Free Chance Encounter (Take a Chance: Prequel) by Nancy Warren

Chapter One
     
     
    June, 1976
    On the Greyhound bus heading from California
to Oregon
     
    Daphne Naigle was making a list. As the
Greyhound bus rolled north and California sunshine gave way to
darkening skies and then drizzle, she passed the time writing in
her neat, round handwriting, all the things she could now call
herself.
    Fallen Woman. That topped the list. Such an
old fashioned term.
    Slut.
    Single mom. She tapped the end of her pen
against the page. Crossed that out neatly. On a fresh line she
wrote.
    Single teenaged mom.
    A shiver of fear trembled through her the way
the wind was blowing through the trees on the side of the
highway.
    She’d be nineteen when her baby was born. Her
hand slipped to where her waist used to be. At five months
pregnant, she wasn’t showing that much but she hadn’t been able to
zip up a pair of jeans in four weeks. She wore sweats, mostly. And
bulky shirts.
    She crossed out the last item on her list.
Rewrote it one more time.
    STUPID, pregnant teenaged slut.
    She started to write Adulteress but she
crossed that out too. She’d take the rap for a lot of this mess,
but her American History prof had told her he was separated before
she let him take her to bed.
    She hadn’t known that separated, in his
terms, meant that his wife and kids were visiting her family back
in Virginia for a month.
    She let her head drop back on the padded
seat. The bus changed gears and jolted slightly. He looked like
Sidney Poitier, she thought. And as she’d sat there in class,
mesmerized by his deep, rich, professorial voice and heard him
lecture with passion on freedom and justice, she’d believed in him
with every fiber of her being.
    She worked harder in his class than any
other, and when he’d asked her to help him research a book he was
writing, she’d been thrilled.
    Naïve fool.
    There was a young guy sitting in the seat
across the aisle from hers. The bus wasn’t very full so the only
people sharing seats were the ones traveling together. Everybody
else got two seats to themselves.
    She’d noticed him checking her out as soon as
he got on the bus a few towns back. He wasn’t much older than she
was. In his early twenties, probably. In a different time, she’d
have flirted with him to pass the time. He looked cute, with curly
hair that fell to his shoulders, hunky body in a well-worn denim
jacket and jeans.
    But she didn’t flirt. Not anymore.
    The miles dragged on. Her
eyes grew heavy. She felt the rattle of the bus as her head slipped
so it was against the window. Ow . She pulled a sweater out of her
bag, bundled it against her cheek and let sleep take
her.
    “ Are you all right?” A
low, soft male voice startled her.
    Daphne blinked, not sure where she was. Her
heart was thudding and black shadows of a nightmare clung. She
blinked again and thudded back to reality. The bus. The young guy
from across the aisle, now sitting beside her, looking worried.
    “ I’m fine.” She realized
her cheeks were wet and wiped at them with her hands.
    “ Here,” he said. He handed
her a red bandana. “It’s clean.”
    “ Thanks.” She wiped her
face.
    “ Go ahead, blow your nose.
I have another one.”
    She did. Feeling embarrassed. “Was I making
noise?”
    “ You were crying in your
sleep. It wasn’t loud, just really sad.”
    “ Sorry.”
    “ Do you want to talk about
it?”
    She glanced down at her lap and saw that her
notebook was sitting open. No way he could have missed reading what
was written there. Not only had she underlined STUPID pregnant
teenaged slut but she’d gone over the word stupid a few times with
her pen. Shit.
    “ What are you, a
minister?” She felt bitchy and cranky and who needed a complete
stranger poking into her problems?
    “ No. I’m a guy on a bus
with some hours to kill. I’m a good listener. A stranger. Sometimes
it helps to talk.”
    She
glanced at him and she thought he had the kindest eyes she’d ever
seen. Blue, so blue, and yet there was a