Claustrophobic Christmas (2 page)

Darcy had a tendency to babble when she was nervous, and talking to attractive men who weren’t hiring her to book a Caribbean cruise made her nervous. But so did small spaces, large people, and riding in vehicles she wasn’t driving.

“This weather is terrible timing, don’t you think? So many cars on the road, and they’re all in a hurry. Terrible timing. I bet everyone at home is stuck to the weather station right now. Pop plays the Weather Channel 24/7.”

“You can’t control the weather, that’s for sure.”

That was one of the things she hated about it. Bad weather ruined her best-laid travel itineraries. The agency had a cancellation policy to protect them from vacationer’s remorse, but still.

She and James lingered by the map another moment before he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. His shirt pulled tight across his chest, snagging her attention like a flashing beacon. Wow, he was really…defined.

She barely registered it when he said, “What time did you start out this morning?”

She yanked her gaze back to his face. “Huh, what?”

One deep dimple appeared in his cheek. What was he grinning about? “When did you get on the road this morning?”

“Noonish? I had to stop by the office first.” And find the vacation itineraries she’d been too ruffled to file in the right place yesterday.

“I figure we’ve got four more hours.”

“This is a little more than half way.” She always stopped here. She always stopped everywhere.

He cocked his head to one side, considering her. She felt every stain on her lime-green sweatshirt like a hot poker, branding her as a fashion victim. “How often do you drive home?”

“Several times a year.” She hadn’t wandered far from Tallwood until she’d moved to Dallas. Now that she was in Dallas, about the only place she went was Tallwood.

“Do you ever fly? I bet you can get some good deals as a travel agent.”

“It’s still cheaper to drive,” she said. No need to tell him the answer was actually,
Are you nuts? I never fly. Airplanes are teeny, suffocating death traps
.

“So where’s the boyfriend? You don’t spend Christmas together?”

First tip on her
Travel Queen
list for female tourists? Never admit you’re traveling alone. To anyone. Instinct and embarrassment took over.

“He’s in the car,” Darcy blabbed.

“Maybe we’ll run into each other over the holidays and you can introduce me. Tallwood’s pretty small.”

She’d heard the term “gimlet gaze,” and that’s exactly the kind of gaze he used on her. A gimlet, pointy stare. “He won’t be around the whole time.”

“He who?”

“He…eeth. Heath.” She was so going to Hell.

“How long will Heath be around? I’m home until the twenty-ninth. We could meet for dinner.” There was that pointy gaze again.

Darcy crossed her arms. “What’s with the twenty questions?”

“I’d like to meet this mystery man I never heard about until yesterday.”

“He’s not sure how long he can stay.” Crap. She was digging herself in too deep. She didn’t have much experience creating imaginary boyfriends, and there was no how-to book on it, either. Now her family would tell his family she hadn’t brought a man home at all. “I may just drop him off.”

“Where?”

“His, uh, house? I mean, his family’s house. In Memphis.”

“He doesn’t want to meet your family?”

She shrugged, hoping that was sufficiently mysterious.

“He should make an effort.” James kind of smirked. “I hear you have options.”

Darcy blushed. If only he knew how ill-suited they were, he wouldn’t have bothered in the first place. “James, you agreed not to—”

“I know, I know. Sorry.” He pointed at the map, tracing several segments of road where the interstate veered close to bodies of water. “When the ice hits, it's gonna get ugly here, here and here. I hope you and your…boyfriend…have blankets and food because it could to be a long, cold night.”

She nodded sagely, but inside she shriveled. He was trying to be sociable, share travel tips, and she was lying to him. If anyone understood the desire to share perky travel tips, it was Darcy Burkell, Travel Queen. Maybe she needed Santa to bring her a copy of
How to Turn Hot Guys Down Gracefully
instead of
Little Known Hiking Trails of the Grand Canyon
or
A Claustrophobic’s Guide to Dallas Without Elevators
.

“I’m set,” she assured him. “I have a boatload of Christmas candy, and I bought a couple drinks from the soda machines.”

He glanced down at her, an errant lock of dark blond hair lapping across his forehead. “That's a mistake.”

