Stowaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #2)

Chapter 1

Goldie

I cross my numb fingers, the icy gusts of wind lashing my skin, my teeth chattering while I silently plead with the big man to fucking go inside the truck stop store already after he finally exits his eighteen-wheeler. My knees ache in my crouched position, concealed beneath the clear, midnight blue sky and prickly bushes. I almost scream finally! when he at last strides away from the rig, his heavy bootsteps slapping the pavement, swinging his keys in his hand without looking back. I crawl forward, making sure he’s completely out of view before I lumber up with stiff joints and my backpack slung over my shoulders, then jog up the passenger side of his truck.

I could nearly cry with joy when I jump and yank on the door handle and the massive door swings open with a creak, the big man having blessedly left his truck unlocked. Climbing the steep, narrow steps with my large belly in the way isn’t easy, but I manage to do so without slipping or losing my grip.

The inside is much more spacious than I thought, with a whole back area behind the front seats, complete with a few storage cabinets and a mini fridge. I curl into a ball behind the driver’s seat, hoping that when the driver returns, he won’t check back here and discover me before he leaves since I desperately need a ride out of here. It’s not exactly warm in the truck, but at least I’m no longer exposed to the elements.

Feeling a tentative sliver of safety for the first time in a week, I slump against the seat back, hug my belly, and allow my eyes to drift shut. Just a few minutes of rest in the dark cab with the background white noise of the rumbling diesel engines from nearby trucks is all I need, and then I’ll be golden.

Davis

I don’t know how Wyatt did this long-hauling gig for almost twenty years. I’m not even three years into it, and I’m miserable sleeping in this cab most nights. I miss my bed, listening to the cicadas instead of the constant honking and slamming doors that jerk me awake when I’m parked overnight at a truck stop. I may only be thirty-four years old, but I may as well be sixty-four with as much as my back complains from sleeping on my narrow mattress every night.

It’s a whole hell of a lot better, though, being out on the road than sitting at home, missing my dad. Better than walking into the living room, expecting to see him dressed in his lucky football jersey, seated on the edge of the couch, ready to watch the game with me, and then getting knocked in the head and heart. It’s been nearly two years since he passed—three years since we even lived together before he needed to move to an assisted living facility after suffering two strokes—and it still bowls me over to find the living room empty on game days.

Dad took care of me and my older sister, Amanda, all on his own after Mom passed when I was ten years old. He worked hard to make sure we lacked for nothing, always finding a way to pay for our school sports and club fees, even when it meant taking on a second job that left him dead on his feet.

When he was the one who needed to be taken care of, I was determined to pay everything he did for us back in kind, especially since I was the only one he had to lean on after Amanda left for the University of Michigan without a backward glance. I jumped at the chance to switch with Wyatt, a fellow trucker at Berenson Trucking, taking over his long-hauls, which pays better and went a long way toward covering the costs of Dad’s ever-increasing medical needs—which I’m still paying off.

Wyatt took over my local deliveries so he would be able to go home every night to his woman, Dolly—the hitchhiker he picked up at a truck stop and quickly knocked up and married, shocking the hell out of our small town seeing as he’s close to twenty years older and a hundred plus pounds heavier than her. He told me he first thought Dolly was a lot lizard and even went so far as to shamefully accuse her of being a whore. He’s spent every minute of every day making up for that mistake.

Now that I’m the one driving from one side of the country to the other, whenever a lizard comes knocking on my driver’s side door, asking if I’d like some company , my first thought is: is the universe sending me a Dolly? And then I shove that ludicrous thought to the side and politely reject her. Besides, as pretty as Dolly is, she’s a bit of a nutcase and way too damn young. I’m glad it all worked out for Wyatt, but I’m not inviting that kind of chaos into my life, no matter how badly I wish I had someone to go home to every night.

Checking my mirrors, I carefully change lanes to the right to take the next exit off the highway, already dreading another night spent in my truck, made all the worse by the heartburn that I can’t seem to shake for the last twenty-four hours.

“Shit, goddamnit!” I hit the brakes hard and swerve onto the shoulder when a dull gray minivan from two lanes over cuts me off at the last second and brakes to take the exit ahead of me. I rage even as my training and instincts take over, trying to keep control of the truck and straighten it out so I don’t run off down the bank and end up killing myself or someone else.

There’s a yelp and a thud from the back of the cab, but I can’t spare a second to check it out yet when the damn minivan driver, who clearly must have some kind of death wish, slams on their brakes to swing into the truck stop’s parking lot and pulls up to a gas pump.

