Drew didn’t want to think he had heard her correctly, but knew that he had. Uncrossing his arms, he stared at her for a minute. Her driver’s license listed her as being twenty-one, but she still appeared no older than seventeen. And while she’d been asleep on the floor, he had wrongly guessed her size. She was still a tiny thing, but damn, she was shapely. He figured her size was a five. Her waist size couldn’t be any bigger than a twenty-four, her breasts–possibly a 34B, and her height he would guess to be five-eight. Those measurements came easy to him, considering how well he knew a woman’s body. In his lifetime, he had bedded all shapes, sizes, races, ethnicities, and national origins.
When she cleared her throat, he knew she had caught him checking her out. Although he now knew that she wasn’t a kid, there was still a nine-year difference in their ages. That made her off-limits.
“Why would you be running from your father?” he asked.
“Because he is controlling. He ordered me to marry Mark after I graduated from college and -”
“You’ve been to college?”
“Yes. I graduated with a master’s degree a few weeks ago from NYU.”
“At twenty-one?”
“I finished high school at sixteen.” She pointed at the door. “If you don’t mind, could you close the door? It’s getting rather cold in here.”
He hated to tell her, but by the time they reached Escondido, she would have been a lot colder. Over the next couple of days, the temperature was expected to dip to the low forties. “Fine, we can talk outside.”
“No! I can’t be seen out in the open.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“My father has men looking for me. If they find me, they’ll drag me home. I’ve just learned that they’re tracking my credit cards since I left New York. That means they know I’m in Arizona. I can’t take any chances on being seen.”
He rubbed his hand down his face in frustration. “I honestly don’t know what to tell you, miss. I have a run to make, and I’m already thirty minutes late. You are twenty-one, and I doubt your father can make you do anything you don’t want to do, including marry someone.”
“You don’t know my father. Mark and I have been promised to each other for years, and both our families feel it’s time for us to marry.”
He found all this rather interesting. “How does this Mark guy feel about all of this?”
“He agrees with me. He doesn’t love me and knows that I don’t love him.”
Drew nodded. “There you have it. All you and Mark have to do is sit down and deny your parents what they want.”
“We have tried, trust me. Besides, me not wanting to marry Mark isn’t the only thing we disagree on.”
“Let me guess. You want to travel and see the world, right?”
“Yes, but more than that, I want to be a model. I’ve been doing it on the side for the past year without their knowledge,but this month, I appeared on the cover of Vogue and my parents flipped.”
“Vogue?”
“Yes. That’s when Dad ordered me home to plan my wedding to Mark. He said that no daughter of his would be a model.”
“Where is your father?”
“My parents live in Boston.”
He nodded, then looked at his watch. “Sorry, miss, I sympathize with your family issues, but you need to get out of my truck.”
She actually looked stricken. “And go where?”
“Anywhere but my truck. I’ll even take you back to Fred’s Truck Stop. It’s against company regulations for anyone to ride in any part of this truck during company hours. And any time I’m on the road hauling cargo, it’s considered company hours.”
There was no way he would tell her that he was the owner of the company and could make or break the rules. “You are a long way from Boston, so as long as you remain out of public view as much as possible, you should be fine.”
“I won’t be fine. My father’s men will find me and force me to go with them.”
He shook his head. “You make your father sound like some mafia kingpin or something.”
