Silhouette Romance

"Blast it!"

Peering past the useless windshield wipers into the heavy downpour, Jessamy Cosette felt the thud-thud of a flat tire. She’d driven two hundred and seventy miles from Cincinnati without mishap, and in two more miles she’d reach her destination. Royal Oak. But her journey was like a dart game—hitting somewhere near the center wasn’t scoring a bull’s-eye.

She edged to the freeway shoulder and smacked her fist on the steering wheel. Her images of the lovely Michigan Indian summer washed from her mind as quickly as golden red leaves drifted away on the wind. Storming dusk had settled across the sky, and the high walls of the freeway rose around her like a cement canyon. The only thing she pictured now was her drowned body floating down this aqueduct of highway...lost forever.

Since two weeks earlier when Meg Sullivan called, Jess had second thoughts–-then third and fourth. Coming home for the high school’s centennial celebration and seeing her dearest high school friend sounded wonderful, but staying in the same house with Meg’s younger brother, Derek Randolph, weighed on her stomach like a bad case of food poisoning.

She hadn’t seen the hulking, obnoxious football player since she graduated from high school and he was in the tenth grade, but he’d stayed in her thoughts, her torment for years. If he called her "string bean" or "Frenchie" again, she’d kill him.

Facing the dreadful reality of murdering her best friend’s brother, she stared at the vanishing taillights of one car after another flying past her like the Concorde along a runway. If anyone were going to change her tire, it would be Jess. And since she’d never changed one in her life, she faced another horrible reality.

Then staring into the shadowy downpour, a third fear knifed through her. Was this the Detroit freeway where people were car-jacked...or worse?

The sky remained slate gray, and the rain gave no sign of ending. With a sigh, she harnessed her fortitude, then reached above her foot and pulled the release latch. Maybe, something inside the trunk would look familiar.

While vehicles sailed past sending a rooster-tail

spray like a fireman’s hose, Jess stepped into the pelting rain, envisioning her new, colorful umbrella at home on a closet hook. Drenched within seconds, she lifted the trunk lid and stared inside. An ice scraper gazed back at her.

Rivulets of water ran from her hair and down her face, joining the tears that crept from her eyes. She felt like a weepy child as she looked down at her rain-soaked cotton blouse clinging to her like plastic wrap.

Headlights lit the inside of her trunk. Jess swung around and stared at the halting SUV with panic. Had the driver stopped to offer help...or doom?

A tall, strapping male slid from behind the wheel, deftly unfurling a black umbrella. Silhouetted in the headlights, his broad, athletic shoulders, like a giant, jutted beyond the waterproof shelter.

Anxiously trying to catch a glimpse of his face, she peered at the stranger stepping across the expanding puddles and asked herself a question. Would a thief use an umbrella? Hopefully, not.

"Problem?" he asked capturing her beneath the waterproof canopy. A fresh, woodsy smell wrapped around her as she faced him, nose to broad chest. She cringed as her usually bouncy hair adhered to her wet scalp.

"A flat," she answered, viewing a flash of his chiseled good-looks in the passing lights through the blur of rain. She pointed to her back tire. "I don’t seem to have a spare or one of those...pump things."

His eyes crinkled, taunting her with a sense of familiarity. "A pump thing?" he asked.

She searched his face and demonstrated with her hand. "You know, one of those gadgets that lifts the car."

"A jack?" His full, resonant voice rippled with good humor.

Humiliated, she glued her attention to the flat, sensing that her mascara had probably made an ugly black trail down her cheeks. "A jack," she mumbled.

But her worry was pointless. The man wasn’t looking at her face. Instead, he’d focused on her drenched blouse that clung to her figure with such detail he didn’t need an imagination. She gaped at her clearly visible breasts, punctuated by tiny nubs, then raised her hand to cover herself.

When she did, his attention darted upward, and a grin flickered across his face. "Guess I’d better find your ‘pump thing.’ Will you hold the umbrella?"

Using her un-busy hand, she grasped the handle and held it above him.

Reaching into the trunk, he lifted a section of the floor to reveal, to her surprise, a tire and jack. "Why look what we have here," he said, eyeing her over his shoulder. His grin spread to a teasing smile.

