Claustrophobic Christmas (3 page)

Guess not.

“Is that Jamie on the phone?” his mother yelled.

“Crud,” Nita said. “She found me.”

Unlike Darcy, speaking of his mother was like conjuring the devil. Her voice grew sharper and louder. She must have opened the bathroom door. “Ask Jamie if Darcy likes light meat or dark meat because we can save her some thigh, maybe, but the kids always want the turkey legs and I don’t know what they’ll do if they don’t get a turkey leg.”

“You should have locked the door, Nita. It’s the only way you can be safe.” James rubbed a patch of stubborn ice on the windshield, gave up, and located his scraper in the glove box. He wondered if Darcy had packed her winter gear. It was rarely needed in Texas, but the woman had sense. You only had to read her travel tips and stories in that funny little newsletter to get that.

“Lock’s broken,” Nita told him. Then to their mother, “Give me a minute, will ya? I’m in the bathroom.”

“In the bathroom on the phone,” Mother snapped. James heard the bathroom door slam. Nita would pay for that later.

“Do me a favor. Tell Mother I struck out.” He wiped the scraper on his jeans to knock the ice off. “Better yet, tell her I ran off with a cute flight attendant. To Hong Kong.”

“Not a chance. She’s already planning the wedding.” Nita snorted out a laugh when he groaned. “It’s a June wedding, by the way. At First United.”

He ran cold fingers over his face, squeezing his forehead. “Come on. I’ll give you three hundred dollars to tell her.”

“I’ll give you five hundred if I can be there when you tell her,” she countered.

“Tell her I’m going to be late for dinner too. I’m still in Arkansas, and it’s snowing.”

“So?”

“You not watching the weather?”

“Rudolph and Frosty are on constant rotation.”

“It’s supposed to get bad.” If snow and ice clogged the interstate, it would be a right bitch, and boring as hell. Traffic jams were an even bigger waste of time than the standard cross-country trip.

Hopefully the storm wouldn’t come to pass. He was looking forward to Tallwood for a change. To running into folks he knew everywhere he went. To his family, Mother notwithstanding. To being in one place with people he loved and not going through a single drive-through for a single meal the entire week.

Darcy would be in Tallwood too. She was part of the attraction but not all of it. Even after her refusal, he still wanted to go home.

This amazed him, but there it was. Tallwood wasn’t Hell, and gathering a little dust didn’t sound half bad.

“It’s flat between Arkansas and Tallwood,” Nita said. “How could it snow enough to block a flat road?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a meteorologist.” A flash of bright lime caught his attention as Darcy crossed the busy parking lot. She quickstepped along the wet black pavement, and it looked like she was talking to herself. In his eyes, she exuded tension. Was she worried? Surely she had everything she needed in the car. She knew about travel. She was a travel agent, for Chrissake. Why was he fretting about her? She could talk powder and slopes like she spent weeks in Colorado during the season. The woman knew her winter weather.

He was due at some resort to photograph the new ski lift in February and had planned to ask her for a long weekend. Instead it would be just another lonely trip for old James Jones.

“They always claim it’s going to be the storm of the decade,” Nita said. “It never is. I think the weathermen are in collusion with the dairy and grain industries.”

“How much bread and milk did Mother buy?” He figured the snow was just getting started, but if he made too big a deal of it, Nita would involve the rest of the family. His phone would ring non-stop, and Mother would have the highway patrol checking the ditches for him.

“They’re not calling for much here.”

“I’m sure Arkansas won’t get much either. Hey, I gotta go. Thanks for telling Mother about Darcy for me.” James hung up before Nita could protest.

Darcy had reached a tan Buick that clearly had no passengers. No loser standing between James and the woman he wanted.

James tightened his grip on the scraper. Confirmation that Heath was fake stung his ego. He had half a mind to confront her but stopped himself. That was mean-spirited. No matter what, he didn’t want to hurt Darcy. She had her reasons for turning him down. She just hadn’t shared them.

She didn’t owe him anything, not even money. She was an ideal client.