“You motherfucker!” I yell and flip the driver off with my middle finger, though I know they can’t hear or see me. It takes a monumental effort to control my breathing as I get the truck fully under control, pull into the parking lot myself, and find an empty space to park the rig.

I have half a mind to jump out and confront the driver to lecture them about how dangerous and downright stupid it is to cut in front of a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler that can’t brake as easily or as quickly as a standard vehicle. When I see the driver is a woman with a pack of kids in little league baseball uniforms pouring out of the minivan, I think better of it. Ain’t no way you’ll ever catch me getting into an altercation with a woman, even if someone needs to set her straight about risking her kids’ lives with her reckless driving.

I close my eyes, drop my head back against the padded headrest, and take a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart at the thought that I could have wiped out a whole family if I had been going any faster. I jerk and snap my eyes open when I remember the yelp I heard when I swerved, and then I’m up and out of my seat quicker than a jack in the box.

The person crouched in the corner behind my seat screams and claws my arms, managing to get one good swipe of their short nails down my cheek when I grab the front of their T-shirt with both hands and haul them up. “Who the fuck are you, and how the fuck did you get in my truck?”

I instantly drop them with a jolt when I realize they’re a girl after she screams again and—bless her heart—tries to punch me in the throat in such close quarters. She lands with a hard thud on the floor and her young, plump face twists in pain.

“Ah, shit, girl,” I say, bending to help her up, but immediately back away and hold my hands up in front of me when she kicks my knee, hyper-extending the joint, and pulls a motherfucking gun out of nowhere.

With both hands trying and failing to hold it steady as she points it at my chest, she yells, “Don’t touch me! I’ll blow your head off if you come near me again, mister. Don’t think I won’t do it!”

I’d take her threat a lot more seriously if it weren’t obvious that she doesn’t know how to handle the gun properly and has left the safety on. I suck my teeth and make my move when she removes one hand to wipe away the tears that are no doubt impeding her vision, accidentally letting the gun dip lower on my body. Risking a non-fatal bullet wound, it takes nothing but a blink to lunge forward, twist the gun out of her small hand, and point it at the floor between us.

The girl’s scream is so high-pitched that the sound rings in my ears. She lurches forward on her knees, damn near dropping her forehead to the floor after wrapping one arm around her belly and the other over her head protectively. It’s disturbing, having a girl on her knees before me like this, like she’s terrified of what I might do to her as she pleads with me, “Please don’t hurt me! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Her long, wavy, golden-red hair falls forward, shielding her face as her sobs garble her apologies.

I’ve got no clue what to make of her, and when I don’t say anything or make another move toward her, she hesitantly peeks up from between her curtain of hair and eyes me. Those unnerving gray eyes jerk me back into the here and now, and she ducks again when I clench my jaw and check her gun’s chamber. Lo and behold…

“Damnit, girl. It’s not even loaded,” I tell her, laughing incredulously. “How are you going to hold someone up with a gun with no bullets?”

She scrunches her red brows, tears clinging to her pale lashes as she slowly straightens to sit on her heels. She darts her eyes behind me, where I’m blocking the only way out of the truck between the two front seats. “Oh.”

I cock my head and huff. “That’s all you got to say? ‘Oh’? Where the hell did you get this anyway? I doubt it’s even yours since you don’t know how to use the damn thing.”

She presses her lips together, her lightly freckled cheeks flaming red to match her messy hair, and she looks away. I slowly look her up and down, noticing for the first time that her belly is huge and rounded, and there are faded yellow fingertip bruises dotting her bare upper arms, with a handful of pink claw marks that haven’t broken the skin but look sore enough. They don’t look like the skin-picking someone deep into addiction might have, which means she either did it to herself or, more likely, she was attacked.

Now I’m pissed off for a whole new reason, liable to have a heart attack when my blood pressure continues to rise. “The fuck happened to you, honey?”

I drop the gun in the driver’s seat and pinch the dark denim fabric at my knees to hike my jeans up an inch so I can crouch down in front of her. She tries to scramble away from me, but there’s nowhere to go. I smile at her gumption when she pulls a knee up and tries to kick me again, but I easily swat her foot away and laugh when she growls with frustration. It’s cute. My smile drops when she shrinks and tries to make herself as small as possible, both arms shielding her middle.

She whimpers, her chin now quivering, when I gentle my voice and tell her, “Hey, hey, I just want to make sure you’re ok,” and then pull one of her arms away from her belly to examine it.

Her short, swollen fingers are damn near white and ice cold. She must be freezing in her tight, faded, off-white, Las Vegas graphic T-shirt, the hem of which stops just above her belly button that looks painfully stretched to the limits. A large swath of skin is exposed since the T-shirt doesn’t meet the waistband of what looks to be black athletic leggings.

