This Heart of Mine (13 page)

A smart girl never accepts a ride from a stranger, even if he is a hottie.

"Hitchhiking Hell"

article for Chick magazine

Molly crawled with Roo into the backseat of the snappy SUV Kevin was driving instead of his Ferrari. She propped up the pillow she'd brought along and tried to go to sleep, but it wasn't possible. As they sped east past the urban blight of Gary, then took I-94 toward Michigan City, she kept asking herself why she hadn't opened her mail. All she'd needed to do was show up at the attorney's office. Then she wouldn't have been body-snatched by a mean-tempered quarterback.

Her refusal to talk to him was beginning to seem childish. Besides, her headache was better, and she wanted to know where they were going. She stroked Roo. "Do you have a destination in mind, or is this a make-it-up-as-you-go kidnapping?"

He ignored her.

They drove for another hour in silence before he pulled over for gas near Benton Harbor. While he was filling the tank, a fan spotted him and asked for an autograph. She clipped a leash on Roo and took him into the grass, then slipped into the bathroom. As she washed her hands, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. He was right. She did look like hell. She'd washed her hair, but she hadn't done anything more than drag her fingers through it afterward. Her skin was ashen, her eyes sunken.

She began to reach into her purse for a lipstick, then decided it took too much effort. She thought about phoning one of her friends to come get her, but Kevin's implied threat to talk to Phoebe and Dan about her physical condition made her hesitate. She couldn't stand causing them more worry than she already had. Better to go along with him for now.

He wasn't in the car when she returned. She debated getting into the backseat again, but doubted he'd talk to her unless she was in his face, so she put Roo there instead and climbed in the front. He emerged from the service station with a plastic bag and a Styrofoam coffee cup. After he got inside, he stuck the coffee in the cup holder, then pulled a bottle of orange juice from the sack and handed it to her.

"I'd rather have coffee."

"Too bad."

The cold bottle felt good in her hands, and she realized she was thirsty, but when she tried to open it, she discovered she was too weak. Her eyes filled unexpectedly with tears.

He took it without comment, unscrewed the lid, and returned it to her.

As he pulled away from the pump, she choked back the tightness in her throat. "At least you muscle boys are good for something."

"Be sure to let me know if you want any beer cans crushed."

She was startled to hear herself laugh. The orange juice slid in a cool, sweet trickle down her throat.

He pulled out onto the interstate. Sand dunes stretched on their left. She couldn't see the water, but she knew there would be cruisers on the lake, probably some freighters on their way to Chicago or Ludington. "Would you mind telling me where we're going?"

"Northwest Michigan. A hole called Wind Lake."

"There goes my fantasy of a Caribbean cruise."

"The campground I told you about."

"The place where you told me you spent your summers when you were a kid?"

"Yeah. My aunt inherited it from my father, but she died a few months back, and I was unlucky enough to end up with it. I'm going to sell it, but I have to check out the condition first."

"I can't go to a camp. You'll have to turn around and take me home."

"Believe me, we won't be there for long. Two days at the most."

"Doesn't matter. I don't do camp anymore. I had to go every summer when I was a kid, and I promised myself I'd never go back."

"What was so bad about camp?"

"All that organized activity. Sports." She blew her nose. "There was no time to read, no time to be alone with your thoughts."

"Not much of an athlete?"

One summer she'd sneaked out of her cabin in the middle of the night and gathered up every ball in the equipment shed—volleyballs, soccer, tennis, softballs. It had taken her half a dozen trips to carry them all to the lake and throw them in the water. The counselors had never discovered the culprit. Certainly no one had suspected quiet, brainy Molly Somerville, who'd been named Most Cooperative despite spraying her bangs green.

"I'm a better athlete than Phoebe," she said.

Kevin shuddered. "The guys are still talking about the last time she played softball at the Stars picnic."

Molly hadn't been there, but she could imagine.

He swung into the left lane and said, with an edge, "I wouldn't think spending a few weeks every summer at some rich-kid's camp damaged you too much."

"I suppose you're right."

Except she never went for a few weeks. She went all summer, every summer, from the time she was six.

When she'd been eleven, there was a measles outbreak and all the campers were sent home. Her father had been furious. He couldn't find anyone to stay with her, so he'd been forced to take her with him to Vegas, where he'd set her up in a suite separate from his own with a change girl as a babysitter, even though Molly kept telling him she was too old for one. During the day the girl watched the soaps, and at night she crossed the hall to sleep with Bert.

They'd been the best two weeks of Molly's childhood. She'd read the complete works of Mary Stewart, ordered cherry cheesecake from room service, and made friends with the Spanish-speaking maids. Sometimes she'd announce to her sitter that she was going down to the pool, but instead, she'd wander around near the casino until she found a family with a lot of kids. Then she'd stay as close as she could and pretend she belonged to them.

Normally, the memories of her childish attempts to create a family made her smile, but now she felt another prickle of tears and swallowed. "Have you noticed there's a speed limit?"

"Making you nervous?"

"You should be, but I'm numb from too many years of riding with Dan." Besides, she didn't care that much. It shocked her—the realization that she had no interest in the future. She couldn't even muster the energy to worry about her finances or the fact that her editor at
Chik
had stopped calling.

He backed off on the accelerator. "Just so you know, the campground is in the middle of nowhere, the cottages are so old they're probably in ruins by now, and the place is more boring than elevator music because nobody under the age of seventy ever goes there." He tilted his head toward the sack of food he'd picked up at the service station. "If you're done with that orange juice, there are some cheese crackers inside."

