Build-A-Daddy Read online

Buckle up.

  She put her seatbelt on. After a long mental debate, she reached over and buckled the bear in too.

  “Just so you know—” She stabbed a finger just off the tip of its bear nose so it would know she was serious. “—if you come awake in the middle of the night and try to spank me, I am going to freak right the fuck out.”

  Warning given, Aubrey put the car in gear and headed for the highway.

  * * * * *

  She should have checked the weather before starting this trip. Half an hour past Wichita on US-81, the flurries turned into real snow. The kind which stuck to the roads, which wouldn’t have been so bad if there wasn’t a half inch of half-melted slush directly underneath. Aubrey kept eyeing her rearview mirror where the digital readout tracked both her northward direction and the falling temperature.

  “Don’t do this to me,” she begged, but it had already dipped well below freezing. By the time she hit the halfway point between Arkansas City and Lincoln, the flurries had turned into a blizzard, and outside temperatures had dropped drastically. Huge gusts of wind buffeted her car, and though she had long ago slowed to a crawl, her back-end kept trying to fishtail. Her hands hurt from her tight grip on the steering wheel. She should have stayed home, but her parents were expecting her. It was rare when she had both the money and the time for a trip home. Bad as it was, even had she known how bad the weather was destined to get, she knew she was just stubborn enough to try to make it, anyway.

  What you wouldn’t have done is stop at the mall, her brain whispered. That was a given. Had she known it was going to snow like this, she would have driven straight past Towne East and probably even hiked her speed a good five to ten miles over the limit in an effort to beat the storm all the way home. Her folks’ home, she quickly amended. She didn’t live there anymore, and thank God, really, because they’d likely still be setting her up on date after blind date. They wanted grandchildren with the same blind desperation she wanted a Daddy. How sad was that?

  Wow, this weather was horrible. She seemed to be the only idiot out in it, which was phenomenally unusual for US-81, even during a snowstorm.

  When have you ever seen, much less been in, a storm like this? her brain demanded.

  The back end of her car slid sideways. Aubrey quickly got it under control, but it scared her. It scared her even more when the temperature dropped another degree. Shit. She couldn’t see a damn thing, not headlights nor taillights. She had barely seen the deep blue Rest Area sign, blurred beneath a dusting of snow, but still recognizable. One-quarter mile, it read; she marked it on the odometer. Packed snow obliterated the turnoff. If she hadn’t been tracking it, she never would have noticed the faint, flat stretch of snow between two road markers which had a good six inches of snow mounded around their bases. She should have been able to see the rest area’s lights from the interstate, but no, all she saw was fast-flying snow. The only reason she didn’t run straight into a lamp post was because she bumped into the curb first.

  Ooo, that was a tire alignment she couldn’t afford to pay for.

  Slipping into reverse, she pulled off the sidewalk, bouncing and sliding as she dropped onto blacktop again. She couldn’t see the bathrooms any more than she could see the sidewalk, but she parked anyway. Everything outside was a white-out. Too bad it wasn’t a white-out inside the car. She wouldn’t at all have minded not being able to see how low on gas she was. She should have filled up two towns back when she could still see the town she was passing. She was still a bar above empty, which meant under any other circumstance, she would have enough to make it to Concordia, at least. Knowing she might be stuck here a while, she was debating on how long or how often to run the engine. She should have put a sleeping bag in the trunk or a heavier coat in the backseat. Sadly, the only warm and fluffy thing she had to help stave off the cold was Potentially Demonic Bear in his cowboy hat and boots.

  She glanced over at him. He grinned back at her.

  “Be very careful,” she warned. “I don’t care how much I spent, there are no laws against abandoning a Build-A-Bear on the highway.” She’d be out sixty bucks, but she wouldn’t go to jail.

  She wished she hadn’t stopped in Wichita for that Five-Hour Energy shot with a forty-ounce Code Red chaser.

  “I really have to pee,” she told her bear. Supposedly, somewhere in all that fast-falling snow was a bathroom. She couldn’t think of anything more stupid than blindly setting out in search of it. On the other hand, if she just sat here, she was going to wet her pants and these were cloth seats. Also, her Little didn’t like diaper play.

  Wind buffeted the car. Already swirling snow was building on the windows. Even with the heater running, it was storming hard enough to blanket all but the sections of glass closest to the vents. The underside melted, but the upper layer accumulated, growing thicker by the minute. She watched thin rivulets of water slip along under the snow like tears.

  Why was it that the longer a person thought about having to pee, the worse the sensation became? The pressure of the seatbelt was too much, so Aubrey took it off. She tried to find a more comfortable, less bladder-crunched way to sit. She bounced a couple times. It wasn’t working. In the short amount of time she’d spent parked here, the swirling storm had completely covered every window and presumably, the rest of her vehicle. Getting out was a bad idea, but she had to do something to relieve the pressure.

  Leaning over the backrest, she hooked her jacket off the rear seat and pulled it on. She shoved open the driver’s-side door just in time to see bright, yellow light splash over the door and her arm. She yanked her arm back in just as the pickup truck slid to a stop beside her, shaving the door clean off her car.

