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It was over. He’d made the choice for her. She couldn’t spend another day with him, not after this. First thing tomorrow, she’d call her family, find an airport, and fly home. Her adventures as Viper, the biker girl, were over.
Fly back home to what? Her family’s disappointment? The job she’d started to hate?
She tucked the sheet around her body, feeble armor. Why couldn’t he be a harmless drifter who’d let her hitch a ride without giving her any trouble? She pressed her head between the pillows again, trepidation and resentment churning inside her. Through the slit of light, she watched him across the narrow space that separated their beds. The walls were thin. She was afraid to shut her eyes. If he made another move, she’d scream. Surely even in this seedy motel, someone would hear her.
He lay on his back with his ankles crossed, the remote propped on his chest, his hair inky against the pillow propped behind his head. He’d switched from monster trucks to bass fishing, and he looked perfectly relaxed, not at all like a man with rape on his mind.
Perfectly, totally relaxed …
Maybe it was a trick of the flickering light from the television, but she swore she saw the faintest smile of satisfaction lurking at the corners of those thin lips.
She squinted. Shifted the pillows ever so slightly. It wasn’t her imagination. He looked smug, not sinister.
He looked like a man who’d figured out the perfect way to get rid of an unwanted nuisance and come out a thousand dollars richer.
SHE GOT DRESSED IN THE bathroom the next morning and didn’t speak to him until they’d been served at a pancake place wedged between a service station and a thrift shop. Some of the diners were women, but most were men wearing caps that ranged from the trucker variety to sports teams. They eyed Panda suspiciously, but no one paid any attention to either her or her pregnancy bump.
He took a noisy slurp from his coffee mug, then dug into his pancakes, chewing without bothering to close his mouth. He noticed her staring at him and frowned. Her conviction that he’d been manipulating her last night wavered. She was almost certain he’d been deliberately trying to scare her off, but her instincts weren’t exactly foolproof these days.
She studied him closely, paying particular attention to his eyes as she spoke. “So, have you raped a lot of women?”
She saw it. A flicker of outrage camouflaged almost immediately by half-closed eyelids and a noisy slurp from his coffee mug. “Depends on what you mean by rape.”
“You’d know it when you did it.” She took the plunge. “I have to admit last night was interesting.”
His brows slammed together. “Interesting! You think that was interesting?”
Not at the time she hadn’t. But now? Definitely. “Maybe if you were a better actor, you could have pulled it off.”
He grew wary. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She ignored his scowl. “It’s obvious you want to get rid of me, but was that the best you could do?” Those sinister lips pulled tight, and his expression became so ominous she had to muster all the bravado she could find to set her elbows on the table and meet his gaze. “I’m not going anywhere, Panda. You’re stuck with me.” A small devil prodded her, and she pointed to the corner of her own mouth. “You have a little food right there.”
“I don’t care.”
“Are you sure? A fastidious eater like yourself?”
“If you don’t like it, you know what you can do.”
“Yes. Fly home and send you a check for a thousand dollars, plus expenses.”
“You’re damned right, plus expenses.” He swiped at his mouth with his napkin, more a reflexive motion than capitulation.
She curled her fingers around her own coffee mug. He could have dropped her off on the side of the road anytime and disappeared, but he wanted the money, so he hadn’t done it. Now he intended to scare her off and still collect the cash. Too bad for him.
She set down her mug. All this time she’d assumed he had the upper hand, but it was just the opposite. “You’re big and bad, Panda. I get that. And now that I get it, would you mind knocking it off?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The leers. All those references to ‘getting laid.’”
He pushed away his plate, leaving his pancakes half eaten, eyeing her with distaste. “Here’s the way I see it. Rich girl thinks she can add a little excitement to her life by slumming it with a guy like me. Am I wrong?”
She reminded herself who had the upper hand. “Well, the experience is definitely making me rethink the importance of decent table manners.” She gave him the same dead-eye look she gave her sibs when they misbehaved. “Tell me where we’re going.”
“I’m going to Caddo Lake. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be going to the airport.”
“Excuse me.” A sixtyish woman in a peach pantsuit approached their booth. The woman gestured toward a nearby table where a jowly man with a walrus mustache pretended to look in the opposite direction. “My husband, Conrad, said I should mind my own business, but I couldn’t help noticing …” She stared at Lucy. “Has anybody ever told you that you look like the president’s daughter? That Lucy character.”
