"You’re not hurt or anything?"
"No, I don't think so. I, I hit the ditch going pretty slow."
"Alright ma'am, there's no phone service out here, but I’ll gladly make a call for you when I get to Evansville. I'll call the tow company, first. You'll need a tow out of there, that's for sure."
"Thank you so much," I said, managing a smile despite the nausea and disorientation. "Could you also call a number for me as well? It's my stepfather’s. He lives outside of Parker." I grabbed a pen and paper from the cab and wrote down the number and handed it to him.
"Absolutely, miss."
I watched as he climbed back in his big-rig and drove away, leaving me alone in the middle of the woods. The air suddenly seemed colder, and the forest bigger and wilder, now that I was in the middle of nowhere alone. It was so quiet; I could hear the wind whispering through the pines all around me. I looked around at the towering trees and tried to enjoy the stillness, but after everything that had happened today, it seemed more ominous than peaceful.
Oh well, I thought at the time, at least my stepfather or the tow company would be here soon.
An hour went by, and nothing.
I paced around, getting bored. I tried to sit in the truck, but it was tilted over at such a crazy angle that I couldn't stand it for long. I ended up leaning against the side of it, looking up and down the road, kicking pebbles. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I heard a truck barreling down the road.
For a brief, hopeful second, I thought it was the same blue Dodge that Luke had been driving. And then it became obvious that it was the tow truck that was speeding towards me. It noisily came to a stop, and a friendly-looking man jumped out, leaving the engine on.
The expression on his face changed when he saw just how stuck my truck was. He walked slowly around it, and then went back to his wrecker to shut off the engine. "It looks like you got yourself in quite a pickle, ma'am," he said, shaking his head ruefully. "I can try to pull out your truck, but I'm afraid it's going to roll over when I do."
I groaned. Of course there was some kind of pain-in-the-neck complication to emerge at the last minute.
"So what are you going to do?" I asked, trying not to let my irritation creep into my voice.
"I dunno. I'll wait until the Thompson boy gets here. He’s supposed to come fetch you."
‘Thompson boy?’ I said quietly to myself. ‘What does he mean by that?’ Thompson happened to be my stepfather’s last name.
But before I could say another word, Luke's blue truck came barreling around the corner--my jaw just about hit the ground. His head popped out of the door and he jumped down onto the dirt, eagerly ready to save me again.
"Hey Cal," he greeted the driver.
"Hey Luke," the driver said, looking relieved, "just the man I needed to see."
Then Luke noticed me, and we stared at each other for a long second.
"How do you do?" he said, formally and a little stiffly. He extended a hand. "We met before," he ventured.
"I know-" I began. And then it dawned on me that Luke must be my stepbrother. He was my stepfather's son, the one he spent long hours on the phone with every couple of weeks back in Arizona. I'd even talked to him before, when I was younger and we had a landline. I'd pick it up, and a very polite voice with a deep western accent would ask if he could speak to Mr. Thompson. I remembered having a sort of bizarre crush on him, probably because he was so foreign and so far way, but then we all got cell phones, and I got caught up in high school things, and I ended up forgetting all about him.
I tried not to stare at Luke as he and Cal discussed how to pull my car out of the ditch. Even in his dusty work clothes, Luke was totally gorgeous. His body was powerfully built, with hard muscles carved over years of hard work. And he seemed totally at ease dealing with what seemed, at least to me, like a nerve-racking situation. Every so often a sly smile would pull at the edges of his beautiful mouth, and his sexy eyes would flash.
I sighed out loud because as my rotten luck would have it, Luke was Off-Limits. The one time I meet a guy, and there’s no way I can be with him. He was my stepbrother, after all. And even if he weren't, he would be out of my league.
My pouty mood was interrupted when Luke and Cal began to nod and look my way, as if they were concluding their conversation and agreeing to a plan. Then Luke jogged over to me.
"We're going to pull your truck out sideways," he said. An hour later, the truck was back on the road. Disappointingly, it looked like the front end was a little smashed.
"Take her back to the shop," he told Cal, motioning towards my truck, "I'm sure Rico can work his magic and put it back together again."
Cal laughed and tipped his trucker hat. "Thanks for all your help, Luke," he said, climbing back into the tow truck.
I climbed into Luke's pickup, and we drove quietly for a few minutes.
"You sure need a lot of rescuing," Luke finally said.
"I'm so sorry," I began, but Luke laughed, cutting me off.
"I can't believe I finally met you. I can finally put a face to that voice on the other end of the telephone."
"You remember me answering the phone when we were kids?"
"Of course. Every time I called I wondered what my stepsister in Arizona was like."
"Am I different than you expected?" I asked.
Then Luke looked at me in a way that sent a delicious chill running down my back, and right at that moment I wanted him to kiss me. He moved his hand unexpectedly towards me, but a second later I realized he was only reaching for his phone. God I was a wreck around him--I knew I was bound to make a fool of myself sooner or later.
After another twenty minutes of driving and idle chit chat, we started passing pastures full of grazing cattle, and soon we were at the ranch house.
There was a whirlwind of new faces and introductions as I met everybody, and a few minutes later my stepfather arrived. He brought me in close for a hug, and it felt like for the first time in my life I had come home.
There was a big, loud family dinner later that night, and I realized that everyone looked up to Luke. He had taken their struggling ranch and made it profitable and successful again. His hard work and ingenuity, beginning as a teenager, was literally responsible for the food on the table in front of us. Now the Thompson Ranch was one of the most successful in Suffolk County, and everyone in the community respected Luke and looked up to him.
****
The next day found me bored and roaming around the ranch. I'd forgotten how dull it could be away from everything in the city, and I started thinking again about what my friends were doing in Mexico. Of course, I could always help out with the myriad chores that needed to be done around the place, but my stepdad and his new wife, Hannah, wouldn't have it. After my long, stressful drive here, I needed a day to recuperate they said.
I found myself following Luke around as he mended a decrepit-looking fence on the northern boundary of their property.
"There's not much to do around here," I complained. Luke looked at me flintily.
"Miss the big city?"
"Yeah, sort of. What do you do around here, when you have time off?"
"Time off..." Luke said, looking at the bale of wire in his hands and then far away at the barn, which needed to be repainted. "Uh, I don’t know. I like to hunt and fish, I guess. My father and I used to go hiking, before he left for Arizona. One time, we hiked into the Gallatins for two weeks with our mules and horses."
"Two weeks? That's a long time. I did an Outward Bound class with my school once. It was like ten days."
"Yeah? So you don't mind roughing it?"
"I had a ton of fun! I haven't done anything like that in forever, though."
"My family's got a little cabin out in the woods past Steven's Pass. I have to go up there tomorrow. Maybe you can join me."