Dammit, he thought she’d be ideal in more ways than one. Why wouldn’t a travel agent be the perfect partner for a man whose job involved travel? Especially one as quirky and funny and smart and interesting as Darcy. Such a good fit, and she could travel with him sometimes. He guessed she’d visited half the world already; her newsletters had recommendations and stories and the kind of information you could only get by being there. They could combine their trips—her fact-finding, his photos—and he could have it all.

The woman, the travel, the job, the life.

Just…dammit again. Dammit all to hell. Why didn’t she want him the same way he wanted her? And what in the world was he going to do with the stupid garden gnome he’d gotten her for Christmas?

Chapter Three

Darcy clicked her tongue in time to the monotonous flap of the windshield wipers. She’d been wrong to doubt James, Pop, the Weather Channel, and all the shoppers who’d cleaned the bread and milk out of the grocery stores. Thirty miles past the rest area, the snow had picked up and traffic had slowed to the point where she could have jogged faster than she was driving.

Frustrated, she quit clucking and squeezed her buttocks in time with the wipers instead. Squeeze, release. Whack, thwack. Car calisthenics. A white skein of snow whirled on the ground. It didn’t quite conceal the grey of the pavement, wet with melt and drizzle. Random flecks were the only thing making it through the window she kept cracked for fresh air. The hand towel she used to dry the water was hardly even damp.

The snow had arrived, but it wasn’t setting records. So what was the delay? Were the other drivers soaking in the vista of crop stubble and farm ponds?

A wreck, maybe. All these cars, it would hardly be surprising. She didn’t know if she’d left the rest area before James, but he hadn’t been at the map when she’d exited the restroom. She wondered what he thought of the traffic situation.

No, she would not start second guessing herself. James floated her boat—without making her seasick, a miracle unto itself. But he was a travel photographer. He stayed in one place only as long as it took to document it with his camera. When it came to romance, he was not the guy for her and she was not the girl for him.

As a distraction, Darcy flicked the radio dial, searching for a traffic report. Not much to choose from. The few with decent reception played Christmas music and country. She caught one travel agency spot extolling the virtues of sunny beaches on other continents while the Southeast was locked down under the worst snowstorm of the century.

Worst of the century? Jump the gun much, Paradise Allure Vacations?

Finally she picked up a local station on the staticky AM dial. “Khhh…khhh… Barnco exit on I-40, backed up to…khhh…khhh. Travelers advised to…khhh…roads and overpasses…khhh…Little Rock.”

The traffic slowed further until she idled behind a tractor trailer, beside a giant SUV full of kids and dogs, and in front of a van. The eighteen wheeler whined and moaned as it decelerated.

With so little movement, the air blasting from the vents grew hot against her knuckles. She’d cranked it up to offset the open window. Darcy nudged the window down and the air to mild. See? She could never have ridden long hours in a car with James. He wouldn’t have appreciated her travel tics, and he’d surely never have let her drive.

She had to be the driver of any vehicle she was in; otherwise the car felt twice as small and squeezy.

She tapped the steering wheel with her fingers, hands in the ten and two o’clock positions.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
It was a song of impatience.
Tap-tap
, come on, I want out of here,
tap-tap
. When she tightened her fingers as traffic lurched forward another fifty feet, the tapping continued.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

The snow and drizzle had changed over to snow and ice, pinging off her car. Tiny missiles stabbed her forehead from the open window, ricocheting into the cabin. Crap on a stick. She rolled the window up.

Shortly after that everyone ceased to inch forward. Was James feeling smug right now? Was he thinking of her at all?

Darcy took a deep breath and released it slowly. Her wipers dragged on crust. She shifted the heater to defrost. The van behind her was too tall for her to see how many vehicles followed. The truck in front, ditto. She was boxed in like a Saltine cracker.

No!
Not boxed in. This was a big, wide road, lots of space, lots of fields. They’d start up momentarily. The other side of the interstate trundled along, jolly as you please. A metal fence bisected the rocky median. Drivers on her side had to be navigating an accident ahead.

Snow showered her car, more pellet than puff, battling the wipers and defrost for supremacy. And still they idled.

The AM station said something about khhh…delays of…khhh hours and ice on…khhh bridges.

Khhh…hours? Serious…khhhly?

