Lovin' a Good Ol' Boy Page 2

  She found nothing else to ease her distress or relieve her mind by the time he slid effortlessly into the cab beside her. She was immediately aware of the smell of lilacs, warm, musky lilacs, and knew it was his aftershave or the soap he used.

  "It must help to have long legs. Getting in. To the truck, I mean. It must help to have long legs," she stammered, extremely ill at ease, acutely aware of everything about him—including his long legs.

  He glanced down at her legs, his gaze lingering a trifle too long before he looked up and said, "Yep."

  He put his dark glasses back on, turned the key in the ignition, and put the truck in gear. The silence between them was thicker than the dense green forest that hung over the road and cupped it on both sides like a tunnel. Anne began to feel claustrophobic. The man seem to fill the whole cab with his presence, leaving so little room for her that she could hardly breathe.

  What had happened back there, she wondered, trying to shake the strange, possessed feeling she was having. It was as if he'd said something very important to her in a foreign language, and now it was imperative that she learn the language in order to understand him. Or it was as if he'd planted a seed in her brain and it would be weeks before it sprouted and became identifiable.

  Maybe it was voodoo. Did people practice that sort of stuff in this part of the South, she wondered. Mountain people had spells and potions, too, didn't they? It seemed to her that Granny Clampet was always doing strange things like that on the Beverly Hillbillies. And that sort of thing was usually based on fact. Anne's mind began to run amok with the possibilities.

  "How long are you stayin'?"

  "What?" she yelped, startled from her eerie thoughts.

  "Will you be here long?" He repeated his question and gave her a quizzical look.

  "I'm not sure," she told him honestly. I hope not, she added mentally, watching the scenery flash by. "You know, I think I can honestly say that I have never in all my life seen so many trees before," she said, pondering the vast expanse of wooded knolls and valleys that spread out before them as they topped a steep hill and started down the other side. "It's really beautiful here."

  He nodded, and she saw him look out at the land with tremendous pride and something that looked very much like reverence. She could tell that she'd said the right thing, that her words had pleased him. Remarkably, that pleased her.

  Less than an hour earlier, she'd found the woods frightening. But she felt relatively safe now. Nothing could creep out from behind a tree to harm her. She felt secure enough to take a really good look at the incredible beauty around her. It was lush and green and looked healthier than any place she'd ever seen before.

  Healthy. It was a strange word to use to describe scenery, but it was a true description. The land was strong and vibrant and full of life.

  Birds flapped their wings through clear, fresh air. The leaves on the trees rustled in a gentle breeze. Spring flowers bloomed in abundance, and their fragrance filled Anne with a sense of well-being. The contrast to the concrete and asphalt she was used to was like the difference between natural spring water and the water that came chemically treated, distilled, carbonated, and bottled from the corner grocery.

  "Have you lived here all your life?" she asked, thinking that he suited the environment he lived in, wondering if she looked as well suited to hers.

  "Sure. My kin moved down here from Letcher County during the Depression to work in the factory. We've been here ever since."

  "Do you ever think of leaving?" she asked, knowing that in a few short weeks he might have to do just that to earn a living.

  "Leave Kentucky?"

  Anne nodded. "I'd rather cut off my legs," he said shortly and with such conviction that it startled Anne, though the underlying anger she heard in his voice was to be expected. If he worked at the mill in Webster, as most of the people in the area did, he knew it was about to be closed. She decided that it might be best for her to let the subject drop for now.

  She kept her eyes trained on the roadside as they entered the town of Webster. The closer they got to the town the more houses there were, until the residences lined the street one right after another. Some were brick, some were wooden. Some were tidy and well kept, others looked like garbage dumps. Most were about the same size and style; none were too elaborate. Factory towns were factory towns, she guessed, whether they were located in Pennsylvania, New York, or Kentucky. But wherever they were, it was always plain to see that it wasn't the people who lived in the town who were getting rich off the factory they worked in.

  "Will we be going past McKee's Motel?" she asked.

  "Yes, ma'am. It's just a ways up the road."

  "Well, if you could drop me off there, I could go ahead and check into my room, and then you wouldn't have to drag me all over town with you while you did your errands. You could come back for me later."

  "Yes, ma'am." He wasn't much of a talker. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. She wished he'd stop calling her that. It made her feel ninety-two years old.

  "My name's Anne," she said, giving him an alternative.

  "Buck," he said.

  Instead of letting her out in front of the motel, he pulled in and parked in front of the office. He got out while Anne slid to the ground on her side of the truck. "Makin' it okay?" he asked from the front of the truck.

  "Oh, yes. It's a lot easier getting out." She smiled at him for his thoughtfulness.

  "Sorry to hear that," he muttered, letting his disappointment show.

  Anne rolled her eyes heavenward and gave a weary sigh. How could anyone be so aggravating and so appealing at the same time? She had a feeling her visit to Webster was going to be very, very long, no matter how many days she stayed.

  He was holding the office door open for her, but she didn't pass through. "If you know about how long you'll be, I can be waiting out front when you come back," she said, not wanting to cause him any extra inconvenience.

  "A couple of hours, maybe."

