Chapter 16 #2
He found her eventually, standing in front of a rack of key chains and refrigerator magnets. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for a gift. For Chris.”
He glanced at the display. “You think he wants a Michigan pine air freshener shaped like a mitten?”
Her smile bloomed. “Probably not. I thought…They don’t have any graduation cards. What about a travel mug?”
“I think,” he said carefully, “he’ll be happy just to see you.”
“Right. You’re right.” She frowned, tapping her fingers against her thigh, staring at the cheap souvenirs.
He bought a couple of sandwiches, two big drinks (he needed the caffeine), and a tin of Pringles.
Giving her time. When he got back, she was still standing there, as if the force of her attention could summon the perfect graduation present to appear magically between the blueberry popcorn and overpriced jerky.
“Hey,” he said gently. “You ready to go?”
“Yes! Sorry! Oh, fudge, are we late?”
“We’re fine,” he said. “Plenty of time.”
And for another hundred miles or so, they were fine. They followed the highway along Lake Michigan, past tiny towns, through rolling orchards and fields, past the billboards for Cops & Doughnuts and the U-Pick signs.
Anne leaned forward. “Oh look, a farm stand! I used to stop all the time with my dad. Well, not all the time. Once or twice. When he took me to college. We bought apples.”
Something—the wistfulness in her voice or the Rob Gallagher Memorial Soundtrack playing from the radio—got to him. He pulled onto the strip of dirt beside the road.
Anne looked from the green-and-white brooks farm sign to Joe. “What are we doing?”
He shrugged. Damned if he knew. “Buying apples, I guess.”
“Not in June,” Anne said. She jumped from the truck.
Joe followed slowly, lifting his chin in greeting to the round older woman in jeans behind the plank counter. She nodded back.
“Hi there! You have cherries!” Anne exclaimed in delighted surprise. As though there weren’t a big cardboard sign with the word cherries spray-painted in black staring them in the face.
“Picked this morning,” the woman said.
“They’re gorgeous.” Anne wandered along the stall, her touch trailing over squashes and potatoes, her face alight.
Joe leaned back, watching.
“Ooh, jam. Did you make it yourself?” she asked.
The vendor smiled back at her, apparently as helpless as Joe to resist all that bright interest. “I did.”
“Then I need to get some. And a pound of cherries, please. They’re so big.”
“That’s Santinas for you. They’re a good cherry. Royal Anns won’t be ripe for another week.”
“I’m an Anne, too. With an e,” Anne said as the woman scooped fruit into a bag.
“Mary Brooks.”
“Of Brooks Farm,” Anne said. Easy. Friendly, in a way Joe could never pull off in a hundred years.
The woman nodded. “My daughter runs the place now.”
“You must be very proud.”
“Proud enough. She’s got ideas of her own, that girl. Wants to go all organic.”
“It can be hard, working together in a family business,” Anne said. “My mom is Maddie’s Candies on Mackinac.”
“Is she, now? Here.” Mary Brooks turned away to pull a plastic tub out of a cooler. Smeared something white on a cracker, topped it with jam, and handed the whole thing to Anne. “Try this.”
“Mm.” Anne licked her upper lip. “Wow.”
She turned and held the half-bitten cracker to Joe’s mouth. “You have to taste this.”
He froze. All that warmth and energy, so close…He looked at her—eyes, mouth, eyes again.
She flushed. “Unless you’re afraid of germs.”
He cleared his throat. “Cooties.”
“Ha ha.”
“That’s good cheese from our own goats,” Mary Brooks put in.
His gaze locked with Anne’s. He bent his head, careful not to bite her fingers. Swallowed. “Thanks. That’s…” Tart. Sweet. Delicious. “Good.”
The air thickened between them.
He took a deep breath and a step back while Anne and Mary Brooks chatted about goats and organic farming and getting certified. Like he wasn’t there. Which was fine.
“You be sure to come back next time you’re driving through,” Mary said.
“I will. Thank you so much!” Anne promised. She and Joe got back in the truck. “What are you grinning at?”
“You. It’s like, we stop for cherries, and you come away with her life story.”
“Chris says I overshare.”
“You asked about her farm.”
“Because I was interested. Also, if I ask questions, I don’t talk so much.” She made an embarrassed face. “Were you awfully bored? Did I make us late?”
“No. It was nice.” He hesitated. Nice was such a lame word to describe her. “Friendly,” he amended.
Her lips curved. “It’s like you and your wood.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You interested in my wood now?”
She punched his arm. “Don’t be a jerk. I meant…You can find a story in most things, if you look for it. You see it in wood. I see it in…” She waved expansively. “People.”
