Dammit, he might as well be talking to the trees. He turned them back toward Medicine Creek Camps and started walking again.
“If you loved me once, you can love me again. And, Emma?”
“What?” she asked, staring straight ahead.
He waited until she looked at him.
“I have more patience than you do.”
They walked in silence for nearly two miles before the first headlights appeared on the road behind them. Emma pulled Ben into the ditch, then well into the woods.
“Hey,” he protested. “We could get a ride.”
“It’s Galen.”
“You can’t possibly know that. He’s still half a mile away.”
“His truck has a whistle. Hear it?”
Ben didn’t reply, and Emma looked over to see him rubbing his face with his hands. “I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.”
She patted his arm. “Try thinking of this as an adventure.”
“All I wanted was a simple, old-fashioned date tonight.”
Emma stifled a somewhat hysterical giggle as Galen’s truck drove past, her senses reeling. Ben wanted to marry her! He was either nuts or he thought he had to marry her for Mikey’s sake.
Which left her smack in the middle of two stubborn men and her own conflicting emotions. She could never marry Ben. She was barely surviving his courtship, if that was what he’d been doing all week. Her brain was screaming one thing, her body another, and her heart was trying very hard to stay neutral.
Her body might have won most of the battles, but the voice in her head was making itself known just as loudly. It was her heart, though, that was most in danger of surrendering. His declaration tonight that he would never leave her had been a powerful blow.
“Come on,” she said. “There’ll be other cars soon.”
“I suppose I’m going to have to buy a new set of tires as well now,” he grumbled, stumbling after her through the bushes. “Galen probably slit them on his way by.”
He fell into step beside her as Emma set a brisk pace for home. At the rate they were going, it would be sunrise before they arrived. And she had to pick up a group of hunters at the seaplane base in Bangor at eight in the morning.
They were cutting it close.
“Everything just bounces off you, doesn’t it?” he asked, his long strides easily matching hers. “No matter what gets thrown at you, you just deal with it and move on.”
“I have other options?”
He was silent so long, Emma figured the subject had been dropped.
Then he said, “Like this night from hell. Most women I know would be a ball of tears by now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry you have such bad taste in women.”
She laughed and started running, but was saved from certain reprisal when bright lights suddenly crested the knoll ahead of them. “A logging truck,” she said with another laugh when Ben’s face became fully illuminated. Lord, she wished L.L.Bean could see their number one customer tonight. Her date was not weathering the evening well.
She looked down at herself. Neither was she.
“He’s going the wrong way,” Ben said.
“Right now, any way is the right one.” She stood in the middle of the road and waved, then quickly stepped to the side.
The huge eighteen-wheeler, looking illegally overloaded, braked to a stop beside them, bringing a blinding cloud of dust with it.
“Little late for a stroll, ain’t it, Emma Jean?” Stanley Bates asked from high over their heads.
“Our truck broke down and we need a ride, Stan. Can you take us to Medicine Creek Camps?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, chicky. There’s no place to turn this rig between here and Medicine Gore. I’ll haul you there, though, if you want. Hop in.”
That was easier said than done for a woman wearing a dress that lacked inches in the length department. Emma had to slap Ben’s hand away more than once and reposition it three times before she made it into the cab.
“You broke that new truck of yours already, Emma Jean?” Stanley asked, his words muffled by the spit of air brakes releasing.
“No. Ben’s new truck broke,” she shouted back over the rev of the engine laboring through the gears.
Stanley peered at the man whose lap she was sitting on. “Hey. I remember you. I gave you a ride out to Medicine Creek a couple of weeks ago. I see you found it okay. What’s wrong with your truck?”
Emma answered. “The oil light came on.”
Stanley looked over and suddenly seemed to notice all the leg she was showing from her thigh to her sneakers. She saw poor Stan’s eyes widen just before his face turned a dull red.
“You … you been to the dance, Emma Jean?”
