Stop The Wedding!: Night Driving / Smooth Sailing / Crash Landing

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Still hung up on her, huh?”

“No, not at all. I’m just embarrassed that I let her make a fool of me.”

“She cheated on you.”

“Yeah.” He bit off the word, grateful to see the waitress coming toward them with their breakfast.

“Well,” Tara said, “at least you’re not commitmentphobic.”

“Are you?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Kinda. Sorta. At least that’s what Chet said.”

“I thought he was the one who left you.”

“Yeah, when I turned down his marriage proposal.”

“Poor Chet,” Boone said, not feeling sorry for ol’ Chet in the least. “You broke his heart.”

She shrugged. “Not on purpose. I was very clear from the beginning that it wasn’t a long-term relationship.”

“Are you always that clear about your expectations from a relationship?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No,” he admitted.

She dug into her breakfast, fork in one hand, knife in the other, both elbows sticking out. The platter was heaped high with bacon and eggs and pancakes and hash browns. “You want some? I got plenty.”

He raised a palm. “I’m good.”

She narrowed her eyes at his oatmeal. “That’s not enough to feed a sparrow.”

“Since I’m not mobile, I have to keep a check on the calorie count.”

“Suit yourself.” She waved a fork. “So what was her name?”

“Who?”

“The one who broke your heart.”

He shrugged.

“You forgot her name?”

“Believe me, I wanted to.”

“Isn’t it a shame we can’t get selective amnesia when it suits us.”

“Shame,” he echoed.

“So what was her name?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not to me, but maybe if you talked about her, you could get over her.”

“I’m over her.”

“You sure?” She sank her teeth into a sausage link.

“Positive.”

“Then tell me her name.”

“Shaina.”

“Pretty name. Was she good in bed?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a legitimate question. The top two reasons couples break up are money and sex.”

Boone couldn’t believe she was asking something so personal. Then again, he could. Tara had no boundaries. Was it strange that, while her questions rubbed him the wrong way, he was starting to admire the way she just said whatever popped into her head? No filter. No caution. Just plowing straight ahead and grabbing at life with open arms. Trouble was, he was a cactus and she was a shiny red balloon.

“It wasn’t money,” he growled.

“So she was bad in bed.” Tara wiped her fingers on a napkin. “Could you hand me the syrup?”

He passed the syrup. “No, she was very good in bed. Everyone’s bed. That was the problem. Her extreme proficiency in bed.”

Tara’s eyes went all goopy soft as she drizzled maple syrup over her pancakes. “Oh, Boone, I’m so sorry.”

“Why? Did you sleep with her?”

Her hearty laugh captured him. Embraced him like a hug. How could someone hug you with a laugh?

A man put money in the jukebox and at eight o’clock in the morning, with the smell of bacon wafting in the air, it was downright incongruous hearing Ingrid Michaelson singing “Be OK.”

“That’s really why you want to stop Jackie from getting married, isn’t it?” Tara surprised him with her chirpy insight. “To keep her from making the same mistake you did. It’s really your mistakes you want to erase, not hers.”

Boone shook his head, polished off his oatmeal. “She barely knows the guy. They’ve only been going out a few weeks.”

“You and your sister weren’t raised together, right?”

“Yes. Where’d you hear that?”

“When I said goodbye to Mrs. Levison at the party, she said your sister is the daughter of Jack Birchard, the famous oceanographer.”

“That’s right. She’s my half sister.”

“Why the deep investment? It takes a lot of time, money and energy to drive across the country to ruin someone’s wedding.”

“I wasn’t there for her when she was growing up.”

“Why do you feel that it was your responsibility to be there for her?”

“When our mom dumped her, I could have made things easier for her.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. A big brother can’t make up for an AWOL mother.”

“I could have told her it wasn’t her fault that she left.”

“I doubt you telling her that would have made a difference.”

“Yeah, well.”

“You still feel guilty even when it had nothing to do with you. C’mon, Boone, you’re not responsible for what your mother did. I’m sure Jackie doesn’t hold you accountable in any way.”

This was making him uncomfortable. This is what he got for opening up to her. She was kicking off her shoes, climbing into his brain, making herself right at home, running barefoot through his psyche. He folded his arms over his chest. “You sure take your time over a meal.”

