Chapter 6
“Shoot. Still no service.” Hayley held her phone up at different angles, scowling at the screen with each change in position.
Didn’t matter how she contorted her body, she wasn’t going to find any reception out here.
No telling how long she’d have had to wait until one of the residents of Turkey Grove happened to cross her path.
Even with their limited resources with modern conveniences, the people of Turkey Grove were pretty self-sufficient and didn’t venture out into the bigger cities all that often.
Miss Holt could have ended up waiting for ages before anyone stumbled upon her.
Truthfully, Levi was surprised she’d managed to find any reception to call him in the first place. Surprised, but mostly grateful as well.
“Hopefully no one is worried about me.” She tilted her head. “Then again, no one knows about the rockslide, so why would they be? I wish I could’ve called and let them know what was happening when I still had signal.”
Mostly grateful. The woman could talk the ears off a whole field of corn. A few more hours of being spared her idle chitchat wouldn’t have hurt anybody. Especially Levi.
“Would you mind if I used your landline once we get into town?” She placed her phone screen down on her lap and turned toward Levi.
“No.”
Her mouth pursed to the side. “No, you won’t mind, or no, I can’t use the phone?”
Levi sighed. This woman was going to plunge to the bottom depths of his well of patience. “No, I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.” She returned her gaze out the windshield.
The next sigh out of Levi’s mouth was one of relief.
Finally, a moment of reprieve. Well, as much as he was going to get with the constant hum of the engine and the high-pitched whistle from the passenger window not being rolled up all the way.
There was never complete silence around him, but controlling the noise input to functioning levels was something he’d learned to be constantly vigilant with.
“So, what’s your story?” Hayley pivoted in her seat so her hips faced him.
For all that was good and right, he did not want this woman’s full attention on him.
“I don’t have a story,” he gritted out. Could she not go without speaking for longer than three seconds?
She laughed, a musical sound that, surprisingly, didn’t instantly grate on his nerves.
He noted the anomaly, then reflexively flinched anyway.
His sister, Nova, tittered when she laughed.
The sound was like ice shards pricking at his brain.
He’d determined never to do anything that could be construed as funny whenever she was around just to spare himself the torture.
Now that he thought of it, he made sure not to be humorous around anyone. To be on the safe side.
When was the last time he’d truly heard laughter, even his own?
Hayley smiled at him as if he’d told an award-winning joke. He hadn’t. Although he kind of wanted to now. Just to hear her laugh again. See if the sound and his reaction stayed consistent. If the soothing warmth that had filled him with the rich tones would come again.
He pressed his lips together instead.
“Everyone has a story,” Hayley insisted.
Did they? Debatable. Even if they did, were they all worth telling? He doubted his was. “No.”
She hummed, unconvinced. “If you don’t tell me, then you’re going to leave me no choice but to make one up about you, and I might get some facts wrong.” Her pause was poignant as she waited for him to jump in.
Let her make up whatever story she wanted about him. People had been doing it his whole life, so what did he care? She’d probably come up with something more interesting than the truth anyway.
He glanced down at his watch. They still had at least ten minutes before he could leap out of this cab and bury himself under the bookmobile’s hood. She could use the phone in the garage’s office, and he could close the door on her voice and finally get some peace.
Even if hers was probably the nicest voice he’d ever heard in his life.
“Once upon a time there was a mechanic named Levi Redding . . .” She let her words drift at the end, again offering the conversation to him to pick up and carry on.
She waited.
His jaw ticked like a metronome counting the seconds. The engine rumbled. The air through the cracked window whistled.
She huffed a breath, whether from exasperation or amusement he had no idea. “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to wait for you to tell me yourself.”
You’re going to be waiting a long time.
“Okay, changing the subject. Would you mind stopping by the general store when we get to town? I didn’t exactly plan to be stranded, so I didn’t pack an overnight bag. I need to get essential things like a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and conditioner, that sort of stuff.”
He still hadn’t felt any fingers of a headache clench into his skull even with Hayley being only a foot away, but he knew the kind of products that Jack MacDonald stocked in his store.
Like soap with actual flowers crushed inside.
Just walking down the aisle where the artisan bars were shelved made his head immediately pound like a cartoon anvil had fallen on him.
Levi had no reason not to assume the shampoos and conditioners would be any better.
“No.”
Hayley huffed again, and again he couldn’t decipher if the sound was exasperation, amusement, or a little bit of both. “I have never needed an interpreter for the simple word no before, but here I am. Levi, do you mean, no, you don’t mind stopping by the store, or no, you won’t take me?”
He slipped the thumb of his left hand into his palm, wrapped the rest of his fingers around the stubby digit, and squeezed. “You don’t need to go to the store. I have everything at the house.”
She raised a skeptical brow. “You have an extra toothbrush lying around?”
“Yes.”
She seemed to think a minute. “What if I need . . . other things?”
Other things? Oh. Right. There were some products that wouldn’t normally be stocked by a bachelor that a woman might need. Lucky for her, Levi was prepared in that department too.
“I have feminine hygiene products if you need them, and if that’s what you’re referring to. Sisters,” he said by way of explanation. His siblings didn’t visit often, but he was always prepared for when one of them decided to descend upon him.
Hayley’s mouth parted. “That’s the most you’ve spoken at one time since I’ve met you and it was about tampons.” Laughter trickled past her lips.
A warm blanket of comfort wrapped around his shoulders at the sound, releasing some of the tension that had been gathering in his chest. Her laughter was like sunshine on a brisk autumn morning, seeping into his skin and soaking into his bones.
