Hiding her feelings, however, had never been a natural talent, so she kept her head down and concentrated on stuffing her boots into her bag and zipping it closed. When she was sure she had a mask of indifference in place, she got out of the car. He didn’t budge an inch, so she shouldered her duffel and stood a bit taller. “Officer Donovan, thanks for the first aid. If we’re all through here, I’ll take my guitar and be on my way.”
He simply reached out, lifted the bag from her shoulder as if it weighed nothing, and strode to the trunk. “Get in the car. You can ride shotgun, or you can stick with the backseat. Your choice.”
“In the car? Why?” The questions came out abnormally high-pitched. “I thought you said I wasn’t under arrest?”
“You’re not. Yet,” he added under his breath when she didn’t move.
“Look. I like to walk. I prefer to walk. There’s no law against taking a walk along a country road.”
He closed the trunk. “There’s a law against hitchhiking.”
“I’m not going to hitchhike anymore,” she said as he approached.
“That’s right.” He opened the passenger-side door and waited. Patiently. Like a man entertaining absolutely no dou
bts about the outcome.
Much as she would have loved to keep arguing, the look on his face suggested any additional words would be a waste of breath. As long as he had Gibson, he had the hammer. She walked to the passenger seat and got in.
“Buckle up.”
With that order hanging in the air, he shut the door. The resulting slam sounded disturbingly final.
Chapter Three
West got behind the wheel and glanced at his reluctant passenger. Roxy stared out the window. Her hair, now closer to dry, waved with abandon. Beautiful, untamed, and in a state of natural chaos, just like the woman. Chaos worried him. Spending his formative years in one of the worst areas of Baltimore had satisfied his chaos quotient for the duration.
Stints as a SEAL and in the NYPD had taught him information combated chaos. Using his on-board computer, he keyed in her driver’s license and waited while the system ran a DMV and warrant check. He scanned through results—a whole lot of nothing—while noting her attention.
She shifted closer to get a view of the monitor. “What are you looking at?”
Christ, even cagey with nerves, her throaty voice thickened his blood. “You,” he answered a little more curtly than necessary and tapped the screen to scroll to the final page of the report.
“You ran me?”
There was that wariness again. He looked up and caught her running her tongue over her lower lip. “You’re clean.”
Her lip glistened, and he imagined taking his turn dampening the soft, pink flesh. Instead, he started the engine and pulled onto the road. “You seem surprised by that outcome. Something you want to tell me, Roxy?”
Silence stretched while he drove, and she worried the cuticle of her thumb with the nail of her index finger. He wondered if she might actually level with him, but no, she turned away and resumed staring out the window at the fascinating display of wilderness constituting scenery along Route 9. “Could I have my cigarettes, please?”
He drove past the carved and painted Welcome to Bluelick sign, with its magnolia blossom border surrounding a colorful representation of the historic brick buildings along Main Street. “No. It’s a bad habit. Potentially fatal, much like your other bad habit.”
She shot him a battle-ready look. “What other bad habit?”
“Hitchhiking.”
“Oh.” She dismissed the comment with a toss of her head. “Save the lecture. I’m trying to quit.”
And to distract him from his questions. “Try harder. Rather than contemplate polluting your lungs, why not tell me what inspired you to hitchhike Route 9?”
“I wasn’t hitchhiking. Not originally,” she corrected when he cocked a brow at her. “I left the driving to Greyhound but wound up missing my transfer in Lexington. I caught the bus to Millersville instead and figured on taking a local from there.” She flipped the visor down, checked her reflection in the mirror, and swiped at the makeup smudges under her eyes. “But there is no local, so…” Her slim shoulder lifted and dropped. “I had to go with Plan B.”
Uber? Lyft? Those pickings would be slim around these parts. “If you got a ride in Millersville, how’d you end up on the shoulder?” There weren’t any stops between the two towns. No subdivisions. No gas stations. Not even a lousy McDonalds. Just a whole lot of undeveloped county land. His stomach clenched as he thought about her trunk comment and scenarios that would have her cutting a ride short in the middle of an empty span of road. “Somebody messed with you?”
“Nobody messed with me.” She answered without pausing from her face-saving efforts.
He caught her arm and rubbed his thumb over the bruises on her wrist. “Somebody messed with you.” The words came out quietly, even though the marks pissed him off. A display of temper wouldn’t encourage her to confide in him.