Читать книгу: «Baily's Irish Dream»

2

“WILL THIS NIGHTMARE ever be over?” Daniel asked himself after being forced to put his foot on the brake yet again. It was only day two of his trip, but at this rate he would never reach his sister’s wedding in time. Not when the vehicles in front of him insisted on driving as slow as his late great-grandmother. A Volkswagen Bug and a semi both conspired against him by only driving sixty miles per hour each in their own lane. For a brief moment Daniel considered passing the truck on the shoulder of the road, but it would be just his luck to get caught in a rut and end up with a flat tire. What he needed to do was to get the attention of the woman in the car in front of him.

He knew it was a woman because it was hard to miss the mass of red hair that spilled over the headrest of her seat. However, she clearly wasn’t aware of his presence behind her. Daniel hunched forward over the steering wheel in the hope that by bringing his body inches closer to the lady in front of him she might sense his desire to pass. Since she remained at a constant speed, he had to assume she hadn’t picked up on his mental vibe.

He tried another ploy and flipped on his headlights. A reflection of bright light bounced off her silver bumper. He could see his high beams clearly. No such luck from Red.

The woman was obviously too distracted to check her rearview mirror. The curls that he’d noticed before were bouncing around her head. She was bobbing and weaving and thrusting an occasional finger at the passenger in the seat next to her. If Daniel had to guess, she was either having a seizure or singing to a very short companion. It must have been his imagination that conjured up the image of pointy ears peeking around the front seat. She wasn’t actually singing to a cat?

“HOW WAS I?” Baily asked, slightly out of breath from sining along with the radio. Baily was no Aretha Franklin, but Miss Roosevelt didn’t seem to mind. Madam President had soul.

Baily waited anxiously for the next song. In the interim she took stock of where she was. A glance in her rearview mirror revealed an ominous black Mercedes practically sitting on her back bumper.

“Jeesh. Sorry, buddy,” Baily muttered a little sheepishly. “I didn’t realize you were back there.” After all, Aretha demanded full concentration. She hit the gas and attempted to accelerate enough so that she could pull ahead of the semi next to her. Her Bug had other ideas.

The car sputtered a bit and sped up a mere five miles per hour on the decline. Since the truck was also picking up speed, there was no way Baily would be able to pass it let alone pull in front of it. Poor car, she thought. She’d pushed it too hard, and it let her know that it didn’t appreciate it. Her only recourse was to slow down and pull in behind the semi.

SHE WAS SLOWING DOWN! There was only one option left. Daniel laid his hand on the horn and left it there out of sheer frustration. Frustration at the woman in front of him for driving too slow. Frustration at his sister for marrying the wrong man. Frustration at having to walk away from his business at a crucial time. It was undignified to shout at the top of his lungs, but there was nothing in the rule books about using a car horn to let off a little steam. The noise was an awful wonderful sound that made his ears ache joyously. The blare filled the car, zoomed out around him, and echoed against the vast Montana landscape.

MISS ROOSEVELT SHRIEKED and dove for cover under the seat. “Oh!” Baily shouted with indignation. The big bully. She’d been trying to move over to do him a favor and he had gone and scared her baby. The semi passed, and she immediately swung into the lane behind it. The truck picked up speed and was soon out of sight. Baily, meanwhile, couldn’t help but stare at the man in the Mercedes as he pulled even with her.

WITH ONE LAST FINAL PUSH, Daniel released his horn. A dreamy sort of peace invaded him. Damn that had felt good. If he smoked he would have had a cigarette. Nothing like a good blow of the horn to relieve a little stress. Heck, now that the car in front of him had moved, Daniel no longer felt the sudden rush to get ahead. He pulled up slowly alongside the yellow Volkswagen Bug. Belatedly he turned to get a better look at the driver, wondering if she was as pretty as her hair.

“BIG…JERK!” Baily shouted, rolling down her window in an effort to make herself heard. Unfortunately it was doubtful that he heard her because his car window was still rolled up. Not that he would be overly offended by such a comment. Baily really needed to work on the whole swearing thing. She had lived too long with her mother’s words ringing in her head. A lady simply doesn’t swear. Obviously her mother never had to put up with jerks that drove Mercedes.

WHAT WAS HER PROBLEM? Daniel thought. He hadn’t heard her, but it didn’t take a genius to understand that she was furious. After all, she was the one who wouldn’t pull ahead of the truck. When Daniel had tried to encourage her forward, she’d had the nerve to slow down. Of course now Daniel realized that she had only slowed down so that she could get behind the truck. More than likely the little car didn’t have the acceleration required for a high-speed pass. It was Daniel’s turn to feel a bit sheepish.

The only thing to do was to apologize. No chance she would hear him through two car widths. Daniel improvised with a shrug of his shoulders and a harmless smile that said, “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to honk so loud.”

BAILY GASPED. “The nerve of that man! He’s smirking and shrugging at me like he doesn’t even care that he turned five of my hairs gray with that blasted horn of his.”

The meanest action she could think to do popped into her head. Without a second’s hesitation she did it.

SHE STUCK HER TONGUE OUT at him! Here he was trying to apologize, and she was showing him tongue. Obviously she was disturbed. Probably an escapee from some kind of mental facility. The best thing to do would be to hightail it out of there before she did something really crazy.

Like the pig face. Daniel hated the pig face. The one where the person pushed his nose up on his face and slanted his eyes back toward his ears. It chilled him just thinking about it. With one last glare to show her that he didn’t appreciate her driving etiquette, Daniel hit the gas pedal with the full weight of his foot.