His gaze pulled toward her, and he stared in wonderment.
In bewilderment. This woman was unarguably having a rotten day.
Her vehicle had broken down. She was stranded in a backwoods town until who knew when, with none of her own things, forced to stay with a stranger who had the personality of a grumpy hermit, and she was laughing.
He had made her laugh. How had that even happened?
He caught himself staring and forced his gaze back to the road. No need to make her even more uncomfortable around him by his unwanted attention.
“And look at you, you’re not even a little embarrassed by talking about the functions of the female reproductive system.” She tapped her chin, her eyes gleaming. “Oh, there is definitely a story, and I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Sisters,” he reiterated.
“Mm-hmm,” she agreed, more placating than anything.
Let her think whatever she wanted. Didn’t matter to him as long as she didn’t walk around his house smelling like some grandmother’s poisonous potpourri.
It had taken him long enough to figure out which men’s brands and scents didn’t cause him to have a reaction; he wasn’t about to welcome a return experience with an unwanted houseguest staying an interminable amount of time.
Even if her laughter was the strands that sunshine danced to.
After what seemed like hours but was only the time it took to travel twelve miles, the silhouettes of Turkey Grove’s few establishments dotted between the trunks of red maples and sweetgum trees.
Besides his service station and Jack MacDonald’s general store, there was also Aunt May’s Diner, Hillman’s grocer-slash-pharmacy, and, of course, the church.
“Your town is so quaint.”
Levi grunted. Turkey Grove wasn’t really big enough to be considered a town, but that was just semantics.
Plus, he liked his community the way it was.
There weren’t many places left where the big cities weren’t expanding, becoming obese with the growing population and spilling over into suburbs and what were once small towns.
He liked the fact that cell phones didn’t get reception in this neck of the woods.
That Wi-Fi was a luxury and not a necessity and that some of his neighbors still referred to the internet as “the interwebs” and had zero social media accounts.
He liked that instead of interstate traffic, he could awaken to soft birdcalls on a still morning with dew fresh on the ground.
That instead of listening to noisy neighbors through a thin apartment wall, he could hear the twigs snap in his backyard when a young deer family came to nibble on the tender shoots of grass.
He liked that he could go days without interacting with another human being. That, he liked the most.
“How long have you lived here?”
He flicked her a glance out of the corner of his eye.
She held up her hands in surrender.
Hmm. Maybe his glance had been more of a glare.
“Sorry. My daddy says I can talk the legs off a chair, and Mama calls me Chatty Cathy.”
Levi squeezed his thumb again. Her parents weren’t wrong on either account.
He slowed the truck as he neared the mechanic shop, released his hold on his thumb, and returned both hands to the wheel.
He watched his side mirror as he took the turn wide, making sure that the bookmobile attached to the tow rigging would clear the ditch on the side.
He swung the tow truck around and lined up the rear of the bookmobile to back it into the garage bay.
“Do you need any help? Should I get out and direct you, maybe?”
Levi threw the gear into park. Hayley reached toward the seat belt clipped at her side and unfastened it while Levi jumped out of the cab and marched around the hood of the truck. He could use her help. By giving him just a few moments when he didn’t have to process her unceasing chatter.
Levi opened the passenger door and offered his hand to assist her down.
It was a big step for anyone who wasn’t him, and he didn’t want her to stumble and hurt herself trying to get out, especially since there wasn’t any way to get her to a hospital with the road blocked.
Deborah Smith was a retired doctor who lived in a secluded cabin farther up the mountain, and people went to her every now and again, but it wasn’t like she had an X-ray machine in her living room if Hayley broke her leg.
She didn’t immediately put her hand in his.
Instead, she regarded him with a pinched expression, her eyes level with his from her perch in the big rig.
He let himself have a moment to indulge in the richness of her irises.
They truly were a decadent pleasure, chocolate infused with bursts of honeycomb delight.
The way her bangs traced the outline of her face acted as a frame for a masterpiece.
Levi Redding was a man of few words, but the speechlessness he felt while looking at this woman was akin to having the wind knocked out of him. Sudden. Gripping. And utterly, completely, unequivocally overwhelming.
He took in the narrowing of her lids as her gaze jumped from his face to his outstretched hand and back again. Was she still afraid of him? Did his size really cause her that much distress?
He opened his mouth to reassure her again that he would never harm her in any way when she slipped her delicate palm into his.
On instinct, his fingers curled around her hand.
Just as with the first time he’d touched her to help her into the cab, a shock of awareness splintered from every point of contact where her skin touched his and shot up his arm with alarming intensity.
He sucked in a breath through his nose. Mental acrobatics were required to keep his grip gentle yet supportive instead of reflexively tightening his grasp.
What was wrong with him? Why did he keep having these out-of-character reactions to this particular woman?
She was beautiful, yes, but he’d seen beautiful women before.
Her laugh, her scent, her voice—none of those things were offensive to him.
Being around others caused a visceral reaction within him.
The same was true for Hayley, but it was different. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Once the soles of Hayley’s shoes touched the ground, she pulled her hand back, leaving the phantom caress of her touch tickling the lines etched into his palm. It was soft and light, rippling in faint waves like a pebble tossed into a pond.
It drove him out of his mind.
With rough, swift strokes, he rubbed the palm of his hand across the outside of his thigh in an attempt to erase the imprint she’d left on his skin.
Something really must be wrong with him. Not that that was new information or anything. He’d always figured his internal wiring was faulty somehow, not all things exactly right. But this? This was altogether a very different kind of wrong.