Batteries Not Required by Linda Lael Miller Page B

for calling?” I prompted. I didn’t mean to sound impatient, but I probably did. My brain kept racing ahead to Parable, wondering how long it would take to get my business done and leave.
    Lucy perked right up. “Yes,” she said. “The law firm across the hall from our offices is hiring paralegals. You can get an application online.”
    I softened. It wasn’t Lucy’s fault, after all, that I had to go back to Parable and maybe come face to face with Tristan. I was jobless, and she was trying to help. “Thanks, Luce,” I said. “I’ll look into it when I have access to a computer. Right now, I’m in a rental car.”
    â€œI’ll forward the application,” she replied.
    â€œThanks,” I repeated. The familiar road was winding higher and higher into the timber country. I rolled the window partway down, to take in the green smell of pine and fir trees.
    â€œI wish I could be there to lend moral support,” Lucy said.
    â€œMe, too,” I sighed. She didn’t know about the Tristan debacle. Yes, she was my closest friend, but the subject was too painful to broach, even with her. Only my mother knew, and she probably thought I was over it.
    Lucy’s voice brightened. “Maybe you’ll meet a cowboy.”
    I felt the word “cowboy” like a punch to the solar plexus. Tristan was a cowboy. And he’d gotten on his metaphorical horse and trampled my heart to a pulp. “Maybe,” I said, to throw her a bone.
    â€œBoss alert,” Lucy whispered, apparently picking up an authority figure on the radar. “I’d better get back to my charts.”
    â€œGood idea,” I said, relieved, and disconnected. I tossed the phone back into my purse.
    I passed a couple of ranches, and a gas station with bears and fish and horses on display in the parking lot, the kind carved out of a tree stump with a chain saw. Yep, I was getting close to Parable.
    I braced myself. Two more bends in the road.
    On the first bend, I almost crashed into a deer.
    On the second bend, I braked within two feet of a loaded cattle truck, jackknifed in the middle of the highway. I had already suspected that fate wasn’t on my side. I knew it for a fact when Tristan McCullough stormed around one end of the semi-trailer, ready for a fight.
    My heart surged up into my sinuses and got stuck there.
    The decade since I’d seen him last had hardened his frame and chiseled his features, at least his mouth and lower jaw. I couldn’t see the upper part of his face because of the shadow cast by the brim of his beat-up cowboy hat.
    What does Tristan look like? Take Brad Pitt and multiply by a factor of ten, and you’ve got a rough idea.
    â€œDidn’t you see the flares?” he demanded, in that one quivering moment before he recognized me. “How fast were you going, anyway?” It clicked, and he stiffened, stopped in his tracks, a few feet from my car door.
    â€œNo, I didn’t see any flares,” I said, and I must have sounded lame, as well as defensive. “And I don’t think I was speeding.” My voice echoed in my head.
    He recovered quickly, but that was Tristan. While I was pining, he’d probably been dating rodeo groupies, cocktail waitresses, and tourists. While I was waiting tables to get through school, he was winning fancy belt buckles for the school team and getting straight A’s at the University of Montana without wasting time on such pedantic matters as studying and earning a living. “Back around the bend and put your flashers on. Otherwise, this situation might get a whole lot worse.”
    I just sat there.
    â€œHello?” he snarled.
    I still didn’t move.
    Tristan opened the door of the rental and leaned in. “Get out of the car, Gayle,” he said. “I’ll do the rest.”
    My knees were watery, but I unsnapped the seat belt and de-carred. Four stumpy French fries fell