Okay, this was bad. When they’d been crawling, she could convince herself she was making progress toward the next exit, the next stint of freedom. She planned these things out so she wouldn’t have to take a chill pill. Her little chemical buddies, helpful as they were, didn’t lend themselves to operating motor vehicles.

Part of the problem was she’d loaded too much in the back seat. She should have shipped the gifts home so she’d have all seats empty. Really, a car felt so confining when it was cluttered. She’d published a newsletter about packing light this past summer.

Darcy fidgeted, wishing the traffic would move. Wishing she’d had her office manager find the misfiled itineraries so she could have gotten an earlier start. Wishing she wasn’t the only travel agent in the world phobic about airplanes. And a few other things.

Not that she admitted that to her clients, or much of anyone. It would hardly instill confidence to have a travel agent who never traveled. She never lied outright, but she did manipulate conversations to ensure nobody asked. She could count the number of states she’d visited in less than a dime—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky and unconsciousness. She’d considered a test run to Florida since she fielded so many offers there, but one of her most quoted trip tips was never go somewhere merely because it’s cheap or you’ll get what you pay for.

The bleak, grey sunset was swallowed by the ticking clock, and the snow grew heavier. Thirty minutes. She could no longer see asphalt. She twitched through the stations on the AM band again and again, hoping for better news. The more the snow coated her vehicle, the more it felt like a suffocating, metal coffin. An inch of white mounded on the car’s hood, but she kept those wipers going, those windows clear.

The cabin shrank smaller the longer she sat. Was it safe to get out? Where was her jacket? In back. She’d need it. The sweat suit was cozy but no protection against a…blizzard. Wind gusted the snow half down, half sideways.

Oh dear. She’d read about wilderness survival in her books, but that wasn’t the same as interstate survival. It wasn’t the same as being stuck in her car for hours.

No, she couldn’t think about hours, only minutes. In five minutes, if she was still here, which she wouldn’t be, she’d open the door and put her feet on the ground. Her butt grew numb as Novocain, and her nerves started twanging like bowstrings.

God, she hated small spaces. Cars, mostly. Other small spaces were easier to avoid. The AM station fuzzed on and off.

Darcy switched to holiday music, hoping the cheery bells would gird her loins to warn her family about her delay. She could hardly admit to herself she might be stuck here, in this itsy bitsy, teeny weeny, yellow, candy-smelling car, because she’d ignored the Weather Channel, so how could she admit it to Pop?

The truck in front of her groaned and cranked. Its taillights and brakes flickered off with a long, exhausted hiss. All around her, vehicles followed his example, headlights disappearing from her rearview mirrors.

They were giving up? But they’d only been here a few minutes! They could break free any second. Darcy tap-tap-tapped the steering wheel, faster and faster, until she caved to peer pressure and flicked off her headlamps. It was probably a mistake. She needed to be ready. If they idled much longer, it could get nasty. It was cold out there, and getting colder. Snow covered the cars, the road, the fields. Was James stuck? She reached for her phone, charging in the console, to text him, but he might not welcome any personal back and forth.

When she heard a door slam, just as he’d predicted, she twisted around to see what was going on.

There were still enough headlights for her to make out the man from the SUV tugging a large, shaggy dog on a leash. They cut in front of her to the roadside. The human hunched miserably against the wind as the dog cavorted in the possibly record snowfall.

So many tires to pee on, so little time.

Darcy had half a tank of gas, ice on the windshield despite the defrost, and cars, trucks, families and dogs all around her in the same predicament. She was hemmed in by vehicles, by snow, by circumstance. Trapped in one spot with no way out. The sky had darkened, the stars invisible through precipitation and clouds.

Pop was going to have a cow.

She was going to have a coronary.

She could take a pill. Should she? Better not. Any minute now, they’d be driving.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap
. Ice and sleet. Snowing and blowing.

What could she do? The lifeless fields on either side were unbroken by exits or secondary roads. The man and dog got back into the SUV. Exhaust fumes puffed from tailpipes all around, but her tips for stranded travelers—yep, she’d researched this too—advised erring on the side of caution. How long would she be marooned if she ran out of gas?