Backwards Honeymoon

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to be on the run for a while. I wish the library was open.”

She frowned a little and said very gently, as if she was humoring him, “If you’re thinking of somewhere to rob, wouldn’t it be better to choose a bank?”

“Thank you for that excellent advice, Katie Mae,” he said dryly. “I’m not planning to steal the overdue book fines, I want some information—because at the moment, I don’t know how far we’ll have to go, or even in what direction.”

“For what?” She was beginning to sound exasperated.

“To find a state…” he set his coffee cup down with a firm click and looked at her very deliberately “…where we won’t have to jump through a lot of hoops in order to get married.”

Kathryn choked on a mouthful of coffee. “You mean…you…”

“I’ll marry you, yes. Or are you backing out of the deal?”

Am I? She’d have expected to feel relief at his announcement, not this sudden wave of blinding panic. This was what she’d wanted, she told herself desperately. What she’d asked for. But now…

It’s just the suddenness of it, she told herself. It’s the same good idea it always was. I’m just surprised that he changed his mind, that’s all.

Of course, said a little voice in the back of her brain, fifteen percent of a national restaurant chain was well worth changing one’s mind for.

But wasn’t that the whole point? She knew exactly why he was marrying her; that absolute certainty was why she’d made the offer in the first place.

“No,” she said as firmly as she could manage. “I’m not backing out.”

“Then from here on out, we’re partners. Fifty-fifty in everything, right?” He held out a hand.

She laid her palm against his and felt an almost electrical zing from the contact.

“What am I thinking? I don’t need a library,” he muttered, and only an instant after taking her hand, he pulled away. Before Kathryn could gather her wits, he’d crossed the room again to a vacant computer station.

She sipped her coffee. It was cold now, but she didn’t care.

Married. She could almost hear her father roaring at the news that within hours of her broken engagement she was seriously planning to marry a different man.

A very different man, she thought. With Jonah, there were no false promises, no crossed fingers behind the back, no faked declarations of love. Just honesty and openness. And kindness, of course. Perhaps that was the most important factor of all, in Kathryn’s estimation. Few men would brave Jock Campbell’s wrath in order to help his daughter, even with the promise of a good chunk of his empire dangling before them. Jonah—despite his firsthand experience of what the man was capable of—hadn’t hesitated. And he’d done a good deal of helping even before she’d offered him the deal of a lifetime.

Well, Kathryn corrected, he hadn’t hesitated much.

Jonah came back to the table, folding a paper napkin. “This may be a little trickier than I thought. It appears that the easiest places to get married in this country are a long way from Minnesota.”

“Well, putting some distance between us and my father might not be a bad idea.”

“A very long way. We don’t have enough cash to buy airline tickets, and if we used a credit card, Jock would know about it long before we reached our destination.”

“He’d probably be waiting for us in the terminal,” Kathryn agreed.

“So it needs to be somewhere within driving distance. However, as far as I can determine, every state around here requires either a waiting period or blood tests or both.”

“I can see why you’d object to the waiting period,” Kathryn said reasonably, “but what’s wrong with blood tests? Are you afraid of needles or something?”

Jonah shook his head. “It’s the uncertain time element that bothers me. It can take days to get a lab report, maybe even longer than the official waiting periods are. And the more time we stay in one place—”

“The more likely it is that Daddy will catch up with us.”

“Of course, he can’t really prevent you from doing anything you want,” Jonah pointed out. “You’re an adult and you can marry whomever you choose, even if Jock’s standing right there yelling at you about it.”

Kathryn made a face. “Not a pretty picture. I think I’d rather present him with a fait accompli.”

“That’s what I expected you to say. So the best choice I’ve found is Nevada.”

“Las Vegas?” She was horrified.

“What’s wrong with it?”

She bit her lip. “I guess it’s a silly objection, but apparently it’s one of Douglas’s favorite playgrounds. And it’s not what I’d call within driving distance, either. Wouldn’t we be better off—”

“To stay right here and play sitting ducks? There isn’t a courthouse in Minnesota that will be open again until Monday, and then there’s a five-day waiting period. How certain are you that Jock wouldn’t hear about his daughter applying for a marriage license in Minnesota—especially since it’s the second one in just a few weeks?”

“You have a point,” Kathryn admitted.

“We might as well spend the weekend on the road. We don’t have to go all the way to Vegas, anyway, because anywhere inside the state line will do.”

Kathryn sighed. “I suppose, if it’s the best we can do, we should get started.”

Back in the car, he thrust a road map at her and said, “Plot me a route to Wisconsin.”

