Read Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) for Free Online Page B

once she saw there was no forthcoming Twinkie.
    Rainey returned to her pickup, where her stranger stood looking down the street and again stroking the back of his hair in that absentminded fashion.
    “My name’s Rainey Valentine,” she said.
    He blinked, then gave his name as “Harry Furneaux” and offered his hand. She thought the name suited him perfectly.
    “Do you remember the accident? Do you know how it happened?”
    He nodded. “Deer in the road—a line of them came running across in my lights. I swerved to avoid them, hit the gravel, I guess.”
    “Deer can total a car. One of my friends had one come through the windshield and almost kill her.”
    He repeatedly raked his hand through his thick hair. “My head feels like a watermelon.”
    “Jell-O gettin’ old,” she offered. “That’s what my ex-husband Monte said when he hit his head once. He fell off an oil rig and was knocked out, and when he came to, he was muddled for half the day, wasn’t even certain who I was.”
    Watching him, her anxiety began to rise again. “You really should see a doctor. Vomiting like you did could mean a concussion, and there can be long-term ramifications from a blow on the head. We should make a report to a doctor and the police, so that there’s an official record for my insurance company.”
    “There’s no need,” he said and downed the final bit of his coffee. “I’m fine. See—one finger, two fingers. I’m at a convenience store in Texas, America, and I don’t think I’m the President or God. I’m not, am I?”
    “No.”
    “There. The doctor would say take aspirin and rest, and I’m doin’ that, so there’s nothin’ more to be done.”
    She thought that he had the best command of sarcasm of anyone she had ever known, not counting her mother.
    He also had a stubborn look that she thought was really pushing it, considering the circumstances; however, she had toagree with his point. Rest and aspirin had been about all the doctors had told Monte to do, too.
    And she did not consider his attitude about not wanting to go to a hospital uncommon. All the men she had known had an aversion to hospitals. With the exception of her mother’s death, her father had steadfastly refused to even set foot in one, even when each of his children had been born. When Robert had had his appendicitis attack, he’d lain around moaning and groaning for half a day before giving in and letting her take him to an emergency room, where he’d had to go directly into surgery. Monte, who had climbed oil rigs for a living and raced Harleys for self-expression, had been inclined to run on seeing a nurse with a needle.
    “Look,” her stranger said then. “I appreciate you picking me up out there.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    They gazed at each other. Rainey felt a quickening inside herself, a very strong sense that she did not want to quit looking at him. As she tried to hide it, she wondered what was called for on her part, and what was behind the sad weariness in his beautiful brown eyes. And what it might feel like to kiss his lips.
    “What are you goin’ to do about your car?” she asked, averting her eyes to sip on her Coke. “Don’t you think you need to make a report to the police for insurance purposes?”
    “I think it’s fairly evident that I crashed.” He was looking in the distance again. “The car’s not going anywhere. I’ll call someone to go get it tomorrow.”
    So he was not concerned about his car.
    “Do you think you could drive me to a motel?” he asked.
    “A motel?” She had an odd difficulty imagining any point beyond that moment in the Texaco parking lot.
    Then, before they could proceed with their conversation anyfurther, a fight broke out over at the Trans Am that was still beside the fuel pumps. There were four young men, of the type that wore lots of black clothing and silver rings in their ears and on their fingers. Two of them immediately went to blows. Rainey recognized one as being