Safe with a Stranger

The look in his eyes as he glared at her wasn’t stony or cynical or in any way threatening, despite his rough words. No, Josh’s facial expression seemed to reach out to her with unspoken compassion. And with something—warmer, more focused—underlying that. Clare didn’t want to think too much about the underlying heat. By now her own body was suffering from a wave of warmth just staring at his remarkably deep-set eyes and intense chocolate-colored gaze.

He was easy to look at. And hot! Six-two or-three, she’d have to guess. All of that was lean, hard-packed muscle. Not the kind of muscle you saw in the gym, but the real sinew and form of an outdoorsman who didn’t hesitate to use his body. He was wearing camo pants and a tight-fitting black T-shirt. Old cowboy boots and a Stetson completed the picture. And what a picture it was, too.

She drew in a shaky breath and her supposedly quick brain finally kicked into gear as she remembered that without his help, Jimmy would have been lost. And she would be hopeless. Even not knowing a thing about her, Josh had given her the sweetest gift in the world.

She swallowed carefully, deciding that she needed someone’s help and it might as well be his. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got all night. I don’t have to be anywhere until the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh.” The way he’d said that, with a murmur of sorrow in his voice, made her curious to know where he was headed. But she figured she owed him the first explanations.

She shifted Jimmy in her arms and rolled her window down halfway for some air. “Okay,” she began, wondering how she could put all her embarrassment and terror into words. “But this has to be off the record.”

“Wait a sec,” he interrupted. “Stay put and hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”

“Wha…” Before she could get a word out, he’d ripped the keys from the ignition, unbuckled and stepped out of the truck into the humidity and heat of an East Texas night.

“Keep the doors locked and an eye out,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. You two should be fine.”

He slammed the door, locked it behind him and stalked off toward the discount store, leaving her with her mouth open and her head shaking. What was with this guy?

True to his word, and before she had a chance to rethink her tenuous position and climb out of his truck and disappear, Josh was already headed back in her direction. And he was carrying an enormous box with him.

“What in blazes…”

“It’s a car seat for a two-year-old,” he said after he opened the door. “Sorry I took so long but I had to get a complete briefing on its installation. Can you put the kid down there on the front seat without waking him up and get out a minute? I’ll give you the short course as we tuck it into the backseat.”

“What backseat?”

Josh slanted a grin in her direction. It was the first one she’d seen from him and it made her heart stutter with lust and longing. Wow. That was fast work. She didn’t even know where she and Jimmy would be in the next hour, yet here she was, thinking about a near stranger in terms of a heated grin. Damn it. She was a mother, for heaven’s sake.

Lightly slipping out of the front seat and easing Jimmy down, Clare tried to get herself back together. This was serious business. Jimmy’s whole future was riding on her doing everything right.

“Lucille has a backseat,” he told her as he pulled a folding knife from his pocket and set to work opening the box. “Maybe it’s more of a bench than a real seat, but this child-size car seat will fit just fine.”

“Lucille? Your truck has a name?” She’d never met anyone who’d named their vehicle. It seemed a little eccentric for such a take-charge guy.

“Yeah. I saved to buy her before I signed up for the army, and then afterward made a few modifications in my spare time. I had a buddy who took care of her for me while I was out of country. She may not be a lot to look at, but she still runs good enough to keep us both out of trouble.”

He and his truck had saved her and Jimmy from a world of trouble. She decided it was worth the effort to become real close friends with Lucille. And to give the man who owned her a break.

Clare and Josh finished installing the child safety seat and then she gently laid Jimmy down into it and buckled him in without waking him up. Grateful not to have awoken the baby, the two adults climbed back into the front and gingerly closed their doors.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “But you didn’t have to spend so much on us. We’ll be back out of your way just as soon as I can figure out what to do.”

“The kid was beginning to look a little heavy in your arms. I thought maybe you both needed a break and some space. You could always use that same seat in an airplane or a rental car if need be.” He handed her one of the water bottles he’d brought back with the car seat.