Kathryn stared at him. “Wisconsin? I wasn’t the best geography student on the planet, but the last time I looked Wisconsin was due east of here, and Nevada is southwest. Why on earth do you want to go to Wisconsin?”

“To rob that bank you were talking about earlier.” He flicked the turn signal and pulled onto the highway. He must have seen her expression, however, for he laughed. “Not literally, Katie. But we must get hold of some cash, so we’re going to have to use the credit cards. If we use them along the way, we’ll be giving Jock directions on how to follow us. So we’ll go the opposite direction, create a false trail, then double back and make our run for Nevada.”

She unfolded the map. “Don’t tell me,” she said as she buried her nose in it, trying to make out the fine print. “In your day job, you’re a spy. Right?”

“Darn, you guessed my secret. Now the director will have to assassinate us both.”

She put the map down. “You’re excited about this,” she accused. “You’re enjoying it.”

“Well…yeah, I suppose I am. Come on, Katie, this is an adventure we can tell our kids about.”

Kathryn gulped.

He shot a look at her. “What’s the matter? Hadn’t you thought that far ahead yet?”

“I guess not,” she admitted.

“Well, you’ll have at least twenty-four hours to think it over before it’s too late to change your mind,” he said easily. “Probably more like thirty-six.”

She turned back to the map, but she hardly saw it; the lines appeared to be squiggly.

Kids, she thought.

She and Douglas had never talked about the subject, but somehow she knew that they would have discussed having children, not kids. She’d never thought about the difference before, but suddenly it loomed as wide as the Gulf of Mexico. Having children with Douglas would have seemed almost clinical. Having kids with Jonah, on the other hand….

Would be one heck of a lot of fun, whispered a wicked little voice.

But she’d think about all that later. She ran a finger across the map. “This would have been easier if we’d started out in the right direction, you know.”

“Well, if I’d realized when we left Duluth that we weren’t headed for the Cities…” He sounded a bit absentminded.

“Okay. There’s a place coming up where we can turn onto highway—”

But Jonah was obviously not listening. His gaze was fixed on the rearview mirror. “Damn,” he said under his breath. “I didn’t think even Jock could move this fast. But I’m not speeding, so—”

Kathryn twisted around to look. Behind them, precisely keeping pace, was a highway patrol car with the emergency lights running. And as she watched in disbelief, the siren began to wail, and the officer flashed his headlights, signaling them to pull off to the side of the road.

CHAPTER THREE

JONAH fumbled for his wallet and extracted his driver’s license. “Don’t say anything, Katie. Keep your head turned away—but not completely, because that looks suspicious.”

She gave him an innocently wide-eyed look. “And I suppose you don’t want me to make jokes about kidnappers, either?”

Jonah rolled down the window as the officer approached with his flashlight playing over the car.

“Good evening, sir,” the officer said pleasantly. “Your driver’s license and car registration, please.” He took the documents, and his gaze slid easily from the photo on the license to Jonah’s face and back. “Thank you, sir. I’ve been following you for a while. I presume you’re not aware that your taillights are working only intermittently.”

Taillights? This was only about taillights? Kathryn tried to choke back a gasp of relief.

“I certainly wasn’t, Officer,” Jonah said.

“I’ll have to issue you a ticket for driving with defective equipment, of course. I’ll be right back with the paperwork for you to sign.”

“That was lucky,” Kathryn breathed as he walked toward the cruiser.

“Don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“But if he stopped us because of the lights, then he couldn’t have been looking specifically for us.”

“Don’t bet on it. Maybe he made up the bit about the lights as an excuse to check us out.”

“How could he just make it up?”

“It’s the ‘working intermittently’ part that makes me suspicious, because that’s not easy to check. The lights could be working perfectly right now, but I can’t exactly argue about something he says happened ten minutes ago and miles down the road.”

The officer returned with a ticket pad in hand. “If you’ll sign here, sir.” He tore off the top layer and handed it to Jonah. “You realize, of course, that the law says the car cannot be driven further until the defect is fixed.”

Jonah sounded calmer than Kathryn felt. “I suppose that means we’ll have to get a tow truck out here. Since we are sitting on the edge of the highway—”

“You’re actually in luck, sir. It could take an hour to get a tow truck out here.”

“That’s lucky?” Kathryn said under her breath.

“But the rules do allow me some discretion. Since you’re only a couple of miles from a truck stop, my best judgment is that it would be better to let you drive that far than to leave you here on the side of the road for an hour or more to be a hazard to other traffic.”

“I guess it is lucky,” Kathryn muttered.

“If you’ll proceed straight ahead to the first stop sign, the truck stop will be on your left at the junction with the main highway. They have some good mechanics in the garage there, and I think they usually have someone working on Sunday to handle emergencies. I’ll follow you in, so you don’t need to worry about traffic coming up behind you.”

