Читать книгу Waiting for Sparks - Kathy Damp - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT HAD THE angel girl just asked him? Thunderbolts banged around in Sparks’s head. The dampness and sting on his chin told him he’d have a souvenir of the Compact Car Crunch.

“I said, do you think you have a concussion?”

Minutes before, he’d started a slow pitch out of the car. Somehow—perhaps he’d recall later—she’d grabbed his long legs at the same moment he’d pushed off from the frame. It took him a few moments to realize he’d landed on his rescuer. She uttered gasping, grunting sounds from underneath him.

After he’d rolled off her, they’d both regained their breath, and she’d lugged his two suitcases out of the trunk and into her car. He focused on standing upright and making his legs move toward it, only to collapse onto the passenger seat. Oh, was his head throbbing.

She’d steered out onto the road, and they were on their way. Angel girl, Sparks thought. Short, dark haired and curvy in beige capris and a light-colored knit shirt, she was the prettiest part of the trip so far. And the prettiest thing to ever save him. Now, what was her name? It wasn’t like him to miss getting a name.

In the light of the dashboard, the skin over her knuckles was stretched taut, he noticed. Although in the midst of the rescue she’d kept saying, “What do I do? What do I do?” She’d been great.

He winced at the virtual bombs exploding in his head. “I’ve had concussions. This isn’t one.”

No response, yet her eyes widened at his comment.

“I’m kind of used to emergencies.” It would take more than a car crash to prevent Sparks Turner from getting a pretty girl to relax. She had a smudge of dirt on the cheek facing him. He raised his hand to wipe it off. She shrunk back. The car swerved.

“Man moratorium!” Her voice squeaked on the last part of moratorium.

He must have landed on her harder than he’d thought. “Did you hit your head?”

She ignored his question. “Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe I should take you to Regional for that cut on your chin. I’m...I’m headed in that direction.” Her voice sounded decidedly nervous.

He blamed himself for scaring her. Of course, taking a strange, bloody guy into your car was a risk. “No, ma’am. I’m a former smoke jumper and I’ve taken some pretty good bangs to the head before. I appreciate it, but a ride to the Safari Motel is good enough for me.”

Silence.

The knock on his head had opened a memory he’d slammed the door on five years ago. The tragedy that had driven him from a once-loved occupation and a part of his life that he was trying to forget.

A few more miles passed by, and the road flattened a bit before another plunge. She gestured to the left. “You can’t see much at night, but that’s the lake down there. Route 12 is Main Street.” So this was Heaven, his borrowed hometown for the summer.

This spurt of conversation seemed to empty her, and she once again fell silent.

Keeping his eyes on the darkness that was the lake, he leaned against the headrest and gave himself over to the pain. “Never expected such a big lake in the Rocky Mountains,” he muttered to himself. Talking to himself was a habit he’d had since he was a kid. Some counselor had told him he did it so he wouldn’t feel alone. He hadn’t wanted to think about that then, and he didn’t want to think about it tonight.

She didn’t respond.

“Heaven’s a different name for a town,” he said, this time louder.

The silence spread so long he thought she wasn’t going to answer, and then she shook herself slightly as though to rouse herself from troubling thoughts. “The original settlers had such a hard time coming down that canyon—” she flashed him a look “—as you can imagine, that when they came to this point and saw the bizarre blue of the lake, they figured they’d died and gone to heaven. Hence the name.”

Everyone had told Sparks he was crazy to take a cut-rate job designing fireworks in the middle of nowhere. When he’d been sitting with his feet dangling over the edge of the wrecked car door, he would have had to agree. Now, seeing the size of the lake and with a summer to play in it, he began to doubt his doubts. He could entertain himself watching the spin cycle in a Laundromat and make five new friends before he’d even folded his polo shirts. He would amuse himself in Heaven and get back into sync with his career. A win-win for him and the town.

In fact...he eyed the petite woman next to him. He’d get a summer girl. Summer girls didn’t need to know why he couldn’t stick around.

