Road Signs Read online

  “Okay, Lib, need to go out?” he asked, drawing out the words as he’d heard his parents do, grinning when she cocked her head comically and then leapt off the bed and headed for the door.

  ***

  Willow sat in the Triple Creek Diner on Main Street, her hands folded around a cup of coffee, her luggage on the floor beside the booth and her ears ringing with accusations hurled by Jerry’s mother. She’d led him on, she’d made promises, she’d broken his heart, she was a selfish girl, only thinking of her career instead of the security Jerry could offer her.

  Doubts spun through her head. She agreed with the last assessment. She was selfish. But the other accusations—she didn’t think so. She was very careful with men and their expectations. She hadn’t slept with Jerry, though his mother had seemed to think that was the case. But Willow had agreed to go home with him for the holiday. There was her mistake, and Cam had warned her. Cam, who should be here any minute now.

  Any minute. She had to get out of this place.

  The rumble of a big engine drew her attention. She recognized the yellow classic Chevy with the black stripes along the hood, but she didn’t recognize the driver, not really. Cam’s shaggy chestnut hair had been trimmed to a more stylish length, though it still covered the tops of the ears he thought were too big. His face was leaner and his shoulders looked broader under the coat he wore. She sucked in a sharp breath. The nameless faceless husband from her fantasy earlier—it was Cam.

  She immediately shut the feeling down. Cam was her rock. He was off-limits. She’d never had success in relationships—witness Jerry—and she couldn’t risk losing Cam. He was her family. So she’d made a conscious decision never to set her sights on Cam and was good with the choice.

  Most of the time.

  He met her gaze through the plate-glass window and she scrambled to drop a bill on the table. She grabbed her luggage and purse and practically bowled over an older couple coming in the door in her urgency to leave.

  Cam smiled and stepped forward to take her suitcase. Tenderness lit his brown eyes. When he touched her arm, a horrible sound came from the car, shrill and insistent. She pivoted to look at the sharp teeth of a small, fawn-colored dog.

  She turned to Cameron and lifted her eyebrows. “A dog?”

  “Mom and Dad’s baby, Libby. They didn’t want to take her to Mel’s, and they didn’t want to kennel her, so they left her with me.”

  “Why didn’t you go to Mel’s?” she asked, following him as he loaded her suitcase in the backseat. “And why are you driving Brian’s car?”

  “Get in,” he said, nodding across the top of the car. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  That was easier said than done, because when Willow touched the handle of the passenger door, the dog charged, barking ferociously through the glass. Not until Cam sat in the driver’s seat, making soothing noises, did the dog back away. The animal rested its front paws on Cam’s jean-clad leg, casting threatening glances at Willow as she slid in. The dog’s growls rumbled across the seat, replaced only by the growl of the engine as he turned the ignition.

  Willow felt as if the whole town watched as Cam drove down Main Street and out of town. She felt a twinge of guilt for Jerry. How would it look to his friends and neighbors that she left with another man? In her desperation, she hadn’t considered that. His mom was right. She was selfish, though she preferred to think of it as self-preservation.

  “What happened?” Cam asked, as she’d known he would.

  “He wasn’t who I thought he was.”

  Cam slowed. “Did he hurt you?” His voice deepened with threat.

  “No! No, nothing like that. He’d be short a hand if he had. He just, well, you were right. I shouldn’t have come. It led him to believe we were more serious, and I couldn’t let him think we had a future. His mom took me to the house next door and said she’d buy it for us as a wedding gift. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine me living in a place like this?”

  “What about your job?”

  “Exactly! Apparently, I am supposed to stay home and raise four kids—a nice even number—while Jerry commutes and takes care of me.” Willow knew some women, like her mother, saw that as security, but for her, security was being able to take care of herself. After all, she’d seen her mother abandoned more than once.

  “Sounds like Jerry doesn’t know you very well, either.”

  She ignored the last word. “The thing is, he does. But he let his mother override his good sense with her ideas of how things should be. She was even telling me how to decorate the house she was going to buy me. I’m sure she’d tell me how to raise my kids too, and how to make love to my husband. I had to get out of there, Cam. Thank you so much for coming for me.” She reached to touch his arm, but a warning growl from the dog stopped her. “Sorry, doggie.”

  “Her name’s Libby. I wanted to leave her with a neighbor when I came to get you but no one was home. She wasn’t too bad on the ride up.”

  “Hi, Libby,” Willow ventured, but the dog only growled louder.

  “She’ll get used to you.”

  Willow shifted in her seat and adjusted the vents. “Why aren’t you at Mel’s?”

  “I didn’t have time. Work.”

  She didn’t press, her mind still preoccupied with the past day’s events. “Thank you again,” she murmured, resting her cheek against the headrest and smiling.

  He glanced over and smiled back, dimple flashing. “Anytime.”

  Whoa. He’d always had that dimple, but the sight of it never made her belly flutter before. She must be more grateful than she thought. She shoved that flutter way down, suppressing it. Clearly she couldn’t be trusted with her own emotions. “I like your hair like that,” she said, to rein in her wandering thoughts. “Why did you cut it?”