  "Fine. I’ll be waiting." She walked into the office simply assuming that the man would go about his own business. She was dumbfounded when he stepped up to the desk and slapped the palm of his hand down over the little bell for assistance.

  Before she could tell him that she didn't need any help checking into a motel, a short, gray-haired man with a moustache and black horn-rimmed glasses came through a door behind the desk and saw him.

  "Buck, you hound dog. Don't tell me you and Bryce got your nights mixed up again," he said in greeting, laughter crackling in his voice.

  The man at her side laughed and cleared his throat at the same time, looking a little self-conscious. "Not this time, Jimmy. This is an all-night customer," he said, motioning to Anne with his head. She wondered if she was supposed to be flattered or grateful for the general announcement that she wasn't a woman who'd only be spending part of the night at the motel. She felt an embarrassed heat moving up into her cheeks. "Well, where'd an ol' boy like you find somethin' as pretty as this little gal?" the motel keeper asked, already passing a friendly, speculative glance in her direction. He must have liked what he saw, because he moved up and leaned on the counter in front of her without looking away.

  "Picked her up off the road into town."

  Anne gasped. He made it sound as though she were a stray dog.

  "Literally," she said, with a straight face as she turned to stare blankly at the man who had rescued her, and then back at Jimmy McKee. "But that was after my car broke down."

  "Car trouble, eh?" the older man said. This led to a very long conversation between the two men about what exactly had happened to her car, who had the best supply of fan belts in town, and the time the exact same thing happened to the older man somewhere outside Lexington.

  Anne wasn't an impatient person. In fact, she'd always thought of herself as being exceedingly tolerant. Hadn't she put up with Harriman Industries longer than she should have just to prove a point? Hadn't she tried to forbear the man's insolence back on the ro
ad? Wasn't she being good just standing there while they talked on and on as if she weren't there at all? How much more was she supposed to put up with?

  "Excuse me," she broke in as politely as she could. "I'd really like a room, please. I have a reservation."

  "Ms. Hunnicut," the old man said, looking surprised to see her.

  "You know my name?"

  "Well, we don't get many reservations. Mostly drop-ins, travelers. And occasionally a mixed-up brother," he said, winking at Buck.

  "A mixed-up brother?" she asked, looking from one to the other. "They take turns at—"

  "Just give the lady her key, Jimmy," her rescuer broke in with a chuckle. "She doesn't need to hear that story."

  The motel owner grinned at them but didn't finish his explanation. Instead he gave a card to Anne, asking her to fill it out, and then he turned to get a room key from a rack behind him.

  "Anne Hunnicut," the man said, reading the card over her shoulder. "Nice name."

  "Thanks. My father gave it to me."

  "My last name's LaSalle. Buck LaSalle."

  "Buck LaSalle?" she repeated. Her heart sank into her shoes.

  Two

  Anne's room wasn't even kissin' kin to a room at the Ritz, but it was clean and adequate. She washed her face and hands and then reapplied what little makeup she wore, trying to pretend it would make her feel better. It didn't.

  She stretched out on top of the bed with her hands behind her head and began to plan her strategy against Buck LaSalle.

  "The first person I meet in Webster would be him," she complained, bemoaning her misfortune out loud. LaSalle and his younger brother were the ringleaders, or spokesmen, as they called themselves, for a large group of workers who were refusing to comply with corporate headquarters in New York to prepare for the closing of the mill. They had demanded that a company representative be sent to hear their grievances, and they indicated that if the company executives wanted the factory closed, the company executives would have to close it. As far as they were concerned, business would go on as usual until certain of their demands were met.

  It had all been pretty impressive coming from what Calvin Schwab had referred to as "a bunch of hillbillies." More often than not, when a factory closed, it closed quietly. The only reason Mr. Harriman had bothered to concern himself with the Webster mill was because he didn't want news of this closing to go slamming into the newspapers. He wanted it handled quietly.

  That was Anne's job. As an assistant controller, she was also there to go over the financial records and to make sure that everything was in order. One of the main reasons she had been allowed to come was that she would be able to explain to the workers why it was economically impossible for Harriman Industries to keep the factory open and what financial arrangements had been made to compensate the workers.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind she'd been hoping that it was an accident that Buck LaSalle could write an intelligent, forceful letter, that he was one of those people who sounded smart if he had a dictionary in front of him but was actually quite dense in person.

  Needless to say, Buck LaSalle wasn't anything like what she had expected him to be. No banjo. No gun—except for the rifle in his truck, and it hadn't been permanently attached to his shoulder. No beer belly. His clothes were clean. He didn't chew or spit anything black and disgusting. He even had teeth. Worst of all, she decided, thinking of his sharp, intuitive green eyes, he didn't look stupid. Cocky and rude, maybe, but not stupid.

  Perhaps the crux of her uneasiness lay in the fact that as obnoxious as he was at times, she liked him. There was something very solid and basically trustworthy about him. Oh, he was a brassy one all right. But underneath it all, she instinctively sensed a core of gold.