She squirmed, mortified that she had no concept of car repair. "Thanks. Now I know where to look." She’d definitely tally car maintenance to her "to do" list. At twenty-eight, the time had come that she learned.

"Too bad you picked such a rotten day for a flat. Otherwise, I’d give you a lesson." He turned back to the tire and hoisted it to the trunk edge.

Had he read her mind? Jess’s gaze swept across his broad back and down his corded triceps. From him, she might enjoy a lesson.

Astounded at her wayward thoughts, Jess jammed the pitiful fantasy into her mental wastebasket. She’d been tied to her flourishing catering business for so long, bound in the kitchen with dough-sticky fingers and a flour-coated body. Dating wasn’t on her menu.

When Jess refocused, she faltered at the sodden vision of rain rolling along the stranger’s arm and dripping from his elbow. Where would she have been without him? "I’m sorry you’ve gotten so wet. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you didn’t pass me by...like so many others."

He pivoted. "Don’t think I hadn’t considered it, but I’m too much of a gentleman." He gave her a wink while his toying blue eyes sent her pulse on a sprint.

The man was truly a gentleman, and she chuckled, thinking of her earlier fear. "When you first pulled up, I worried you might be a mugger."

He dropped the tire to the ground, and she followed its descent, then let her gaze wander upward to his trim hips and taut belly beneath his form-fitted jeans.

"Disappointed?" he asked.

She snapped her head upward, then noticed his eyes were focused where she’d been inspecting—-below his waist. A hot flush rose up her neck. "Disappointed? I’m not sure what you mean."

The corner of his lip lifted in a wry grin. "Disappointed I’m not a mugger?"

"Oh, only a little," she countered, shooting back her movie starlet smile...a humiliated starlet smile.

He didn’t move, and for a moment a strange sense of recognition washed over her. She studied him, then mentally shook her head. Only wishful thinking.

Crouching beside the wheel, he hesitated as if waiting for something. "The umbrella keeping you dry?"

"Not really," she said, her dripping garments sticking to her frame. Then the impetus of his words sank into her soggy, thick skull. Her assignment was to hold the umbrella over his head, not hers.

She glanced at the rib supports above her and shifted them while he loosened the lug nuts. When he rose, she smugly raised the canopy higher while he attached the jack, hoisting the car a few inches off the ground.

But soon she lost interest in the tire and umbrella and found herself concentrating on his long, powerful legs bound by drenched, well-worn jeans as tight as adhesive tape. The denim mounted his thighs, nestled around his tight bottom, and ended just above his trim hips.

Uncomfortable with her ogling, she pulled her attention back to the tire, facing that dating should become part of her agenda.

The man gave the tire a pat and looked up at her. "I wouldn’t trust that spare. Looks like dry rot to me." He rose and tossed the muddy tire into the trunk. "I’d get this baby fixed right away."

In a flash, he disengaged the jack and threw it inside, then slammed the lid. "That’ll keep for a short time."

His eyes narrowed, scanning her face like a searchlight, and his mouth opened as if wanting to ask her a question, but closed again, curving to a pleasant grin.

"Thanks so much," she said, watching the rain drip from his chin. She’d never had anyone this good-looking....

Jess stopped in mid-thought. She’d never had anyone be as chivalrous as this stranger. Then her manners tugged at her brain. "Let me give you something for your help?"

"Okay," he said without hesitation and extended his hand.

Expecting a "no thanks," she reigned in the surprised gape that headed for her mouth. Digging into her shoulder bag for her wallet, Jess heard him laugh. She faltered and looked up.

"I’ll settle for my umbrella," he said.

She lifted her gaze above his outstretched hand and peered above her head, staring at the black cloth protecting her from the downpour while he waited like Neptune risen from the sea. She jutted the umbrella at him. "Sorry. I seem to have a short attention span."

"Really? I hadn’t noticed." He grasped the handle and, with a half-wave, vanished inside his SUV as quickly as he’d appeared. But instead of driving off, he sat with the motor running, apparently waiting for her to leave first.

Chivalry was still alive. Water-logged, she stepped over a puddle and climbed into her car, realizing she’d let the man of her dreams slip through her fingers before she’d even laid a hand on him. Grinning at the ridiculous fantasy, she pulled into the flow of traffic.