  “Work.”

  She sighed in frustration at his lack of elaboration. “I hate that you don’t love your job.” He’d been employed as an IT for a Fortune 500 company for five years and was still at the bottom rung, working the crappy hours. He was entirely too brilliant to put up with that.

  “Not all of us are as lucky as you.”

  “True.” She was lucky. She adored her job as an ad designer, loved playing with colors and designs and fonts. She got along well with the people she worked with and even had happy dreams about her job. That Cam understood that fact when Jerry didn’t warmed her. “When do you have to be back?”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re already halfway to Melanie’s.” And she could use some normal family interaction after dealing with Jerry’s overzealous family.

  Not that she really knew what a normal family was, but she’d grown up in the middle of Cam’s family since she was eight years old, the only child of a working mom. The loud group—three brothers and a sister, generous mother and soft-spoken father—had absorbed her when they realized how often she was alone. Her mother worked two different jobs just to keep their modest house.

  “You want to go to my sister’s for Thanksgiving.”

  “I think you do.”

  He pressed his lips together, considering. “I don’t know.”

  Which meant he wanted her to make the decision. She had no problem with that. She sat back in her seat with a toss of her head. “Okay, then yes, I want to go to your sister’s. If you don’t have to be back at work too soon.”

  Cam mentally pulled up train schedules. He’d have to travel to Saint Paul after dinner to catch the train to Seattle, but he could make it if he left early enough. He’d considered the route when he’d learned his interview would be the Monday after Thanksgiving, but discarded the idea since he didn’t have a car. He would have to find a way from his sister’s house to Saint Paul, which meant leaving her house early in the evening, disrupting everyone’s holiday. Simpler to leave from home.

  “Maybe just you and I can have Thanksgiving dinner,” he suggested, though now that she mentioned the idea of his family…well, he wanted to see his sister
about to pop with her first child.

  Willow scoffed. “Which of us will cook?”

  “They have restaurants open now.”

  She shook her head sadly. “Not the same.”

  Ah, damn, he never could resist that wistful tone. “Where’s your mom this month?”

  “Vermont, I think, or Connecticut.”

  “New guy? Have you met him?”

  “She’s stopped introducing them to me until she gets a ring on her finger.”

  Cam liked Brenda Hawkins-Bryant but he’d spent too many years watching her disappoint her daughter as she searched for a man to take care of her. He couldn’t blame her, really. She’d worked two jobs for the first ten years he’d known her, never getting ahead unless she had a man in her life. But her behavior explained Willow’s violent reaction to Jerry’s idiotic suggestions. “You think that will happen this time?”

  “Who knows? I’m sure he’ll see through her before long.” She shifted in the seat and Libby growled. “So? Melanie’s?”

  “They aren’t expecting us.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You think they’d turn us away?”

  “It’s three hours home, five hours to Melanie’s. Even if we make good time, we won’t get there until midnight.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “All right. Home, then.”

  He drove farther down the road, then turned into a gas station. Libby pushed to her feet in excitement as Cam slowed, and he nudged her aside, glancing over his shoulder as he guided the car through the lot, pulling back onto the road in the opposite direction, toward his sister’s house.

  Willow said nothing, just leaned forward and reached for his iPod, a smile curving her lips as she plugged it into an adaptor hooked up to the radio.

  “Hey,” he warned.

  “What have you got on here?” She ignored him and scrolled through his albums. “Springsteen, U2, Tom Petty? What century do you live in? Oh, my God. Really? Anita Baker? You have Anita Baker on your iPod.”

  A flush crept up his throat. “It was our class song.” That she didn’t remember surprised him. Or maybe not. She wasn’t exactly the sentimental type.

  “That doesn’t make it good.” She gave an exaggerated shudder.

  He took the iPod from her and placed it back in the adaptor. “Rules of the road: driver picks the music.”

  She held up her hands in surrender. “Just not Springsteen. I’m begging you.”

  He swirled his thumb over the controller and clicked. Tom Petty rolled out of the speakers, and he set both hands on the wheel again.

  “I’m surprised Brian lent you his car. Something wrong with yours?”

  “I sold it.”

  “Really? Why?”

  He considered what to tell her. She knew he made a conscious effort to be green, but this might be a step too far for her. Would he ever stop thinking of her every time he made a decision? “I can get anywhere I need to be with public transportation, and even one car off the road makes a difference.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t imagine being without a car.”

  “You live life at a faster pace than I do,” he pointed out.

  “True.” She rubbed her hand back and forth over the dashboard. “So it must be killing you to drive this gas guzzler.”

  A grin curved his lips. “I don’t know. It’s got some power.” He tapped the gas and the car ate up the road on the way to Highway 90.

  Cam didn’t work up the nerve to ask the question that had plagued him for a week until they drove into the next town. “Still surprises me that you decided to go home with Jerry for Thanksgiving. You’re always so careful about things like that.”

  “You didn’t go to Judith’s wedding,” she said, like an accusation.

  He blinked. “Yeah. I had to work.”

  “But you didn’t see it. It was gorgeous, and so romantic. Jerry took me, and was so attentive, so when he asked, I said yes.”

