First Lady (6 page)

He smiled at the memories, then pushed another ten-dollar bill into the back pocket of Lucy’s cutoffs. “Buy yourself some lunch after you get her cleaned up. I’ll meet you here in half an hour.”

She gave him a long, searching look that hinted at disappointment. He wondered if she’d expected them all to cuddle up together to eat. Not a chance.

The woman he’d been envying got out of the blue Corsica. She had short light brown hair styled in one of those uneven cuts that was fashionable. The rest of her, however, wasn’t so fashionable: cheap white sneakers, navy shorts, and an oversized yellow top with a row of ducks marching across it. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. And she was heavily pregnant.

A Grand Am slowed down on the highway for the hitchhiker, only to shoot off as soon as the driver got a closer look. The hitchhiker flipped him the bird.

Mat glanced at the woman again as she walked past him. Something about her seemed familiar. She had fragile, finely carved features, a long, slender neck, and striking blue eyes. There was almost a patrician quality about the way she carried herself that was at odds with her bargain-basement clothes. She reached the door of the restaurant just ahead of Lucy and held it open for her. Lucy didn’t acknowledge the courtesy. She was too busy tossing him a dirty look.

Something caught his eye on the seat of the Corsica. He leaned down and saw an ugly ceramic frog. He’d always wondered what kind of people bought things like that. Then he noticed the set of keys dangling from the ignition. He thought about going after her to say something, but figured anybody stupid enough to buy that frog deserved what she got.

The interior of the truck stop was arranged in a large L. He selected a small table in the back corner where he had room to stretch his legs and ordered coffee. As he waited for it to arrive, he considered the fact that it was going to take him at least two days to reach Iowa. Maybe longer, if that ominous pinging coming from the engine got any worse. How was he going to tolerate those girls for another two days? The irony of letting himself be saddled with exactly what he’d worked his whole life to get away from didn’t escape him.

He should have left them both to foster care.

Nealy swabbed a thick, greasy french fry in catsup and watched the three people seated on the other side of the truck stop dining room. At first the man had been there by himself. She’d noticed him right away—his physical size would have made it hard not to. But it wasn’t just his size that had caught her attention. It was everything about him.

He had that hard-muscled look of a working man, and it didn’t take much imagination to picture him suntanned and shirtless, nailing shingles to a roof or wearing a battered hard hat over that crisp dark hair as he wielded a jackhammer in the middle of a city street. He was also drop-dead handsome, although not in that too-pretty way of a male model. Instead, his face looked lived in.

Unfortunately, he was glowering at the young girl who’d wedged herself in next to him, the baby propped in her lap. Nealy pegged him as one of those fathers who regarded his children as inconveniences, her least favorite kind of man.

His daughter was the girl she’d held the door open for earlier. Although she was overly made-up and had a maroon stripe in her hair, her delicate features gave her the potential of great beauty. The baby was adorable. One of those healthy, blond-haired, mischievous cherubs that Nealy avoided as much as she could.

The people-watching had been enjoyable, but she was anxious to get back on the road, so she forced her eyes away from the man and gathered up her trash as she’d seen others do. A middle-aged couple at an adjoining table smiled at her and she smiled back. People smiled a lot, she’d noticed, at a pregnant woman.

Her smile changed into a self-satisfied grin. Last night, before she’d gone to bed at the motel, she’d cut the long blond hair her father and husband had cherished and dyed it light brown, which was really her natural color, although it was so long since she’d seen it that she’d had to guess at the exact shade. She loved the shorter, tousled style. Not only did it make her look younger, but it was much too casual for an elegant First Lady.

Although maintaining her disguise as an elderly lady had been her first idea, she hadn’t wanted the encumbrance of a wig and all that clothing. The fake pregnancy padding had been the perfect solution. Even if people noticed a pregnant woman’s resemblance to Cornelia Case, they’d regard it as nothing more than a coincidence.

Last night she’d modified a small Wal-Mart pillow by reshaping its corners and adding some ties. With her short brown hair, discount store clothes, ring-free hands, and minimal cosmetics, she looked like a pregnant woman who was down on her luck. When she spoke, she completed her change of identity by reshaping her upper-crust vowels with the trace of a Southern accent.

As she left the truck stop restaurant, she fumbled for her car keys in the purse she’d left the White House with. She felt a packet of tissues, some mints, her new wallet, but no keys. Had she left them in the car?

She needed to be more careful. She’d grown accustomed to having a cadre of aides carrying things for her. This morning, she’d left her purse behind when she’d stopped at a diner for breakfast, and she’d had to run back to get it. Now it was her keys.

She stepped out into the parking lot and looked around for the Chevy, but she didn’t see it. Odd. She thought she’d parked next to that trail-worn yellow Winnebago. She was sure she had.

She hurried forward, but the car wasn’t there.

She stared at the empty parking place, then at the motor home next to it. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe she’d parked somewhere else. Her heart raced, and her gaze swept across the parking lot. Even then she didn’t want to believe it. The car was gone. She’d left her keys inside and someone had stolen it.

Her throat constricted. One day of freedom. Was that all she would get?

She struggled against the despair that threatened to choke her. She could still salvage this. She’d brought thousands of dollars in cash with her. She could buy another car. She’d hitch a ride into the nearest town and find a dealer—

Her knees gave out beneath her, and she sagged down on a wooden bench. Her money had been locked in the trunk for safekeeping. All she had in her wallet was a twenty-dollar bill.

She buried her face in her hands. She’d have to call the White House, and within the hour the Secret Service would swoop down on this peaceful, ordinary place. She’d be whisked onto a helicopter and returned to Washington before dinner.

