Three Bedrooms, One Corpse - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,32
lifted my hair out of the collar and let it hang down my back, acutely conscious that he watched my every move. I thought if we made it out the door it would be amazing, so I kept my distance; and when he opened the door for me to pass through, I did so as quickly as I could. Then he opened the patio gate and the door of his car. I hadn’t felt so frail in years.
His car was wonderful—real leather and an impressive dashboard. It even smelled expensive. I had never ridden in anything so luxurious. I was feeling more pampered by the moment.
We swept imperially through Lawrenceton, attracting (I hoped) lots of attention, and hit the short interstate stretch to Atlanta. Our small talk was extremely small. The air in the car was crackling with tension.
“You’ve always lived here?”
“Yes. I did go away to college, and I did some graduate work. But then I came back here, and I’ve been here ever since. Where have you lived?”
“Well. I grew up in rural Ohio, as I mentioned last night,” he said.
I could not picture him being rural at any point in his life, and I said so.
“I’ve spent my lifetime eradicating it,” he said with some humor. “I was in the Marines for a while, in Vietnam, the tail end, and then when I came back, after a while I began to work for Pan-Am Agra. I finished college through night school, and Pan-Am Agra needed Spanish speakers so much that I became fluent. It paid off, and I began working my way up ... this car was the first thing I got that said I had arrived, and I take good care of it.”
Presumably the big house in Lawrenceton would be another acquisition affirming that he was climbing the ladder successfully.
“You’re—thirty?” he said suddenly.
“Yes.”
“I’m forty-five. You don’t mind?”
“How could I?”
Our eyes moved simultaneously to a lighted motel sign looming over the interstate.
The exit was a mile away.
I thought I was about to give way to an impulse—finally.
“Ah—Aurora—”
“Roe.”
“I don’t want you to think I don’t want to spend money on you. I don’t want you to think I don’t want to be seen with you. But tonight...” f
“Pull off.”
“What?”
“Pull off.”
Off the interstate we rolled at what seemed to me incredible speed, and suddenly we were parked in front of the bright office of the motel. I couldn’t remember the name of it, where we were, anything.
Martin left the car abruptly, and I watched him register. He carefully did not turn to look back at me during the interminable process.
Then he slid back into the car with a key in hand.
I turned to him and said through clenched teeth, “I hope it’s on the ground floor.”
It was.
It rained during the night. The lightning flashed through the windows, and I heard the cold spray hit the pavement outside. He had been sleeping; he woke up a little when I shivered at the thunder. “Safe,” he said, gathering me to him. “Safe.” He kissed my hair and fell back into sleep.
I wondered if I was. In a practical way I was safe, yes; we were not stupid people; we took precautions. But in my heart I had no feeling, none at all, of safety.
The morning was not the kind that ordinarily made me cheerful. It was colder, grayer, and puddles of muddy water dotted the parking lot of the motel. But I felt good enough to overcome even the faint sleaziness of putting back on the same clothes I’d worn. We ate breakfast in the motel coffee shop, and both of us were very hungry.
“I don’t know what we’ve started,” Martin said suddenly, as he was about to get up to pay our bill, “but I want you to know I have never felt so wrung out in my life.”
“Relaxed,” I corrected smilingly. “I’m relaxed.”
“Then,” he said with raised eyebrows, “you didn’t work hard enough.”
We smiled at each other. “A matter of opinion,” I said, quite shocked at myself.
“We’ll just have to try again until we’re both satisfied,” Martin murmured.
“What a fate,” I said.
“Tonight?” he asked.
“Tomorrow night. Give me a chance to recoup.”
“See, you do know some French words,” he replied, and we smiled at each other again. He glanced at his watch as we drove back. “I’m usually working at the plant alone on Sunday, but today we’re having a special meeting at twelve-thirty, followed by an executives’ lunch. It’s a kickoff for our next production phase.”