His jaw tightened as he stared grimly ahead. “I would never want you staying with me because you don’t believe in giving up. Sometimes it really is best to walk away. For your own sake.”
Her temper flared higher. “And I wouldn’t want to stay with someone who wasn’t willing to fight against all the odds to keep us together. What’s the point of making commitments at all if a person is willing to just walk away when the going gets hard? How can you pour everything you have into anything if you aren’t willing to invest whatever it takes to succeed?”
He risked glanced at her again. “Are we talking about school again—or about us?”
“We’re talking about whatever is important to you,” she answered evenly.
She might as well face it. She had told herself she wouldn’t fall in love with him. She had promised herself she could keep it light. That she wouldn’t expect too much and therefore wouldn’t be disappointed when it inevitably ended. After all, she’d been able to accomplish that goal with other men from her past.
It wasn’t the same with Ron.
When had she fallen in love with him? Since they’d become lovers? Sometime during the two years prior to that? The first day she’d met him?
“Haley—”
He cursed when rain lashed the car so hard it nearly blew them sideways. “We’re going to have to pull over for a while until this band blows over.”
Nodding stiffly, she peered through the torrents. “Looks like a little café up ahead. We could wait in there.”
She wasn’t hungry, but there was no need to risk both their lives in this weather.
He pulled into the parking lot and as close to the door as he could get. There were only a few other cars in the lot at just before six on this Saturday evening. Either it was too early for the dinner crowd or other people had the good sense to stay out of this storm.
“You want to make a run for it or just sit out here in the car?”
She looked at the sheets of rain between them and the door, weighed the discomfort against a continuation of this painful discussion with Ron. She really didn’t think she was ready to hear him confirm that she had offered her heart to a man who wasn’t interested in the responsibility of caring for it long-term. Maybe she just wanted to hold on to the fantasy for a little longer.
“Let’s go in.”
They didn’t bother with umbrellas, but simply jumped out of the car and made a dash for it. They shed their wet coats inside the café, hanging them to dry on a coat rack just inside the door. Their pants and shoes were wet, and their hair hung damp and limp, but at least they weren’t soaked to the skin.
A waitress with flame-red hair and too much black eyeliner approached them with a commiserative smile. “Pretty bad out there, isn’t it? We’ve got the TV on in the corner over there so we can watch the radar. You know we’re under a tornado watch, don’t you?”
“Yes, we know.” Ron glanced at the screen where a graphic showed almost the entire state covered in boxes depicting thunderstorm warnings, tornado watches and flash-flood warnings. Two serious-looking men in white shirts and loosened ties sat at a news desk, discussing the radar activity they were showing on-screen. “We thought we’d have a bite to eat and wait for the rain to let up a little before we keep driving to Little Rock.”
Nodding, she waved a hand tipped with blue nail enamel toward the small dining room. “Just sit wherever you want. I’ll bring you a menu. And some coffee?”
“Please,” Ron and Haley said in unison.
“Be right with you.”
At a quick glance, Haley noted that only a few other people were in the café, counting the two waitresses and whoever was working the kitchen. A family of four sat at a table next to the front glass wall. Mother and father in their late thirties, a boy and girl of maybe nine and twelve, respectively, all talking at once as they ate. An elderly couple—mid-seventies, perhaps?—were silently putting away bowls of soup and a basket of corn bread muffins at a table in the corner. And a younger couple dined on hamburgers and fries while stopping often to coo at the baby sitting in a carrier on a third chair at their table. Occasionally they glanced at the TV and out the windows, keeping an eye on the weather, probably judging when it would be safe to make a run for their car.
Haley doubted that the little establishment often had a full dining room, but she suspected there were usually more here than this. The place was clean and the food looked good. The weather had to be a factor in the lack of business tonight.
“Here’s your coffee.” The waitress, identified by a name tag as Candi, set steaming mugs in front of them. “Bet you’re both chilled with that damp hair.”
“We are,” Ron answered her with a smile that made her eyelashes flutter. “Thank you, Candi.”
She grinned back at him, as people always did. “What can I get y’all to eat?”
“What do you recommend?” Ron asked.
“The burgers are always good. The soup of the day is homemade vegetable beef, and that’s pretty good, too. But my favorite is the chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and fried okra.”
Ron sighed regretfully. “That sounds really good, but we had a big lunch. Guess I’d better just have the soup.”
“I’ll have the same, thank you,” Haley decided. Warm soup sounded good on a day like this, and a light enough dinner after their hearty lunch. Maybe by the time they’d finished eating, the rain would have let up enough to allow them to get underway again.