  However, she decided, sitting up on her bed with a new resolve, she couldn't let her personal feelings for Buck LaSalle sway her. So he was a little brighter and bolder than she had anticipated. So what? she asked herself. She had a job to do. Nothing and no one was going to stand in her way. Long ago she had learned that determination could eventually overpower height, skill, and experience in nearly every sport she had ever pursued. It could overcome Buck LaSalle as well.

  She repeated this over and over, steeling herself to succeed. The two hours Buck had planned to be busy elsewhere were almost over. He'd come looking for her soon, and then she could make the situation perfectly clear to him. She'd needed time to regroup her resources when she'd first discovered who he was. She'd given him fifty dollars for a fan belt and had practically run all the way to her room before he could see how confused she was. But she was okay now. She'd arranged for her car to be repaired on her own. She could handle him. She'd close that damn mill come hell, high water, or Buck LaSalle.

  As if on cue, there was a knock on her door. She socked the mattress with her fist to psych herself up, and then she scrambled off the bed to answer it.

  He was braced against the doorjamb with his hands, his glasses dangling from his fingers. For the first time she took in the blue-and-gray plaid shirt worn open at the neck to reveal a stark white T-shirt, jeans that were snug, well worn, and that outlined the lower half of his body with undeniable accuracy, and she swallowed hard. Then she looked at the happy grin on his face and felt a light lifting sensation in her stomach.

  That he was extremely male was not a sudden revelation to Anne. But it was certainly something she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with. It was a weird perception for her. She spent most of her time with men. She was used to coming into close proximity with men. She was comfortable with the idea that some people were men and some were women. But she'd never, ever felt as soft, as . . . female as she did standing toe to toe with Buck LaSalle.

  "Ready?" he asked in a cheerful voice, unaware that everything had changed between them in the past two hours. His gaze gave her a quick once over, coming up to meet hers full of lurid questions and possibilities. His smile was now a smirk.

  Anne frowned in confusion and looked down at her feet. She'd forgotten to put her shoes back on. Her suit was rumpled and her blouse was hanging out suggestively. No, she sure didn't look ready to go anywhere.

  She straightened her spine and looked out past his left shoulder before addressing the situation.

  "Mr. LaSalle—"

  "Buck."

  "Buck. Umm. I wanted to thank you for helping me today. It was very nice of you, and I'm sorry I put you to all that trouble. But the car's been taken care of."

  It was his turn to frown and be confused. "I don't understand."

  "While you were gone, I asked Mr. McKee to call the garage. They'll put a new belt in it and drive it into town for me."

  "But why?" Now he looked hurt and confused. Anne sighed. She was making a mess of this.

  "Well, it's not because I didn't appreciate what you did. I was scared to death out there all alone," she blurted out. "I—I simply think it's better that I don't put myself too deeply into a position of being indebted to you for anything else."

  "Indebted?"

  "Beholden to you."

  Now his frown was stormy and angry. Great. She'd hurt him and insulted him in less than sixty seconds. She was pretty sure this wasn't listed under How to Have Good Labor Relations.

  "I never had any intention of askin' for anything for helpin’ you. If you're still mad about the way I was lookin' at you back there, that didn't have anything to do with it. I'd'a helped you even if ya looked like a cow."

  "Oh, I'm sure you would have. I'm not doing this very well, Buck. I. . . maybe I should tell you who I am. Then you'll understand what I'm trying to say here."

  His anger subsided, but just a little, as he put the hand with the glasses on his hip and leaned impatiently on the other, waiting for her to explain.

  "I'm an assistant controller at Harriman Industries, and I've come to shut the mill down." She wasn't a beat-around-the-bush person. She liked to get unpleasant things over with. She braced herself for his reaction to the news.

/>   He just stood there. Completely unimpressed.

  "So now you see," she said, wondering if he did, in fact, understand.

  He shook his head. "I don't see what it's got to do with my fixin' your fan belt."

  "Well, maybe it doesn't," she said, feeling a little foolish. "It's just that I thought that maybe if you knew who I was, you wouldn't want to help me."

  "Oh. That's rich. And you called me rude?" He looked back over his shoulder as if looking at her was revolting. Anne's heart grew tight and painful. When he finally turned back to her, she could see that he was very angry. "I'm not some fancy-pants city person who doesn't give a damn about anybody but himself. I'm somebody who, when he sees somebody in need of a hand, lends one. How many Yankees you reckon come here to Webster on business, Annie?"

  He very obviously wanted her to answer.

  She shrugged. "I don't know."

  "Hardly any." And with that he turned to leave.

  "You knew who I was?" she asked, reaching out to touch his arm and keep him from going away. "You knew what I'd come here to do, and you helped me anyway?"

  He didn't answer her. His expression told her that what he'd done was perfectly clear.

  Anne felt like a wad of tissue paper stuck to a rest-room floor. She found it very hard to look him in the eye, but she did. "Buck, I'm very ashamed and very sorry. I shouldn't have assumed you'd be so petty and spiteful."

  "No, you shouldn't have," he said, and then he walked away.

  Anne watched him go around the corner of the low building, toward the street. She turned back into her room, closed the door, and sank down onto the bed. She released a huge sigh through loose lips and let her shoulders hang in dejection. She hadn't meant to hurt him. She'd only been trying to keep things between them on a professional level.