A Gift For The Groom. Sally Carleen

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ vivid picture was emerging of the woman who’d caused Lucas’s family untold agony, and it wasn’t a pretty one. She’d been so strict on her daughter that even the Reverend Sampson, a by-the-book clergyman, thought she was cruel rather than dedicated.

      The decrepit car Analise had borrowed from Nick inched along the asphalt, so slow she wanted to open the door, put her foot out and push. What a difference from her own car, a small red sporty model with five on the floor and enough power to keep her in regular speeding tickets.

      But her car was parked at the Tyler airport while she chugged along in this clunker, fighting her impatience to get back to the motel, back to Nick to share her news with him. Not that she was especially anxious to see him again, or that she felt any need to tell him what she’d accomplished, to prove that she wasn’t flaky. It didn’t bother her one bit if he thought she was flaky. And after last night, she’d bet her beloved fast red car that he definitely thought she was.

      Yesterday had not been one of her diamond days. More like a lump-of-coal day, actually. And Nick had been the crowning lump, a promise of escalating fiascoes to come if she couldn’t control her obsessive penchant for flirting with trouble.

      Nick was the complete opposite of Lucas. Lucas was safety, security, a friend she could count on. Nick was danger, an invitation to the unknown, to taste the exhilaration of a flight into skies that terrified her even as they tempted her, to prove she could do it.

      For most of the night she’d lain awake in the hot little room at the motel, trying to forget the way his accidental touch had made her feel, the way the scent of him had invaded her senses and lingered as surely as if he’d been in that bed with her.

      She gripped the steering wheel tightly and ordered herself to stop thinking about that. Not only were those inappropriate feelings for an engaged woman, they were inappropriate feelings for a sane woman. Her bad habit of dancing with disaster usually resulted in a catastrophe rather than success.

      She’d left her room early and, to her surprise, found a lead, something she could do to be useful, to take her mind off those hazardous-to-her-health feelings. She’d come up with information that would help them locate Abbie...and rescue Sara.

      The familiar sound of a siren intruded on her thoughts.

      Automatically her foot hit the brake while her eyes scanned the descending speedometer needle.

      Damn! Had she been speeding again? What was the speed limit, anyway? She’d been too caught up in her thoughts to notice.

      This decrepit car couldn’t possibly be speeding! Maybe the dangling taillight had fallen completely off, or the wire Nick had used to hold up the muffler broke or maybe the car with its three shades of rusty paint and primer violated some law of ugliness.

      In her rearview mirror she watched the young officer swagger up to her car.

      Swaggering was not a good sign.

      She located her driver’s license and held it out the window as the man approached. She didn’t want him to look too closely inside, to see that she’d hot-wired the car rather than wake Nick to ask for the keys, rather than risk going inside that overheated motel room where he slept, probably in the nude, when she was already overheated.

      The policeman accepted her license wordlessly then went back to his car to, she assumed, check for wants and warrants. Good grief! The police in Briar Creek never did that! She could be here all day!

      Finally he swaggered back and leaned down to look in, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. She leaned toward him so he couldn’t see the dangling wires.

      “Going a little fast, weren’t you, Ms. Brewster?” And she’d have to go twice as fast to make up for lost time after this. “Only a little,” she protested. Why didn’t he give her a clue? Tell her what the speed limit was?

      “Oh? How fast do you think you were going?”

      How did she know what answer she should give when she had no idea what the speed limit was? “Well, I think possibly the speedometer said somewhere around about the vicinity of fifty-eight.”

      He straightened and began to scribble on his clipboard. “The speed limit through this stretch is forty-five. Big sign a mile back.”

      Great. An out-of-state ticket to start a brand-new blunder list for today.

      “But you see,” she improvised, “this car is eleven years old, and since carbon buildup in internal combustion engines results in a gradual slowing of all exposed parts revolving counterclockwise, it’s necessary to deduct approximately one mile every year, which means I was only doing forty-seven, and what’s a couple of miles between friends?” She gave him her best smile.

      The officer stopped writing, lowered his clipboard, raised his sunglasses to his forehead and looked at her. “What?”

      “I said—”

      “Never mind.” He shook his head and replaced his sunglasses. “It’s not right, whatever you said. You were doing fifty-nine. Slow down.”

      “Okay,” she agreed. Had her gobbledygook really worked? Was she going to get off without a ticket?

      He raised his clipboard again, dashing her hopes with the action. “You didn’t signal when you changed lanes, either.”

      “But there was nobody else on the highway to signal to!”

      “You have to obey the law all the time, not just when there’s somebody watching. Anyway, I was watching.”

      She sighed. “All right. From now on I’ll signal before changing lanes if it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m in the middle of the Sahara Desert.”

      “You’re not wearing your seat belt.”

      “It’s an old car. The belt’s broken.”

      “I need to see your vehicle registration.”

      Amazing what a quick downswing her luck had taken in the last few minutes. The way things were going, Nick’s contact probably hadn’t left them the vehicle registration.

      Fumbling in the glove box, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks when she found the document. She gave it to the policeman, leaned her elbow out the window and smiled as innocently as she could.

      “This vehicle’s registered to Fred Smith of Omaha, Nebraska.”

      “Yes, it’s a borrowed car.”

      He took a step backward and his hand dropped to his gun. “Borrowed?”

      Analise froze. Was she going to be shot for taking Nick’s car that wasn’t really Nick’s car? “Yes, borrowed! You see, my friend...well, he’s not really my friend.” Oh, dear! She was getting nervous and incoherent. “My detective,” she said firmly, pleased with herself for finding the right word, “Nick Claiborne, flew into a small airport and it was late and his friend...well, I don’t know if it was his friend or just an acquaintance...anyway, he left him this car and I borrowed it this morning because I had to go to church and find out about Abbie Prather who’s now June Martin and—”

      “Turn off your engine and step СКАЧАТЬ