A Drive-By Wedding Read online

  “The matter with me? What the—” Ever mindful of little pitchers out to collect language of all sorts, Michael swallowed the expletive. “What do you mean, what’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you? You’re going to cause an accident swatting me like that. Never should have given you a platinum wedding ring. You’re going to knock me out with that thing yet.”

  “I’m going to cause an accident? I’m going to…” Anger throttled Becky’s ability to speak. “You’re the one who stepped on the brakes.”

  Clarity dawned on Michael. “I didn’t step on the brakes, Beck. Ask Andy. Did you guys jerk like Daddy hit the brakes, Andy?”

  Becky’s oldest child shook his blond head at his mother. “Uh-uh, but Momma jerked really hard up there, I saw her. Maybe you only hit them in the front seat.”

  Michael chuckled. “I don’t think that’s possible, An, but thanks.” He glanced at Becky. “No brakes,” he said, carefully neutral. “UFO, you think?”

  Becky rolled her eyes, gave him a look of withering scorn. “Yeah, right. UFO.” She tsked her tongue against the back of her teeth, then bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. “You know, that’s the second really weird thing that’s happened today.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “This morning I all of a sudden felt like I was being whipped around until I got dizzy, then it was like I had a gun in my hand. It was weird. I kept wondering if I could pull the trigger if I had to on a weapon that wasn’t there.” She bit down on sudden concern for her sanity. “I’ve never held a gun in my life, Mike, not even when you and Gabriel wanted to teach me, so what is going on?”

  They eyed each other, and light dawned almost simultaneously.

  “Allyn.” Michael said it first. He’d known his wife’s twin sister as long as he’d known Becky, after all. And although he’d never understood it, he knew about and accepted Becky’s and Allyn’s extra connection with each other, had witnessed the results of it on more than one occasion. This time, though, he didn’t particularly care for the effect the extrasensory tie seemed to be having on his wife. She’d gone pale, appeared nauseous and terrified. “Beck?”

  “She’s in trouble,” Becky said, horrified. “We’ve got to do something.”

  Michael hoped she was wrong. “Are you sure this isn’t just something like when she gets morning sickness when you’re pregnant?”

  “She’s not pregnant,” Becky told him. “She’s never even…” She paused, aware of avid ears in the back seat, embarrassed to even think she’d know when Allyn lost—or that Allyn had probably known when she— She shuddered. Talk about your inconvenient abilities, and thank God she’d realized this one in time to put a lock on it before Allyn did…you know. “It’s nothing like that,” she said lamely. “I’d know.”

  There were some knowledges better left unpursued, and Michael had the distinct impression this was one of them. “You have any idea where she is?”

  Becky shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. But she was supposed to be leaving from that friend of hers in Baltimore this morning. She told me she got a Triptik Route Map from Triple A, and I don’t think she planned any more detours.”

  “She still driving that Saturn?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Then Gabriel can probably get the license number and put out a description, have the staties along the way keep an eye out, pull her over and make sure everything’s copacetic.”

  Becky looked at her husband, viewing him for the first time in several weeks the way she used to before the seven-year itch had come along. “You think he could do that just because I feel weird?”

  Michael smiled slightly and squeezed her hand. “I think he’d do that if you didn’t feel weird. Give him an excuse to be overprotective, he’ll take it.” He picked up the cell phone between their seats. “Call him.”

  Wordless, Becky stared at her husband a minute, then caught his hand and brushed a kiss across the back of his knuckles. Took the phone and speed dialed her stepfather.

  Jeth gave them twenty minutes amid the protection of the big rigs before ducking off the interstate into a truck stop.

  The thing about two-year-olds was that when they were sick, they were very, very sick, but when they decided they were well… Well! Keeping them down to insure their recovery was, to say the least, a joke. On you.