  In the half-second of heart-pounding quiet which directly followed, there was a lot Aubrey couldn’t remember. She didn’t remember crab-crawling into the passenger seat until her back butted against the other door. She sure didn’t remember grabbing Potentially Demonic Bear because never in her wildest imaginings did she imagine hugging him would have saved her from anything. At best, he was only a Build-A-Bear, he just didn’t have that kind of power. At worst… well, the jury was still out on which side of the whole Good vs. Evil Spectrum he swung.

  Staring wide-eyed and horrified at the jet-black truck and gaping snow-filled hole where her door used to be, Aubrey honestly didn’t know if she’d screamed. She couldn’t remember making a sound. Not until that truck rocked, the window cranked down, and a dark-haired man in a well-worn brown felt cowboy hat popped his head into view. The truck was high enough, so he had to scrunch down to see her, but his eyes were no less wide than hers, and when he saw her, his face paled.

  “Christ on a cracker,” he swore, peering through the narrow gap between the bottom of his window frame and the top of her now quite broken car. “Lady, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t see a thing.”

  In that instant, two thoughts centered themselves in her mind—a mind blown empty by the shock of what had just happened. First, how was she going to get to Nebraska or hell, even the next town, in a car without a driver’s door? And second, from his hat to the white collar of his t-shirt to the black collar of his leather jacket, the man looked just like her Build-A-Bear. And her Build-A-Bear looked exactly the way she had imagined her cowboy Daddy would when she’d been hugging the little cloth heart.

  “Holy shit,” she said stunned, her breath steaming the snow-flecked air as it came swirling into her car. She hadn’t built a bear. “I built a Daddy!”

  Chapter Two

  “Thanks for looking the other way while I peed,” the blonde woman said. “I was starting to get desperate.”

  “No problem.”

  “I know. I just want you to know, you know… I appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” he said again; that was pretty much how the conversation had gone between them. Branch Dalton continued driving while silence once more filled the extended cab of his pickup.

  He gripped and re-gripped the steering wheel. His knuckles were so tight, every few miles he had to let go just long enough to flex, sounding like a cereal commercial, popping and cracking. The tension in them had nothing to do with the worsening weather conditions outside, but everything to do with the slip of a woman sitting on the passenger side of his bench-style truck seat.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” he said; that seemed to be what his conversational starters were limited to. He’d lost track of how many times he’d tried to apologize.

  “It’s okay,” she said in the most neutral tone he’d ever heard from a car accident victim. “I didn’t really like that car, anyway.”

  “You’ve got another one?” His hands relaxed their grip, just a bit.

  “Nope,” she said, still bluntly neutral.

  “Oh.” His grip tightened again. He shook his head, and then again. “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “So, you keep saying.”

  “I’ll pay for everything.”

  “You’ve said that too.” Still neutral. Almost cheerful in a weirdly blank way. Not once did she look at him. Instead, she stared straight through the snow-blind windshield at a highway she couldn’t see; he sure as hell couldn’t see it. All he saw was snow, on the road, filling up the ditch. Mother Nature trying her damnedest to blanket the road markers and signposts until he was more or less driving by Garmin and braille. The bright pink stripe on the Garmin attached to his dash told him there was a road here somewhere. Whenever he felt his tires dip, braille told him to get off the soft shoulder and back onto the road before he hit something that killed his truck. Even crawling along at around 10 mph, these were dangerous conditions. Near as he could figure, they were still twenty miles out of Concordia, but if he could get them there, that’s where he intended to hole up until this storm passed. Concordia wasn’t a big town, but surely, it had to have a hotel or café.

  “Don’t worry about it.” It was the first time she’d voluntarily said something other than in response to something he’d said first. “I’m insured.”

  If anything, that made him feel worse.

  “Well, anything your insurance doesn’t cover, I will. I mean it.”

  “I know you do.”

  He looked at her again. Maybe she was in shock. Maybe that’s why she was so calm about all this. She didn’t look like she was in shock, but then he was a rancher, not a doctor. Frowning, he glanced from the road to her, then back again before reaching out to feel her forehead. Startled, she blocked his hand with her teddy bear and flattened against the passenger door.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Checking to see if you’re in shock. ‘Cause, lady, you’re not acting right.”

  “How exactly am I supposed to be acting?” She blinked twice. “I have been very calm about all this.”

  He scoffed in agreement. “You definitely have been that.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she scoffed right back at him.

  “Lady, even Mother Teresa would have been a little upset by what happened back there. Don’t you realize I could have killed you?”

  “No, I really don’t think you could have.” There it was again, that cheerful, not-quite-cheerful, odd blankness again. “You were meant to do what you did.”

  “Shave your door off?” he demanded, arching both eyebrows in surprise.

  “Clean as a baby’s behind.” Her calm was phenomenal.

  “Wait. What do you mean ‘meant’? Are you talking as in ‘destiny’ or as in you sit in rest area parking lots all the time waiting for trade-up vehicles?”

  “No, I mean you did exactly what you were meant to do so we would…” she hesitated before spreading her hands, gesturing her teddy bear all around his truck.