  “So it’s Judith’s fault.”

  “No, of course not. But I kind of got swept away.”

  “You’re not the swept-away type.”

  “Now I remember why.” She rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. “I’m not made for impulsive.”

  “Because you’re a control freak.”

  “Maybe.” Her lips quirked.

  “No maybe about it.”He pulled into a gas station and parked at the pump. “You want anything?” He gestured to the attached convenience store.

  “You don’t want real food?”

  He glanced at his watch. He didn’t want to take the time to stop at a restaurant. As it was, they’d get to Mel’s place around midnight. He’d call when they crossed the border into Minnesota to let his family know they were on their way. Once he got there, he’d have to contact Amtrak to change his ticket. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not as hungry as I’ll be by the time we get to Mel’s. I’ll buy.”

  He looked at Libby. “What will we do with her?”

  She frowned. “Let me think.”

  “Right.” He swung out of the car to pump gas. “Take her to the area there to do her business.” He pointed to a patch of snow-covered grass. “Her leash is in the glove box.”

  When Cam closed the door behind him, Libby put her paws on the door and whimpered through the window, then turned and snarled at Willow.

  Willow popped open the glove box and drew out the slender pink leash, then considered the growling dog. “Look, honey, we’re going to have to learn to get along.” She did not want to be useless to Cam, not when he’d come for her. She held up the leash for the dog to see. “Don’t you want to go for a walk?”

  If a dog could look indecisive, Libby did. She tilted her head at the leash, then snapped when Willow moved cautiously in an attempt to attach it to her collar.

  Cam opened the door and stuck his head in. “Hey, you doing okay?”

  “Peachy.” She reached to click the leash onto the collar while the dog was distracted by Cam, but Libby turned her head to snap. Willow snatched her fingers back.

  “Here.” He held his hand out for the leash and attached it easily. Libby jumped out of the car and then turned to gaze at him adoringly.

  Willow watched as he led the little dog to the snow-covered area, kicked some snow aside and waited for her to squat. He used the available plastic baggies to dispose of the mess.

  Patience, that was Cam. She wished she could be more like him. To be honest, she didn’t have the patience to learn. Though this trip had been her idea, she was already antsy. She wanted to be there now.

  He returned to the car and caught her gaze through the windshield. His sudden grin took her breath away. Okay, she was going to have to do better about controlling these little moments of attraction if they were going to spend the next couple of days together. Her emotions were too jumbled to be trusted right now.

  He helped himself to the hand sanitizer by the pump. When he opened the door, Libby hopped in. She glared at Willow before turning her back and waiting for Cam to get in. Once Cam got the car started, Libby positioned her front paws on Cam’s thigh, her head between them, tail thumping.

  “Sorry,” Willow said.

  “She’ll get used to you. Maybe if you give her a t-r-e-a-t, she might warm up. They’re in the glove box too.” He handed her the leash to put back.

  She opened the glove box and saw Libby perk up. Willow drew a treat from the brown paper bag.

  “Libby? Do you want a treat?”

  The dog scrambled around on the seat, quivering as she looked from the treat to Willow’s face. Obviously she wanted the treat, but wouldn’t accept it from Willow. Hardheaded mutt.

  “Wow. She really doesn’t like me.”

  “Put it on the seat beside you. She’ll warm up.”

  “You sound confident about that. Did she take a while to get used to you?”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  “She didn’t, did she?”

  “I’ve known her since my parents f
irst got her, Will. Not the same.”

  Willow placed the treat on the seat by her thigh. The little dog whimpered and lay on the seat between them, black nose twitching, longing in her eyes, body shaking with the desire to get to the treat. Willow had mercy and pushed the treat across the seat. The puppy snapped it up and promptly returned to Cam’s lap.

  He shook his head. “You have no patience.” He nodded at a restaurant with a to-go entrance. “Will that work? Drive and eat?”

  “Easier for me than you.”

  “I can manage. Better than leaving Libby in a cold car.”

  “Okay. I’ll go place the order.”

  He parked and shut off the ignition. “See if they’ll give it to us in something besides Styrofoam.”

  She frowned. “You know they won’t.”

  He shrugged. “It’s worth a try. I’m going to run in and use the restroom.” He glanced at the dog on the floorboard, gnawing on her treat. “She should be okay that long, right?”

  Willow’s stomach rumbled loudly. “I suppose.” She hopped out.

  Cam hurried up the sidewalk and opened the door for her, so she ducked under his arm. She’d forgotten how tall he was. Definitely not his coat making him look so broad. Her nerves did a little feminine trill as she passed him.

  Once again she shoved the awareness down and took his request. He disappeared into the restaurant while she stepped forward to place their order.

  Twenty minutes later, she walked out, the scent of the warm sandwiches wafting from the paper bag, to see Cam leaning into the backseat.

  “Cam? What’s going on?”

  He straightened, banging his head on the door frame and swearing, his hand on the back of his head.

  “Will, I’m sorry. I was only inside a few minutes.”

  She was close enough now to see colorful bits of fabric across the backseat. A moment passed before she recognized the fabric as her underwear.