“But you just told me to—”

“Don't drink anything.” His tongue flicked the corner of his mouth. “Suck on a piece of hard candy, but don't drink anything till you get near Memphis.”

She stared at his lips, mesmerized. Was it weird when he said “suck on a piece of hard candy” she heard something else entirely?

“Why not? Gotta stay hydrated.”

He appeared to nibble the inside of his cheek before he answered. “I don’t know if I told you, but I used to drive trucks. Long haul. I survived more than a few traffic jams. After a couple hours, certain bodily functions make themselves known. They're a sight easier to handle if you're a man.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Anything a man can do, a woman…wait, do you mean peeing?”

His lips tightened as he tried not to laugh. “Yes, I mean peeing.”

Oh God, she’d said peeing to James and he’d said it back. The bathroom was one place their conversations had never extended. Still, no reason for him to be sexist. “Come on. A girl can find a gas station restroom as easily as a guy can.”

She knew it for a fact. She’d visited every interstate gas station between Dallas and Tallwood in the years she’d been making this trip. Also every rest area, scenic overlook, outlet mall, park and historical marker—basically every justification she could find to escape the car.

“If there's no exit,” he said with a straight face, “there's no restroom. Just the side of the road and a bunch of bored people watching to see why you're out of your vehicle.”

“Well. That’s troubling.” She made a mental note to duck back into the restroom and take care of any lingering bodily functions. Also to tout “Don’t drink much until you get there” in her next
Travel Queen
newsletter. “I wasn’t worried before, but I am now.”

He laughed and took her hand, squeezing it. “If you know it’s coming, you can prepare to deal with it.”

Her brain short-circuited when his big hand enclosed her smaller one. She stuttered something agreeable, but what she was really thinking was how she hadn’t been prepared to meet James. Hadn’t been prepared for his sheer physical appeal, for his magnetism, for the fact he thought he wanted her. Her! She’d been able to fantasize about him safely when they’d maintained a long distance correspondence.

A guy like James was not safe for a girl like her. Their idiosyncrasies would never mesh.

He hadn’t let go yet. He had warm hands. Long fingers.

“You seem nervous,” he commented.

“I am. The image you painted of a traffic jam is nerve-wracking.” His touch was about to spin her into a giant fuzz ball of anxiety. “Do you really think we’ll see ice and snow?”

“Looks like it.” His thumb rubbed the back of her fingers. “You got a full tank of gas?”

“Yeah.” She realized she was smiling like an idiot—where had that come from?—and slipped her hand free. “Thanks for the advice. Do you mind if I use the no-drinking tip in my next newsletter?”

“Gonna give me credit?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be watching for it.”

He subscribed to her newsletter for more than just the pictures, or so he said, because the pictures these days were mostly his and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen them. She was meticulous about dotting her i’s and crossing her t’s legally when she used other people’s observations. It was a necessity, all things considered.

Darcy brushed her sweatpants at the hips, wishing she had pockets to stuff her hands into. “I guess we should go.”

He just stared at her as if waiting for something. God, he was good-looking. His eyes were gorgeous, his hair sun-streaked, pushed back from his face by those long, callused fingers. His movements were slow and easy, like he never hurried. Did he know how sexy he was? Did he have any idea she was standing here imagining him naked?

Thoughts fluttered in her brain like moths around a light. If he wasn’t going to ditch her and they got trapped in the snow, they could talk each other through it. Or text each other. Send each other photos. She’d ask for one of his hands. She’d send him one of her…Christmas candy.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t convince herself to suggest it. He didn’t bring it up, either. It didn’t seem like a good idea. Their friendliness had been what had given him the impression she liked him as more than her favorite photographer.

He’d been right. And
she
was right to lie about it and save them both the trouble of breaking up when their lifestyles proved incompatible.

“Well, James, I'm going to…” She jerked her thumb at the ladies room and scurried away, conscious that his gaze followed her retreating form.

Chapter Two

James watched Darcy go with mixed feelings. The one person he paradoxically had and hadn’t wanted to see more than anyone in the world, and damned if she didn’t show up. Speak of the devil.

