Breaking the Rules

Cover Image
Beginning
Excerpt: How to Bake a Perfect Life
Excerpt: Jezebel's Blues
Excerpt: Walk in Beauty
About the Author
More Books by Barbara

Copyright © 2011 Barbara Samuel

Cover Design / eBook Conversion Sharon Schlicht
LittleBytesDesign.com

Image: Watching Setting Sun ©
Jeremy Edwards
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This is a re-publication in ebook format of an earlier work. Every effort has been made to reproduce the original as accurately as possible. If you find an error, please let us know at
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S
he drove all night. Fast and hard through the emptiness of the Kansas plains, dotted with silos and water towers silhouetted against the clear, starry sky. In Emporia, she clutched her coat around herself and bought a cup of coffee and filled the gas tank.

By morning, she reached Pueblo. Leaving the technically stolen car in the parking lot of a huge discount store where it would eventually attract notice, she fastened her coat around her again and went inside the store. She bought a pair of soft desert boots, jeans and a handful of T-shirts, trying to ignore the collection of stares she received over her wild and incongruous appearance.

From the discount store, she crossed the street on foot to a convenience store that sold gas and food. In the bathroom there, she ripped the tags off the new things and threw her tattered dress in the waste bin. For a moment, she stared at the royal blue taffeta, bloodstained on the side and at the hem. A wave of dizzy nausea washed through her.

Once changed, she assessed herself in the fly-specked mirror. This was the hard part. With trembling hands, she braided her hip-length hair, secured it at the top and bottom, then lifted the shears she’d bought with the jeans.

“Do it, Mattie,” she said to the white-faced woman in the mirror. She did, but resolve and necessity didn’t keep her from weeping as she did so. Her pride and joy. Her hair.

When it was done, she held the three-foot braid in her hand, then looked at herself. The cut was ragged, but not bad, considering. With surprise, she touched her neck and shoulders.

Taking a deep breath, she coiled the braid and nestled it into her bag. No one would recognize her now. No one.

She left the car with its Kansas plates in the sprawling parking lot and hopped on a city bus that took her downtown. At the Greyhound station, she scanned the lists of destinations and impulsively bought a ticket for a little town she’d never heard of because she liked the name.

Kismet, Arizona.

They would never find her there.

I
n the middle of the morning bustle, with country music playing in the kitchen of the café, and coffee perking and the noise of a dozen men buzzing around the room, Mattie realized that somehow or other, the job she’d taken out of desperation three weeks before was one she had learned to like. No, love.

“Order up!” called the cook. Mattie grabbed the thick porcelain plates filled with greasy eggs and strips of bacon and good white toast. Piling them on her arms, she hurried toward the table of road workers who would gulp the food down and tip her a dollar, no matter how well or poorly she did her job, as long as she kept their coffee cups filled. Bustling back toward the counter, she grabbed the coffeepot and swung through in a circle, touching up every cup along the route, except Joe Harriday’s, who liked to get all the way to the bottom before he started again.

There was a buzz in her muscles and heat in her chest. Her hair fell in her eyes and she brushed it back, feeling the pleasant grime of hard work on her skin.

Loved it.

As the breakfast crowd thinned, leaving behind only a single pair of tourists who’d wandered in off the highway, Mattie made a fresh pot of coffee, mainly for the crew to drink as they cleaned up breakfast and got ready for lunch.

“A woman after my own heart,” said Roxanne, the other waitress, breathing deeply of the scented steam rising from the pot. “You want to take a break first?”

“Go ahead, Roxanne. I can wait awhile.”

“Thanks.” She touched her stomach. “I’m starving.”

The low, precise grumbling of a motorcycle cut through the post-rush quiet. Mattie turned to watch a bike roar up in front of the café. Through the plate-glass windows, the waitresses watched as a man parked a sleek, midnight blue machine. Chrome shone all over it. The man driving settled it easily and limberly dismounted.

Mattie stared, a prickling in her nerves.

For a minute, he stood beside the bike, looking out toward the canyon. She’d learned the hard way to be careful about men, careful about even looking too hard at one for fear she might start to want again what she couldn’t have.

