Fender Bender Blues (19 page)

“I called a tow truck,” Rick said. He was shooting nervous side-long glances at Leah whose face was again buried in Rach’s chest. “I—he came out of nowhere.”

“It’s not your fault, Rick,” Rach insisted. His face was pale and she feared he might get sick. She reassured, “We live in Nebraska, it happens all the time.” The comment didn’t seem to comfort him at all.

Craig grasped his shoulder and gave him a small shake. “You’re both fine, that’s all that matters.”

Through the beam of the headlights, she watched his fingers on the dark green of Rick’s shirt and remembered his touch on her bare skin…

She cleared the images with a sharp shake of her head and said into Leah’s hair, “Let’s go sit in the car. The guys can take care of this.”

When they were ensconced in the backseat of the Toronado, Leah said in a shaky voice, “It’s over. I have to break up with Rick.”

“Why?” Confused, she searched Leah’s tear streaked face. “You love him, remember? It’s fate and all that crap you’re always droning on and on about.”

Leah sighed and burrowed deep into the seat, exhausted. “That’s what I thought, but there’s no way I can stay with him now after what happened tonight. It’s a sign.”

Rach peered out the window at Rick. The grimace on his face was too painful to watch and she guessed Leah had already told him the news. She barely knew him but she could see his feelings for Leah were strong and very real. She took Leah’s clammy hand in hers and gave it a firm pat.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll regret this decision and you know it,” she warned.

“We were going to that bed and breakfast on the river. It sounded like such a romantic thing to do for our first time,” Leah said in a dreamy voice, staring out the window at the open field beside them, the sprouts of corn barely peeking through the soil.

“That does sound amazing,” Rach encouraged, hoping she’d forget about the “sign.”

Leah’s eyes narrowed and her voice turned hard. “But then we hit that deer. I watched it squirm and jerk and
die
right before my eyes,
inches
from my face. It was horrible. It was final. We can’t be together.”

Rach loved Leah like a sister, and because she loved her more than the horrifying thought of revealing her actions of earlier that night, Rach had to face that embarrassment now. Rick made Leah happier than any other man ever had—there was no way Rach would stand by and let Leah throw away it all away because of “fate” or anything else. Giving Leah a reason to hold on to Rick was more important than the embarrassment she was about to endure.

Wishing she were anywhere but there, saying anything but what she was about to, Rach sighed and sucked in a deep breath. “No honey, that accident wasn’t a sign for you.”

Confused, Leah asked, “Huh? What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you curious why I’m here with Craig? Remember, you couldn’t get a hold of him?” Her eyes were distracted by the flashing lights of the tow truck slowing behind them, the loud whine of its engine and rumble of exhaust pierced the quiet night. Beside her, Leah waited in silence and she wished she didn’t have to continue. She turned back to Leah and said, “When you called we were…in my bedroom.” Thinking about Craig’s phone call before they’d left the house and his aloofness on the drive over, she shrugged and said, “I’m positive this accident was
my
sign, not yours.”

Realization dawned in Leah’s blue eyes and she squealed, “Oh Rach, that’s great!”

Taken aback by her enthusiasm, she asked, cautious, “Yeah?”

“Yes! That means Rick and I don’t have to break up!” Leah exclaimed, grasping her hands and squeezing them in a death grip. Wincing, Rach tugged her hands free and narrowed her eyes with annoyance.

“I’m sorry,” Leah rushed on, “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but I was heartbroken at the thought of never seeing Rick again. It was breaking my heart! He completes me.”

How could she argue with that? That kind of love was difficult to find—didn’t she know it. She felt much like the wrecked car being winched onto the tow truck looked.

“It’s all right,” she said, but her words were for herself, not for Leah. “Craig and I…we were a mistake. We just had a moment of temporary insanity, that’s all. It’s done, it won’t happen again.”

“Oh don’t say that,” Leah said, shaking her head adamantly. “This was fate telling you it wasn’t time, not that it’s not meant to be.”