The bottle was cold and dripping sweat and she was thrilled to be able to quench her thirst. “Thanks. But I’ll pay you back for the seat.” She swallowed a slug of the water and immediately felt better. “This is wonderful.”

Clare thought once again about all that Josh had done for them. She was still rather hesitant to trust a person whom she’d just met for the first time a few hours ago—especially a man who made her itchy and prickly by simply looking in her direction. After all, she’d recently escaped from one gigantic mistake made solely on lust, and she didn’t dare dive off that cliff blindly into another one.

But at the moment, there wasn’t time for careful consideration. Ramzi’s men, or whoever those goons had been, might catch up to them anytime. They weren’t safe yet, and wouldn’t be until they were well on their way out of town.

Her reporter’s instincts were telling her that Josh could not possibly hurt her or her child. Clare understood the Texas men she’d been raised with. They called a spade a spade. They were loyal to a fault, and always more than generous and fair. Her father was a good example, and Josh, too, appeared to be among the best of the breed.

Josh shot her a wary look over the top of his own water bottle. “You ready now to give up those explanations?”

“I think maybe there’s only time enough for the bullet points—the headlines. Okay?”

He nodded and sat back against the door to wait.

“You know, I’m really not sure who those men were who attacked us.”

Josh narrowed his eyes and frowned.

“Well, I thought I knew, but…” She took another sip of water. “Okay. Okay. Here’s the background.

“About three years ago I married a Middle-Eastern man whom I thought I loved. He was…” Clare looked over at Josh and realized her original lust-filled thoughts about Ramzi had been so far off the mark that it would sound ridiculous trying to explain. “Well, anyway, he wasn’t what he appeared to be. For the first six months or so things seemed great between us. I continued to work—”

“What kind of work?” Josh interrupted.

“I’m a reporter. Magazine bylines mostly. I was working for the Oil News Monthly when I met him. And since he was also busy at the time working as an undersecretary for OPEC, I just kept on doing what I’d been doing—traveling and getting interviews for my job.” She took a breath as gentle memories snuck into her mind and threw her out of rhythm for a minute. “We’d meet up on our weekends off and for whirlwind vacations in places like Corfu and the beach resort on Phuket, Thailand. It all seemed…terribly romantic.”

“Uh-huh. So what happened?”

“Jimmy.” Clare snapped back to reality in an instant. “I mean, I learned I was pregnant with Jimmy and everything changed. My husband insisted I quit working until the baby was born and he took me back to his home country…ostensibly to met his family and have their doctors check me over. He claimed their physicians were the best that money could buy. I knew he was concerned for our baby’s health, so I agreed.”

“So what really went down when you got there?” Josh finished his water bottle and stashed the empty under the seat.

This was where the truth was more than a little embarrassing. Clare wished she could fudge on the answer, but fudging wasn’t the way she’d been raised. It wasn’t who she was. So she straightened up in her seat and set her chin.

“For one thing, I found out that I hadn’t done quite enough of a background check before I got married. Apparently I was so smitten, I forgot the first rule to getting a good story. Check your facts. It turns out that my husband already had a few current wives stashed away back in his homeland.”

“A few? Current? How many?”

“Eight.”

Josh’s eyes widened. “So what did you do when you found out? Did you divorce him then?”

“I would’ve. Or I would’ve left and come back to Texas to have my child. But by that time Ramzi had fixed things with the local authorities to keep me in his country and married to him for as long as he wished. Women have no rights there. They’re their husband’s property. I finally woke up and realized what a mess I was in, but by then it was too late. Not even the U.S. State Department could help me.”

“This sounds like a bad movie plot. How’d you get free?”

Her life did sound a lot like a grade-B movie now that she thought about it. She decided to speed up the rest of the story.

“Ramzi suddenly became willing to divorce me when the baby was a year and a half. In fact, he wanted to have me deported. To be sent home and out of his way. But he wasn’t about to let Jimmy leave the country.”

Josh looked a little confused. “He wanted you gone…without your baby?”