  While Allyn took Sasha inside and changed his diaper and generally learned a little more about him—like the fact that he could not only walk, but run fast if a trifle drunkenly—Jeth emptied and rid them of her Saturn and found them a Dodge Ram as a replacement. He toyed briefly with the idea of finding some way to change their appearances, but decided against it when he couldn’t find hair dye he was sure wouldn’t do harm to Sasha’s tender scalp. He also couldn’t find wigs or anything else that he thought would be the least convincing to disguise himself or Allyn. Such was the problem of keeping a low profile on the fly between small towns and truck stops. That was why when she and Sasha met him in the restaurant portion of the truck stop, he handed her a bag with her license plate and paperwork inside, shook his head at her consternation and said, “Don’t ask.”

  He had the keys to the Dodge with him, so despite a world of misgivings, she didn’t.

  It was also not like misgivings were exactly new to her where he was concerned. In fact, if she’d had to name the primary emotions she felt about Jeth Levoie, they would be misgiving, uneasiness and disquiet—among other shadings of the term.

  She would also have to say that, for the first time in months, due to him—not thanks to him—she felt alive.

  The van was far more comfortable for family travel than Allyn’s coupe. There was room to stretch out, spread out, feed and change and play with Sasha while they were moving—although Allyn was adamant about regular stops to give the little boy a break, and Jeth reluctantly obliged.

  It was at her insistence, too, that they stopped for the night at about dinnertime just inside the Pennsylvania border after shifting their direction from the straight south-westerly route that Jeth had originally planned to one that was more convoluted, varied and, as Allyn put it, “more vacationlike.” Feeling slightly henpecked by this time, Jeth nonetheless did as she requested, recognizing the wisdom in the move for Sasha’s sake—even if he wasn’t entirely convinced of its safety. He felt better when he was able to find a two-story motel with parking at the back—hidden from the road.

  They ate at a nearby diner that listed macaroni and cheese on the children’s menu. Sasha viewed the dish with wide-eyed, cocked-head suspicion even after Allyn took a bite of his meal and smacked her lips to show him how good it was. He dug in with imprecise gusto, however, when Jeth stuck his fingers in the dish and showed the tyke how much fun it was to squish the macaroni in his hand and eat it that way.

  Allyn stifled a grin and offered her “husband” a look of rolled-eye disgust when he gave her a triumphant—and all too appealing—smirk that said, “Ha! I got him to eat when you couldn’t.”

  She didn’t bother to stifle the wicked chuckle that exploded when Jeth needed two napkins to clean the cheesey guck off his hands—and Sasha immediately reached for Jeth’s T-shirt to copy him.

  It was easy to establish a comfort zone, a rapport that meant paying attention to Sasha while they largely ignored each other, their present situation and the fact that they would soon spend the night in a single motel room—albeit with two beds.

  Daytime, babies and chase scenes were quite one thing. Twilight, stardust and closed rooms, especially one where a child slept, were quite another. Twilight meant intimacy, a proximity that was unavailable on the road with a seat and other concerns between them, and a sleeping Sasha meant silence, quiet voices, whispers, leaning near to each other to hear….

  They looked at each other across the Formica restaurant table, and awareness was a spooky sizzle raising goose bumps on the skin, a tumbling wave of an image without substance, a discomforting sensation in t
he small of the back that sent furtive fingers of heat furling forward through the belly.

  Desire, the sensation murmured. Anticipate, delay, deny.

  Give in.

  To what? Allyn wondered wildly. To the lust she’d experienced at the first sight she’d had of him on the road this morning? They’d shared a day. She didn’t know him. This wasn’t like her.

  She wanted the moment anyway, whoever he turned out to be.

  The knowledge made her blush and duck her head, hiding her face behind the activities-of-the-day-loosened curtain of her hair. Of course, she reasoned guiltily, she flushed easily when it came to any kind of thoughts of human sexuality. This had nothing to do with him.

  Yeah, right.

  For himself, Jeth regarded her with both amusement and curiosity, an in-spite-of-himself desire to take his thumb and smudge away the embarrassment staining her cheeks and throat.

  Cruder thoughts, more primitive cravings followed full tilt on the heels of that simple want, turned his baser instincts on full volume, made them impossible to ignore. He’d been rebuffing them with only varying degrees of success all day, but now…

  When he looked across the table at her his pulse quickened, senses roared, wildness muttered with the breath in his lungs, Want, need, take, consume.