She yanks her arm back, and I let it go so I don’t give her any more bruises. She wraps it around her middle again, a wave of fresh tears slipping down her cheeks, and she mumbles, “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll leave. I won’t bother you. Just please let me leave.” Her large eyes bounce around frantically while she starts shaking like a leaf.

I rock back on the heels of my square-toe brown boots with my elbows on my knees and try to relax my expression. It also works to block her view of the windshield between the front seats until she has no choice but to look at me. It’s difficult to make myself come across as less threatening or intimidating, seeing as I’m built like a linebacker in the NFL at six-foot-three and 250 pounds, but I try anyway so I don’t frighten her more than I already have.

I clear my throat and lower my voice, hoping it’ll help ease some of her fear. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” I sigh when her tears keep coming, and I back up to give her a few more inches of breathing room, then sit on my butt, my thick, leather billfold digging into my ass in the back pocket of my jeans. “You’ve got my word, ok? Now, why don’t you tell me your name, honey.”

“Marigold,” she whispers, her breathy, feminine voice scratchy but soft. It’s a massive difference from the fierce look and shrill scream she gave me earlier. She slowly sits up straight and rolls to sit on her knees, giving me a better view of her. She looks young as hell—too young to be out on her own and breaking into vehicles.

“Marigold. That’s a pretty name.” And it is. With her mane of thick, red hair streaked with gold and the wide eyes she gives me, it suits her perfectly. “Now tell me, how’d you get those bruises?” I point to her upper arm, then fist my hands in my lap. It just ain’t right, whatever she’s been through.

She eyes me warily for a moment but nods like she’s giving herself permission to speak. “The last guy I hitched with…he told me I had to pay for my ride, but that he’d take it easy on me because of my…condition. That I only had to give him a…a…blow job.” She’s barely whispering by the end of it, and she presses a hand over her mouth like she’s going to be sick.

I have to take a deep breath and hold it in because I know if I explode with rage like I want to, I’ll end up scaring her worse than before. That can’t be healthy for someone in her condition .

“I’m sorry that happened to you.” Fuck , I don’t want to have to ask her this, but I have to know. “Did he…did you…?” I don’t even have the words to finish asking just exactly what he did to her when she clearly fought back. Instead, I settle on, “Do you want me to call the cops or take you to the hospital so you can get treated for…something like that?”

Marigold shakes her head, and I guess maybe I’m gaining a little bit of her trust because she slides onto her butt to sit with her legs crossed and leans back against the side wall of the truck. She doesn’t take her hands off her belly, rubbing them up and down.

“No, I’m fine. I got away before he could force me to do it.”

“Ok, that’s…ok.” I blow out a massive sigh of relief. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you get away? You’re just a little bitty thing, and you’re…” I gesture to her heavily pregnant state, which would make fighting and running away that much more difficult.

“Pregnant? Yeah. Um, I pretended to agree, and he pulled his car over at that last truck stop. When he unzipped his pants, I went for his gun holstered on his hip. He grabbed me, trying to get it back, but I was able to get the door open and get out. I started screaming as loud as I could and threatened to shoot him in the balls if he didn’t stop.” Her brows pull together. “Though, I guess he didn’t know it was unloaded either? That’s when your truck pulled into the lot close to us, and he took off with the door still hanging open.”

It’s getting harder to maintain control over my expression, and I think she knows it, judging by the way she tilts her head to the side, studying me.

“Well…I’m glad to hear you got out of a…bad situation.” It’s the understatement of the year, and my hands tremble slightly with the sudden overwhelming urge to pull her onto my lap and hug her. To hold her and tell her everything’s going to be ok and that she did real good protecting herself.

But I don’t.

I don’t think she’d take too kindly to a strange man—one who could easily overpower her—touching her after what she’s been through. Instead, I keep her talking, watching her shoulders slowly lower as she tells me her story. “After that, how did you get in my truck without me noticing?”

“I hid in the bushes behind your truck all night until you went into the store right before the sun came up. The door was unlocked, and you didn’t check back here when you got in and started driving.”

“That was damn near fourteen hours ago.” A thought pops into my head, and I remember what Dolly was like in her condition . “Shit, was that the last time you used the restroom? My buddy’s wife is fit to burst all the damn time when she’s pregnant. I can’t believe you haven’t pissed yourself.” I eye her lap, and she crosses her hands over it. “You didn’t, did you?”

“Oh my god, no!” The flush of her pale skin deepens with embarrassment.

“Hey, it’s, uh, it’s ok if you did. I about pissed myself when you pulled that gun.” I wink at her, and the redness in her cheeks spreads down the front of her slim neck to her even paler collarbones peaking above the scoop of her T-shirt. “I can walk you inside the store if you need to do your business.”

