“And guys ruin their engines competing in this?”
Jeannie looked taken aback. “I guess they do. Oh look, there's Eddie. He's going off in the second round. And Truck is right behind him.”
It was, Carrie supposed, a fascinating male contest: to be the one to drive the machine that moved the most weight in the least amount of time with the least damage to the drive shaft and engine.
The crowd was really getting into it. Clearly, they had their favorites, and there was wild applause as Eddie Gerardo and his opponent drove up to the starting line and the pallets of bar weights were attached to the underside of their trucks.
“Ed-die, Ed-dieâ” The chant started, steady and rhythmic. The starter popped his gun. Eddie and his opponent gunned their engines, and slowly, slowly, they each moved off the starting line, churning up dirt and dust everywhere. It must have taken a full ten minutes for either truck to move forward, and then it was all about the driver's skill in handling his vehicle, and getting the advantage. Another ten minutes, and it was over, and Eddie had lost the round.
“Poor Eddie,” Jeannie murmured. “He was in the finals last year. So was Truckâthere he is.”
It was a different story, Carrie found, when you were rooting for someone. Of course, there were three dozen others who wanted him to win just as ferociously as she, and they chanted loudly behind her: “Truck, Truck, Truck...” as he rolled up to the starting line, the pallet was attached, and the gun went off.
Truck was determined. Jeannie told her he'd won with it last year, and sure enough, as he and his opponent plowed through the dust and grass, he inched ahead and over the finish line.
“Finals tomorrow,” Jeannie said to Carrie over the applause. “Seen enough?”
Truck joined them a few minutes later, beating the dust from his shirt and hair. “I have to check on Old Man. Want to come?”
Old Man was in the adjunct barn playing bingo. It was one of his enduring pleasures, whether he went into town to the Masonic Hall, or just milled around with a
group of fair-goers he didn't know. By the time the session was over, he got to know them pretty well.
He was deep in a game when Truck touched his elbow.
“Hey, son.”
“Think you can afford to drop a game? Carrie and Jeannie are here.”
“Oh sure.” Old Man wheeled around to see them standing in the doorway. A moment later, he was grasping Carrie's hands, stunning her with his strength and vitality, and his resemblance to Truck.
“Carrie. Welcome home, my dear.”
It was the eyes, she thought. No, the mouth. The voice. Definitely the voice. There was nothing infirm about Old Man, nor did his wheelchair seem to limit him. If anything, you hardly noticed it once you were captivated by his voice.
“I was so sorry about your mother. So sorry. She was so brave, Carrie. I hope that's some comfort to you. It's s good to see you, good to have you here. Tell me, did Truck invite you up for dinner?”
She felt a wash of shame. “I think he tried.”
Old Man gave her a sharp look. “But now you'll come, won't you?”
“I will,” she whispered. How could she deny him when it had nothing to do with Truck at all.
Old Man smiled, and it was Truck's smile, Truck's face, thirty years older. How could anyone not love him? she thought.
How could anyone not love Truckâ
Oh no, she didn't want to go there, she couldn't.
“Good,” Old Man was saying. “And soon, Carrie.”
“I will,” she promised.
What
was she promising?
“You know we've been talking on a regular basis recently?”
“How so?”
“Longford's my local supplier.”
“Ahâ” that explained that. But it didn't explain Old Man, and how warm and secure he made her feel. How she was falling for him already and she'd barely spoken to him for five minutes.
But everyone loved Old Man, and as he took Jeannie's hand, Carrie saw why.
Old Man saw everything.
“How you doing, Jeannie?” he murmured. “You look beautiful today. Don't know about you, but I like the change. And it's about time, too.”
“I know,” Jeannie said, tears edging around her eyes.
Old Man saw them. “You did the right thing, Jeannie. You know it. Everyone knows it. Now it's about time for me to get back to my game,” he added, to spare Jeannie, who was surreptitiously wiping away her tears.
