So Lucas had shrugged and said, si, he would go to Texas even though he did not deserve such a punishment.
He’d meant it lightly but for some reason, Felix had laughed as if it were the best joke he’d ever heard.
“Lucas,” he’d said, “I promise you, what awaits you in Texas is precisely what you deserve.”
Now, looking at the empty road, the empty sky, the blinding sun and the woman sulking beside him, Lucas decided that his grandfather was wrong.
Nobody deserved this.
“Aren’t you going to start the car?”
Delia’s voice was fraught with indignation. Lucas didn’t waste time answering. Instead he turned the key. Tromped on the gas pedal. Turned the key again…
Nada.
Muttering something that would have delighted the street urchins in Seville, he released the hood latch, opened the door and stepped outside.
The heat hit him like a fist even though he’d expected it.
Unlike Delia, who was decked out in a gender-challenged designer’s misbegotten notion of the Old West, Lucas had dressed for the realities of a Texas summer.
Boots, of course. Not shiny and new but comfortable and well-worn. What else did a man wear when he was going to spend the day ankle-deep in horse apples? Boots and jeans, faded and washed to the softness of silk, and a pale gray chambray shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled up.
In other words, he was sensibly dressed. It didn’t matter. One step from the car and he was drenched in sweat.
“Ohmygod,” Delia screeched dramatically, “I’ll burn up if you don’t shut that door!”
Lucas obliged, slamming it with enough force that the vehicle shuddered. Jaw set, he stalked to the hood, lifted it and peered inside. Then he got down in the dirt and looked at the car’s undercarriage. Neither action told him anything more than he already knew.
This sad excuse for a car was roadkill.
He dug his cell phone from his pocket, flipped it open and saw those dreaded words. No Service.
“Mierda,” he muttered and banged his fist on Delia’s window. “Open the door!”
She glared and cracked it an ungracious inch. “What?”
“Do you have your cell phone?”
“Why?”
Could a man’s back teeth really shatter if he ground them together too hard?
“Do you have it or not?”
A put-upon sigh before she reached into the doll-size purse that hung from her shoulder.
The purse was white leather.
Everything she wore was white leather. The ridiculous sombrero perched on her artfully-coiffed hair. The tiny fringed vest. The tight pants. The boots with four inch stiletto heels. She looked ridiculous, Lucas thought and realized, with icy certainty, that what had been dawning on him for a while was true.
Their affair had run its predictable course. As soon as they got back to New York, he’d end it.
As if she’d read his mind, Delia all but slapped the phone into his outstretched palm. A glance told him she used a different wireless provider. Maybe there was hope.
At least, when he flipped the phone open, he didn’t see the ominous No Service.
But he couldn’t get a transmission bar, either.