“That’s not what you were ready to believe when it was your relationship on the line.” Rach gave a short, humorless laugh. “Nah, I’m okay with it. I think he regrets it anyway. He barely spoke to me on the ride here. I just don’t want to deal with this right now. I’ve got too much on my mind. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

Even as she said it a great disappointment weighed down upon her chest, squeezing at her heart. And she recognized that somehow, without meaning to, she’d begun falling for Craig, the guy who annoyed the hell out of her—and turned her body to jelly.
Not fair.

Leah patted Rach’s leg and gave her a knowing smile. “You’ll see, just wait.”

She wondered where Leah got her certainty—she could have used a little of it right then. She was too tired to argue, though. Instead, she leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Craig fell into bed well past three a.m., exhausted and pissed off at a redhead who ignored him since the moment they left her bed. He didn’t understand it. At first he wanted to give her a little space so she wouldn’t feel smothered. He definitely didn’t want her thinking what happened was a mistake, a product of her vulnerability. But then she was silent the entire ride to the accident and the entire ride home.

He shut his eyes and a naked image of Rachel invaded his thoughts. He groaned and smashed a fat pillow over his face. It did nothing to block the scent of her that still lingered on his skin. What had he been thinking? Just what the hell had he imagined would come of them sleeping together? Nothing good. And that had been apparent when she’d gotten out without a goodbye, taking her keys and hurrying inside as if she couldn’t get away fast enough. He’d walked to his car parked at the curb and paused to gaze at her front door for a few moments, wondering if she’d come back outside to say something, anything. She hadn’t. Thinking she regretted what they’d done made him angry, though he should’ve been relieved.

Seeing her cry had been the final straw—he wanted her. Somehow, he’d let his guard down and she was the only thing on his mind. Despite the fact he wasn’t interested in a relationship, he was now interested in a relationship with her. And it had blindsided him.

He ached for her now. Falling asleep was difficult when in the silence of his bedroom he imagined the sound of her moans and the feel of her skin against his.

****

“Why aren’t you talking to him?”

Rach sighed. Forgetting Craig was proving difficult when Leah mentioned him in every conversation they had.

“It’s not like he’s tried talking to me,” Rach pointed out. A supreme pizza fresh from Anthony’s oven sat in the center of the table, untouched. Skipping breakfast to save room to stuff her face at lunch had sounded like a great idea at the time, but now her stomach rumbled in protest. She waited a few moments for Leah to make a move for the spatula and when she didn’t, Rach dove in. She put the largest piece on Leah’s plate and said, “I know you expected me to take that piece, and normally I would have, but I feel like you deserve it since lunch is your treat, and I’m hoping it’ll be enough to shut you up about Craig while we eat.”

“Why, thank you,” Leah laughed and ignored her hopeful expression. Reaching for a breadstick, she said, “But I still want to talk about Craig.”

Rach set the second biggest slice on her white ceramic plate, thought,
What the hell,
and added another slice. “It’s been a week and I haven’t heard from him so I really don’t give a rat’s ass if he’s upset.”

Leah raised a perfect blonde brow at Rach’s heated tone. “For someone who doesn’t care, you sure are touchy about it.” She gave Rach a suggestive eyebrow waggle which Rach chose to ignore. “Goes both ways, you know. And you didn’t exactly give him your number.”

“True,” Rach agreed. With a wave of her finger, she added, “But he didn’t exactly give me
his
number, either. He knows where I live.”

She bit into the gooey pizza and red sauce dribbled down her chin. In normal circumstances she would’ve experienced a cheese rush, might have heard angels singing in the heavens above, but because of the topic at large she couldn’t enjoy the tastes exploding inside her mouth. Without being in the same room he’d still managed to ruin her lunch.

“Jerk,” she muttered through a mouth full of pizza.

“Be nice,” Leah admonished, dipping the breadstick into a bowl of steaming marinara.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rach shrugged and snagged the red sauce out from under Leah’s breadstick. She poured some on her plate and it spread along the edge of the pizza slice.