  Leave alone.

  He had to—for the sake of his sanity as much as for her welfare.

  He didn’t do one-night stands, didn’t fling himself wildly into a moment without first considering the consequences—and he’d had all day to consider the ramifications of bedding Allyn Meyers. When he wasn’t seriously tossing thought to the wind in order to live on the wing and a prayer that was keeping them alive, that is.

  No, bedding Allyn would be a mistake he wasn’t prepared to make. They were going to know each other a few days, that was all. She was a convenience to his cause. He was using her as a cover to help protect Sasha. He couldn’t allow himself to make her a convenience to his bed, as well—even if she was willing. One of them was sure to regret the momentary liaison later, and he had the uneasy feeling that the one to do so would be him.

  She had a face that could bother a man’s dreams, a body built specifically for cradling a man’s and a spirit it could take him three lifetimes and a half to understand. If he found a way to sleep with her, as his body demanded, there would be no going back. He would be involved, she would be involved. He knew it as certainly as he didn’t know what he was doing here. Despite the rules he’d laid down for himself, he already knew there would be no easy way to let her go.

  Damn, the things a man discovered about himself when the timing was shot to hell.

  The moment broke when Sasha gabbled at them, reaching for his milk glass.

  “He’s darling,” a grandmotherly woman at the next table said. “How old is he?”

  “What?” Still distracted, Allyn looked at her, tried to focus on the question while she brought Sasha’s straw to his mouth. “Oh, he’s two. Almost.”

  “Aw,” the woman cooed, wiggling her fingers at Sasha. “They’re so sweet at that age.”

  “More like holy terrors,” her companion, a slightly younger woman who looked like she knew whereof she spoke, corrected her. “What’s his name?”

  “Adam,” Jeth told her, not missing a beat. “After my father.” He signaled for the check, touched Allyn’s hand. “We should probably get going if we want to get to Dad’s tonight.”

  Allyn nodded but let Sasha finish his drink before beginning to clean up the little boy.

  “Aw, there’s the face.” The older woman chucked Sasha’s chin. “I’ll bet you’re not a holy terror, are you, Adam.”

  Suspicious of overly familiar strangers who cooed, as only a toddler can be, Sasha pulled away from the woman and looked down his nose at her. When she reached to tweak his nose he swung toward Allyn, arms wide. Hiding elation over this show of trust, Allyn dampened a napkin and finished wiping the cheese off his hands, then picked him up and cuddled him.

  “It’s all right, baby,” she crooned. She looked at the disappointed woman. “I’m sorry, he’s a little shy around people he doesn’t know.”

  “And well he should be,” the younger woman said firmly. “Never know who’s out there looking for cute little blond babies these days. Make sure you teach him to stay shy of strangers, too.”

  “Oh, we will.” Allyn jiggled Sasha’s tummy until he giggled and bounced on the seat beside her. “We wouldn’t want to lose you, would we, babe?” She smiled at the women, glanced at Jeth, who’d returned from the cash register to lay a suitable tip on the table. “Ready, love?”

  He nodded and took Sasha from her, set the tyke astride his shoulders. “Saddle up, cowboy, let’s go,” he agreed, then jog-trotted Sasha to the front of the diner and ducked him neatly out the door.

  Allyn shook her head and rolled her eyes, gathered her purse and the diaper bag to follow them. “Men,” she said affectionately. “Little boys all.”

  “And women are the packhorses,” the younger woman agreed with feeling.

  The older woman simply looked after Jeth and Sasha, turned to Allyn and smiled. “You’ve got two beautiful boys there, hon. I hope you always enjoy them as much as you do now.”

  Touched, Allyn swallowed both half-wish and outright lie and nodded. “I’m sure I will,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Then she beat feet after Jeth before anyone else had time to say something she might think too much—or too wistfully—about later.

