Free Connected Hearts - Four Lesbian Romance Stories by Jae, Joan Arling, Rj Nolan

Like I needed more.
    Then I had a bright idea. I’d place rainbow stickers next to Tiny’s door handles. I frequently gave hitch-hikers a lift, so I had somebody to talk to. Maybe, just maybe, I’d come upon a dyke hiker (would that make her a “hyker”?). Not very likely, but if that happened, she might as well “read the signs”.
    Of course, I had to order the stickers online since I had no time to attend something like a gay pride parade. And, naturally, they were delivered to my home address, and so I had almost forgotten my order when, two months later, I had Tiny in for an overhaul at the place where I’d worked before becoming self-employed and paid a rare visit to my “home”.
    Several months’ worth of mail had been neatly stacked on my desk by the lady who looked after my apartment in my absence. Even though she discarded things like special offers from a nearby super market and the like, obviously of no use to me, most was a waste of paper. No, I did not want to take the latest model from Vauxhall for a spin. Besides, the not-to-be-passed-up opportunity was six weeks in the past. Piles of balance sheets from my bank, while not exactly wastepaper, taxed even my compulsion to read.
    On the positive side, there was a picture postcard from my sister, who had moved to down under and seemed to be happy enough to live on a diet of steaks and Foster’s. Then I came across the almost forgotten rainbow stickers. I put them on with a wry grin, anyway, when I got Tiny back two days later. Now that I had them, I might as well use them, even though it seemed a little childish.
    The next day I boarded the ferry to Rotterdam, Netherlands, to take on a trailer for Arnhem, which would cover the expenses of deadheading to Cologne, Germany, where I was booked for a long haul.
    * * *
    I stopped at a restaurant to take a prescribed break. Visions of steak-and-kidney pie with green peas (whatever did they do to peas on the Continent to make them look so pale?) vanished at the sight of the Wiener schnitzel before me.
    “’tschuldigung, fahren Sie Richtung Süden?”
    Even though I preferred the autoroutes in France to the Autobahns in Germany (the police there were a little too “gründlich” for my taste), I’d been there often enough to pick up a few phrases of German. When I looked up, I saw a woman, perhaps a little younger than I was, standing beside my table. “If you were asking if I was headed south, yes, I am,” I said. “Sorry, my Deutsch doesn’t amount to much.” I gave her a quick once-over.
    Five foot eight, around one hundred and ten pounds, clad in blue jeans, a loose, vee-neck sweater in lavender colours, and off-white trainers greeted my view. She wore her blonde hair short, and her smile reflected in her eyes. Nice.
    “I wonder if you’d be willing to give me a lift.” She switched to English without apparent effort. Hardly a trace of German accent.
    “Sure, I like company. So, if you’re not in too much of a hurry―I’ll have to pick up a trailer in Cologne―I can take you all the way to Sicily, or you can get off somewhere along the way.”
    Her eyes lit up some more. “Oh, cool! Makes my day, it really does. I’m Rita, by the way.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Rita. I’m Stella. And that,” I indicated my truck through the restaurant window, “is Tiny, your trusty means of transportation for the next few days, unless you’re getting second thoughts.”
    Her eyes widened a little at the sight of my monster, but at the same time her smile grew wider. “Tiny? I think I like your sense of humour.”
    I grinned, delighted by her frankness. “Let me finish this,” I gestured at my plate, “and have a cup of coffee, then we’ll get going.”
    “Okay, but I’m buying. Least I can do.”
    I watched her move to the counter, then return with two steaming mugs and sit down at my table.
    “So, what do you do when you’re not hitching a ride across the Continent? You don’t look like a