The uncomfortable niggling at the back of his mind, the keening loss that often surged within him, kicked in again. He’d been feeling it off and on for months now. A place to call home. A place to be from. Come back to. Sparks touched the cut on his forehead. It had stopped bleeding.

Shooting a sideways look at his angel girl, he wondered where she was from, where she was going. She’d said a hospital. Local girl with a sick husband? He sighed. He hoped not.

Minutes later, she braked at a four-way stop sign with a Qwik Stop in need of a paint job on one corner. The other three corners were the edges of fields that gave way to Main Street.

“It looks like...home,” he blurted as yet another crash sounded in his head.

“Don’t bet on it.” Her muttering landed so softly he wasn’t sure he’d actually heard her. After she stopped on Main Street in front of the Safari Motel and put the car in Park, she turned to look at him—or rather, the cut on his forehead. Then she smiled.

Her smile curved up wide, showing white teeth with a tiny overlap of the right incisor. The move pressed her eyes into a delightful squint. He was glad she’d been coming down the canyon when she had. In the reflected light from the motel’s office, he saw coppery highlights glinting in her dark hair. A pretty woman preoccupied with something. After her rescuing him, he wanted to make everything right for her. Keep that smile on her face.

Finally, she spoke. “Looks as if Lynette kept the light on for you. She’ll want to know why you look as though you got beat up. She’s not much on troublemakers staying at her motel.” The smile faded and the tone sharpened. “Or unreliable, undependable charmers.” She closed her lips in a thin line.

“You’re from here?” His spirits lifted; he’d choose to ignore the edge to her last words. Summer girl. For the summer, he could be anything she wanted. For the summer.

A look swept over her face. Revulsion? Regret? He couldn’t place it.

“Not really.”

He slid slowly out of the car, emitting a few spontaneous grunts as he pulled his suitcases out of the backseat. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

Her smile returned, lightening her expression. “You rescued me from rescuing you. We’re square.”

As he came around the front of the car, he spoke in the direction of her open window. “See you around, then?”

She leaned out the window. “I’ll call on my cell about your car. The garage will contact the rental company.”

“Hey, no problem. I’ll call from my room.”

Another transforming smile. “I’ll call.” She put the Omni in Drive.

“Thank you for saving my life!” he shouted belatedly as she left the parking lot. She didn’t look back. He knew because he watched her. She knew where he was, so maybe...

Digging a piece of paper out of his jeans’ pocket, Sparks gingerly felt around the scrape on his chin. He leaned over, stretching right and left to unravel the increasing kinks, while checking out his home for forty-six glorious days of vacation. To the right was a line of single-level motel units of cinder block with a metal, aqua-painted eaves running their length as they sloped down away to the lake. Probably built in the 1950s.

He pushed open the glass door of the office and the bell at the top of the door tinkled; the theme song for a late-night talk show sounded in a room behind the desk. He was hours past his guaranteed reservation time. As his hand hovered over the bell on the counter for a second time, a bouffant-haired older woman pushed through the bead curtain.

“Don’t be pounding that bell. At my age, it takes more time to get everything moving.” Of average height, a loose black pullover tunic and legs encased in black knit pants, she didn’t look as though she had an ounce of fat on her. Taking in his damaged face, her eyes narrowed. “You got a reservation? We don’t allow riffraff here.”

Sparks glanced at the confirmation number on his piece of paper and passed it over to her. She snatched it from his hand.

“You’re Lynette?” he said.

Looking up from the paper, she seemed satisfied with his right to be there. “I’m the owner, Lynette.” She peered at him over half glasses. “You’re that hotshot fireworks designer who’s going to put Heaven on the map this year.” She swung her head back and forth. Her hair never moved. “Why do you look as though you lost a fight at the Wayside Inn?”

“I had an accident coming down Bigelow Canyon.”

“The Last Nasty, no doubt. Going too fast, I imagine. Happens all the time.”

His head ached in cadence to the throbbing in his jaw. He hadn’t eaten anything for hours, and he was feeling that Heaven fell short of Naomi’s rhapsodizing about warm, friendly people. Forcing his split lips into a smile, he said, “Yes, ma’am. Fortunately, a woman from town stopped to help me. I didn’t get her name.”