Craig had been on her mind every day for the last week and she’d wallowed in self pity at having jumped into the sack with him so quickly. To top it off, she was embarrassed about spilling her heart out to him, a practical stranger, letting him in on one of her most intimate details. To say she was embarrassed was an understatement. The memory of how she’d begged him to put his hands on her made her want to crawl into a deep hole. This time if he were to accuse her of wanting him, she couldn’t deny it without being called a big fat liar.

Hoping for a food-induced coma, she reached for another slice of pizza.

“He probably picks his nose, anyway.” Even though she snickered, she couldn’t picture Craig with a finger up his nose.

“What is your obsession with nose-pickers?” Leah rolled her eyes. “You were too quiet on the way home. He noticed.”

Rach set the pizza slice down—Leah had officially ruined it. Did free pizza have to come with strings attached? It was less appealing that way.

She dabbed her mouth with a napkin and gave Leah her full attention. “What the hell was I supposed to say? I’m sorry I tore your clothes off and rolled around naked with you when I really shouldn’t have? Oh yeah, and by the way, it was a mistake. But no big deal, right? Somehow that speech has no ring to it.” She shook her head and stressed, “I’m completely embarrassed. He probably thinks I’m a raging slut for jumping into bed with him so quickly. Not exactly the impression I like leaving with a man. I don’t have time for this crap.”

Leah sighed and grabbed the parmesan cheese from the middle of the table. Rach looked away, refusing to watch as she desecrated the pie with mounds of parmesan. A sprinkle was one thing, but tablespoons of it was another. When she was done, Rach confiscated the shaker and set it out of her reach.

“I think you’re being ridiculous,” Leah said and Rach raised curious eyebrows in response.

“Hello, crazy lady.” Rach waved a hand at her. “I don’t think you need to be lecturing me about ridiculous when you’re the one who swears she’s going to marry a man you just met a month ago and all because of fate.”

Leah went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “If you like him, I don’t see what the big deal is. You’re deliberately making things complicated.”

“You don’t understand.” Rach frowned down at her plate. The pizza was getting cold.

“I don’t even think
you
understand,” Leah said.

“Yeah, well I started out with a plan—no distractions, remember? We talked about this. Me getting my life back on track.” She picked a mushroom off the pizza and popped it into her mouth. “My great, logical plan isn’t working too well.”

“It’s because your plan sucks. You can’t put love on hold just because you don’t have a job. I don’t get what the big deal is.”

Rach narrowed her eyes. “You can’t see what the big deal is because you
have
a job and you can pay your bills. Another big deal is that he’s got commitment issues. You said so yourself, he dumped his girlfriend of eight months—’’

“Rick said he had a very good reason,” Leah interjected.

“—and I don’t need the stress. I’m telling you, it’s important for me to concentrate on
me
and not a man who drives me nuts. He complicates things. I’m
tired
of complicated. I just want to pay my rent, that’s it.”

Leah looked pained, but finally like she understood. With a nod, she replied, “Okay, I’ll leave you alone about it. Maybe I’ll talk to him so he’s not so offended by your—’’

“By my what?” Rach interrupted, giving her a pointed stare.

“By the way you behave like an ass sometimes,” she finished.

Rach rolled her eyes.
So much for understanding.

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you since you’ve been so busy with your mansicle, but I filled out an app last week at Dexler’s, that outfitting call center in town, and you’ll never guess in a million years who I ran into,” Rach said, leaning into the table. Not giving her a chance to guess, she rushed on, “
Jackie-in-the-Box.
”

“No way. From high school?”

“Yes way, from high school. And she remembers us and she still hates us. In fact, she told me not to hold my breath for a call-back.” She reached for the half eaten slice of pizza on her plate. Now that the conversation was off Craig, her appetite was back. And sitting in a pizzeria was better than dodging Mrs. Petska.