Page 27 of Story of My Life
“Two,” he said, sounding like he was hoping I’d give up on the small talk.
Ha. No such luck, buddy.Like it or not, Campbell Bishop was my temporary muse, and I was going to get everything I couldout of him. “Are you the oldest? You seem like you’re the oldest. Have you lived here your whole life?” I asked.
He grunted as if that was an acceptable response.
I spied the battered paperback on the dashboard. “Do you read?” I asked hopefully. Heroes who liked books were, in my humble opinion, even hotter.
“Are you asking me if I’m capable of reading?”
I pointed at the dog-eared police procedural. “I’m asking if you enjoy reading.”
“Right now I’m not enjoying anything,” he said.
I settled back in my seat to regroup. I was rusty at small talk, but it was imperative that I pump this man for as much information as possible to grease the wheels of inspiration.
Cam handled the truck like he was born driving very large, high-horse-powered machinery. Like it was some kind of extension of his body. And what a body it was. He wore a gray Bishop Brothers T-shirt that hugged some very nice real estate. His jeans were worn in the “I do manly work and it’s taken me years for my muscular thighs to break in this denim” kind of way.
The radio, before he’d turned it off, had been set to some lively country music station.
Despite the rough start and the throbbing from my forehead, I felt like things were definitely looking up. In my head, I was already sending Book Cam roaring off to rescue our stranded heroine. Of course, Book Heroine…hmm, let’s call her Hazel just for ease. Yeah. Book Hazel wouldn’t have hit the national bird right out of the air. That was not a meet-cute. That was a meet-disaster. But the head-wound thing could still work. Who didn’t love an injured heroine and a grumpy hero playing doctor?
Maybe a sprained ankle would be sexier? Less blood, and Book Cam could carry her around with his gigantic muscles.
“Hello in there,” Real-Life Cam snapped, waving his hand in front of my face.
I blinked out of my fantasy world. “Huh? What?”
“Don’t mind her. She’s always partially checked out,” Zoey said from the back seat. “He asked what business besides eagle assault we had in Story Lake.”
Book Cam would definitely be nicer than Real-Life Cam.
“We’re meeting the mayor,” I said haughtily.
Cam smirked but said nothing.
“This is some kind of abandoned movie set, isn’t it?” Zoey demanded. “Where is everyone?”
I turned my attention away from the simmer of creative juices and glanced around. She was right. Besides a pair of squirrels racing up and down tree trunks in the park, there were no other signs of life.
“Nope,” Campbell said.
The rumble of the truck’s engine had masked the silence. I frowned. “I was told the ‘bustling downtown’ is a tourist magnet.”
Our reluctant hero snorted. “Who the hell fed you that line?”
Before I could answer, something more interesting caught his attention, and he hit the brakes in the middle of the street.
A man dragged a ladder and a long white pipe out from under a green awning in front of a brick storefront. The wordsGeneral Storewere spelled out in gold lettering on the windows. A dog the size of a bear sat on the sidewalk, swishing its furry tail back and forth like a metronome of delight, and another smaller, less hairy dog was at the man’s heels.
Cam leaned out his window. “Problem?”
The man with the ladder shook his head and pointed with the plastic pipe to a divot in the awning. “Nah. Fish head.”
The smaller dog gave an exuberant bark, which got the larger dog’s attention, and it lumbered down the concrete steps to join the party on the sidewalk.
Zoey poked me in the shoulder, and I turned around in my seat.Fish head?she mouthed.
Cam got out of the truck, leaving his door open. If we were in New York, it would have taken less than four seconds for a garbage truck or delivery van to rip the door right off its hinges. But here in thebustling downtown,there wasn’t another car in sight.