“Excuse me, won't you? Carrie, we'll see you soon?”
“Isn't he something,” Jeannie said as Truck wheeled him away. “And you know what he did after the accident, after the diagnosis? He just went on ahead. Truck moved the business to the house, and Old Man took over the office. He does all the paperwork, the cost specs, the pricing, the ordering. He learned to use a computer and everything.”
“Truck is very devoted.”
“Yeah, well, Old Man was mom and dad to Truck. I don't know if you ever heard the story, but his mom went away. Fell for the man, but not for the life. Didn't want to live in some backwater town. But I tell you, Old Man must have been something back then, if he attracted a woman like that.”
Jeannie slanted a considering look at her. “Kind of like you, actually.”
Carrie froze.
No, nothing like her; she'd been raised in Paradise. It wasn't the same thing at all.
“What happened to her?” She could barely get the words out.
“She died, oh, a year or two later, I think. A car accident in Europe. Which was the kind of high life she led. I always thought she married Old Man to escape something but I guess it caught up with her in the end.”
Why didn't she know this? Carrie wondered. It was one of those tragic stories that people fed on for years that became part of the town folklore. And she hadn't ever known.
“So Truck had to have been a baby when she died,” she murmured, thinking how similar his loss was to her own circumstances. But that was way before she and her mother had come to Paradise.
“Five, I think.”
“How do you
know
all this?” Carrie asked.
“Oh, people talk,” Jeannie said airily.
Everyone knows...
I
wonder what they're saying about me...
9
C
ARRIE AND JEANNIE ended up spending the entire weekend at the festival, not that it was planned. But they both wanted to see Truck run the finals and the judging of the crafts fair. Besides, there was some jewelry Jeannie wanted to look at, and some other odds and ends she wanted to buy. All those were in addition to attending the winddown of the live performances, which always featured a fairly well-known country star.
To get good seats close to the stage, they arrived long before the performance was scheduled to begin. By this time, Jeannie was loaded with packages, more containers of beans and no energy at all to do anything more than put up her feet and relax. Carrie was feeling pretty mellow herself. The final round of the truck pull held at noon had been exciting, exhausting and extremely hot. At least today, she'd been smart and brought a hat, a thermos of ice and bandannas for both her and Jeannie to tie around their necks. And now she was dribbling the last of the ice water onto her bandanna so she could mop her face with it while Jeannie roused herself to buy some sodas.
A body dropped down beside her. “Well, aren't you the cutest thing?” Eddie Gerardo said.
Carrie suppressed a shudder. “Hi, Eddie. Sorry you lost.”
“Sure you are. Sure. But that damn race isn't the only
thing I lost Since you got back here, I lost my wife. I want to know what kind of voodoo you're working on her, and I want you to stop it.”
There was no arguing with Eddie, Carrie thought, and she wasn't even going to try. He was as predictable as the sun, and just as hot right now.
“You tell Jeannie to get rid of all that trashy stuff she's been flaunting around town, you hear me? That's not my wife in those tight clothes. That's some big-city tarâ”
“Eddie.” Jeannie arrived, like the cavalry, just in the nick of time. “I thought you had an appointment with the Howell sisters.”
“Well, I did, that's for damn sure. But how am I going to sell them on a house in a country town if my
wife
won't advertise those plain country values?”
“Gee, I don't know,” Jeannie said. “I thought you were a better salesman than that.”
Eddie gave her a dirty look and stalked off.
“He sure doesn't like my new look,” Jeannie said, an understatement if ever Carrie heard one.
“How far are you going to push it?” she asked curiously.
“I'm in for the duration. I wouldn't go back to being frumpy if you paid me.”
The concert started soon after that; it was packed, even with extra seating, but everyone could hear the music from anywhere on the fairgrounds. The singer was a homegrown talent who had been considered a one-hit wonder, and was now making a comeback by playing local and state fairs to rebuild his audience.