"Yummy, but I think I'll pass."

"You seem to have passed on a lot of meals lately."

"Thanks for noticing. I figure if I lose another sixty pounds, I might be as skinny as some of your
chères amies
."

"Feel free to concentrate on that nervous breakdown of yours. At least it'll keep you quiet."

She smiled. One thing she'd say for Kevin, he didn't handle her with kid gloves like Phoebe and Dan. It was nice to be treated as an adult. "Maybe I'll just take a nap instead."

"You do that."

But she didn't sleep. Instead, she closed her eyes and tried to make herself think about her next book, but her mind refused to take a single step into the cozy byways of Nightingale Woods.

After they got off the interstate, Kevin stopped at a roadside store with a smokehouse attached and returned carrying a brown paper bag that he tossed into her lap. "Michigan lunch. Do you think you can make some sandwiches?"

"Maybe if I concentrate."

Inside she found a generous piece of smoked whitefish, a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese, and a loaf of dark pumpernickel bread, along with a plastic knife and a few paper napkins. She mustered enough energy to put together two crude, open-faced sandwiches for him and a smaller one for herself, all but a few bites of which she ended up feeding to Roo.

They headed east toward the middle of the state. Through half-closed eyes she saw orchards coming into bloom and neat farms with silos. Then, as the afternoon light began to fade, they made their way north toward I-75, which stretched all the way to Sault Ste. Marie.

They didn't talk much. Kevin listened to the CDs he'd brought with him. He liked jazz, she discovered, everything from forties bebop to fusion. Unfortunately, he also liked rap, and after fifteen minutes of trying to ignore Tupac's views of women, she hit the eject button, grabbed the disk, and tossed it out the car window.

His ears turned red, she discovered, when he yelled.

It was getting dark when they reached the northern part of the state. Just beyond the pretty town of Grayling they left the freeway for a two-lane highway that seemed to lead nowhere. Before long they were driving through dense woods.

"Northeastern Michigan was nearly stripped of timber by the lumber industry during the 1800s," he said. "What you're seeing now is second- and third-growth forest. Some of it is pretty wild. Towns in this area are small and scattered."

"How much farther?"

"Only a little over an hour, but the place is run-down, so I don't want to get there after dark. There's supposed to be a motel not far from here, but don't expect the Ritz."

Since she couldn't imagine him worrying about the dark, she suspected he was stalling, and she curled deeper into the seat. The headlights of an occasional oncoming car flickered across his features, casting dangerous shadows beneath those male underwear model cheekbones. She felt a shiver of foreboding, so she closed her eyes and pretended she was alone.

She didn't open them again until he pulled up in front of an eight-unit roadside motel made of white aluminum siding and fake brick. As he got out of the car to register, she thought about making sure he understood that she wanted a separate unit, but common sense intervened.

Sure enough, he returned from the office with two keys. His unit, she noticed, was at the opposite end from hers.

Early the next morning she awakened to door pounding and poodle barking. "Slytherins," she grumbled. "This is getting to be a bad habit."

"We're leaving in half an hour," Kevin called from the other side. "Get the lead out."

"Hut, hut," she muttered into her pillow.

She dragged herself into the cramped shower and even managed to run a comb through her hair. Lipstick, however, was beyond her. She felt as if she had a colossal hangover.

When she finally emerged, he was pacing near the car. The lemony patch of sunlight that splashed over him revealed a grim mouth and unfriendly expression. As Roo took advantage of the shrubbery, Kevin grabbed her suitcase and tossed it into the back of the car.

Today he'd decorated his muscles with an aqua Stars T-shirt and light gray shorts. They were ordinary clothes, but he wore them with the confidence of those who were born beautiful.

She fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses, then glared at him resentfully. "Don't you ever turn it off?"

"Turn what off?"

"Your basic ugliness," she muttered.

"Maybe I should just drop you off at a funny farm instead of taking you to Wind Lake."

"Whatever. Is coffee too much to hope for?" She shoved on her glasses, but they didn't do a whole lot to shut out the blinding glare of his irritating beauty.

"It's in the car, but it took you so long to get ready that it's probably cold by now."

It was piping hot, and as they pulled back out onto the road, she took a long, slow sip.

"Fruit and doughnuts were the best I could do for breakfast. They're in that bag." He sounded as grouchy as she felt. She wasn't hungry, and she concentrated on the scenery.

They might have been in the wilds of the Yukon instead of a state that made Chevrolets, Sugar Pops, and soul music. From a bridge crossing the Au Sable River she saw rocky cliffs rising on one shore and dense woods stretching on the other. An osprey soared down over the water. Everything seemed wild and remote.

Occasionally they passed a farm, but this was clearly timber country. Maple and oak competed with pine, birch, and cedar. Here and there, golden straws of sunlight penetrated the canopy formed by the trees. It was wonderfully serene, and she tried to feel peaceful, but she was out of practice.

Kevin swore and jerked the wheel to avoid a squirrel. Getting closer to their destination definitely hadn't improved his mood. She spotted a metal highway sign that indicated the turnoff for Wind Lake, but he flew past it. "That's the town," he grunted. "The campground is on the far side of the lake."

They drove for another few miles before a decorative green-and-white sign with a Chippendale top edged in gilt came into sight.