Chapter 2 #3
“You don’t have to convince me. I lived with her for seventeen years of my life.
Why do you think I left Phoenix the same day I graduated from high school?
I tried to persuade Dad to come to Charlotte with me, but he refused to leave.
Said Ma had anger issues that she would eventually work out.
I don’t think she ever did, but he loved her until the end. ”
When Harold suddenly began a series of prolonged coughing, Drew became concerned. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Harold answered when he got his coughing under control.
“Sounds like a smoker’s cough, Harold. Why do I get the feeling you’re smoking again?”
“Don’t start on me, Drew.”
“I thought you promised Claire that you were going to quit.”
“I tried.”
“Try harder.”
“I’ll give up the cigarettes when you give up the women.”
Drew figured it was time to change the subject, since he wouldn’t be giving up women anytime soon.
However, as he had told Harold, he’d have a break from them over the holidays.
He sniffed the air again, and this time he was certain he could make out the scent of a woman ─a damn pleasant scent of some expensive perfume. Definitely nothing cheap.
“I think there might be a woman on board,” he told Harold.
“I hope you don’t have one of those lot-lizards as a stowaway, Drew.”
He hoped not, too. Lot-lizards were what truckers called the women who hung around truck stops ready to do sexual favors. He’d never engaged in such activities and didn’t plan to start now. He was more selective when it came to bedmates than that.
“You heard what happened to Ghost. He didn’t know he had a lot-lizard as a stowaway until he checked into the weight station. The woman got him in a lot of trouble.”
“I’m sure I’m simply imagining things,” he said, although he was more than certain that he wasn’t. But he didn’t want his cousin to worry about him. “You recall when you tried to quit smoking that time and swore you could smell a cigarette when you actually couldn’t?”
Harold chuckled. “Yep, I remember. Fighting off an addiction of any kind is hard, man.”
“I believe it.” Drew knew his family thought women were an addiction for him, but they weren’t. He enjoyed being with them and making love to them, but in no way was he addicted to them. He could go cold turkey if the need arose. However, he hoped like hell that day would never come.
“I’m about to hit the interstate, Harold. Honk if you pass me on I-10. Safe travels to North Carolina, and give the family my love. Tell them Happy Holidays for me.”
“Will do.”
Drew hung up his microphone. But instead of heading toward the interstate as he had told Harold, he pulled into the next gas station and parked his rig behind the building. He was glad there weren’t any other truckers around. If a lot-lizard had stowed away on his truck, she would be sorry.
Getting out of his rig, he headed toward the back. Opening the rig’s door, he knew a woman was somewhere among his boxes since the scent of her was even more potent. Climbing in the back, he looked around before he found her. A woman was asleep on one of his blankets.
He frowned. A stowaway was the last thing he needed.
By habit, whenever he saw a woman, sleep or awake, his gaze would automatically check her out.
This one here, dressed in a pair of jeans and a top, was almost too thin for his taste, though her body appeared shapely.
Although one side of her face was resting on her hands while she slept, he could see that she looked young.
It was his guess that she was probably not even eighteen.
And she had the smoothest, most radiant-looking light brown skin he had ever seen.
From the texture of the medium brown hair that hung past her shoulders, he figured she was biracial.
What would make such a pretty young girl take up the life of a lot-lizard?
Of course, given her age, there was also the possibility that she was a runaway.
Even with all the hell Walleen Steele had put him through growing up, he had never considered running away from home.
This girl should be with her parents, who were supposed to love her and protect her from all the cruelties in the world.
There were some men out there who wouldn’t think twice about preying on someone young and innocent.
She was lucky that he was not that type of man.
He wondered if she had even finished high school.
Her clothes looked decent enough. Even a bit costly.
He’d heard some lot-lizards, as well as some runaways, were pros when it came to shoplifting.
They referred to it as survival of the fittest and best dressed.
Drew checked his watch. It was time for his sleeping beauty to wake up. His sleeping beauty? Damn, how could his mind conjure up such a thought? She wasn’t his anything. No woman was. He needed her out of his truck. “Hey, you, wake up,” he said in a loud voice. “You need to get out of my rig now!”
Her eyes immediately flew open, and when she shifted her head to look up at him, he blinked, then suddenly felt like a deer caught in headlights.
She had the most gorgeous pair of green eyes he had ever seen in his entire life, and for an unprecedented moment, Andrew Darryl Steele got lost in their beauty.