She stopped fiddling when she found a station playing the Temptations and adjusted the volume slightly. “I’ll have you know, I make a mean chicken piccata.”
He changed lanes to get around the SUV. Even with her memory impaired, she’d chosen classic Motown.
At least it wasn’t “Just My Imagination.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I’ll even prove it one day. I learned from the owner of a little trattoria in Tuscany who—” She broke off and thumped her palm lightly against her forehead. “This is maddening. Why can I suddenly recall something like that, but I can’t remember my own flesh and bl—”
He reached over the console and closed his hand over hers. She’d clenched them together again. “Stop.”
“But—”
“Stop.” He squeezed her hands. They were so slender he could enclose both in one hand. Dr. Granger must have told him a dozen times not to allow her to push herself too hard too fast. “Give yourself a break. You’ll get there.”
She was silent for a long while. Long enough for him to work his way around a semi, an SUV and a cherry-red Corvette. Then her fingers twitched against his palm. “What if I don’t?” she asked in a small voice.
Then maybe he’d have a chance.
The fact that he thought it at all shamed him.
“Where’s that confidence you showed Dr. Granger?” He put his hand back on the steering wheel. “Not remembering everything about your past won’t stop you from having a future.”
Her shoulders rose and fell with the huge sigh she gave. “I should be grateful that Linus is so young,” she said after a while. Her head was resting against the seat back, her focus on the window beside her. “He won’t remember anything about me abandoning him with his father.”
Adam’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Four days, he figured. They had at least thirty-five hours on the road ahead of them. He could drive faster, longer. Do it in three days. But four would be better for her. Less taxing. It would still mean eight hours on the road every day.
So four days. Four days to figure out how he was going to tell her that she hadn’t left Linus with either the father who’d claimed him or the father who’d made him.
Everyone in Rambling Rose knew the truth about what she’d done.
Which meant he couldn’t let her get there without making sure she knew that truth, too.
Chapter Six
“Is it bigger than a bread box?”
“Yes.”
“Is it smaller than a—” Laurel tapped her finger against her lips, thinking.
It was their third round of Twenty Questions. So far, he was two games ahead of her. They’d been driving nearly four hours now, stopping once at a rest area on the side of the road to eat the sandwiches that Maria had sent with them. Laurel had been more grateful for the chance to get out of the car and stretch her legs than she had been for the food.
There was no way she was going to admit it, though. Not after telling him she wasn’t a whiner. Against the journey still ahead of them, a few hours in the car was nothing.
“Did you fall asleep over there again?”
“No, I’m not asleep.” She’d only dozed off for a few minutes before they’d started playing the guessing game. “I was thinking.”
His chuckle was barely audible.
“Could it fit in the front seat of this car?”
This time, the chuckle was a little louder. “Pretty sure nothing else could fit in the front seat of this car besides us. But yes.”
She looked out the window. They’d already crossed the border into Oregon. Five states yet to go. She’d toed off her shoes and propped her bare feet on the dashboard. “Is it something everybody owns?”
“Nope.”
She wiggled her foot. He’d stumped her on Benjamin Franklin, and then on Niagara Falls. She really didn’t want to lose a third time, particularly when it had been her idea to play the game in the first place. Did that mean she had a competitive streak in her somewhere?
You ran in track meets, didn’t you?
“Is it something you own?”
Even in the dwindling light, she caught the look he gave her.
“Right.” Silly question. How would she know what he did or did not own nowadays? Their “not really serious” had been a decade before. “What question was that? My fifth?”
“Yeah, but I’ll give you that one.” He angled his shoulders against the back of the seat as though he was trying to stretch. “You can ask something else.”
“You don’t have to drive all the way through the night, you know. Just because I’m anxious to get to—”
“Are you going to ask a question or are you giving up?”
“I don’t give up.”
But you did. You gave up your own child.
She shifted herself, as if she could mentally stretch herself away from that fact.
All she ended up doing was pressing her arm against his where they both rested on the too-narrow console. She pulled her feet down from the dashboard and sat up straighter, putting a quick end to the warmth of his forearm burning through her cotton sleeve.
Her gaze fell on his cell phone where he’d dumped it in one of the cup holders between them. While they’d navigated their way out of Seattle, it had intoned directions. Now, with only the highway stretching out endlessly before them, it was silent. “Is it something high tech?”
“No. Old tech if anything. Way old.”
He was giving her hints, now. He’d probably tired of the game within minutes of agreeing. But she hadn’t been able to find a radio station and the sound of the tires on the road hadn’t been enough to silence the worries bouncing around inside her head.
Truth was, she was tired, too. Not of the silly little game. But of sitting on her rear end, trying to keep herself from leaning naturally toward him. Of trying to
