The Rocky Road to Romance

  He kissed her at the base of her spine. “You could spend the night.”

  “No!”

  They both were surprised at how vehemently she’d said it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wriggling into her underwear. “I didn’t mean to shout.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No. You were wonderful. You did everything right…better than right. It’s me.”

  Besides being mortally embarrassed, she realized she was scared. She was feeling emotions she had no business feeling. She loved him. Good Lord, don’t even think it, she warned herself. Don’t say it out loud, don’t formulate it in your mind, and wipe that expression of adulation off your face.

  She was within inches of her doctorate; she was maxed out on education loans, and she was starting to get tired. If she slowed down now, she’d never make it. And Steve Crow could slow her down big-time. He’d have her going around in hormone heaven, dreaming fairy tales about how poor psychologists grow up to marry handsome oil tycoons.

  She dropped her shirt over her head and tugged her shorts over her hips. “I’m sorry to have to run off like this. You probably think I’m rude, but the truth is, I’m a little discombobulated.”

  “I understand.”

  “Really?”

  He pulled his shorts on. “No, but it seemed like the right thing to say.”

  She caught a look at herself in the hall mirror and groaned. “I look like heck.”

  “I think you look great. I think you should look like this more often. Every morning, in fact. And maybe once in a while in the afternoon.”

  “Every morning?”

  “For the rest of your life.”

  “My Lord, I’d be dead in a year.”

  Steve smashed his hand down on the alarm clock and stared glassy-eyed at the digital numbers. Five o’clock. So this was what it felt like to wake up at five o’clock, he thought. Not something he’d want to do on a regular basis. It was still dark outside. He didn’t give a fig about A.M. and P.M.; if it was dark it was night. He’d always thought people who rose before the sun were a little loony. He rolled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where he stared into the mirror for a while, waiting for his brain to catch up with his feet. He brushed his teeth, splashed cold water on his face, put on some jogging clothes, and tried to wake Bob.

  “Get up,” he said. “I have a real treat for you today. We’re going jogging.”

  Bob opened one eye and snuggled deeper into the quilt.

  Steve turned on all the lights. “Look at this, fella. It’s morning!” he said, giving Bob a shake.

  Bob growled low in his throat and kept his eyes firmly closed.

  “That’s it,” Steve said. “No more Mr. Nice Guy. Get your lazy butt out of this bed!”

  Fifteen minutes later they were in front of Daisy’s house. Steve held Bob’s leash in one hand and a box of Pop-Tarts in the other.

  “This is the last one,” he said to Bob. “And you can consider this to be an official bribe. I expect a good performance out of you. I expect you to look like we do this all the time. We don’t want Daisy to think we’re a couple of slugs. Let her find that out after she marries us.”

  Light shone from Daisy’s living room windows. The front door opened and a bar of yellow light appeared, slashing across the small front porch. Bob ripped the leash from Steve’s hand and streaked across the lawn. He barreled through the door, pushed past Daisy, and bolted up the stairs. Steve ran after him.

  “Sorry,” he said to Daisy, “we were out jogging and he got away from me.”

  It took Daisy a couple of beats to figure it out. “He ran upstairs. He was going so fast I didn’t even recognize him.”

  They both went upstairs and found Bob deep under the covers on Daisy’s bed.

  “Smart dog,” Steve said. “Why didn’t I think to do that?”

  Daisy looked at the empty Pop-Tarts box. “Breakfast?”

  “Bob needs motivation in the morning.”

  She looked at the lump in her bed. “I’d say he’s found all the motivation he needs.”

  Steve wrapped his arms around her. “Me too. I’m suddenly feeling very motivated.”

  She knew all about his motivation. It was poking her in the stomach, and she thought it must be difficult to jog with that sort of physical condition.

  “How about you?” he asked, sneaking his hand under her shirt. “Are you feeling motivated?”