“You’re supposed to eat slowly. It aids digestion.”

“It does not aid expediency.”

“You went to college,” she said.

“I did.”

“You use a lot of big words.”

“In some circles, a large vocabulary is considered an asset.”

“I didn’t go,” she said, wistfully licking syrup from her fork. “To college, that is. My parents couldn’t afford it. Not on a plumber and secretary’s salary. Too many kids. I put myself through beauty school.”

“Doing what?”

“Swear you won’t laugh.”

“What? Did you work in a strip club?”

“Boone!” She looked half amused, half insulted. “What in the world do you think of me?”

He raked a gaze over her. “With a body like that you could make a fortune dancing.”

Her cheeks pinked and she looked both pleased and embarrassed. “Thank you. I think. No, I worked at an amusement park.”

“Doing what?”

“I was a character.”

“You are that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Specifically, a chipmunk.”

“You got the spunk of a chipmunk. I’ll give you that.”

“Why, thank you. That’s exactly what they told me at Florida Land.”

“You finished?” He tapped the face of his watch. “It’s almost nine. We’ve got to hit the road.”

“You know, if you keep doing that I’m gonna have to smash that watch.”

He narrowed his eyes, pretended to be affronted when he wasn’t. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“It’s for your own good.” She bit into a crisp slice of bacon, her gaze hooked on his. “You don’t know how to slow down, relax and take it easy.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to sit around. It drives me batty. Relaxing is severely overrated.”

“Because your mindset is rush, rush, rush, go, go, go. It’s killing you to be incapacitated. That’s why you had to go back for a third surgery. Because you couldn’t sit still and just be. Now you’re having to learn the hard way that life doesn’t always turn out the way you planned.”

“How much do I owe you for the analysis, Dr. Freud?”

Tara grinned. “It’s on the house.”

“And the advice is well worth every penny.”

“Oh-ho, here come the barbs.”

“I wanted to be on the road hours ago.”

“And here we were getting along so well there for a split second.”

“You’d think you’d be in a hurry, too,” Boone said. “To see your mother.”

A shadow flickered over her face. “I’m not very good when those I love are sick.”

“But you’re going home anyway.”

“Of course. I love my mother.”

“Yet here you are, over a thousand miles away.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “It was my mom who told me to follow my bliss. She encouraged me to leave Florida.”

“Why’s that?”

“She got married young and started having kids, and even though she never said it, I think she regretted not getting to have adventures.”

“What did your dad say?”

“He’s my dad. He was dead set against it, but Mom convinced him.”

“Could you get a to-go bag for the rest of that?” He nodded at her half-eaten breakfast.

The waitress led a cowboy past their table. Boone pointed at Tara’s plate, silently mouthed “to-go box” to the waitress and pantomimed signing the check.

The waitress nodded.

“I90 East is a mess,” the cowboy told the waitress. “Eighteen-wheeler jackknifed and turned over, blocked that entire side of the freeway. Bread truck. Loaves of bread and buns strewn everywhere. You should have seen the birds flocking. I thought I was in a Hitchcock movie.”

Tara tucked her legs underneath her, sat up higher in her seat, looked over Boone’s head to the cowboy in the booth behind him. “Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the cowboy said.

“Did you say a bread truck overturned on the freeway?”

“Yep. Traffic is backed up all the way from here to the state line. It’ll be hours before they get that mess untangled. If you’re headed that direction, stay on the access road.”

“Thank you.” She threw the cowboy a beaming smile, then slipped her feet back on the floor and was back eye-to-eye with Boone. “You owe me an apology,” she said.

“How do you figure?”

“If we’d been on the road like you wanted, we’d be trapped in traffic with no way out. In fact, we probably would have been right behind that bread truck. It might have turned over on us. Squashed us flat.”

“You have a very active imagination,” Boone said because there was no way he was going to admit she was right. It was one thing to put up with her Mary Sunshine attitude. It was quite another to give her a reason to gloat.

She gloated anyway. “And the moral of that story, Toliver, is that sometimes it’s better to be the tortoise than the hare.”

4

Wednesday, July 1, 4:45 p.m.

