LITMIR.BIZ

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her foot, or any other body part, to a total stranger. However, these were not normal circumstances. Like much of the bus trip, they bordered on the surreal.

      The total stranger in question pulled a red bandanna from his pocket and moistened it liberally with his tongue. Straddling her uplifted foot like a blacksmith shoeing a mare, he rubbed her sticky sole until it tingled.

      She clung to his rock-hard arm for balance. His rear end was backed up against her, and the wave of heat she felt had nothing to do with ambient temperature.

      “That’s better.” He finished scrubbing and returned her foot to the sidewalk.

      “Did you just spit on me?” She still felt off-balance. Even with both feet firmly on the ground. When she noticed where her hand lingered, she snatched it away.

      “I reckon so.” His words constituted a verbal shrug.

      “Well, thanks. I think.”

      “Happy to oblige.”

      Ryanne groaned when the baby executed an impromptu shuffle-ball-change. “Cowboy, it’s only fair to warn you that if I don’t find a rest room soon, I cannot be held responsible for what happens.”

      “I can help there, too.”

      “I doubt it.” Ryanne pressed her hands to the small of her back. A cloud skidded past the full moon, permitting a quick glimpse of her rescuer’s face. Too tanned to be a vampire. Way too amused to be dangerous.

      That was the good thing about podunk towns. They didn’t have much to offer psycho ax-murderers.

      “Well, don’t just stand there.” She knew some might call her tone “bitchy,” but she preferred a less-common adjective such as churlish.

      “What is it you expect me to do?”

      “I don’t know. Rob me? Mug me? Dump my battered body in a bar ditch?” Like a stressed-out lab rat, Ryanne could no longer run the maze. Biting the head off her own kind seemed a logical progression. “Is that what you’re planning?”

      “Hell, no, ma’am.”

      “If you have crime on your mind, I can save you the trouble. Nothing I own is worth working up a sweat over.”

      “Ma’am, I don’t want anything.”

      “What? You’re just a good-ol’-boy Samaritan? Have spitty hanky, will travel. Is that it?”

      “Something like that.”

      “Okay, then. Watch my stuff while I go to the bushes. And it better be here when I get back or I will track you down and sit on that silly hat.”

      “But I—”

      “Just watch it, buster.” Although what he had to guard it against, she had no idea. A marauding coyote perhaps?

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      Ryanne picked her way into the darkness, muttering to herself. She threw a parting comment over her shoulder. “And stop calling me ma’am.”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      She thought of bugs and snakes only in passing. She was more worried about the man in black, a gifted quipster who communicated only in short sentences. There was something unnervingly familiar about him. Or maybe the unnerving part was knowing he waited, politely, on the other side of the shrubbery while she conducted business of a very personal nature.

      And she thought the world had run out of ways to humiliate her.

      Tom Hunnicutt wasn’t interested in the woman’s pile of battered, mismatched suitcases. But like a man who couldn’t tear his gaze away from a train wreck, he was fascinated by the woman. Despite the bad attitude, the lopsided ponytail, and the gummy bare feet, she was just about the cutest little egg-shaped female he’d ever seen. Even if she did waddle like a Christmas goose.

      Who was she? What was she doing here? And why had she been put off the bus in the middle of the night? Those were all legitimate questions, but what he really wanted to know was, how did such a tiny girl carry around a belly like that? She had to be expecting a medium-size third-grader.

      “Do you have a phone, cowboy?” Miss Congeniality was back and she had a way of making even simple questions sound like stamp-her-foot demands.

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Didn’t I tell you to stop ma’aming me?” She thrust out her hand.

      Not knowing what else to do, Tom shook it. “Nice to meet you. I’m—”

      She snatched it back and propped it on her hip. “May I use your phone?”

      “I don’t have it on me. It’s attached to the house.”

      Using an I-must-be-speaking-to-the-impaired voice, she drew a vague circle in the air. “Is…there…a…phone…any…where…around…here?”

      Tom didn’t much appreciate the implied slur on his intellect. He was only trying to assist someone who obviously needed all the help she could get. However, even good-old-boy Samaritans had limits. He wasn’t a robber or a mugger. And he was no clabberheaded fool. But if the little mama wanted dumb, he could give her dumb.

      He shuffled his feet. “Ah, shucks, ma’am. Nearly ever’ body in Brushy Creek’s gotta telly-phone nowadays. They got the e-lectric, too.” He doffed his hat and scratched his head in broad hayseed fashion. “’Cept ol’ Possum Corn back in the hills. He don’t hold for nothin’ fancy as all that.”

      Her pretty face wrinkled in a pained grimace. “Oh, no. I’ve gone and offended you. I am so sorry.”

      Such total lack of sincerity. “You run around loaded for bear like that, a fella’s bound to get grizzly.”

      She took a deep breath. “I really am sorry. It’s just been—”

      “Let me guess. A rough day?”

      “Actually it’s been a rough year, but why nitpick over the details? Can we start over? I’m Ryanne Rieger.”

      He stepped forward for a closer look. “I don’t believe it. You’re little Ryanne?”

      She patted the small mountain that was her belly. “Not so little these days, but, yep, that’s me.”

      “Birdie said Short Stack was coming home.” Her foster daughter’s fall from grace had been a hot topic with the coffee and pie crowd at Mrs. Hedgepath’s diner.

      “No one’s called me Short Stack since I waited tables at the Perch. You know Birdie?”

      “Place like this, everybody knows everybody.”

      “And everybody’s business, I suppose?”

      “Pretty much.”

      She made another face. “So what else do you know?”

      “Birdie might have mentioned your, uh, difficulties. In passing.”

      She threw up her hands. “Oh, great. Please tell me the whole dang populace doesn’t know that my marriage and my career have been sucked down the toilet.”

      Tom fought a smile. She sure had a way of turning a phrase. “Possum Corn, back in the hills, might not have heard. He doesn’t have a telly-phone.”

      “Very funny.”

      “There was one thing Birdie left out.”

      “My shoe size?”

      He looked pointedly at her expanding middle. “She didn’t say a word about you being in the family way. That was a big surprise.”

      “Big being the operative word.”

      Tom frowned at the unmistakable waver in her voice. One minute she was fit to be tied and the next she was teetering on the brink of tears. Her mood swings

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