Miracle on I-40 (8 page)

Everyone was staring.

“Huh,” the man said with disgust and began lowering himself back into his seat.

“I believe you forgot somethin’,” Cooper said.

The big man’s eyebrows shot up. Lacey, still behind Cooper’s shoulder, tugged on his coat. But Cooper stayed planted.

“Pardon me...la-
dies
,” the big man said in a low voice and with a bare glance, as he lifted a coffee mug to his lips.

Lacey turned Jon and took Anna by the hand.

The next instant, Cooper was beside them and scooping up a wide-eyed, sniffing Anna to carry her grandly from the room.

“Stop in here,” he said in the lobby outside the restrooms, where he lowered Anna gently to the floor. “
All
of you. I don’t want to have to stop again ten minutes down the road.”

* * * *

The incident had brought all sorts of uncomfortable memories. Cooper didn’t like to have memories. He tried to leave them behind by walking quickly away from Lacey and the kids. He tried to focus on checking out the rig again, walking around it and hitting the tires with the stick, hard.

But still, the memories swirled around him.

“Boy, you’re gonna learn not to be stupid.”
“I’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut.” “Kids are meant to be seen and not heard.”
The faces changed, but they all were big and threatening, and Cooper had been small for a child, like Anna. He had always seemed to be clumsy. Until he turned fifteen and suddenly he had muscles. He had been on his own since then.

“Hey, buddy.”

Cooper was bending over, checking the cables. He looked over his shoulder and knew he had made a clumsy error in not paying more attention. The red-headed giant bore down on him. He barely had time to straighten, before the man swung, his fist plowing into Cooper’s cheek.

It didn’t last long, and Cooper got in a few licks of his own before the hulk sent one final blow to the solar plexus that knocked Cooper sprawling on the pavement. Satisfied, the man hitched up his pants and lumbered away, leaving Cooper watching after him and trying to get a breath.

He was picking himself up when he heard Lacey’s voice and running footsteps. “Cooper? What…”

He held up a hand and tried to quickly straighten his shoulders, though the movement hurt considerably. Tentatively, he felt the already swelling skin beneath his eye. He licked blood from the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, goodness…” Lacey, hovering, pressed a tissue to his mouth. Her eyes were close enough for him to fully see her long eyelashes. Her womanly warmth drifted out and around him. He enjoyed her ministrations for a brief moment, then came to himself and pulled away.

“It was that big guy from the restaurant, wadn’t it, Coop?” the boy said. “How’d you do?”

“Well, he doesn’t look too good, either.” Cooper managed to get out. He wasn’t about to tell the kid, or Lacey, that about the best he’d done was give the hulk a split lip.

“Here...put this on your eye...come on now.”

He took the tissue she handed him and dabbed at a sore place near his eye. He remembered the contact with the pavement. He said, “Let’s get in the truck.”

“Cooper, maybe we should go to a hospital.”

“Aw, Mom, Cooper don’t need no doctor.”

“Just get in the truck,” he said, his breath giving out on him. He jerked open the driver’s side door and hoisted himself up, leaving her standing there. She was still there looking up at him. He closed the door.

Seconds later she and he kids were crawling in the passenger side.

When the little one, Anna, passed through to the sleeper, she touched his shoulder. Her brown eyes were large and wet. “I’m sorr-y, Cooper.”

“It’s okay, kid.” He winked with his good eye. “Everybody has accidents. That fella had no call to talk to you like he did, you hear?”

A spark he liked seeing came into her eyes, and she nodded.

Then he turned quickly away to focus on the gauges, which he didn’t really see. No one had cared about his welfare for a long time. It made him as confused as a bear walking down a city street to see the kind of looks these three were giving him.

Cooper wasn’t about to say he hurt all over, but Lacey saw it in his careful movements and the fleeting wince. She remained quiet, which seemed the safest course. But she felt so horribly responsible. Because of her, Cooper was likely having the worse trip of his entire life.

Fifteen minutes later, when they were well down the road, she brought a slice of pecan pie from her tote and offered it to him. A grin flashed, followed by a wince.

“Oh, dear.”