She saw exactly how it would unfold. Castigation from her father. Reminders from the President of her duty to the country. Suffocating guilt. By tomorrow evening, she’d be standing in a receiving line, her fingers aching from shaking another few hundred hands. And she had no one to blame but herself. What use was all her education, all her experience, if she couldn’t remember a simple thing like taking car keys out of an ignition?

Her throat closed tight. She wheezed as she tried to draw a breath.

“She’s heavy, and I’m not carrying her anymore!”

Nealy lifted her head and saw the young girl she’d been watching earlier set the baby she’d been carrying down on the sidewalk and yell at the Father of the Year, who was heading toward the yellow Winnebago.

“Suit yourself.” Although he wasn’t speaking loudly, he had a deep, carrying voice.

The girl didn’t move from the baby’s side, but neither did she pick her back up. The baby plopped forward on her knees as if to crawl, only to rebel at the midday heat coming from the sidewalk. She was a smart little critter, though, and she pushed herself up until only the minimal parts of her were in contact with the hot concrete—the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. With her bottom shoved high in the air, she began to move forward in a spider crawl.

The girl spun toward her father. “I mean it, Jorik! You’re acting like an asshole!” Nealy blinked at the girl’s crude language. “She’s not poison, you know. You could at least touch her.”

“You’re in charge of the baby, and I’m in charge of driving. Let’s go.” The man named Jorik might be a lousy father, but he was smart enough to have taken his keys with him, and now he shoved one of them in the lock on the door of the motor home.

The girl slammed her hands on her small hips. “This is bullshit.”

“Yeah, well, so is ninety percent of life.”

They were so involved in their argument that neither of them noticed the baby, who was slowly and fastidiously spider-crawling down off the curb into the parking lot.

Nealy rose automatically. A baby in danger. The one thing in life she hadn’t been able to escape since she was sixteen.

“Quit complaining and get inside,” the man growled.

“I’m not your slave! You’ve been bossing me around ever since yesterday, and I’m sick of it!”

An elderly couple in a Cadillac began to back out of a space much too near the crawling baby. Nealy shot forward, bent down, and snatched her up.

The kind of anger she couldn’t ever express in her real life erupted. “What kind of father are you?”

Mr. Macho turned slowly and regarded Nealy with flint-gray eyes. She stormed toward him, the baby in her arms. The fact that holding babies terrified her made her even angrier.

She jabbed her finger toward the Cadillac as it drove away. “Your daughter was crawling right in the path of that car. She could have been hit.”

He stared at her.

The closer she got, the taller he seemed. She belatedly remembered that she was supposed to be speaking with a Southern accent. “How could you be so irresponsible?”

“He doesn’t care,” the girl said. “He hates us.”

Nealy glared at him. “Children need somebody watching out for them, especially babies.”

He tilted his head toward the empty parking space next to him. “What happened to your car?”

She was taken aback. “How do you know about my car?”

“I saw you get out of it.”

She refused to let him throw her off track. “Never mind about my car. What about your child?” She thrust the baby toward him, but he didn’t take her. Instead, he stared down at the little one as if he weren’t sure what she was. Finally he turned toward the teenager. “Lucy, take her and get in.”

“You got a broken arm or something?” the girl shot back.

“Do what I say. And feed her before we start moving again.”

His tone had grown so intimidating that Nealy wasn’t surprised when the girl took the baby from her arms. Still, Lucy had enough defiance left to shoot him a lethal glare before she jerked open the door of the motor home and hauled the baby inside.

The man named Jorik gazed down at Nealy. Although she was tall, he loomed over her, and he looked even tougher close up than he had been from a distance. His nose had a small bump at the bridge, as if he’d broken it falling off an I-beam he was welding.

“She’s not my kid,” he said. “Neither of them are.”

“Then what are you doing with them?”

“I was a friend of their mother’s. So tell me about your car.”

A yellow caution light flashed in her brain. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“It was stolen, wasn’t it?”

He was regarding her so intently, she was afraid he’d recognize her, so she tilted her head a bit to keep him from looking at her full on. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I saw you park it there, and now it’s gone. Besides, you left your keys inside.”

Her head shot back up. “You saw them?”

“Yeah.”

“You saw them, but you didn’t do anything?”

“Well . . . I thought about stealing your car myself, but I was afraid of your frog.”

If she hadn’t been so upset, she might have laughed. His speech marked him as an educated man, which was disconcerting considering his tough-guy appearance. His eyes had dropped to her bulging stomach, and she had to resist the urge to look down and make certain the padding hadn’t shifted.

“You’d better go inside and call the state police,” he said. “There was a hitchhiker out here earlier. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got tired of waiting for someone to pick him up and decided to take advantage of that free transportation you were offering. I’ll stay around long enough to give them a description.”

She had no intention of calling the police. “That’s all right. You don’t have to wait.”

“I don’t mind.”

He seemed to be trying to place her face. She began to feel nervous. “I don’t want to hold you up. Thanks anyway.” She turned to leave.

“Stop right where you are.”

W
HERE HAD HE
seen her? Mat studied the woman more closely as she looked warily back at him. There was something about her bearing that reminded him of royalty, but her thinness, along with that long, fragile neck, and hands that bore no sign of a wedding ring, spoke of hard times. Her arms and legs were almost comically slender in contrast to her heavy pregnancy, and there was a world-weary quality in her blue eyes that made him suspect she’d seen more of life than she wanted to.

Those bright blue eyes . . . they were so familiar. He knew he’d never met her, but he felt as if he had. Her reluctance to call the police piqued his journalist’s curiosity. “You’re not going to report the theft, are you?”