Tight, faded jeans rose up his legs, sticking out of tattered blond cowboy boots that had seen better days sometime before either of them were born. Lengthy hair the color of the boots was tied in a ponytail, shaking from side to side as he walked with hitching steps alongside Interstate 10.

“Where you headed?” she asked from the driver’s seat of the sky blue Cadillac convertible with the top down.

Jay stood there in the steaming summer Arizona heat and grinned, showing her his perfect whites between lips that had been fighting a losing battle against the heat but obviously were quite full in better climes.

He was immediately taken with her as much as she was with him. She looked young, probably in her early twenties, but she could easily pass for younger with those dark green eyes and the long, night-colored strands that played around her face in the open wind. The dress she wore was pale and thin, covered with raspberry flowers but covering little of her.

“Do you make a habit of picking up strangers on deserted highways in the mountains?” he asked, keeping the grin.

If his bottom hadn’t done it, the tiger’s grin beneath those azure eyes did. Shasta’s breath grew sharp, then she realized she had a question to answer.

“I haven’t picked you up, yet,” she said, her own grin flashing, “and besides, I don’t know if we’re going the same way. You didn’t say where you were going.”

“Nowhere fast,” Jay replied, the smile on his lips faltering.

“Been there,” Shasta said, her smile failing also.

“But now I’m just headed east,” Jay said.

“Me too,” Shasta said. “I’m going to Omaha.”

“Nebraska?”

“Sure. Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Why are you going?”

“I’m from California.”

Jay waited a second for further explanation, but when none came, he asked, “Which means?”

“Everybody goes to California,” Shasta said, rolling her eyes, “but when you’re from there it’s nothing special. You tire of the beaches after a while and the fast life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Now that he was stopped, Jay realized his feet were hurting from the constant walking on gravel and he leaned against the Cadillac’s door.

A semi-trailer roared by, sending winds to toy with their hair.

“So why Omaha?” he asked.

“When you’re from California, there’s no place to go,” Shasta said. “I’ve never been to Omaha. Don’t even have a clue to what’s there. So I picked it off a map and decided that’s where I’m going.”