A mistake, considering he hadn’t taken his eyes off the redheaded driver. Daniel never saw the cow that had slowly made its way through the opening in the fence along the side of the road until it was actually on the road itself. He knew it was too late the minute he saw the big bovine. Completely oblivious to the damage the dumb animal was about to cause, the cow mooed at the oncoming car.

Daniel slammed on his brakes so hard he feared he would push the pedal through the floor of the car. The vehicle swerved then spun out of control. He tried to steer into the skid, but the car didn’t respond in time. Before he was aware of what was happening, he’d skidded off the road and crashed into a fence post. The air bag inflated, and Daniel was thrown back against the seat.

It all took exactly two seconds.

“Moooo.”

Well at least the cow made it.

“Mister! Mister! Are you all right?”

The air bag now deflated, Daniel was able to move within the car. First he took stock of his body. Both his legs and arms were okay. His chest and the rest of his body had been protected by the air bag. He bumped his head and he felt a burning sensation on his cheek from where the air bag had scraped his face. Other than that he was fine. And lucky.

His car…not so lucky.

“Answer me!”

Daniel turned his head and met the worried green eyes of his redheaded nemesis. “Why?”

Baily sat back on her haunches. That was an odd answer. “Because I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Obviously I am, or I wouldn’t have been able to answer you, now would I?”

Good point. He was awfully calm for someone who had just gotten into a car wreck. And by the looks of it the car was totaled. The hood was practically wrapped around the thick fence post. The fence post, however, looked fine. “Didn’t you see the cow?”

No words were necessary. Daniel’s sour face said it all.

“Okay, you didn’t see the cow,” Baily concluded.

Daniel attempted to open the car door. Not an easy task since the entire frame had been pushed in. Baily saw his intent and aided him by pulling on the door while he pushed. Together they managed to create enough space for him to escape. Finding his legs a bit unsteady, he took a few calming breaths before he inspected the damage.

“You should sit down while we wait for the cops.”

“What cops?”

“You know the cops that come after you’ve been in an accident,” Baily told him naively.

Daniel raised his arms to indicate the vast space around him. The only thing for miles was Baily’s Bug, Daniel’s wreck and a cow. “And just where do expect these magical cops to sprout from?”

“Oh.” She saw his point. The road they traveled wasn’t a hotbed of activity. The semi was the only other vehicle Baily had noticed for hours and by now it was long gone. “I don’t have a cell phone or anything.”

“Who doesn’t have a cell phone in today’s world?” he asked incredulously. He didn’t know why he cared, but it seemed wrong for a woman to be on the road alone without a cell phone.

“Me. I’m a schoolteacher on a budget. It was either a cell phone or my monthly manicure.”

“Cell phones are very useful in cases of emergencies, accidents…”

“Yes, but well-painted nails are a joy every day,” she said holding out her pretty pink nails for inspection. He didn’t seem impressed. “I take it you have a cell phone.”

“Of course I have a cell phone,” he stated haughtily. He reached for his right pants’ pocket and found it empty. Then he reached for his left pocket and also found it empty. Looking down at his pants, he realized they weren’t the same ones he’d been wearing on his trip back from California. The ones with his cell phone still in the pocket. They were on the floor of his bathroom where he’d last left them. Not here. With him. In the middle of Montana.

“No cell phone?”

He almost wanted to growl at her.

“So what should we do?”

Again, Daniel was beyond words. He moved around the car slowly and carefully. The hood, the engine, the frame—the whole damn car was trashed. He began to swear with the skill of a sailor.

Baily smiled uncomfortably. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard the words before. Growing up with five brothers, she could give vocabulary lessons in swearing. She just envied the ease with which he did it. Boy, if her mother could hear him now, she’d shove enough soap in his mouth to keep his language clean for years.

Finally, after he’d surveyed the wreck and realized that he wasn’t going anywhere, Daniel turned his attention on the woman. “You,” he accused.

“Me?” Baily asked.

“This is all your fault!” It was a lie. He’d been driving too fast, but it felt good to blame someone else for his stupidity.

“My fault! You were the one who almost hit that poor cow and drove off the road.”

“Poor cow?” Daniel searched and found the cow off to the side of the road munching on some grass. “The cow is fine! What about my car?”

Baily spared a glance at the car. “It’s pretty much totaled.”

“Ah-hh,” Daniel yelled in frustration.

Perhaps this would have been a good time for Baily to get in her car and get the hell out of Dodge. Who knew what the man would do next? Honking and yelling, he was obviously the emotional sort. But she couldn’t leave. Although she’d denied it, she did feel partly responsible for the accident. She wasn’t about to admit it to him, but he had been staring at her tongue. The tongue she’d so childishly thrust at him. It was why he hadn’t seen the cow until it was too late. For that reason, she had to at least offer her assistance.

“What am I going to do?” Daniel yelled. Now that he had regained some of his senses, he realized that he was in big trouble. Totaling his car wasn’t part of the plan. Being stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a redhead wasn’t part of the plan, either.

Baily refrained from making a comment, but she had asked a similar question only moments before. They were still all alone. Not counting the cow.

That’s when the trepidation hit. She was alone in Montana with a strange man who liked to beep his horn and swear. The smart course of action, the one the self-defense books suggested, would be to get into her car, drive to the nearest phone, and call someone to help him. That idea, however, didn’t sit well with Baily. Not while she was still feeling slightly, just slightly, guilty.

Besides that, the poor man appeared to be desperate. It was a safe bet he hadn’t staged the accident as part of some diabolical plot to kidnap, rape and murder her. Had that been the case he wouldn’t have been driving a Mercedes. No one totaled a sixty-thousand-dollar car just to commit murder. He could do that in a Ford.