Free Tall Tales and Wedding Veils by Jane Graves Page B

and emerged in the terminal, he didn’t see her. He rode up the escalator to the parking garage level.

    He went through the automatic doors and stepped outside, and when he did, he caught sight of Heather standing at the front of a line of people waiting for a cab. He started to cross the street to head to the parking garage, but his conscience nagged at him. Cab fare for the thirty-mile trip back to Plano was going to cost her a bundle.

    Not your problem. Keep walking.

    But he couldn’t get his feet to move. He just stood on the curb, looking at Heather and feeling really crappy about the whole thing. After everything she’d done for him, was it right to let her pay to get home when he could take her home himself?

    A cab pulled to the curb, and the driver got out to grab Heather’s bag. Tony walked over and took it from the man’s hand.

    Heather spun around. “Tony? What are you doing?”

    “A cab will cost you a fortune.”

    “I don’t care.”

    “We’re both going back to Plano. I’ll give you a ride.”

    “That’s not necessary.”

    “It’s also no big deal.”

    She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll ride with you,” even though she didn’t seem the least bit happy about it.

    Ten minutes later, Heather and Tony were in his Explorer heading east on 635. And being with him felt every bit as awkward as Heather had expected it to.

    After the plane landed, she’d grabbed her stuff and gotten off as quickly as she could so she wouldn’t have to talk to him. She’d spent the past three hours thinking about him sitting two rows behind her, telling herself the whole time not to turn around, not to look at him, not to give him even the tiniest indication that she couldn’t get last night out of her mind.

    Because she couldn’t. Not for five consecutive minutes.

    And she hated that. When she should be smacking herself for her spur-of-the-moment wedding, all she seemed to think about was every sizzling moment that had led up to it.

    But apparently she was the only one who felt awkward. Tony didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. He’d jacked up a country-and-western CD and was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel along with the music. She glanced at the speedometer. The speed limit was sixty. He was going almost seventy. It didn’t surprise her that he was one of those men who took traffic signs as suggestions, not rules.

    “You were reading
Forbes
on the plane,” he said.

    She looked at him warily. “Yeah.”

    “I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who read that before.”

    “Then you probably don’t know many women who are CPAs.”

    “You’re a CPA?” He laughed a little. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

    Heather sighed. Just once she’d love to hear a man say,
CPA? No way! I would have sworn you were a supermodel!

    Maybe in her next lifetime.

    “What I mean is that you seem pretty detail oriented,” Tony added.

    She shrugged.

    “Not me. Guess I’ll have to learn to be, though, right? Running a business and all?”

    “Uh-huh.”

    Silence, except for the country music twanging through the speakers.

    “So where did you go to college?” Tony asked.

    Did he
always
chatter like this? “Rice University.”

    “Good school. I went to the University of Texas. Only one year, though.” He smiled. “I majored in tequila drinking and minored in class skipping. As soon as they offer a degree in those things, I’m going for my Ph.D.”

    She didn’t respond, so he kept talking. He was clearly one of those people who didn’t like dead air and felt obligated to fill it. She would have asked him if he’d consider becoming the strong, silent type, but she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

    “Tell me why you’re not talking to me,” he said.

    She whipped around. “What?”

    “You didn’t speak to me on the plane. You’ve barely said anything to me since we left the airport.”

    “I’m just tired