It was bad enough I’d have to call her in the morning and ask her for a ride into town to buy a new tire, since my donut replacement wasn’t going to last me very long. Besides, it wouldn’t kill me to walk the rest of the way home. Probably less than two miles from where I pulled over, anyway.
As soon as I reached for the door handle, a big jacked-up truck roared up with its high beams on and parked behind me. Blinded by the bright lights shining in my rearview mirror, I reached over and hit my door lock button, praying to God it was a little old lady with a hankering for masculine monster trucks.
The door on the truck opened and a tall, broad, and bulky figure—definitely male—appeared in my side mirror, just out of reach of the lights and shadowed by the darkness of the surrounding forest. He headed toward my driver’s side door, walking with the measured, deliberate steps of Satan’s hockey player, Jason Voorhees.
Frozen with fear, I sat there staring straight ahead, yet watching him from my peripheral vision as he stopped next to my door. He paused. My heart beat faster, until he finally leaned down and tapped on the window.
Then I jumped.
“Anna…? You okay?”
Oh, for goodness sakes. This wasn’t happening. I twisted my head to see Cowboy’s smiling face staring back at me. I cracked open the window. “Um, I’m fine, thanks.”
His smile faded. “Really? Because you don’t look fine. You look like you have a flat. Want me to change the tire for you?”
God. He’s going to think I’m an idiot. I rolled the window back up, then reached over and unlocked the door before shoving it open and crawling out. “I don’t have a spare. Well, I do…but I took it out of my trunk last Saturday.”
His brows gathered over the bridge of his nose and he frowned. “Why would you do something like that?”
Not appreciating the condescending tone, Cowboy. “If you must know,” I said, “I went to the flea market over the weekend to pick up some used books. There wasn’t going to be enough room in the trunk for all the boxes, so I removed the spare before I left and forgot to put it back in.”
“Where is it now?”
“It’s lying on the ground next to my front porch. I figured I didn’t need it and I was right…er, until now.”
Cowboy shook his head and sighed in blatant disapproval. “You always need a spare.”
Yeah, no kidding. “Yes, I guess you could say I learned my lesson. Thanks for not rubbing it in,” I said.
A tiny smirk lifted the corner of his mouth. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“Oh, yeah? What would you like for me to do? Leave you out here all alone in the boonies so some weird fella in a hockey mask can slice ya to bits?”
Guess I wasn’t the only one who thought like that. I smiled lightly. “Well, okay, when you put it that way.”
I reached inside the car, grabbed my keys, my cell phone, and my purse, then hit the door lock button before swinging it shut. As I turned to face him, I caught the scowl Cowboy was wearing. “What now?”
“You didn’t have to lock it.”
“Yes, I did. I didn’t want to come back tomorrow to find my radio had been stolen.”
“Way out here? What do you take us country boys for…a bunch of hoodlums?”
I blinked at him in confusion. “But you were the one who just said you weren’t going to leave me out here so a guy in a hockey mask could slice me into pieces.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t say he was going to steal the radio out of your car first. Christ, woman, give us a little bit of credit.”
I didn’t have much of an argument for that logic, so I bit my tongue.
He led the way around the back of my Cavalier to the passenger side of his much larger, jacked-up red Chevy. He opened the door and spent a moment clearing off the seat before turning back to me.