Free Miracle on I-40 by Curtiss Ann Matlock Page B

Did he like showers or baths? She continued to wonder as she stood beneath the massaging heat of steaming water. Would he think she had a good body?
    Just as she turned off the water, she heard a peculiar knocking. Someone rapping on the wall, she realized, as she stood in the tub, rivulets of water running down her skin. Cooper? Knocking out a rhythm on the wall?
    Hesitating only one self-conscious second, before throwing caution to the wind and rapping back, imitating his rhythm. Then she held her breath.
    The knock came again.
    Lacey clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling her laughter. Fine thing it would be to wake the children and have to explain herself to them.
    But it was hilariously funny. Two grown people engaging in a childish stunt. She couldn’t believe Cooper would do such a thing. Not solemn, gruff Cooper, who’d spent most of the day treating her as if she wasn’t there.
    Suddenly curious, she knocked again and waited expectantly.
    But no more knocks came from his side. Only silence.
    Lacey was suddenly exhausted, and very lonely. When she crawled into the double bed beside Anna, she brought the extra pillow and hugged it tight to her chest.
    * * * *
    Morning came much too early. Immediately upon turning off the alarm, Lacey discovered that the rumbling she heard was the Kenworth engine—already running. How revolting. It was still pitch black, for heavensake.
    Allowing the children a few minutes’ extra sleep, she threw on her clothes and  ran across the parking lot to the large gas station-minimart to get sweet rolls and milk to tide them over until breakfast. At the last minute, she bought a sweet roll for Cooper, too.
    Cooper knocked at their door while Jon was still dressing. “Come on, let’s go.” He definitely sounded testy.
    Lacey didn’t bother to awaken Anna enough for her to dress but gathered her up in her arms and carried her to the truck. Without speaking, Cooper helped get Anna into the sleeper in the back, then slipped into the driver’s seat, while Lacey and Jon threw their baggage into the sleeper.
    When Cooper shifted the truck into gear without as much as a “good morning,” Lacey wondered if the knocking she had heard the night before had happened at all. Had she imagined it?
    When he switched off the radio in the middle of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Lacey figured she had the answer to the question of whether he was a morning person or not.
    And when he snapped at her to please stop that noise, calling attention to the fact she was now unconsciously humming Santa Claus is Coming to Town , she called herself a saint for buying a died-in-the-wool Scrooge a sweet roll.
    She gave him the roll, however, with every ounce of pleasantry she possessed. He scowled—but he took it. Heaven knew he needed all the sweetness he could ingest.
    And it was true that every time she looked at his eye, which, although less swollen, remained the color of thunderheads, she told herself she could not forget what he had suffered on their account. What he was still suffering.
    * * * *
    Cooper stopped a bit early for breakfast and varied his schedule to stop for lunch, too. He didn’t know much about kids, but he knew enough about people to tell when two young ones were restless enough to explode. He was experiencing something similar himself. The feelings were unfamiliar and quite annoying. Never had he felt so keenly that he wanted to be anywhere but in the truck, stuck in one position behind the wheel.
    He blamed it on not sleeping well. His face and various bruised parts of his body had throbbed too much. And he’d kept thinking about Lacey.
    She was causing him no end of discomfort. Her green eyes were warm and full to bursting with life. Her scent drew him like a magnet. He couldn’t seem to quit sneaking peeks at her body—at her sleek thighs hugged by blue denim, her breasts full and round beneath her soft sweater, her creamy neck and chin. Last night he had imagined in great detail