He was charmisatic, and generous too, calling on local musicians to come on stage and jam, so that his set turned into an evening of extraordinary music. Truck
and his band were up there with them, and that, as much as anything, kept Carrie glued to her seat He played with unbelievable passion and power, and the give-and-take between him and the singer had the audience on its feet.
Afterward, there were autographs and interviews, and side groups making music, the milling crowd surging back to the midway for one last ride, and teenagers making plans for later on that night.
“We used to do that,” Jeannie said with a laugh.
Carrie smiled. “You remember that far back?”
“Nothing changes,” Jeannie said, and Carrie remembered having believed that the day she rode into town. But things did change: people, circumstances, the landscape of your dreams.
And the things you thought you wanted fell like dominoes before the things you could realistically have.
Carrie didn't look back once as she and Jeannie exited the fairgrounds.
Â
TRUCK HAD the warrior princess imprisoned in the tower and so confused she didn't quite know what to do.
But she was coming around, Truck thought as he got up the next morning. The job at Longford's was the first step, and she'd taken it all on her own. She wasn't going anywhere any too soon except into his bed. And into his life.
Every time he saw her, it was like adding fuel to the fire. Yesterday, tonight, he wanted to be with her, and instead he had been held up by a group of admiring musicians and he'd played the damn night long with a bunch of guys he'd never see again in this lifetime.
The choices a man had to make...
But Carrie was going to have to make choices too
whether she wanted to or not. This thing between them was escalating by the minute, and it wasn't just about desire. There was something more, something deeper, and he was damned if he was the only one feeling it.
Carrie had to be feeling it too, or she wouldn't be responding to him the way she was. That was the thing he was counting on. That deeper connection, the one she wouldn't acknowledge, the one she refused to let into the light of the day. Well, it didn't matter what she called it. Or what she thought was happening between them, deep in the night. He knew the truth, he knew what it was, and he knew eventually she would fall.
Over breakfast, Old Man told him, “Longford says she's given the place some class. Makes him look good. And she's gettin' through the mess, he says. Gettin' everything on spreadsheets and databases. He can finally see the desk, he says.”
“All that in a week?” Truck said admiringly. “She's a wonder.” But maybe it was more than that. Maybe Carrie was just someone who got things done. She'd worked under pressure and deadlines, and it could be said that her job had been to solve problems. Overhauling someone's office system probably wasn't much different, and a damn sight easier, than dealing with jittery clients.
Now all she had to learn to do was overhaul her life.
“Get her up to dinner.” Old Man said. “Listen to me, son. Don't lose her.”
“Soon,” Truck promised. “Soon.”
Â
WORK, Carrie thought. You couldn't depend on a
phantom lover,
but you could always depend on work.
She'd been a Longford's about a week and already she had found some real satisfaction in setting up some basic
office systems and procedures. It was instant gratification. Mr. Longford said either no or yes and the thing was done. She had forgotten the world could work that way.
By the sixth day, she had cleared all the extraneous papers from the desk and either filed them or entered the information on a spreadsheet, and she was working on a payroll spreadsheet for Mrs. Longford. And she was also helping out in the store, and she found a certain enjoyment in that too.
She learned that the Heaths were putting a two-story addition on their house with a bath, they said, and Truck was going to do the plumbing; and that Mr. Emberly had a chronic sink problem, but Mr. Longford said he only came in because he wanted company. She met Maria Bonnell, the carpenter, and Junie de Longo, the artist who designed custom-made frames.
She heard Mrs. Williams was ailingâAl the tile man couldn't get into her house to finish up her porch floor; and that the Hillmans were retiring and selling their summer home for the kind of money that hadn't been dreamed of in this town before and Eddie Gerardo was handling the sale.
At one time or another, a whole range of townspeople came in that door looking for a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, a glue gun, advice on how to hang wallpaper, or fix a door that squeaked.