“Part of it.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be carrying any oil, would you?” Ben asked, yanking her coat down over her thigh.
“Ah … yeah. Sure. I got a couple of gallons,” Stan said, ripping his gaze away to look at the road.
Emma nearly laughed out loud. Stanley Bates, like most of the men in town, hadn’t seen her in a dress since Sable Jones’s funeral. He looked as if he’d forgotten she actually had legs.
“I don’t know if there’s a puncture in the pan or if the cap was loosened,” Ben continued. “But maybe we could stop and check.”
“We can fix ya up, mister.”
A heavy sigh hit the back of her head. “That’s assuming I still have four round tires,” Ben said.
Emma patted his arm. “If not, we can ride to Medicine Gore and file a complaint with Sheriff Ramsey. Then he can take fingerprints and issue a warrant for the arrest of the vandals.”
He squeezed her.
Stanley Bates chuckled. “Like my daddy used to say, if they got tires or tits, they’re gonna give you trouble.”
Emma reached over and smacked Stanley’s arm.
“Gosh, Emma Jean, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean nothing by that. It just popped out.”
“Aren’t you running a little heavy tonight, Stanley? Your load looks pretty high to me,” Emma said in response, giving him a good glare for insurance.
“Now, Emma, I said I was sorry.”
“The guy was only stating a truth, Emma Jean,” Ben added, pulling her back against him. “Don’t threaten the man who’s saving us from an all-night walk.”
Within minutes they covered the distance it had taken them half an hour to walk. Stanley pulled the eighteen-wheeler to a noisy stop. After the dust settled, Ben climbed out, then gallantly—and somewhat lecherously—helped her down.
“I bet you’re going to think twice about wearing this dress again, aren’t you?” he whispered before he let her go.
“Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like all the attention it gets me,” she purred, bolting for the Suburban. She turned when she reached it, and saw Ben was just coming around Stanley’s truck. He seemed to be adjusting his own clothes, tugging on the legs of his pants.
Stanley was already crawling under the Suburban, which in itself was an amazing feat. The man weighed a good three hundred pounds, and Emma feared he was going to get stuck.
“Your drain cap was loosened,” he hollered from under the guts of the engine. “You’re lucky you didn’t lose it completely.”
“And look,” Ben added. “My tires aren’t flat.”
With much grunting, Stanley reemerged from beneath the truck. “Oil pressure’s got nothing to do with tire pressure,” he said, looking confused.
Ben appeared momentarily startled, then shook his head and chuckled. “I’ll remember that,” he told Stanley, who was already headed back to his truck for the oil.
“Open the hood. I’m guessing it will take five or six quarts,” Stan hollered over his shoulder.
Ben unlocked his truck and popped the latch.
“You know, it’s a good thing you had Emma with you, young fella. A man could get lost walking these roads at night,” Stanley said as he poured oil into the filler pipe.
Ben walked around the truck with a flashlight, apparently checking for other damage.
“There ya go, Emma Jean. Your ride’s full of oil and ready to go. Why don’t you start her up,” he instructed Ben, who was shining the light in the ditch beside the truck.
“Not yet. I found this in the ditch,” Ben said, holding up a lug nut. He bent down to inspect the right rear tire. “The hub covering the lug nuts has some grease on it.” He pulled out a pocketknife and pried it open.
The cover fell off and the flashlight showed that only two nuts were left holding the tire on, and even they had been loosened.
Stanley whistled beside them. “Oh-ee. Someone don’t like you.” He looked more closely at Ben. “You one of them tree huggers?”
“No, I am not.” He held the lug nut up in the light, looking at Emma. “We could have gotten hurt if we’d taken off without discovering this.”
Headlights appeared on the horizon, coming from town. A short burst of siren sounded two seconds after the headlights landed on them.
“What in hell else can go wrong?” Ben said with thinning patience.
“That’s Ramsey’s Blazer,” Emma said. “Why would he be out here?”
Ben sighed. “It must be Michael.”