TARA HAD A MISSION. Cheer Boone up. Whenever he smiled, he dazzled, and when he laughed, well, she melted, gooey as chocolate in the hot sun. Unfortunately, he rarely laughed.

Why do you care? He’s not your problem. He’s not a project and you’re not chocolate.

No, but she was stuck in the car with him and she preferred sunshine to rain. They’d been driving for hours and they were almost out of Nebraska. Once they’d left the truck stop, taking an alternate route that the cowboy had suggested to avoid the bread truck smashup on the freeway, they’d made great time.

She slid a glance over at Boone. He was staring out the window at the Nebraska cornfields rolling by. His clenched fist rested on his right leg.

“Are you hurting?”

“What?” He blinked, turned to meet her gaze.

“Your leg. Do you need some pain pills?”

“It’s fine. I’ll live. I’m trying to taper off.”

“You don’t have to suffer. If you need a pill, take it.”

He shook his head. “I’ve been taking the easy way out. This thing with Jackie woke me up. I can’t keep stewing in pills and self-pity.”

“It’s only been three weeks since your last surgery. You’re still healing.”

He grunted. “Or maybe this is as good as it gets.”

Tara didn’t know what to say to that. She knew he was going to get better, but from his point of view things had to look a little dark right now. “I broke my leg once.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“When I was eleven.”

“How’d it happen?”

“Stilts accident.”

“Stilts?” An amused smile flitted at the corners of his mouth. “Now that’s unusual.”

“My brother Matt is a powerbocker.”

“A power what?”

“It’s an extreme sport where you jump and run on spring-loaded stilts, but that’s not the kind I fell off of. Matt experimented with all kinds of stilts before he discovered powerbocking.”

“Is he short?”

“Who? My brother? Yeah, kinda. Five foot six.”

“What kind of stilts did you fall off of?”

“Peg stilts.”

“What are peg stilts?”

“They’re also called Chinese stilts and are used by professional performers. On peg stilts you have to keep walking at all times in order to keep yourself from falling over.”

“No stopping, huh?”

“None.”

“Can’t stay in one place?”

“Nope.”

“How in the world do you dismount?”

“Therein lies the challenge that I was working on when Matt caught me and hollered. I started running to get away from him. Not smart. Seriously, do not run on peg stilts.”

“I’ll take that into consideration the next time I’m stilt walking. What happened next?”

“I stepped on some boggy ground—we’ve got a lot of that in Florida—and one of the stilts got stuck. I did the splits midair.”

“Ouch.” Sympathy tinged his voice.

She winced in memory. “It was not a pretty sight.”

“How long were you in a cast?”

“Six weeks. But shh, it was sort of humorous after I got past the initial pain. I didn’t have to do dishes and I got to be the center of attention, which is very important to the middle child in a family with six kids. I milked it for all it was worth.”

“Ah,” he said. “You’re one of those lemonade people.”

“Pardon?”

“Life gives you lemons, yada, yada.”

“There’s nothing wrong with lemonade.”

“I wish I could have seen you walking on stilts,” he mused, his voice softening. “Not when you fell, of course. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Really?” She canted her head, studied him.

“Just…well…you’re so graceful. I bet when you walked on stilts it was like you were dusting clouds.”

“Why, Boone, how romantic. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

He made a face. “Really? As I was saying it, I thought, ‘Come on, Toliver, this is way too cheesy.’”

“It might have sounded cheesy coming from someone else, but you do not throw around compliments, so when you say something like that, I know you mean it.”

A long silence stretched between them and Tara started fretting that she’d said too much.

“I don’t dislike you, you know,” he mumbled.

Her heart thumped strangely. “You don’t?”

“Not at all.”

“You’re not very friendly to me most of the time.”

“It’s because you scare the hell out of me.”

“I do?”

“Yeah.”

Tara gulped past the odd lump in her throat. “Why’s that?”

“Because I do like you.”

“Really?”

“That’s the problem,” he rushed to add. “I don’t want to like you.”

She felt a little hurt that he didn’t want to like her, but she pretended it rolled right off her shoulders. “Any particular reason why?”

“You’re hard to keep up with.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ve got a quicksilver mind.”