Like they had something in common. The thought stirred inside him, like a disturbance on the bottom of the lake, billows blooming under the surface of the water. He started the truck.
Anne punched up her playlist. “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”…
She tipped the bag toward him, smiling. “Want one?”
The miles rushed by in a blur of green and gold.
They ate cherries in the truck, spitting out the stones into an empty cup, passing it back and forth.
Anne made this little noise in her throat, and when Joe glanced over at the passenger seat, her eyes were half-closed.
Red, red juice stained her lips and fingers.
She looked sweet and sticky and sexy as hell. A jolt of lust electrified him.
“I should have bought Chris cherries,” she said.
The jolt flickered into irritation. At her.
At her boyfriend for thinking she wasn’t enough.
At himself for caring. It’s not like he’d been stuck on her all these years.
He’d been married, for fuck’s sake. Divorced.
He wasn’t going down that road again, no matter how sweet or funny or friendly she was.
There was construction on I-94, just over the Indiana border. The sun struck through the windshield, glittering on the long line of vehicles ahead.
Anne stopped singing.
It was fine, Joe told himself. They weren’t late yet. He could fix this. He turned off the music so he could focus on the map directions.
Gradually, the bright orange barrels gave way to concrete barriers and guardrails. The Chicago skyline rose in the distance.
“Now what?” Anne demanded as the cars ahead slowed to a crawl.
“Accident,” Joe answered. “On the Dan Ryan Expressway.”
Stop. Go. Stop. Beside him, Anne was white and uncharacteristically silent, fidgeting as if her twitching could move traffic.
“What time is this dinner?” he asked.
“Seven.”
He glanced at the clock on the console. “Almost there.”
“I have to change.”
She turned around, reaching over the back of her seat to rummage in her suitcase. Her butt wriggled next to Joe’s head.
“We’ll be at the hotel in another fifteen minutes,” he said tersely.
She flipped back around in her seat, clutching an armful of flowered fabric. “Don’t look.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She yanked off her T-shirt—red bra, pale stomach, don’t look—before pulling the fabric over her head. Her arms waved in the confines of the cab.
“You’re gonna cause an accident.”
“Not if you keep your eyes on the road.”
The ramp descended into a warren of bridges and buildings. “At least fasten your seat belt.”
“In a second.” She tugged and wiggled the dress to her waist. Skinny straps exposed her bare shoulders and that bra. Red, God have mercy.
“You just flashed a cabbie.”
She huffed and lifted her butt off the seat, smoothing the full skirt over her lap. “He drives a cab. In Chicago. I’m pretty sure he’s seen more exciting things than my underwear.”
He pulled around a delivery truck. In the seat beside him, Anne reached behind her back, performing some complicated female maneuver before yanking the bra off and out the neckline of her dress.
The traffic lurched around them. Stop. Go, go, go.
She wadded up the bra and dropped it to the floor of the truck. Reached under her skirt and wriggled out of her jeans.
Joe dodged a bus and turned left under an L platform, all the time aware of Anne digging out a pair of sandals and strapping them around her legs. She flipped down the visor. Fussed with her hair. Bent over again to fish in her bag and apply lipstick.
“Your destination will be on the right,” said the voice from the dashboard.
Anne sniffed at her armpits.
He bit down hard on a smile.
She glanced over, coloring. “What?”
“Relax. You’re fine.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Joe. That’s totally the look I was going for. Fine.”
“You look…” Eyes shining, cheeks shining, bright red hair and black tattoos against that pale, freckled skin…“Very nice,” he said gruffly. Stupid word. “Pretty.”
She beamed. He felt the jolt in his chest. Like it was a starlit night six years ago and he’d complimented her on her prom dress.
He pulled under the lit canopy past the gold dragons and fancy planters, sliding his shitty old truck into line with the Audis and Lexuses and Cadillac SUVs.
He lifted out her suitcase, ignoring the looks from the valet stand, and set it on the curb. “You’ll be all right now?”
She nodded. “You?”
“I’m staying with a friend. The one I’m doing the job for.”
“Good, that’s good.” She glanced toward the entrance, her mind already skipping ahead. He’d lost her.
“Text me if you need to,” he said.
“Why would I need…?”
“Ride home Sunday.”
“Yes. Right.” She refocused on his face. “Thank you.”
“Good luck,” he said quietly.
The attendants swung open the hotel doors.
She smiled and squeezed his arm. “Thanks,” she said. To him? To the doormen?
He watched her go inside, dragging her little suitcase. Leaving him behind.
She didn’t look back.