And to chat. Carrie was amazed that customers had time to stand around and chat, to ask after someone's family, to give some details about their own. To talk about what was going on in town, in local politics, in Washington, and the world. And sometimes, someone would talk to her about her mother. Then after the social chat was all over, there was still time to get back to work.
She'd never done business that way, and was surprised by how much she liked it.
People knew her now. They waved when she came out of the store at noon, and as she roared up Main Street on her way home. They greeted her in the supermarket and at the post office where those sorry-we-found-another-candidate-more-qualified-than-you letters kept dribbling in.
There wasn't going to be a call from New York, she thought, or Boston or L.A., and she began distancing herself from the disappointment those letters brought her.
What she had here and now was enough, she thought; she could build from there.
Â
TRUCK CAME to Longford's a day later to pick up some adhesive Old Man had special-ordered. It was about fifteen minutes before noon. The store was quiet, Henry Longford was going over some papers, and he motioned Truck to the back of the store.
Truck hadn't seen Carrie since the weekend, hadn't had time for anything but work and the gnawing yearning that was his constant companion whenever he thought about her. He was damn intrigued by the daily reports Old Man was giving him about how she had taken over Longford's back room, and he was curious to see Carrie in her new realm.
She was checking a printout against some handwritten numbers as he came to the door. And she looked fabulous, dressed in a classy cobalt-blue silk dress, accented with chunky silver jewelry.
Carrie could feel him there, looming, sending her senses into a tailspin. Why today, why now? She looked
up, girding herself to be calm and collected, the sexy-lady way. “Hi, Truck.”
She was good, he had to give her that. He didn't know any other woman who could maintain that disdainful tone in the face of all the heat they had generated. But a warrior princess had to have a cool head especially when she was trapped. Especially when they generated sparks just by looking at each other.
So Truck didn't waste words. He had more potent weapons. “That adhesive Old Man ordered?”
“It's in,” she said coolly, wholly aware of the heat and tension between them. Instant on, like the flick of a remote. “In the back. Jerry will know.”
What was it about him? she thought, unable to keep her eyes off him. It was easier to think that Truck was the sum of his partsâthe tight jeans, the cotton shirt slung casually over the black T-shirt, those knowing eyes, those wicked workman's hands...
Don't go
there
â
“Put it on my account.”
An insanely unsatisfactory conversation.
“Done,” she murmured.
If that's how he wants things to be...
“Thanks.” The ball was in her court, Truck thought, his body tight with desire. She could not mistake that he wanted her, that right now, this instant he wanted her. But she was so damn determined to have it all her way, to hide, suppress and deny everything that was between them. What else could a warrior princess do when she was backed against the wall?
Carrie had turned her attention back to the pages she'd been scanning and he gazed at her for one long moment more before he turned and walked out the door.
He was almost at the store warehouse when he heard the long low sound of her faltering whistle.
Â
NOW WHAT?
Carrie was shaking at her audacity. After this many days, after there had been no contact, after he'd said he was willing and then he practically ignored her, what did a woman do?
She whistled.
...so you never have to be seen with me, you never have to talk to me...
Taking her at her word. Giving her exactly what she'd said she wanted.
And it was so damn unsatisfactory she wanted to scream.
What
did
she want?
The phone rang. She jumped.
Jeannie. Lunch.
“Not today,” Carrie said, swallowing hard. “I have some stuff to get done today.”
Stuff. Truck was now relegated to the bin labeled
stuff.
...
I'm willing
â
tonight and any night...a hot body in the dark and no contact during the day...I'm willingâ
If he had heard her. If he even still wanted her.
I'm willing,
she thought, a stifling excitement catching her breath.
Anywhere. Anytime
. Her body went liquid just thinking about it, just imagining it.
It didn't matter where. It didn't matter when.
What did you call that?
What name did you put to this hot need that could only be filled by him?
Carrie wanted him and she'd asked. When he came, she'd be waiting.
TRUCK CAUGHT UP with her before she left town on her cycle, running her down near the supermarket parking lot.
“Park that thing and get in here.”