  “So, we would end up traveling together?” In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help wondering if it was time to get concerned. “How did ‘destiny’ even know someone would be coming along?”

  “Because I conjured you.” She turned away from the windshield and looked out the passenger window instead.

  Mama always told him there were stranger things on this highway than himself. “I so owe her a Coke.”

  The girl looked at him. “What?”

  “Nothing.” His hands on the steering wheel were tight again. He checked the odometer and then the Garmin. Only 19.5 miles left to Concordia.

  “You’re going to think I’m crazy.” Shaking her head, she turned back towards the window.

  Way ahead of you, honey.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I don’t even know if I believe it.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. That was something else his mama always told him.

  “Go on, hit me with it. Believe what?”

  She glared at him, a corner of her mouth twisted as she no doubt considered her next move.

  “Okay.” Decided, she faced him as fully as her seatbelt allowed. “You exist only because I created you.”

  “I’m pretty sure my parents will disagree, but all right.” Making himself open to the possibility, he said, “How do you figure that?”

  “I thought you into existence.”

  “My mom has a really fun story about the twenty-six hours of labor she went through with me. She likes to tell it every time I get a new girlfriend. I think her story pretty much disproves your theory.”

  She shook her head. “You only think that because I conjured you.”

  “You couldn’t conjure me as an orphan?”

  “That would make your back story more tragic, but no. All good characters need interesting back stories.”

  This was too crazy to be a serious conversation. He started to laugh, but one look at her face told him she was not only serious, she was upset about it.

  “Okay,” he said and reached across to pop open his glove box. “Start digging.”

  “For what?” She didn’t move.

  “My car insurance. Four months ago, I had to print a new copy off my computer. It’ll be dated.” He waited, but when she only looked at him confused, he spelled it out. “You couldn’t have conjured me this morning if I was already here four months ago.”

  “Back story,” she repeated as if he was slow on understanding.

  “I spilled coffee on it that morning,” he argued. “There are coffee stains all over that paper.”

  She arched both eyebrows in a very plain if unspoken, ‘So?’

  “That’s one hell of a detailed back story, don’t you think?”

  “I’m one semester shy of gaining my pathology residency. It’s my job to be detailed.” Folding her arms, she frowned out the window at the swirling storm beyond. “Or it will be, once I graduate.”

  “All right.” Branch shifted in his seat, leaning back so he could keep his eye on both her and the road. “If you conjured me, then you should know everything there is to know about me.”

  She looked at him. “You want me to prove it?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but I doubt you can.” He didn’t mean to sound as if he were issuing a challenge, but he knew that’s how she took it when she faced him again. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed.

  “You’re a rancher,” she said.

  “So is half the Midwest. What do I ranch?”

  “Cattle,” she shot back. “But you do have three horses: Silver, Tonto, and Kemosabe. Tonto is your favorite, but he’s getting up in years, so you don’t ride him anymore. You take the four-wheeler.”

  Branch forgot about the road ahead of him. He stared at her. “How the hell do you know that? And don’t say—”

  “Because I—”

  “Don’t!”

  “—conjured you,” she stubbornly finished. “I know everything about you. From your preference for cowboy boots, to how you like to watch the sunrise each morning on your front porch with a coffee cup in your hand.”

  They were in the middle of the nowhere on what was usually a very busy highway, but Branch didn’t care. He hadn’t seen another car in almost an hour. The truck skidded a few feet when he hit the brakes, but he got it stopped without going sideways and threw the gear into park.

  “Now look here,” he warned, twisting sideways in his seat. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to—”

  “You’re headed to Nebraska,” she said, lifting her chin.

  “So is everybody else on this road,” he laughed. “This road goes to Nebraska.”

  “It goes to Canada,” she calmly corrected. “It runs through Nebraska, but okay, let’s be more specific.”

  Branch wasn’t sure he could handle anything more specific.

  “You’re going to Lincoln, Nebraska.”

  “How—” He stared at her.

  “Because I conjured you,” she insisted, although this time she did so with a glittering rush of tears. “I did it because I was tired of being so lonely and because I didn’t think I had a prayer of finding someone who might want the same kinky things I want.”

  A strangling noose caught hold of his insides, yanking taut in an instant.

  “Lady,” he said, much more calmly than he felt. “I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Aubrey,” she whispered, fighting back tears. “My name is Aubrey.”

  “Okay, Aubrey.” Beyond ready for something to start making sense here, Branch took the lead. “You know everything else about me, what’s my name?”

  “Branch Dalton,” she said with a breathy hiccup.

  It floored him… for all of two seconds. Reaching across the seat, he slapped his glove box closed. “You saw that on my registration.”

  “No, I—”

  “Don’t,” he said sharply, cutting the air between them with the flat of his hand. “Don’t say that again. It isn’t true, Aubrey, and I’m sure if you think about it rationally for half a second—”

  “You like kinky sex,” she told him, and that noose in his gut tightened its stranglehold. He stared at her. “You like your girls to have Little qualities. You like them in pigtails and Little dresses. You like to color with them, watch Disney with them, give them baths, nap times, and grilled cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off. And at night time, you like to cuff them to your bed.”

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