“I can manage.” He wasn’t giving up the pie. He took it as his reward.

* * * *

They continued across Oklahoma, through several long sections of cold rain, and stopped for the night at a motel just off the interstate in Henryetta. The clerk naturally  assumed they were all together, husband and wife and children. Confusion ensued when Lacey and Cooper, instantly and talking at once, with interjections by Jon, tried to explain.

“You want a separate room for the children?” the clerk asked, when he could get a word in. His gaze moved rapidly from herself to the children to Cooper, pausing curiously on Cooper’s black and blue eye.

“For the three of them.” Cooper wagged his finger.

The clerk shot Lacey a questioning look. “Yes, one for me and the children.”

“You got it now?” Cooper said sharply enough that Anna jumped.

“Yes, sir.”

The clerk looked down and wrote on a card. “Just sign in here, ma’am. And here’s your key. Room 154.” He slid a key across the counter and then held one out to Cooper. “Here’s yours, sir. Room 155.”

Lacey marched the children down the row of doors to their room, which was the second from the end. The last one was Cooper’s. Right next to theirs.

She unlocked the door for the children, then went to the truck to get their bags. Five minutes later she found herself standing in front of her room, Cooper beside her, in front of his room. For some reason she didn’t understand in the least, it was a very awkward moment.

Cooper twisted his key in the lock; Lacey pushed open her door. They paused and looked at each other. The flesh surrounding Cooper’s left eye was the color of roiling thunder clouds.

“I’m so sorry about what happened back at dinner,” Lacey said. “Does it hurt terribly?”

“It hurts, but I’ll live.” His dark eyes searched hers, as if seeking answers to something that puzzled him.

Anna called, “Mama, do I have to take a bath?”

“Good night,” Lacey said to Cooper.

“Good night.”

They each entered their own rooms. The two doors clicked closed at the same instant.

Needing time alone, Lacey got Jon and Anna into bed before taking her shower. After having risen so early, the children fell asleep as soon as they had settled who got which pillow. The ensuing silence was more than golden—it was heaven to Lacey.

As she leisurely undressed, she could hear the muffled sound of the television on the other side of the wall in Cooper’s room.

She wondered what he was watching.

Was he a late-night or early-morning person? Did he like showers or baths? She continued to wonder as she stood beneath the massaging heat of steaming water. Would he think she had a good body?

Just as she turned off the water, she heard a peculiar knocking.
Someone rapping on the wall,
she realized, as she stood in the tub, rivulets of water running down her skin.
Cooper? Knocking out a rhythm on the wall?

Hesitating only one self-conscious second, before throwing caution to the wind and rapping back, imitating his rhythm. Then she held her breath.

The knock came again.

Lacey clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling her laughter. Fine thing it would be to wake the children and have to explain herself to them.

But it was hilariously funny. Two grown people engaging in a childish stunt. She couldn’t believe Cooper would do such a thing. Not solemn, gruff Cooper, who’d spent most of the day treating her as if she wasn’t there.

Suddenly curious, she knocked again and waited expectantly.

But no more knocks came from his side. Only silence.

Lacey was suddenly exhausted, and very lonely. When she crawled into the double bed beside Anna, she brought the extra pillow and hugged it tight to her chest.

* * * *

Morning came much too early. Immediately upon turning off the alarm, Lacey discovered that the rumbling she heard was the Kenworth engine—already running. How revolting. It was still pitch black, for heavensake.

Allowing the children a few minutes’ extra sleep, she threw on her clothes and  ran across the parking lot to the large gas station-minimart to get sweet rolls and milk to tide them over until breakfast. At the last minute, she bought a sweet roll for Cooper, too.

Cooper knocked at their door while Jon was still dressing. “Come on, let’s go.” He definitely sounded testy.

Lacey didn’t bother to awaken Anna enough for her to dress but gathered her up in her arms and carried her to the truck. Without speaking, Cooper helped get Anna into the sleeper in the back, then slipped into the driver’s seat, while Lacey and Jon threw their baggage into the sleeper.

When Cooper shifted the truck into gear without as much as a “good morning,” Lacey wondered if the knocking she had heard the night before had happened at all. Had she imagined it?