  A thrill zinged through her at his touch. Be strong, she told herself. There were people out there, waiting for their papers. They didn’t give a hoot about her need for morning motivation—they needed the funnies to start off their day. The responsibility hung heavy on her. “I’m feeling motivated to deliver my papers,” she said with obvious reluctance.

  He pulled her closer and kissed her just below her ear. “Bet I could change that.”

  Of course he could change it. All he had to do was look at her, and she felt the earth shift on its axis.

  “Kevin is asleep in the other room,” she said, pushing him away. “And besides, I have this responsibility…”

  Steve was beginning to hate the word responsibility. “Okay,” he said, “looks like I’ve lost my jogging partner, so suppose I help you with the papers?”

  “That’d be terrific. If I get done in time, I might be able to squeeze in breakfast.”

  Big whoopee. She was going to try to squeeze in time for breakfast before going to her job as a crossing guard. Things were going to change in Daisy Adams’s life, he decided. She deserved better than this. She deserved not only breakfast but a leisurely second cup of coffee in the morning. Why was she a crossing guard anyway? Where were all the mothers and fathers? They were sitting in their comfortable kitchens reading the paper Daisy had just delivered, Steve thought as he followed her downstairs.

  She gave him a heavy bag filled with papers. “Since you’re going to help me, we can take the car. It goes faster that way. You drive, and I’ll run the papers.”

  “No way,” Steve said. “You drive and tell me where to deliver.”

  It took several tries before her car kicked over. She gunned the motor, the car backfired twice, and settled down to its normal death-rattle idle. She drove half a mile to a subdivision of single-family homes. There was a sprinkling of lights shining from bedroom and kitchen windows. Northern Virginia was awakening. Steve took an armload of papers and ran from house to house. After a half hour he’d worked up a sweat and was breathing heavily. “How many papers do you deliver?” he asked.

  “Hundreds,” she told him. “You don’t want to know.”

  The route ended in her own subdivision of town houses. They had one paper left. It was Daisy’s. Steve wasn’t sure he had the strength to carry it into her house. He was in pretty good shape, but he wasn’t accustomed to this sort of activity at six in the morning. At six brushing his teeth seemed strenuous.

  “Yipes,” Daisy said, looking at the kitchen clock. “I’ve got five minutes to get dressed and get over to the school.”

  “What about breakfast?”

  “Maybe when I get back,” she said, dashing up the stairs. “Help yourself to orange juice and whatever.”

  Steve looked in the refrigerator. There was an empty orange juice carton and an empty container of milk. There was a plastic bag containing one slice of bread, a box that used to hold English muffins, and there was an empty jelly jar. Kevin, he said to himself.

  Daisy thundered down the stairs and flew into the kitchen, strapping herself into a glow-in-the-dark

  orange vest. She snatched her keys off the counter and left. “See you in a little bit,” she called to Steve as she whisked out the door.

  He heard the car backfire and pull away, and he concluded he was in love with a crazy person. How did all those old people stand her? He could see her rushing into a retirement home, knocking old people over like bowling pins.

  He jogged home, got his car, went food shopping at a nearby c
onvenience store, and arrived at Daisy’s house just as she was getting out of her wreck.

  “Now can you have breakfast?” he asked her.

  “I have to take a shower and get dressed. I have to leave for the station at eight-thirty at the latest.”

  Kevin met them in the kitchen. He took the grocery bag from Steve, looked inside, and his face lit up. “Doughnuts!”

  Daisy took one upstairs with her. “I can eat one while I shower,” she said.

  Steve poured himself a glass of juice. “Is she always like this?” he asked Kevin.

  “Pretty much. She’s the family overachiever.” He finished off a doughnut and selected a second. “And she’s a real sucker. If you’ve got a cause, you go to Daisy. She never refuses anybody anything.”

  Steve knew differently. She’d refused to go to bed with him this morning.

  Chapter 6

  After work Steve stepped out of the elevator into the parking garage and took a fast survey of the crowd. Most were people en route to their cars, stopping to gawk for a moment at the police cruisers and the blonde. There didn’t seem to be any unsavory characters around, except for Elsie. She had her big black purse pressed to her chest, obviously ready to pull out her gun at the least provocation.