“That’s very kind of you, Officer.” Jonah’s voice sounded a bit hollow.

He started the engine and waited till the officer was back in his patrol car. Then he pulled onto the highway and cautiously accelerated. The patrol car fell in behind them, emergency lights still running.

“A police escort into town,” Kathryn said. “Just what we wanted. So now do you believe the lights aren’t working right?”

“It doesn’t matter much what I think, because that ticket says the wiring will have to be checked out by an approved mechanic before we can go anywhere. And that means we’re stuck till at least tomorrow morning. Just keep your fingers crossed that we’re the only emergency repair waiting when the garage opens.”

Kathryn groaned, then brightened. “There’s the stop sign. So that must be…” She looked across a complex of buildings, lit by a glare of high-powered street lamps. “The truck stop,” she said faintly. “But where’s the town?”

“Probably a few more miles down the road. Truck stops have a habit of locating where there are trucks—on the highways, outside the towns.”

“Thank you very much for that lesson in economics, Mr. Clarke. I can’t be seeing right—does that sign really say this place is called West Podunk?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. There’s one in Iowa called Boondocks. This is actually a pretty big one. Restaurant, gas station, motel…”

“Jonah,” she said with a tinge of panic. “The restaurant is a Katie Mae’s.”

“Honey, they’re in every third town in the entire country. We were bound to run into one sooner or later. That set of doors must be the garage.” He took a parking spot outside and got out of the car, leaving the engine running.

The officer pulled alongside, called a cheerful goodbye, and was gone.

Kathryn scrambled out, as well, and joined Jonah at the back of the car. “It’s pretty dark back here,” she pointed out.

“I noticed.” Jonah jiggled the fender, and the taillights flickered on and back off as if on command. He shook his head. “He’s right, there’s a short somewhere. Dammit, I’d have sworn this thing was in first-class condition.”

“And that’s why you were under it this afternoon, I suppose. Because it’s in such good shape.”

“I was changing the oil.”

Kathryn refrained from further comment, but only by biting her tongue. “Now what do we do?”

“We pool our resources, go into the restaurant and order a meal, and hope that we can afford to check into the motel. Then we’ll work on figuring out how we’re going to pay the mechanic.” Jonah shut off the engine and locked the car. “I suppose things could be worse.”

“They certainly could. You could be in jail right now, and I could be looking for a lawyer to bail you out.”

“Taking things fifty-fifty,” Jonah said with a note of approval. “That’s my girl. And if you couldn’t find a lawyer, you could always use your nail file and break me out.”

They had enough cash to pay for their bacon and eggs, the biggest breakfast Kathryn had ever seen at any time of day. But it was apparent from a quick phone call to the motel that their resources would not stretch to cover a room.

“Then we’ll sleep in the car,” Kathryn said bravely, pushing her half-full plate away.

Jonah refilled his coffee cup. “Have you ever tried that? Not just dozing, I mean, but actually spending the night?”

“Well, no.”

“Believe me, you’ll be doing enough sleeping in the car on the way to Nevada. You don’t want to start any sooner than you have to. I told them to hold the room.”

“But if we can’t pay for it—”

“The way things stand at the moment, we can’t pay for the car repairs, either. We’ll just have to hit the money machine for a cash advance.”

“But that will leave a paper trail.”

“I’d have preferred to wait till we were out of Minnesota, but we don’t have a choice. Since I’m already in the official records as being here, we’ll use my card tonight and keep yours clear till we get to Wisconsin.”

“I thought maybe, with this happening, we’d just skip Wisconsin.”

Jonah shook his head. “With this delay, it’s even more important to lay a red herring for Jock to follow. But money isn’t the only problem we’ve got right now. There’s that ticket, too.”

“Are you still being paranoid about that poor cop? He was only doing his job, Jonah.”

“It’s in the computer now. If your father thinks to ask for a driver’s license check on me, that ticket will pop up—and he’ll know where I am.”

“Why would he do that? He probably doesn’t have any evidence that I’m with you,” Kathryn objected. “You said yourself when the cop pulled us over that you didn’t think Daddy could possibly have put the pieces together yet.”

“It doesn’t matter. Even if Jock isn’t exactly suspicious of me, he’s going to want his people to talk to everybody who was on the estate today, to find out what they might have seen. When I turn out to be hard to find, it would be only natural to ask the police to keep a lookout for my car. And if he would happen to do that before we manage to get the lights fixed—”

Kathryn winced. “We’ll be saying ‘Hello, Daddy’ when his helicopter lands in the parking lot.”

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