“Is that a compliment or a complaint?”

“Just an observation.”

“What does quicksilver mean, exactly?”

“Changing unpredictably.”

“I don’t do that.”

“You do,” he disagreed.

“Oh, look.” She pointed at the red sports car that sped by them in the fast lane. “A Porsche Boxster. I always wanted one of those.”

“If you were in school these days they’d probably diagnose you with ADHD and put you on Ritalin.”

Tara pursed her lips in thought. “Probably. I took home all kinds of notes telling my parents I was a chatterbox who couldn’t sit still.”

That got a smile from him. It was small, but it was a smile and damn if she didn’t feel pleased as punch. “Some things never change.”

“Let me guess what kinds of notes you took home from school.” Tara tapped her index finger against her chin. “‘Dear Mr. Toliver, Boone dusts the erasers far too hard when he’s playing teacher’s pet.’”

“I didn’t get notes in school.”

Tara laughed. “Why am I not the least bit surprised?”

“You know,” he said, “this isn’t so bad.”

“What isn’t?”

“Being trapped in a car with you.”

“You thought it was going to be bad?”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted. “I mean, we don’t get along at the best of times and a cross-country road trip is definitely not the best of times.”

“What do you mean, we don’t get along? I thought we got along famously.”

“You did?”

“Sure.”

“Lemonade,” he mumbled.

“I know you don’t really mean it when you get all grumbly. You just don’t want anyone seeing you with your guard down so you push people away. I don’t take it personally.”

“You forgive everyone.” He sounded amazed. “Do you take anything personally?”

“Meredith Moncu,” she said.

Boone frowned. “I’m not following.”

“Meredith Moncu. I took her personally.”

“Who is Meredith Moncu?”

“My high school rival. She was always beating me out for everything. Head cheerleader—”

“You were a cheerleader?”

“Hustle! Get to it! Gators, let’s do it!” Tara cheered.

Boone groaned good-naturedly. “I had to ask.”

“Get fired up! Let’s go! Have at it! Let’s roll!” She clapped and pantomimed raised pompoms over her head.

“Hands on the wheel, Duvall.” He grabbed for the steering wheel.

She warded him off with her elbow. “I’ve got it under control. Settle down.”

“Not my strong suit.”

“What? Letting go of control?”

“Yeah.”

“You should work on that.”

“What else did Meredith Moncu beat you out of?”

“Class president.”

“High school politics? Seriously, you dodged a bullet.”

“She also stole my first boyfriend. Bobby Joe Harding.”

“Bobby Joe? Sounds like you dodged a bullet there, too.”

“He had a lot of muscles.” She turned her head to assess Boone’s biceps. “But you could have taken him in arm wrestling.”

“Good to know. Whatever happened to Bobby Joe?”

“Oh, he knocked Meredith up and they got married. They have four kids now and live in Buena Vista trailer park down by the railroad tracks.”

“See, you did dodge a bullet.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”

“Knew a lot about birth control, did you?”

“Nope. I didn’t put out. Which is how Meredith stole him.”

“Really?”

“What part? Meredith putting out, or me not putting out?”

“You.”

“Don’t sound shocked. What? You think I’m Suzie Sleep Around?”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. Your face did.” She shrugged. “I just wasn’t ready for sex when I was in high school. I wanted to be in love and I wasn’t in love with Bobby Joe.”

“I thought you said you’d never been in love before. If you’ve never been in love, does that mean…”

“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re asking. Cripes, Boone, I’m twenty-five. After a while…well…a girl has certain needs and her lofty ideals fall by the wayside.”

“I suppose they do,” he said, his voice turning husky.

“I’m old-fashioned, really.”

“You?” Boone hooted. “In what way are you oldfashioned?”

“I believe in marriage, for one thing.”

“Me, too.”

“Even though you’ve been divorced? Even though your mom flaked out on your dad?”

“Even though. What else do you believe in?”

“Waiting until you get married before you have a baby. For me, I mean. I wouldn’t presume to tell other people how to make their choices.”

The car tires strummed along the asphalt.

“You’re not quite what I thought you were,” Boone said after a while.

“The flakey hairstylist syndrome, huh?”

“What’s that?”