When he switched off the radio in the middle of
Santa Claus is Coming to Town,
Lacey figured she had the answer to the question of whether he was a morning person or not.

And when he snapped at her to please stop that noise, calling attention to the fact she was now unconsciously humming
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
, she called herself a saint for buying a died-in-the-wool Scrooge a sweet roll.

She gave him the roll, however, with every ounce of pleasantry she possessed. He scowled—but he took it. Heaven knew he needed all the sweetness he could ingest.

And it was true that every time she looked at his eye, which, although less swollen, remained the color of thunderheads, she told herself she could not forget what he had suffered on their account. What he was still suffering.

* * * *

Cooper stopped a bit early for breakfast and varied his schedule to stop for lunch, too. He didn’t know much about kids, but he knew enough about people to tell when two young ones were restless enough to explode. He was experiencing something similar himself. The feelings were unfamiliar and quite annoying. Never had he felt so keenly that he wanted to be anywhere but in the truck, stuck in one position behind the wheel.

He blamed it on not sleeping well. His face and various bruised parts of his body had throbbed too much. And he’d kept thinking about Lacey.

She was causing him no end of discomfort. Her green eyes were warm and full to bursting with life. Her scent drew him like a magnet. He couldn’t seem to quit sneaking peeks at her body—at her sleek thighs hugged by blue denim, her breasts full and round beneath her soft sweater, her creamy neck and chin. Last night he had imagined in great detail what she looked like in the shower, just on the other side of his wall. He had not been able to stifle the very odd urge to knock on the wall. He had not done something so foolish in a very long time. Part of him had a sense of euphoria at his daring play, but the larger part was embarrassed. She must think him some kind of a nutcase.
He
thought himself some kind of nut case.

Her knock in return had been immensely gratifying, and still was, but at the same time it was threatening. He did not want her to get ideas about him. He did not intend to encourage any sort of relationship between them at all.

“I’m going to go ahead and see about fuel,” he told Lacey, leaving the steak-burger he’d ordered only half finished. “I’ll meet you and the kids at the truck.”

They were falling further and further behind schedule. Several rest stops this morning, now lunch. Good grief! They would be lucky to get to North Carolina before the new year.

He was stuffing bills into his wallet after paying for the fuel, when he looked through the station window into the small gift shop beyond. The kid, Jon, stood there examining something on a shelf—when he was supposed to have his butt out at the truck.

Cooper strode around the pumps and entered the store. “Come on, kid. This isn’t a sight-seein’ tour, you know.”

Something in the boy’s expression stopped him. Stepping forward, Cooper saw the object of the boy’s interest on the shelf: a woman’s fancy brush-and-comb set. He looked at the boy.

“I was thinkin’ of getting it for Mom,” the boy said. “For Christmas.”

“Well, get it and let’s go.”

The kid shuffled toward the door. “I’m goin’.”

“Hey, you can take a minute to get this if you want.”

The kid scuffed his feet. “Naw. I’m a bit short, and she probably wouldn’t like it anyway.”

“Here.” Cooper pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off a twenty. “I’ll advance you this, if you make certain my windshield’s clean at every stop and be my general gopher, handling whatever I tell you.”

The boy eyed the money, then cast Cooper a suspicious look. “Whatever you tell me?”

“Do you want the money or not?”

Jon hesitated another moment, then said, “You bet,” and snatched the bill with one hand, reaching for the comb and brush set with the other. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

There was no pretense in the boy, Cooper thought, taking in how the boy had lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. And an unusual glow spread within Cooper, as well.

“What is it?” Lacey asked when he reached the truck.

Only then did Cooper realize he was smiling. “Oh, nothin’.” He looked at her for several long seconds, and she looked back. Then slowly that special smile of hers broke across her face, and Cooper recognized the one thing that made Lacey Bryant unique. She could smile and laugh over nothing at all.

Lacey knew something had transpired between Cooper and Jon. Jon returned to the truck with a secret grin for Cooper and a bag he immediately hid. Her Christmas present, she guessed. But where did Cooper fit into it? And why was he suddenly smiling, too?