A Cowboy of Her Own. Marin Thomas

and he became concerned that she’d passed out from the putrid fumes inside. He pressed the edge of the screwdriver into the latch at the base of the knob and jiggled it. The hardware was ancient and pulled right off. Next, he loosened the screws, then removed the mounting plate. “Hang on. I’m almost done.” He poked his finger inside the hole, scraping his knuckle. Ignoring his bloody finger, he pushed the latch aside, then shoved the door open.

      He wasn’t sure what he expected to find inside the windowless graffiti-covered compartment with a chipped ceramic sink and condom wrappers littering the floor, but it sure wasn’t Wendy perched on top of the toilet tank, texting away on her phone.

      “Thanks for freeing me.” She hopped off the toilet, inched past him and stepped outside, where she sucked in a breath of fresh air. “We should exchange phone numbers. If that happens again, I’ll be able to text you.” She marched to the truck, a strip of toilet paper stuck to the heel of her shoe fluttering in the air like a kite tail.

      Her nonchalant attitude confounded Porter. Manipulating the jammed key was difficult when it was connected to a bike chain that had been padlocked to an old hubcap.

      To hell with this. Cheetos Betty could figure it out. Porter replaced the outside knob then returned to the store. “I can’t get the key out of the lock. You’ll have to call a repairman.”

      Betty’s head remained buried in the magazine, but she waved her orange fingers in the air, signaling that she’d heard him.

      When Porter got into the truck cab, Wendy was working on her iPad. He glanced at the floor and noticed she’d removed the TP from her shoe. “I can’t believe it.”

      She looked up from the screen. “Believe what?”

      “You were just sitting there calm as can be, texting on your phone when I opened the restroom door.”

      “I was making good use of the time by checking work emails.”

      He stared, dumbfounded.

      “I told you this isn’t a vacation for me, Porter. I have accounts that I need to manage while we’re traveling.”

      “You’re a girl. You should have been distraught and panic-stricken.” And she was supposed to jump into his arms and smother his face with kisses of gratitude once he’d freed her—that’s how it played out in the movies.

      “I’m not like most girls.”

      No kidding. He started the truck, then merged onto the highway. “We’re not stopping again until we hit Durango or Silverton.”

      “That’s fine.” Wendy set aside her iPad and dug through the bag of snacks on the seat. She unwrapped a candy bar and said, “You’re shaking your head again.”

      “I’ll never understand women.”

      “At least you’re smart enough to admit it. Most men assume women can’t function without them. The truth is we can do everything they can and often better.”

      “I didn’t see you free yourself from the bathroom.”

      “I would have figured a way out.”

      “Okay, smart lady. If I hadn’t been there, how would you have gotten out of that jam?”

      “I would have called nine-one-one.”

      Porter shut up and focused on his driving.

      * * *

      THE TRUCK HIT a bump, and Wendy’s eyes popped open. “What happened?”

      “Sorry. I didn’t see the pothole in the pavement,” Porter said.

      She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and yawned, waiting for her blurry eyes to focus. She wasn’t used to wearing her contact lenses more than ten hours a day. As soon as she arrived home from work, she switched to her glasses. “It’s late, isn’t it?”

      “Almost ten.”

      The cab was dark and she couldn’t make out his features, but she heard the frustration in his voice. Their unexpected delay at the gas station earlier in the afternoon had put a kink in his driving schedule.

      “You didn’t actually plan on picking up the bulls tonight, did you?” The thought of the animals stuck inside a trailer until morning seemed cruel.

      “No, but I wanted to have a little fun before I went to bed.”

      “Do you always hit up the bars and women when you’re on the road?” She swallowed a groan. She was the same age as Porter, but she sounded like a crotchety old woman.

      “As far as I know, when I’m off the clock it’s not against company policy to have a beer or a dance with a pretty girl. Do you have a problem with that?”

      “Forget I asked.” Wendy wanted to get to the motel, enjoy a soak in the tub and then drift off to sleep—after she checked her email.

      “If I go out for a beer, will the information end up in your report?”

      “What do mean?”

      “Are you documenting my after-hours activities on this trip?”

      “No.” She tapped her fingernail against the armrest, willing the next ten miles to pass quickly.

      “What do you do when you’re off the clock?” he asked.

      She laughed. “When is that?”

      “You don’t work 24/7...do you?”

      “No, but there’s always email and phone calls to catch up on.”

      “Surely your clients know you have a life outside of your job.”

      “Maybe, but livestock disasters strike whenever and wherever with no respect for the human workweek.”

      “There’s no blizzard or dust storm affecting cows or horses tonight. What do you say we stretch our legs and let loose for a couple of hours before we check into a motel?”

      A couple of hours—was he nuts? “If you drink and drive, I’ll have to put it my report.”

      He flashed his pearly whites. “Then I’ll be the designated driver.”

      “Get serious, Porter.”

      He frowned. “I am serious.”

      She opened her mouth to argue with him but changed her mind—until she caught him shaking his head. “What?” she asked.

      “It’s weird that you and my sister are friends.”

      “Why is it weird?”

      “Dixie was rebellious but I doubt you ever went against your parents’ wishes.”

      She didn’t care for the critical tone in his voice, but bit her tongue. It would be cruel to argue that she respected her parents when Dixie and her brothers grew up without a mother and a father.

      “Dixie gave my grandparents fits in junior high when she snuck off with Tanner Hamilton. They grounded her, but she kept leaving the house to be with him. My brothers and I followed her one night. Turns out she and Tanner had entered a dance competition and they were practicing in his family’s garage.”

      Wendy knew that. “Glen Smith asked me to be his dance partner for the contest.”

      “You snuck out of your house, too?”

      She hadn’t dared disobey her parents. They would have been horrified if she’d met a boy late at night. She recalled sitting in the school cafeteria, listening to Dixie, Shannon and the other girls laugh and joke about the fun they’d had with the boys.

      “I had to tell Glen I couldn’t be his dance partner.”

      “Why not?”

      She waved a hand in the air. “My parents wouldn’t have approved.”