“I don’t know.” She guessed wildly. “The Mona Lisa?”
He was silent for half a second before he gave a laugh. “For a wild-ass guess, that’s pretty good. Yes. The thing I was thinking of is the Mona Lisa.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re making that up.”
“Scout’s honor.”
“I have the feeling you were never a Boy Scout.”
“And you’d be wrong.” He stretched again, grimacing a little. “I need to get out of this car for a few minutes.” They’d left behind anything approaching traffic two hours ago. He slowed and pulled well off on the shoulder, checked his mirror, then got out of the car.
She watched him walk around to the weedy sage-colored grass on her side of the car. