Page 1 of Home on the Road (Trucker Love #2)

“Hey, Ziggy, that purple truck you’re always on the lookout for just pulled in,” Sally Jo called through the window that connected the kitchen with the rest of the diner two weeks later.

Ziggy Montrose took a breath, wincing as the pain in his ribs flared. He was tempted to run into the walk-in refrigerator and hide until that particular truck left again. The only problem was there were three meals on the grill that needed his immediate attention. Plus, there was the one yet to be ordered, though it was always the same thing. One twelve-ounce sirloin steak cooked medium-rare, a double order of hashbrowns with cheese, onions and tomatoes, a sweet tea, and a slice of apple pie for dessert. It was the same order he placed every time he came into the diner.

It just sucked that today Ziggy would not be able to sit with the man while he ate as he started doing a couple months ago. After three nights of sitting and talking until closing, they had become more than trucker and short order cook. They had become biweekly lovers, whenever the trucker stopped.

The black eye and bruises on his arms and pain in his ribs and hips were also the reason he hid in the kitchen all day, instead of roaming back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room as he normally did. Talking to the truckers and listening to the gossip and news from the road made Ziggy feel a little less alone. He missed driving a truck and being on the road himself. It had been six months since he’d given up being a long-haul driver to work here.

While he hated his job as the chief cook and dishwasher at the small truck stop in the middle of Kansas, there was not a lot he could do about it. His father had died six months before and before he could get to his truck and leave after the funeral, his stepmonster cornered him to demand he give up his job to fill his father’s shoes in the diner.

She also insisted he live with her. His closet-size room was barely big enough for a single mattress on the floor, and he lived out of his duffel bag, but Ziggy did not know how to leave. At least not without shutting down the diner. Family honor dictated that Ziggy work here until he could come up with a better solution. One that would allow him to return to the road while the diner stayed open.

Problem was the diner was the only one along the highway in a fifty-mile radius and the truckers relied on it for gas, a meal, and a place to park and spend the night when needed. His sense of duty to his father kept him slaving away in the kitchen sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.

Between the exhaustion that had been getting worse in recent days, and the pain from that morning’s harsh beating from the stepmonster, Ziggy was moving at less than half speed. Sally Jo tried to help, but she was hopeless in the kitchen, so he had her take over the busboy duties, which had also fallen on Ziggy’s shoulders when the last busboy slash dishwasher had walked out two weeks before. Except for posting a sign in the window, his stepmonster did not seem enthusiastic about hiring anyone. Which left Ziggy doing everything except actually waiting on the customers. Thank god for Sally Jo, Kelly, and Inez, the waitresses that kept the food flowing from the kitchen to the customers.

The bruises on his body were hidden under his loose t-shirt and cargo pants, but he could not conceal the ones on his lower arms and face. The stepmonster had bruised his arms when she grabbed them to drag him out of his bedroom. She then began punching and kicking his face and body because his alarm clock had woken her up.

Twenty minutes after Sally Jo’s announcement, the cowbell hanging on the front door rang as his lover walked in. By that time, most of their customers had finished eating, paid for their meals, and left. The ones still eating who had heard Sally Jo’s announcement looked from the big, burly trucker to the kitchen passthrough where Ziggy peaked out while trying not to drool or be seen. Some looked intrigued, some looked disgusted, but at least no one, including Sally Jo, said anything as Harry Myles walked across the diner.

He was the sexiest thing—on two legs or eighteen wheels—that Ziggy had ever seen, though he had never told him. In fact, until now no one except Sally Jo knew of his attraction for the man. If his stepmother knew Ziggy was gay, she would do more than just beat him up. She would kill him for what she said was a perversion in the world.

Thank the universe she did not know the truth.

Harry was not wearing his usual baseball cap, so his black hair, which was shaved on the sides and long enough on top to wear in a tail. was visible. His mustache and goatee looked like they needed a trim, and even the cheeks that were usually smooth had a couple days’ stubble growing on them. From where Ziggy stood, his beautiful turquoise eyes appeared tired and his shoulders were slumped with exhaustion. Even so, with his strong features, and the sculpted body of a god, Harry Myles was any gay man’s wet dream.

Ziggy knew from what he had learned over the past months that Harry was headed home after yet another two-week run all over the western United States. He and his brothers owned their own long haul trucking company, and Harry delivered loads around the west while one of his brothers drove the east coast, and the other one ran the business from their family farm in Paola, Kansas. They were no longer farmers, but held onto the land, just in case. Currently, one of their neighbors leased and farmed their property.

After his first few visits, Ziggy never waited for Harry to come in and order. He always ate the same thing and Ziggy could time it so the food came off the grill just as the man walked in.

As soon as the big trucker settled at the counter as far from the door as he could get, Ziggy carried the man’s plate out to him. He kept his head down so the baseball cap he wore hid most of his face. With luck, Harry would not see the bruises on his cheek and around his left eye.

“How did you know?” Harry asked as he did every time he stopped for dinner. His stomach gave a loud grumble.

Ziggy shrugged. “You haven’t changed your order the last six months. Why would you change it today?”

He turned away, pulling his arms in front of him in hopes that Harry would not see the blue-black marks that encircled his wrist and lower arms. But, as usual of late, luck was not on his side.

“Ziggy? What happened?” Harry reached out, but froze with his hand an inch from his bruised arm. “What the fuck? Who do I have to kill?”

****

Harry Myles was beyond tired. He had worked what felt like the longest three weeks of his life, and he was still half a day’s drive from home. Tonight, all he wanted was to cuddle and fuck the cute little cook who looked as delicious as the meals he created, and crash in his truck for the night. Tomorrow morning, he would deliver this load to Kansas City before heading home for some well-deserved downtime.

But instead of delivering his dinner with his usual wink and snarky, flirty conversation, Ziggy barely said a word. He placed the plate in front of Harry and turned away quickly. Which was unusual. Usually, the man sat on a stool on the other side of the counter and drank a chocolate milkshake while Harry ate his meal.

Then he saw dark bruises that nearly covered every inch of skin from Ziggy’s wrists to his elbows. Some were new and others were yellow and looked to be several days or a week old.

He wanted to grab the man’s arm to keep him from walking away, but doing so would add to his pain. When Ziggy did not answer him right away, Harry ran two fingertips up his biceps to his shoulder.

“Answer me, Z-man. Who did this to you?”

Instead of confiding in him, Ziggy shook his head and turned toward the kitchen. Harry thought he saw tears in the man’s eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered before hurrying back into the kitchen.

“He was fine yesterday, but he had the newest ones when I came in this afternoon for my shift,” Sally Jo said softly as she wiped the empty table behind him.

“Do you know who could have done that?”

Sally Jo finished with the table but did not walk away. “My best guess is his stepmother. She’s a mean bitch and has always hated Ziggy, even before his father died. That’s why he became a trucker as soon as he could get his license and a job. To get away from her.”

“He’s a trucker?”

“He was. For almost six years until his dad died. That’s when the ice queen demanded he come home and take over the kitchen. She works him like a slave and I think she beats on him pretty often, but he won’t complain or have her arrested or anything. When I asked him why he doesn’t just walk away and go back to the road, he said it has to do with family honor.”

Rage began to burn in Harry’s belly. “Family honor, hell. If she is hurting him, he needs to get out of here.”

Sally Jo smiled at him. “You talk to him. Maybe he’ll listen to you because he sure won’t listen when I tell him he should leave before she puts him in the hospital. Or worse.”

“I think I will,” Harry said rising from his seat. “I’ll be back in a minute, so please don’t throw my dinner away, okay?”

“Sure thing, big man,” Sally Jo said, glancing toward the front window. “Better make it quick. She just pulled in, no doubt to empty the cash register before she goes to town for a night of drinks and fucking one man or another.”

Harry nodded as he rose and slipped around the counter and into the kitchen. “Cover for me.”

He did not wait for her response, but ducked into the kitchen just two seconds before the front door opened with a loud jangle of the cowbell.

Looking around the kitchen, he was impressed by how clean it was, especially after a full day of cooking. But Ziggy was nowhere in sight.

Harry opened the walk-in refrigerator, but the man was not in there, either. He headed down the short hall to the back door, but did not see him in the storage pantry, or the small office. Pushing the back door open, he took a step out and looked around.

“Go away,” a small, miserable voice came from his left.

“Not until we talk,” Harry said, easing the door closed so it would give them privacy, but not lock them out.

Walking around the dumpster, he found the slight man sitting on a plastic box. Had he lost more weight since the last time Harry had been through?

Ziggy looked up at him with tears running down his face. “What do we have to talk about?”

Though he was not sure his brothers would approve of his hiring a new driver without their input, Harry felt in his gut this was the right thing to do. Ziggy needed to get out of here, and after their every other week liaisons, he wanted the man with him in his truck. He wanted to fully explore the attraction he felt for the cute ginger that had his cock rising every time he was within twenty miles of the truck stop.

“About you coming on the road with me.”

Harry watched as Ziggy blinked before he said, “But if you’re my boss, we can’t have sex. That wouldn’t be right.”

As soon as Ziggy blurted out the statement, he frowned like he could not believe he had just put such a condition on his coming on the road with him.

Though it was not at all what he wanted, Harry nodded. “That sounds reasonable. At least until you decide we’ll be together permanently.”

“Permanently?”

“Yep. As in ‘til death do us part, grow old together and adopt a dozen cats once we retired from the road.”

The expression of astonishment on Ziggy’s face had Harry fighting to keep from laughing out loud.

“But you hardly know me,” Ziggy whispered.

“I know enough that I’m willing to spend the rest of my life getting to know all the parts of you that I don’t know yet. So, what do you say? Come with me when I leave in the morning.”