“I don’t need to…Promise. I can wait,” she says with a grimace, squirming a fraction—the little liar. “Maybe I can stay here if that’s ok with you? I mean, unless you want me to leave.” She shakes her head, fluttering the strands of her hair, then brushes them behind her ears, three gold-stud earrings pierced in a line up each lobe. “What am I talking about? Of course, you want me to leave. Jesus, that was dumb. Ok, I’ll just…” She rolls onto her knees and has to place both hands on the floor to stand.

I spring up to help her to her feet with my hands around her ribs. I drop my hands quickly, stepping back once she can stand on her own. I’m just over a head taller than the girl, and I clench my fists as I picture her fighting off a grown man. Even if her attacker was smaller than me, I’d wager he was still a lot stronger than her. She’s damn lucky she was able to get away.

Marigold arches her back with a wince and massages it, working out the kinks from being hunched on the floor for so long. She’s all belly, and I wonder with apprehension just how far along she is in her pregnancy. She yanks the waistband of her leggings up to meet the hem of her T-shirt, and it promptly rolls back down, showing off a dark line that trails from her belly button down to disappear into her pants before she bends to grab a ratty, dark purple backpack I hadn’t noticed yet on the floor.

“So, um, I’ll just be going. Right? I should leave, shouldn’t I?”

I click my tongue as I shift on my feet, uncomfortable with the idea of her striking out on her own again. “Where are you gonna go?”

“Oh, uh, I’ll just…” She rolls her pink lips between her teeth and hedges toward the open space between the front seats.

The easiest thing to do would be to let her walk away, but my conscience is screaming at me to do something. I can’t tell exactly how old she is, but she’s too young to be out here alone. Since she clearly hasn’t gotten to wherever she’s going, seeing as how we’re out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, I know she’ll be looking for another ride. The next person might try to make her pay for it, too, and I can’t let that happen.

I pull her heavy-as-shit backpack from her shoulder and hike it over mine. “Okay, here’s the deal. We’re gonna go inside and get you sorted. I know you were lying about having to use the restroom.” I raise my brow at her, calling her out. “We’ll grab something to eat, then get some sleep since I’ve hit my time limit. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be back on the road, and I can drop you off where you need to go if it’s between here and Texas.”

Her eyes light up. “You’re going to Texas? I need to get to Dallas.”

“Well, alright. I can get you there, no problem, since I only live about two hours outside of Dallas. Just gotta drop the truck off at the warehouse first. All you have to do is promise not to steal from me or try to attack me in my sleep. We got a deal?” She doesn’t answer right away, so I add, “I won’t make you pay for a ride.”

“And you’ll keep your hands to yourself? I don’t have to worry about you messing with me in my sleep, either?”

A vision of cuddling up next to her, my palm resting on her belly while we sleep, hits me right in the gut, but I answer, “That’s right.”

“Ok. That…that’s really nice of you, mister…”

“Davis. Davis Freeman.” My palm engulfs hers when we shake hands. “Let’s get you inside and warmed up, Marigold…” I let the statement hang, waiting to see if she’ll give me her last name. She doesn’t. “Alright. I’ll see about getting you a jacket if you don’t have one in this bag of yours.”

She chews her bottom lip and shakes her head. “The guy took off with my suitcase in the back seat.”

I grab my duffel bag, which I had stored in one of the compartments above the fold-out bed. I shake out one of my yellow and gray flannels and hold it up so she can slip her arms into it. It swallows her frame, and she’s able to button it up over her rounded stomach. I stare without blinking and press a hand to my chest, wondering if I’m truly having a heart attack or something. It sure feels like it as my heart races and my fingertips tingle, seeing her dressed in my clothes.

Did the universe send me a Dolly?

No, no. I’m being ridiculous.

I snap out of my mental whirlwind when she crosses her legs at the ankles, and I force myself to look away, motioning for her to follow me out of the truck. I don’t know how she got up into it in the first place since I have to help her out with my hands once again around her ribs so she doesn’t fall and hurt herself. She jumps down with my help from the last step and immediately crosses her legs.

I can’t help but chuckle. “Come on, Goldie. Let’s get you to the restroom before you piss yourself…if you haven’t already.”

Her whole face burns as she presses her lips together in a tight line, but she doesn’t say anything as she hurries ahead of me in her beat-up, off-brand white sneakers as fast as she can, not giving a damn that I still have her backpack. That takes considerable trust after the hell she’s already been through, and I feel a slight prick of pride at that.

I also note, in the back of my mind, that my heartburn is gone.