Chapter 4 #2
Because, hello, I am a woman alone in a secluded area with a man who could easily overpower me with his pinkie finger if he wanted to.
The fact that he’s standing there, unsmiling, gruff, and foreboding is doing nothing at all to put me at ease.
I’m sure every woman has grown up on cautionary tales such as this, and the sage advice passed down through the ages of placing your keys in between your fisted fingers to use as a weapon will do me absolutely no good.
Especially since I left the keys in the ignition.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough that a metallic taste fills my mouth. The downside of having an active imagination is that it can run away with me pretty quickly. I take mine by the metaphorical reins and yank hard until it comes to a screeching halt.
The man before me is as big and imposing as a bear, but why does he have to be a scary, ferocious, predatory grizzly bear? Why can’t he be a soft, fluffy, cuddly teddy bear?
That’s it. He’s nothing but a big, squishy marshmallow that looks like he could snap someone’s arm in half like a twig but would really never hurt a fly.
I smile brighter and hold out my hand. “Thank you so much for rescuing me. I have no idea what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been able to come help me out like this. I’m Hayley, by the way.”
His golden gaze barely flicks to mine before returning to over my shoulder, effectively dismissing me in a fraction of a second. He does shake my hand, but like with the eye contact, his grasp is there for only a moment before it’s gone again.
“Levi Redding.” It’s the same underused voice that I’d heard on the phone. Like the sound was pulled across a gravel road before reaching my ears.
I clear my throat and wave in Cletus’s general direction. “Well, there’s the culprit. I left the keys in the ignition, although I doubt they’ll do you any good. Do you need help with anything, or should I just get out of your hair and let you do your thing?”
He looks down at me with an inscrutable expression, the longer strands of his dark-brown hair slowly falling across his forehead with the languidness of maple syrup. “You’d better wait in the cab.”
I’m not sure what surprises me more—hearing a complete sentence in that deep and throaty voice of his or the fact that he follows the words up by walking around the hood of the tow truck and opening the passenger’s door for me.
My feet slowly tread the same path as if my sandals are all of a sudden weighed down with red clay mud. I step around him and—okay, no contest, this is the most surprising part—he holds out one of his massive paws to help me climb up into the cab.
Definitely a big ol’ teddy bear. A true southern gentleman in manners if not charm.
The last dregs of worry that had pooled in my stomach seep from my muscles.
Generations of vigilance that has been ingrained into female DNA is obviously not needed around Levi Redding.
While still more-than-slightly intimidating, this giant of a man isn’t displaying any warning signs that he intends to physically overpower me and, as Mrs. Cline at the nursing home would say, steal my virtue.
I set my fingers in his palm, and my tiny digits are quickly swallowed. Next thing I know, I’m very nearly catapulted into the cab. One minute my feet are on solid ground, the next they aren’t. I have never been so effectively manhandled in my life.
Levi’s shaking out his hand where he stands to the side of the open door, wiping his palm along the leg of his washed-out blue coveralls as if trying to rid himself of my touch.
Rude!
He shuts the door in my face just as I’m sputtering in offended outrage.
I watch him march back around the front of the tow truck again, and I clench my jaw.
The driver’s door opens, and he slides into the seat, not even having to use the runner to step up on.
That loud, rumbly diesel engine is brought back to life, then he turns the truck around so Sir Galahad’s back faces Cletus’s front.
He exits again without a word, then there’s banging and movement coming from behind me as he hooks up one vehicle to the other.
I look down at my hands to see if maybe I have something on my fingers and that’s the reason he’d wiped his hands after touching me. A little peanut butter left over from my sandwich at lunch, perhaps.
Nope. They’re clean as a whistle.
My lips turn down as I glance at the side mirror and watch as he hefts a hook the size of my head—it probably weighs just as much as I do—as if it’s nothing at all. I wait to see if he wipes his fingers after handling the greasy hook.
He does not.
Guess it’s just my touch he finds repulsive.
That should relieve me, right? The fact that I repel this man instead of attract him?
I’m solidified in the safe zone when just a handful of minutes before I was worried about the threat of assault.
That is the normal reaction. Relief. But I must have more female pride than good sense because against all logic there’s a feeling of hurt caught right behind my breastbone.
Okay, whoa. I am making way too much out of this.
What does it even matter? He’s just the mechanic.
The tow truck guy. The only interactions I have to have with him are right now when I need a ride into town and one other time after Cletus is fixed.
That’s it. I don’t, for any reason, need him to like me.
Even if I’ve done absolutely nothing for him not to like me, a small voice in my head whispers petulantly.
To keep any other arguing thoughts from being able to express themselves, I reach forward and turn on the radio, flicking through the channels until the chorus to “Good Morning Baltimore” streams through the speakers.
Two songs later, the driver’s door opens and Levi plants himself behind the wheel.
“All set?” I ask, giving him my sweetest smile.
Okay, so I may have a problem with wanting people to like me. As far as fatal flaws go, it could be worse.
He merely grunts in response and puts the truck into gear, pulling forward.
Alright, then. I may not be a curmudgeon, but I’m beginning to suspect Levi Redding is.
I half expect him to either turn the radio off or change the channel. I can’t really picture the giant burly man to be a big showtunes fan. But he doesn’t make any move toward the radio knob and doesn’t voice a single objection.
I study the man beside me out of the corner of my eye, trying not to be too obvious that I’m attempting to figure him out.
I never want to jump to conclusions with people I meet.
One never knows the backstory of another, what has happened in their life to shape them into the person they are or the circumstances that have led to their current behaviors.
Fictional characters sometimes get a better deal than people in real life because readers are allowed to see the conflicts and motivations on the page, understand the reasons they are the way they are.
Real people are too rarely afforded the same consideration, even though we all have backstories of our own.
Jennifer Hudson is belting out a high note when I turn to the taciturn mechanic who hasn’t spared me a single glance, much less a word. “Is there another road out of Turkey Grove, by chance?”
A muscle in his jaw ticks, and he does what I thought he’d have done already. He turns off the radio, then flicks me a quick look in the ensuing silence. “No.” He turns the music back on.
“Really? Not even one that would be a super long detour but would allow someone to come and get me?”
His hand reaches out and clicks the knob to kill the music again. “There’s a Forest Service road, but it’s impassable right now.”
The lyrics to “Defying Gravity” fill the cab when he clicks the radio on.
I have so many questions. Why is it impassable?
Even to a vehicle with four-wheel drive?
How are the residents in Turkey Grove going to survive if everyone is trapped without the means of getting to any type of service?
What am I going to do? If there’s no way to have anyone come pick me up, then I’m stuck in Turkey Grove for the foreseeable future.
“Okay, what about a hotel I can stay at? An Airbnb or Vrbo?”
He clicks the music off again. “No.”
I eye him and then the radio, my brows pulling down in confusion. A theory is developing but not fully formed.
He turns the radio back on. An instrumental interlude bangs out in the space between us.
I wait a few beats, then ask, “If there isn’t a hotel or short-term rental, do you have any ideas on where I can stay? I’ll settle for a hobbit house or a shoe, even though I’m not necessarily an old woman to live in it yet.”
His jaw muscle ticks again, and the vein along the back on his hand bulges.
So, he doesn’t like poor attempts at humor. Got it.
Slowly, almost as if the lack of speed were deliberate, he reaches out a fourth time and kills the music. He takes in a long breath, his nostrils flaring as he does so. This time when he looks at me, it’s not fleeting. He pins me with his intense golden gaze. “You have to stay with me.”