  Daisy was with two policemen. They were a study in stoic concentration in their crisp blue uniforms, perfectly creased, not yet marred by underarm sweat stains. They clearly hadn’t been talking to Daisy for very long, Steve thought. She was waving her hands and rolling her eyes, her blond curls bobbing about in agitation.

  He made his way over to the knot of policemen and security guards. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “You won’t believe what happened!” Daisy said. “Someone’s stolen my car.”

  “You’re right. That’s hard to believe,” Steve said. “Why would anyone want to steal your car? You sure it didn’t just roll away? Have you looked at the rest of the parking garage?”

  “It’s gone,” she said. “It’s been stolen.”

  “Must have been one of them mercy stealings,” Elsie said. “That car was pitiful.”

  Daisy flapped her arms some more. “How am I ever going to manage without my car? How am I going to get to work? How am I going to go grocery shopping?”

  Steve tried to look sympathetic, but he was having a hard time keeping the grin off his face. He hated that car. “I wouldn’t worry about it. It only gets a couple miles to a quart of oil. I’m sure it’ll turn up before long. All we have to do is listen for a traffic jam.”

  “I know it wasn’t such a great car,” Daisy said. “But it was all I had. I can’t afford to buy a new one.”

  “I have an extra car,” Steve told her. “I’ll loan you mine until yours is found.”

  “That’s very nice of you, but I couldn’t possibly accept.”

  “Yes you can. I can’t drive two cars at once. I don’t even want two cars.” He turned to the policeman. “Is there anything else?”

  The officer shook his head. “I have all the information I need. If she comes to the station tomorrow, she can pick up a copy of the report for insurance purposes.”

  “Well, I’m going home,” Elsie said, heading for her Cadillac. “I got a date tonight. I told Clarence Funk I’d go to bingo with him.”

  Steve took Daisy by the hand and led her to his SUV. “We should go home, too. If the police find your car, they’ll call you.”

  She was quiet on the ride home. She stared straight ahead, lost in thought. Every now and then her lower lip quivered ever so slightly, and she’d clamp down hard on it with her front teeth.

  Steve reached over and covered her hand with his. “It’s only a car,” he said gently. “You’ll get another one.”

  “It’s not the car so much,” she said. “It’s being a victim of a crime. I’ve never thought about it before…never experienced it. It makes you feel very vulnerable.”

  “Maybe it was a mistake,” Steve said. “You know it was a little disreputable-looking. Maybe it accidentally got towed away.”

  She brightened at that. “And when the garage discovers its mistake they’ll bring my car back!”

  He slowly drove down his street and parked in front of his house. The black car was parked in the driveway. “In the meantime, you’re going to drive my car. It’s worthless to me. Bob doesn’t fit in it, and it takes up space in my driveway.”

  “Why don’t you put one of your cars in your garage?”

  He looked at her blank-faced for a minute while his mind raced for an answer. “It’s locked, and I can’t find the key,” he finally said. “I can’t get the door unlocked.”

  “And why are the garage-door windows painted black?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never noticed. Weren’t they always black?” He ran around the car and opened the door for her. “Anyway, it’ll be easier for me with only one car.” He took keys off his key ring and handed them to her. “You drive, and I’ll ride along with you to pick up Bob. I left him with Kevin this morning.”

  She reluctantly climbed into the car and put the key into the ignition. “I don’t know about this,” she said, peeking over the black leather steering wheel. “It feels a little racy for me.” That was an understatement. It was like being in the cockpit of the Batmobile. She felt like she should be wearing a garter belt and black leather boots that came up past her knee and had high spike heels.

  “It drives like any other car,” Steve told her. “Just go slow at first until you get the feel of it.”

  She put it into reverse and peeled out of the driveway, laying an eighth of an inch of rubber on the asphalt.

  Steve made a sound that went something like “Ark” when the seat belt caught, squeezing the air out of his lungs.

