Wrong time.
Wrong man.
She needed…well, no one right now. Not after Brett. She’d sworn off men for at least a year. Add to that her three interfering brothers and the last thing she wanted was another man who thought he had to protect her and guide her. For too long she’d let the men in her life do just that.
An hour and two cups of coffee later, the firefighters were gone but the stench of burnt Jeep remained. Its carcass dripped in the afternoon sun, a bizarre centerpiece in Harvest’s parking lot.
Damn, Claire had loved that car. She’d miss the feel of the wind blowing through her hair on the twenty-minute drive home while she blasted the satellite radio.
“Mourning the Jeep?”
Sitting on the employee bench outside the back door, she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at her brother. Chris held an industrial-size brown bottle. She squinted at the label. Hydrogen peroxide. He’d wanted to distract her with his question. Really, it was kind of sweet. She would have told him so too, if he hadn’t chosen that moment to yank her foot out and pour the clear liquid over the small gash. It bubbled and hissed like he’d just opened up a shaken Coke bottle. She jerked her foot out of his hand.
“Hurts like crazy, doesn’t it?” Chris twisted the cap back on the bottle. “Mom always said the sizzle means it’s working.”
“Give me the stupid bandage.”
He slapped it into her outstretched palm.
“I’ll be right back.” He paused right outside Harvest’s door and waved the bottle at her. “Unless you want another shot of the good stuff.”
She would have hurled something at him if there had been any ammunition nearby.
Chris had always been a tease, winning the super lottery hadn’t changed him a bit. Except now he had more time to be annoying.
She pushed the sticky ends of the bandage onto her sole. The icy burn from the hydrogen peroxide subsided. Bandages always made injuries feel better. True at age eight and still true at twenty-eight.
“At least let me take you home.” Hank slapped his dark brown sheriff’s hat against his thigh.
Claire slid her sore foot into her shoe, stood up and bounced gently to test her pain threshold. It ached, but nothing she couldn’t handle.
“Hank, I appreciate the offer. I really do.” She smoothed her skirt, hopelessly marred with dirt. “But I drove the farm truck in this morning and if you took me home, I’d be stuck out in the country without transportation. Anyway, the Voice of Doom knows I don’t have the phone or the flash drive.” She didn’t think he’d buy that last bit, but she had to try.
She took in his disapproval, evident by the set of his jaw. He glared at her. The vein at his temple pulsed as he gnawed on an already tortured nail. As the eldest brother, he’d always been her first and most effective protector. No surprise that he’d gone into law enforcement.
“That’s crap and you know it.” He spit part of his nail to the ground.
“Look, I’m only going home for a few hours to shower and let the dog out. I’ll be back before the dinner service. And despite what you think, I’m not completely without defenses. I’ve got dad’s quail-hunting guns at the house. You know damn well that I’m a good shot.”
He regarded her without comment. She gave him her best everything-will-be-okay smile. Hank shook his head and walked away. A few minutes later, he and Chris took off in their cars.
She didn’t know where Jake had gone. She surreptitiously looked for him for half an hour with no luck before she got behind the wheel of the decrepit farm truck to head home.
The truck had a hole in the passenger-side floorboard, dents and rust along both sides and an arthritic manual transmission. Her parents had sold a large part of the family farm to finance their post-retirement dream of cruising around the country in an RV. However, her father refused to part with the heap of a truck. He’d left it parked in Claire’s garage—something she was grateful for this morning when she’d needed to get into town.
But now, she couldn’t wait to get home and shower. She planned to break out the double chocolate fudge ice cream for a quick dinner. Healthy? No, but after the day she’d had, she deserved a little bad-food loving. Claire turned the key in the truck’s ignition.
Nothing. Not a groan of the engine. Not a click of the starter. Nada.
She tried again. Still zilch.
After everything that had happened today, she had to deal with a non-responsive engine, too? The addition was more than she could take. Her temper exploded.
She stomped her feet on the pedals. Yanked on the immobile steering wheel. Cursed and railed against the unfairness of it all. She was in the middle of a diatribe about how the truck would be sorry when it went up for auction at the scrap metal dealer’s when a chuckle interrupted her tirade.
Slowly, already knowing who it was and hating that fact, she turned.
Jake stood outside the truck’s passenger door. His right elbow rested on the open window frame with his chin cradled in his palm as if he were enjoying the show.