She shrugged. “Payment’s in full. Up front. Cash preferred.”

Naomi had warned him of Lynette’s affection for cash. No plastic card was accepted, but as he pulled out his wallet, he noted the rest of the office asserted a predilection for plastic. On the counter, plastic—not silk—daffodils leaned out of a hot pink plastic vase with seashells glued on it. The bead curtain was plastic. Plastic covered the lampshade by the cash register. He shifted his feet, heard a crackle. Plastic runner.

After opening his wallet and removing the cash, he glanced down at the registration card she slid in front of him.

“Fill it out completely—including home address. I’ll need your license plate number, too, in case you go sneaking off with my towels.” She looked out the side window. “Where’s your car?” Her eyes narrowed again.

“It’ll be towed in.” He focused on the card. Home address. There it was again. Home. By habit, he put down the address of the pyrotechnic corporation with whom he contracted. He was rarely at the condo he rented with a pilot.

She took the completed card Sparks offered her. “Doug?”

“I go by Sparks.”

A twinkle at last thawed the frosty, faded eyes.

“Bet there’s a story there.” Her tone returned to business. “The town’s got us a drought going on, so we change the towels and sheets twice a week ’stead of every day.”

He nodded. A quick survey out the window showed no on-site restaurant. “No restaurant?”

Turning away from him with the card in her hand, Lynette slid it into a pocket of a numbered canvas wall hanging. “No need for me to monopolize making money. Dew Drop Inn Café’s over there. Place for those of us over thirty and tourists who want local color.” She gestured behind him; Sparks followed. Across the street sat a cinder block building with wide glass windows and a prominent sign announcing a “Squat and Gobble Special” of eggs, biscuits, cream sausage gravy and hash browns. No lights on and a closed sign on the front door. His stomach rumbled.

Lynette peered at him. “Nothing’s open this late... Tomorrow, start of Memorial Day weekend, you can also go to the Dairy Delite at the other edge of town or Angel Wings BBQ here on Main.” She leaned her forearms on the counter. With money in hand, her tone of voice became positively chatty. “So you’re here to bail out Naomi?”

“You must be thinking of somebody else.” He dredged up a smile, wincing at the sting. Everything he owned ached. Longing for bed, he added quickly, “I’m only here to design the Fourth of July Jamboree fireworks. Technicians come from Evanston to set up the actual display. Pretty much, I’m on vacation.” Before he opened the door to leave, he remembered. “I’ll need directions to her office, though.”

“Won’t do you any good. Naomi’s had another stroke.” Lynette’s watery gray eyes scanned him. “We’re waiting for poor little Emma to save us.”

He nodded, and moments later, as he stood in the doorway of room number twenty-seven, Lynette’s departing statement lingered. Poor little Emma must be Naomi’s hapless assistant. Did this mean working for Naomi would be...difficult?

Holding the handles of his two suitcases, he surveyed the room with no relief found from a gathering sense of gloom or his aching muscles. The two full-size beds in front of him, one with a distinct hollow in the middle and both draped with red and saffron zigzag bedspreads, shouted 1970s, as did the crimson velvet paisleys raised on the gold wallpaper. He spied a rotary desk phone on the nightstand. At least there was a phone.

Walking over faded yellow shag carpet, he picked up the receiver to call the rental company. No dial tone. So that hazel-eyed angel girl had already known the secret. Hence her smile, the smile he wanted to remember and see again.

Reminiscing about the four-star hotels he’d enjoyed in Chicago, DC, Paris and Tokyo, he rotated his shoulders. Hadn’t he wanted a break from the globetrotting for a touch of hometown America?

He chose the least concave bed and plopped his suitcases on the other. The bed dropped a couple inches lower. He shrugged. “Best to look on the bright side.” Mother Egan, a fond memory from growing up at the orphanage, had had a million such sayings; every now and then one popped out of his mouth.

Sleep was his next order of business. Once he’d slept, his head would stop banging and his bones would settle back into place. After he met this unfortunate Emma, he’d explore his summer hometown.

Forty-six glorious days of vacation.