“When people hear you’re a hairstylist they assume certain things about you. That you’re arty and creative and impulsive and undependable and have scads of tattoos.”

“And you’re not those things?”

She notched up her chin. “I’m dependable.”

“Do you have any more tattoos? I mean, besides the dolphin.”

She felt the heat of his gaze roll over her. “Would you be disappointed or relieved if I said no?”

He shrugged, didn’t answer. Silence filled the car. Tara sneaked another glance over at Boone. He was studying her with a pensive expression on his face, as if she were as mysterious to him as a platypus.

“How come you don’t date?” she asked.

“With this?” He waved a hand at his knee.

“You’re using that as an excuse.”

“That’s because it is an excuse. Can’t perform bedroom gymnastics in a metal leg brace.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“No, I haven’t tried.”

“Then how do you know what you can’t do?”

“Because—”

“I get it. Performance anxiety. You’re afraid of rejection.”

“I’m not afraid of rejection.” He snorted.

“You know, if you had a girlfriend, you might not be so jealous of your sister Jackie’s happiness.”

“I’m not jealous of Jackie’s happiness!” he growled.

“Um, yeah, okay.”

“I’m not!”

“You’re traveling three thousand miles with a former cheerleader who makes you uncomfortable in a Honda Accord pulling a U-Haul trailer just to stop Jackie from marrying the man she’s madly in love with.”

“You don’t make me uncomfortable.”

That gave Tara pause. She was glad she had a reason to keep her eyes straight ahead, but she could feel the heat of his stare. “You don’t have to be polite. If you don’t dislike me as you claim, how come you never came to my parties?”

“I’m not a party guy.”

“How come you shut your curtains when you see me coming across the street to your house?”

“I’m not good company.”

“How come you won’t ask me to drive you to the doctor or the grocery store? And don’t say pride, because I know you’ve let some of the other neighbors help you.”

“Because I have nothing to offer you,” he said so faintly she wasn’t sure she heard him.

She moistened her lips. The tension in the car stretched tight. His breathing was rough. Her breathing was none too smooth either. “I didn’t want anything from you other than to be a good neighbor. It’s not like I wanted to jump your bones or anything.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Well, maybe I wanted you to.”

WHY THE HELL had he told Tara that?

Her sharp inhalation filled the car. “You…you want to jump my bones?”

“I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but yeah, I’ve had a fantasy or two about you.” Shut up! Just shut your damn mouth right now. Don’t say another freaking word.

“Real-ly?” She sounded pleased. “I’ve had a fantasy or two about you, too.”

Boone felt as uncomfortable as a woolly sheep in a Swedish sauna. His body tightened in all the wrong places. Or all the right places. Depending on how you looked at it.

He moistened his lips. Traffic was slowing. Up ahead he could see a flashing roadside sign with an arrow indicating they should merge left.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Well,” Tara said breezily, “I think we’re admitting to a mutual attraction.”

“Not that. The road.”

“Oh.” She shifted her attention to the road and then glanced into the rearview mirror. She flicked on the turn signal and started edging over to the far lane. “Looks like we’ve run into some roadwork.”

“Dammit,” Boone swore under his breath, secretly grateful to have an excuse to get out of their conversation.

Traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether.

Boone shifted in his seat. His knee was achy—when wasn’t it?—and every muscle in his body was wound tense. He’d known that the drive to Florida with Tara would be a challenge. What he hadn’t expected was to turn into a damn chatterbox, confessing stuff he had no business confessing to her. His plan had been to keep his trap shut and simply endure. He’d shot that all to hell.

Tara hummed tunelessly, drumming her fingers on the dashboard. Long, slender fingers with nails painted the color of Pacific salmon. Bright and eye-catching, just like the woman wearing it.

Boone slid a melted-butter gaze over her, slippery and hot. He couldn’t believe how much she rattled him with that beguiling smile of hers and that chirpy go-getter attitude. She had the body of a professional dancer and she smelled like a strawberry patch—all ripe and juicy. Why did she have to be so damn appealing?

Stop thinking about her. It’s not like you can act on the attraction. No bedroom activities for you. Not with that bum leg. While you’re at it, stop staring at her.