But Darcy Burkell was no demon come to ruin his life and cast his soul into Hell. Hardly. She was kind of a goody-two-shoes. Kind of fussy. Kind of frumpy. God, that sweat suit!

She was the kind of woman he never had anything to do with, but at the same time, she was all he could think about. She made him laugh and she made him worry about her and she made him crazy wondering what it would be like.

It
being sex. With her.

When he’d shown up at her office, her hair had been in all these dark, shiny curls and she’d had two buttons undone on her blouse so he could see a hint of pale cleavage. She had enough to entice but not so much it looked like her chest would get in the way when they were mashed up together, hot and heavy. And then there were her tight skirt and round hips. Yeah, a man could grab onto Darcy and not get tired of her any time soon.

But instead of being happy to see him, she’d stared at him like he had two deformed heads. And proceeded to make up some crap about a boyfriend he knew was crap the minute she said it.

Even in that day-glow sweat suit, he still wanted her, and he
never
wanted a woman who’d shot him down. Thanks, but no thanks. There were plenty of easier women. And by easy he didn’t mean slutty, he just meant easy to predict, easy to be with and easy to leave.

His feelings for Darcy had crept up on him like kudzu. One day he’d been thrilled to have a punctual client who asked for material that inspired him, and the next he’d noticed that whenever he took a great shot, he wanted to share it with her. He passed the world’s largest garden gnome en route to a job, and he wanted to laugh at it with her. He saw dolphins leaping in the Atlantic…the aurora borealis over Nome…the foamy white spray of a waterfall in Brazil…he wanted to turn to her and say, “Look, Darcy. Would you look at that? It’s almost as amazing as you are.”

Not so amazing if she’d had the poor taste to reject him, he supposed, trying to patch the gaping wound in his ego.
Women, right? Can’t live with them in their condos, can’t ask them to live in your tent.

James shook himself and headed for the parking lot. While he’d been inside pretending the rest area was a meet-cute, snow had speckled his truck. Icy flakes wet his neck and face, interspersed with the drizzle that had dogged him since Texas. The light was grey, barely filtering through the clouds.

It really
was
going to snow. Hell. He couldn’t put off calling home any longer. His nosy sisters had left eighty thousand messages at his mother’s behest. Everyone was expecting him—and Darcy—and he needed to break the news.
No, Mother, I won’t be getting involved with a Tallwood girl, moving home, and popping out twenty babies. What’s worse, I suspect I’ll be late for dinner.

His older sister Juanita answered. Thank God it wasn’t Sally. Sal was Mother’s clone, but Nita might give him a break.

“Hey, loverboy,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“She said no, so it’s going shitty.” James swiped the driver’s side window with his sleeve while he talked, not bothering to get his gloves.

“I’m sorry, Jamie. I thought Darcy liked you.” James could hear a billion females gabbing in the background. He was the only boy, the middle child of five, and according to his sisters, his mother’s favorite. Not including the grandkids, of course.

“I thought she did too.” Instead, his big romantic gesture had been a big waste of time.

“Is she gay?” Nita’s voice echoed, and the hubbub dimmed. She must have closed herself in the half-bath.

“Nah.” There was no reason for Darcy to have lied about being gay. “I don’t think so.”

“I heard she almost married some Hispanic man a couple years ago. She wasn’t gay then.”

“That would be Luis.” During their many exchanges, she’d mentioned men from her past but never a Heath, one of the reasons James figured Heath was imaginary.

“Her brothers thought Luis was a great guy. They were disappointed it didn’t work out.”

“Well, Mother’s going to have to be disappointed it didn’t work out with me, either. Isn’t Sal pregnant again? She can get obsessed with that instead. Another Jones grandchild.”

Nita snorted. “Mother can be obsessed with all sorts of things simultaneously.”

“True.” James studied the snow sticking to the cars, and the interstate with its heavy holiday traffic. The pace had definitely slowed.

Fan-damn-tastic. The futility of this journey jabbed his gut in a way it had been doing more and more lately. If he’d had his way, Darcy would have been with him and they’d have entertained each other. Warmed each other. All his idle hours in cars or planes, commuting to jobs when he could be… He didn’t know what else he could be doing. Whatever it was, he’d thought it might involve Darcy.