  The car came to a standstill in the middle of the road. Daisy licked dry lips and put her hand on the gearshift knob. She slanted a look at Steve and smiled. “I think I’m going to like this,” she said, putting the car into first.

  Kevin and Bob were waiting on the front steps when Daisy drove up. “We’re out of food,” Kevin told Daisy. “Bob ate everything.”

  Half an hour later Daisy and Steve wheeled several carts full of groceries out of the supermarket. When they reached the car Daisy found a pair of men’s navy briefs hanging on her antenna.

  She gingerly picked them off, holding them between thumb and forefinger. “I’m glad I wasn’t here when he took them off,” she said, dropping the briefs onto the pavement.

  “It’s the car,” Steve said. “It draws underwear. You’ll get used to it after a while.”

  They stored the bags away, Daisy got behind the wheel and backed over the briefs. She looked at the flattened navy material and smiled. “Roadkill,” she said, driving over it one more time as she left the parking lot.

  Supper consisted of canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches—lots of them.

  “The trick to making grilled cheese is tons of grease,” Daisy said. “You need to fry all of the bread surfaces, and then you need this disgusting yellow cheese that has lots of salt in it. That way you can clog up your arteries and give yourself high blood pressure all at the same time.”

  She was frying the seventh sandwich when the phone rang. She cradled the mouthpiece on her shoulder while she flipped slices of bread. “This is who?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed and her lips compressed flat together. “Uh-huh,” she said into the phone. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.” Her eyes got small and glittery, and she wrinkled her nose, causing little squint lines to appear between her brows. “Now let me tell you something, you disgusting insect—” she shouted. She blinked at the click when the caller disconnected. “Creep! Unh,” she grunted, slamming the phone back into the wall hanger.

  Steve raised his eyebrows. “What was that all about?”

  “Crank call,” she said, turning back to the sandwiches.

  “What did he say?”

  She slid the grilled cheese onto Bob’s dish and put a frozen apple pie into the ove
n. “He said the Roach didn’t like smart-ass reporters interfering with his business, and he was going to do some unpleasant things to my anatomy. Actually, that’s paraphrased. He was more specific, but it’s not worth repeating.”

  “You need to call the police and tell them you were threatened.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow when I get the stolen-car report. I don’t have time tonight. I have to be at a lecture at eight.”

  Steve pushed his plate away. “I’ll go with you.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’d rather you stay with Kevin. I don’t feel comfortable about leaving him home alone tonight.”

  Between a rock and a hard spot, Steve thought. He didn’t want to leave either of them alone. “Kevin can go with us.”

  “A lecture?” Kevin said. “Give me a break. It’ll be about old people. They’re always about old people.”

  “I’ll let you drive my car to the end of the parking lot,” Steve said.

  Kevin was on his feet. “A lecture wouldn’t be so bad,” he decided. “Maybe they’ll show a cartoon.”

  Steve wanted to increase Daisy’s protection. He wanted twenty-four-hour guard service. He’d requested it earlier from the police, but they claimed they didn’t have the manpower. The line of his mouth slanted down at the thought of his alternative—Elsie Hawkins. Elsie Hawkins didn’t instill a lot of confidence in Steve, but Daisy wasn’t willing to accept anyone else. Not only didn’t he think Elsie could protect Daisy, he was terrified that she’d shoot Daisy by mistake. The only positive point was that Elsie seemed to genuinely care for Daisy. And at least Elsie was a cantankerous diversion to a would-be assailant. She was another set of eyes and ears, another person capable of making an emergency phone call. He supposed she was better than nothing at all.

  “I’ll be ready in a minute,” Steve said. “I have to make a phone call. I’m going to see if Elsie is willing to work extra hours.”

  It was ten o’clock when Steve brought Daisy and Kevin home. He pulled into the lot and parked next to Elsie’s Cadillac. Kevin tumbled out of the sports car, and Daisy eased herself over the gearshift.