Night Driving by Lori Wilde Page A

were almost out of Nebraska. Once they’d left the truck stop, taking an alternate route that the cowboy had suggested to avoid the bread truck smashup on the freeway, they’d made great time.
    She slid a glance over at Boone. He was staring out the window at the Nebraska cornfields rolling by. His clenched fist rested on his right leg.
    “Are you hurting?”
    “What?” He blinked, turned to meet her gaze.
    “Your leg. Do you need some pain pills?”
    “It’s fine. I’ll live. I’m trying to taper off.”
    “You don’t have to suffer. If you need a pill, take it.”
    He shook his head. “I’ve been taking the easy way out. This thing with Jackie woke me up. I can’t keep stewing in pills and self-pity.”
    “It’s only been three weeks since your last surgery. You’re still healing.”
    He grunted. “Or maybe this is as good as it gets.”
    Tara didn’t know what to say to that. She knew he was going to get better, but from his point of view things had to look a little dark right now. “I broke my leg once.”
    He raised an eyebrow.
    “When I was eleven.”
    “How’d it happen?”
    “Stilts accident.”
    “Stilts?” An amused smile flitted at the corners of his mouth. “Now that’s unusual.”
    “My brother Matt is a powerbocker.”
    “A power what?”
    “It’s an extreme sport where you jump and run on spring-loaded stilts, but that’s not the kind I fell off of. Matt experimented with all kinds of stilts before he discovered powerbocking.”
    “Is he short?”
    “Who? My brother? Yeah, kinda. Five foot six.”
    “What kind of stilts did you fall off of?”
    “Peg stilts.”
    “What are peg stilts?”
    “They’re also called Chinese stilts and are used by professional performers. On peg stilts you have to keep walking at all times in order to keep yourself from falling over.”
    “No stopping, huh?”
    “None.”
    “Can’t stay in one place?”
    “Nope.”
    “How in the world do you dismount?”
    “Therein lies the challenge that I was working on when Matt caught me and hollered. I started running to get away from him. Not smart. Seriously, do not run on peg stilts.”
    “I’ll take that into consideration the next time I’m stilt walking. What happened next?”
    “I stepped on some boggy ground—we’ve got a lot of that in Florida—and one of the stilts got stuck. I did the splits midair.”
    “Ouch.” Sympathy tinged his voice.
    She winced in memory. “It was not a pretty sight.”
    “How long were you in a cast?”
    “Six weeks. But shh, it was sort of humorous after I got past the initial pain. I didn’t have to do dishes and I got to be the center of attention, which is very important to the middle child in a family with six kids. I milked it for all it was worth.”
    “Ah,” he said. “You’re one of those lemonade people.”
    “Pardon?”
    “Life gives you lemons, yada, yada.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with lemonade.”
    “I wish I could have seen you walking on stilts,” he mused, his voice softening. “Not when you fell, of course. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”
    “Really?” She canted her head, studied him.
    “Just...well...you’re so graceful. I bet when you walked on stilts it was like you were dusting clouds.”
    “Why, Boone, how romantic. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
    He made a face. “Really? As I was saying it, I thought, ‘Come on, Toliver, this is way too cheesy.’”
    “It might have sounded cheesy coming from someone else, but you do not throw around compliments, so when you say something like that, I know you mean it.”
    A long silence stretched between them and Tara started fretting that she’d said too much.
    “I don’t dislike you, you know,” he mumbled.
    Her heart thumped strangely. “You don’t?”
    “Not at all.”
    “You’re not very friendly to me most of the time.”
    “It’s because you scare the hell out of me.”
    “I do?”
    “Yeah.”
    Tara gulped past the