  Chapter 5

  Evening crept in on its proverbial cat’s feet, settled in long shadows across the parking lot that Jeth kept an eye on through a minute opening in the motel room drapes. No longer putting on a show for the benefit of diner patrons or other onlookers, he found himself both exhausted and restless, and the day’s strain showed.

  Allyn’s scent in the half-lit room tortured him; he wanted nothing more than to dump her on her back and lose himself in her body, relieve the tension, rid his muscles of the tightness engendered by a day spent driving in the healthiest way he could think of. But to love her—even to merely have sex with her—that way lay madness.

  Torture or madness. Hell of a choice.

  Instead of allowing himself to select either, he roved between the door and the window with his retrieved and loaded Browning settled where he was used to carrying it: the shoulder holster under his left arm.

  The silence was as loaded as his weapon, and equally awkward to carry. But awkward or not, simultaneously carrying a gun and silence were things he knew how to do.

  While he wandered, Allyn played with Sasha on the floor between the beds, dividing her attention—the way a real wife might—between the men, big and small, who occupied her life.

  Sasha seemed to have no concept of shapes or colors the way Allyn’s experience told her he should. His language development also seemed to have been arrested by his life to date. It wasn’t until he described her correctly if inaccurately as mama and Jeth as papa that Allyn began to figure out Sasha’s language development might not be impaired, but merely that he wasn’t speaking English. Perplexed, she turned to Jeth.

  “I think our son speaks Russian instead of English,” she told him matter-of-factly.

  Jeth stopped pacing, looked at her. The word “son” and the instant images it conjured did nothing to allay the accompanying tumult of emotions—mostly ones he didn’t want to feel. If he hadn’t been able to look after his little sister, what made anybody think he’d ever be able to look after a son of his own? “What?”

  “Sasha doesn’t speak English,” Allyn repeated—and forgave herself immediately for enjoying the consternation that crossed Jeth’s face. Some days one took one’s amusement where one found it, if one was wise.

  Jeth started to swear and stopped himself, but not before Sasha rolled to his feet and gleefully announced the entire word for him.

  Choking, but trying not to encourage Sasha to repeat his pronouncement by showing the laughter,
Allyn covered her mouth and looked at the dumbfounded Jeth.

  “No, maybe I was wrong,” she said, as the toddler launched into an entire stream of unprintable words he could say in English. Shaking with merriment, she caught Sasha and covered his mouth with her hand. “No, no, love, we don’t say that. Nyet.”

  “Nyet,” Sasha agreed joyfully and, just like any normal two-year-old, flung his arms around Allyn’s neck, bussed her on the cheek and went right on with what he was saying anyway.

  Convulsed with laughter, Allyn wrapped her arms around the tyke and buried her face in his shirt while she once again attempted to shush him. Jeth viewed her with disgust.

  “Great,” he said. “Just great. Apparently he speaks some English.”

  “Uh-huh.” It was all Allyn could do to trust herself to reply.

  He gave her male macho pseudo-helpless sarcasm. “You’re the one who knows all about kids, what do you suggest we do?”

  “Don’t use the words and don’t encourage him,” Allyn managed to say before breaking the latter rule herself by going off into more gales of stifled laughter when Sasha broke loose and marched over to Jeth, called him Papa, and launched into a serious repeat of his blue lecture for his benefactor’s benefit.

  “You’re not helping,” Jeth told her severely.

  “Hey.” She offered no apology. “I’m not the one who gave him the opening.”

  “You’re the one who’s laughing at him.”

  “I’m laughing at you,” she corrected. “There’s a difference.”

  “Like he knows that.” Jeth picked up Sasha, sat on the bed and pressed two fingers gently across the toddler’s lips. “No,” he said firmly. “Bad. Sasha say good things.”

  “Sasha,” the little boy concurred. “Papa bad.”

  Taken aback, Jeth stared at him. “Who’s papa?”

  Seeming to understand a world more English than he appeared to speak, Sasha patted Jeth’s chest. “Papa,” he said slowly, for all the world as though he were the translator identifying an object for a student. “Papa bad.”