Why hasn’t this idiot gone already? The light changed five seconds ago.
Kate gritted her teeth. The driver’s left arm rested on the truck’s open windowsill, his hands tapping to some unknown beat. Kate counted another five seconds, then released her foot off the brake. Her car rolled forward until it was inches from the offending fender. She hit the brakes.
Message received, the guy lifted his hand in a brief greeting and puttered through the intersection. But his speed didn’t pick up measurably. The truck crept down the street.
Kate stifled a screech of frustration and, for the sixth time since leaving her office, pressed redial on her Bluetooth headset. Don’t go to voicemail. Don’t go to voicemail, she prayed.
“Hi, Kate,” Payton answered, out of breath. “Sorry I missed your calls. I’ve been meeting with a wedding videographer for the past hour and had my phone off.”
Two months before, Payton became engaged to someone whose trust fund miraculously exceeded her own. Massive planning had since ensued, not only for the wedding but for the upcoming engagement party. Payton was a Vaughn, after all, as her mother would say.
It also left Kate with not just one but two parties for which she needed to find a date.
In short order, Kate relayed the events of the afternoon—particularly the massive diamond perched on Nicole’s slim finger, still conscious of the fact the truck in front of her was cruising at an easy speed of twenty-one miles an hour.
In a twenty-five-miles-per-hour speed zone.
“You’re kidding me. Nicole and Michael are engaged,” Payton mused. “How are you holding up?”
Kate sighed. “Been better. I’m on my way home.”
“Before eight? That’s a record. Wait a minute, you’re not listening to that depressing Bonnie Raitt song again, are you?”
Kate paused just as the familiar refrain about making someone love you when they didn’t streamed loudly from her speakers. Too late to turn it off now. “Maybe.”
“I thought I tossed that CD a year ago.”
She had. But that was the beauty of everything being digital. Kate only had to repurchase it and add it to the breakup playlist she’d created months ago. For moments like this.
“You should go home and have a bottle of wine. I’d come over but I’m running a few minutes late for my appointment with the caterer for the engagement party. Supposed to finalize the menu. But I’ll call you later?”
“No, don’t worry about it. I plan on drowning my sorrows in a large bubble bath and a pint of coffee ice cream. If I can get my bathwater above a balmy sixty-four degrees, anyway.”
“I warned you about buying a fixer-upper. You’ve got to find someone who can help.”
“I’m working on it.” Ahead of her, the truck eased to a halt at the four-way stop. Kate said a hasty good-bye and disconnected. Reaching forward, she flipped the volume of the radio back up and glanced at the road.
Shit! She slammed on the brakes, almost careening into the truck, now stopped in front of her at the stop sign. Her cell phone flew out of the center console and clunked to the floor somewhere around her feet. Great.
The truck idled for a moment and she said a quick prayer he would hang a right or go straight. As long as he got the hell out of her way.
He took a left. Frick.
Kate turned left in reluctant pursuit. Up ahead she could finally see the roof of her newly purchased two-story house. The down payment alone had rivaled her total student loan debt, but the century-old home, built in the esteemed Avenues neighborhood just east of downtown Salt Lake, had all been worth it.
Nirvana was a moment away. A wave of calm drifted over her.
Until she realized the guy had slowed down. A lot.
Oh. Lord. What if this guy was one of her new neighbors? Although she’d moved in almost a month ago, with her late nights at work, she hadn’t met anyone save for her next-door neighbor, Glenda, a friendly widow who’d brought over a batch of cookies the day after Kate moved in.
He crept past her house, and Glenda’s, and the next house…
Phew. Relieved, she turned left into her driveway. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the white truck make a U-turn. He stopped at the curb in front of Glenda’s.
Kate parked her Audi and slumped down in the soft beige leather seats. How much worse could this day get? She considered waiting him out in the haven of her car, maybe pretending to be rooting for something in her purse until he went away. But that would have been the coward’s way out, and she was anything but cowardly.
A glance in her rearview mirror showed the guy had eased open his own door. A crown of coal-black hair appeared over the top of the cab and the guy stepped around to the front of the truck. An unbuttoned light blue chambray shirt acted like a jacket over a white T-shirt that hugged his taut upper body. Loose, ripped jeans hung from narrow hips.