But it was impossible not to stare. Standing there against the backdrop of rough red sandstone cliffs and thick ponderosa pine, he looked like one of the outlaws that had hidden in the canyon long ago. Or maybe, Mattie thought, he was more like the eagles she sometimes saw on her dawn trips to the canyon—there was in his stance the same wary alertness; in his size she felt the same sense of leashed power.

He wore a plain white cotton shirt, the long sleeves rolled to the elbows, tucked at the narrow waist into a pair of jeans. His hair, the color of coffee and tangled from his ride in the wind, was long. Very long. Casually, he finger-combed it away from his face and headed for the restaurant.

Roxanne made a low, approving sound in her throat.

The bell rang over the door and the man came in, his walk graceful and controlled. He glanced around the room, making a clean sweep, and Mattie was sure those eyes missed nothing. After the initial scope, the pale gaze swiveled back and settled on Mattie.

Mattie told herself she ought to do something with the bar towel in her hand, and managed to swipe it nervously over the counter, but she found it nearly impossible not to look up again—as if he carried with him some secret magnetic force. Even the old lady in the corner had paused with her hand on the sugar bowl, to stare.

The face was hard, made of planes carved into high, sharp arches of cheekbone, a powerful nose and harsh, clean jaw. The eyes—maybe it was his eyes—were a pale green, like water in the forest, and the color was all the more startling in contrast to the deeply suntanned skin.

When Mattie finally realized she was gaping like a child in the presence of a star quarterback, she realized he was staring at her. No smile or softness of expression marred the implacable planes of that face. Mattie shifted, but found it hard to look away.

“Hey, Zeke,” Roxanne said with a purr. “Don’t stand there letting the flies in. Come on in.”

He settled on a stool. “Hi,” he said to Mattie. “Don’t believe I’ve seen you around here before.”

The voice matched the face, for it was deep and rough as a midnight canyon, the words drawl-thickened with the sound of the South. Louisiana, at least—maybe even Mississippi.

She gathered her breath and her defenses. “No, you haven’t,” she said, and was pleased at the cool, even sound of her voice.

“What’s your name?”

“Mary.” She shifted uncomfortably and crossed her arms.

His gaze moved over her face, lingered on her mouth, slipped up to her eyes again.

“Who’s gonna wait on me this morning?”

Roxanne nudged Mattie with a sideways grin. “He thinks we’re going to fight over the privilege.” To the man, she said, “Mary’ll take care of you. I’m going on break.”

The wary expression on his face eased ever so slightly as he winked at Roxanne. “My heart is broken, baby.”

Mattie quelled an impulse to roll her eyes. It was obvious he thought he was the Lord’s gift to women—and while that same Lord had done a fine job of packaging, she wouldn’t argue with that—arrogant men of this sort were not her style. “Don’t let me interfere,” she said wryly. “I’ll take my break.”

Roxanne shook her head. “He won’t bite,” she said, scribbling on a ticket for her breakfast order. “And I’m famished.” She ducked into the kitchen. Mattie heard her call out her order to the cook.

The man at the counter lazily pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Guess you’re stuck with me.”

“What can I get you?”

“Coffee. Please.”

Mattie could feel his gaze as she took a heavy white mug from the rack, settled it before him and poured coffee. “Would you like cream?” she asked formally.

He shook his head.

Lifting the pot, she inclined her head. “You know, in most places, it’s considered rude to stare.”

He moistened his lips and drew on the cigarette. “Is that right?”

She lowered her eyes. In the brief pause, she felt within her a strange psychic disturbance. A warning, like the shriek of a blue jay when a cat wanders by:
Danger! Danger! Danger!

“Where you from, Mary?” he asked.

Mattie turned to precisely place the coffeepot on the burner. “Here and there,” she said with a shrug. Nervously, she smoothed a wisp of hair from her face. “Do you want to look at a menu?”

He took his time pouring sugar into his cup. “No, I know what I want.” Slowly, he stirred. Even such a small act rippled the rounds of muscle in his arms, and at the collar of his shirt she could see the chest, too, was powerfully muscled.

He was deeply tanned. Probably, she thought disdainfully, some body-builder type who hung out in gyms striking poses.

The light green eyes accepted and deflected her examination—and made her revise that last conclusion. No way this man played pretty boy for anyone. Maybe he’d been born well endowed or his work gave him muscles, but she knew without doubt that he didn’t spend time on weight machines to satisfy any vanity on his part.