling excuse for a car will go.”

“I thought
Thunderbirds were supposed to last forever.” She winced at a strange clattering
sound coming from somewhere beneath the car.

Ethan let out a
pitiful sigh as a black Porsche went flying by them at twice their speed. “This
one clearly won’t. All I’m hoping is that it will last for about eighteen more
hours.”

“At this speed,
we better estimate twenty-four.”

A wide-load
truck carrying farm equipment and an ancient school bus both sped past them,
quickly leaving them in the dust. The truck driver honked at them cheerfully as
he went by.

Ethan didn’t
seem to appreciate her comment, so Ashley thought it might be strategic to
change the subject. “Am I going to get to drive?” she asked, hiding a grin at
his strained expression.

“Of course. If
we manage to make it more than two hours today—which is not, I assure you, an
assumption I’m willing to make—then you can take a turn. I have no desire to
drive this heap halfway across the country without a break.”

There was
another strange sound coming from the back of the car now. It went
clippety-clop-bop-bop. Clippety-clop-bop-bop. “Surely we’ll make it more than
two hours,” she said optimistically. “But hopefully we won’t get into any more
car chases today. We wouldn’t have a prayer in this piece of junk.”

Ethan’s mumbled
reply was not particularly reassuring.

***

“So why did you decide to get
out of the moonshine business?” she asked randomly, later in the morning. She’d
been thinking about him—a lot—and the reflections finally pushed her into the
question.

“What?”

She’d been
quiet for a long time, so she’d obviously startled him. “Why did you decide you
wanted out? You got your fancy truck and your fancy boat and no doubt a
huge-ass TV with all your ill-gotten gains. Why did you decide you wanted out?”

“Believe it or
not, a moonshiner was not what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

She couldn’t
read his expression very well. He had that same tense look she’d seen before,
as if he was holding something back. She really wanted to know what it was.

“You always
wanted to build bridges.”

“Yeah. That’s
never going to happen.”

“Well, you’re
the one who dropped out of college and got arrested.” He’d been majoring in
civil engineering at Virginia Tech. Doing really well, if what she’d heard was
true.

“I know that.”

She felt kind
of bad for bringing it up, although it was absolutely nothing but the truth. “I
guess you could go back to college and grad school if you wanted. You’ve only
lost less than two years.”

“With a record?
What kind of career do you think I could have?”

She studied his
face. It was handsome and controlled and lost somehow. “It could happen. It’s
just a misdemeanor. Employers could understand. It will make it harder, but I
don’t think it would be impossible. At least, that’s what I’m hoping with Mark.
So what do you want to do now?”

“I don’t have a
clue. I just want out.”

She could tell
he was telling the truth. He was almost desperate to be out of whatever mess
he’d gotten himself in. And, instead of feeling vindicated, she felt
sympathetic. Deeply moved by his earnestness. He felt more like the boy she
used to know than ever. “What were you doing to try to get out of it that
caused all this trouble in the first place?”

He sighed,
apparently giving up on what he’d refused to tell her before. “I was trying to
work on a plan. With the guy on the other end of the distribution route—in
South Dakota. We’d talked some—just to take care of business—and eventually we
were understanding each other. We both wanted out, but Jones had too much on us
to let us go. We started talking about possibilities. Getting licenses. Going
legit. There’s a whole new market for moonshine now—city-folk think it’s cool.
There could be a real business there. We’d just have to pay taxes and change
some of our methods. We put together a whole proposal to spin off part of the
network into a legit business. We’d have paid Jones a hefty percentage, but we
would have been legit.”

“I guess Buster
wasn’t too fond of that idea.”

“No. I guess I
should have known. It was too reasonable a plan. He’s never been reasonable.
The moonshine is like his family honor or something, and making it legal—even
just part of it—would be spitting on his father and grandfather and
great-grandfather’s memory.” He gave Ashley a rueful look. “I didn’t expect him
to call in the cavalry, though.”

“I’d have
thought he’d use his own guys instead of hired guns for something like this. If
it’s personal, I mean.”

“Nah. I’m just
business to him. And he’s careful about muddying his own water. He’s got a lot
of the county officials on his payroll, but that could change if he started
leaving bodies around. If it’s outsiders who do the dirty work, though, then
there are plenty of folks who would just refuse to connect the dots back to
him.”

Ashley’s mind
was whirling with all this information. He hadn’t spoken so openly to her
in…forever.

“So he’s trying
to kill you?”

“I don’t know
if he wants to kill me or just wants to round me up and keep me from talking to
the other guy.”

She was glad to
know all of this. It confirmed in her own mind that she was right to trust him.
He’d made mistakes. A lot of them. Really bad mistakes. But he was still a little
of the Ethan she used to know.

“So you’re not meeting
this guy at the other end of the route to set up that business you wanted?”

“No. That’s out
now. We’d need Jones on our side to make it happen. But the guy says he has
some sort of evidence to leverage against Jones—something other than our
testimony, which neither of us wants to give—but he doesn’t have enough
information on my side of the business to interpret all of it.”

“And he refused
to use the phone or email.”

“Or snail mail.
Right. Paranoid. I thought he was crazy at first, but Jones does seem to have several
dozen loose screws I didn’t know about before. So I’ve got to get there to
interpret his evidence, and then we should be able leverage it against Jones.”

“You don’t know
what the evidence is?”

“No.”

“But you think
you can trust this guy?”

“I have to.”

She nodded.
“Okay. I hope it will work.”

He gave her a
curious glance. “I’m surprised you believe me. You haven’t been big on trusting
me lately.”

“Well, what do
you expect? All my life, I thought you were this certain person, and then you
just…” She felt a poignant lump in her throat and didn’t continue.

“Then I what?”
His voice was much softer, much less curt, than usual.

“Then you
became someone else.”

There was a
strange silence in the car for a minute until Ashley pulled herself together,
pushing the fond memories of the Ethan she used to know back into the corner of
her mind. She added, “But I’d pull for you over Buster Jones and his hired
goons any day of the week.”

Ethan chuckled.
“Thanks.”

“So this is
what you were starting to say the other day? Something that Mark didn’t tell
me? That you were trying to get out of all this?”

Ethan shot her
a quick look but then almost immediately looked away. “Something like that.”

She sighed,
feeling a lot better. About a lot of things. “When you get this straightened
out,” she began, trying to sort out everything in her mind, “maybe you should
move. I know it’s your home, but everyone in the county knows what you’ve been
up to. I don’t think you could ever really put it behind you there.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“So you think
you’ll move?”

If he moved,
she’d probably never see him again. It didn’t make her as happy as she’d
expected.

“I don’t know.
It’s my home, and there’s a lot that matters to me there.”

Their eyes met
then, and she couldn’t look away. The shared look felt deep and meaningful, and
it made her heartbeat accelerate.

“Like what?”
she breathed.

He jerked his
head back to face the road and said dryly, “Like the best fishing in the
state.”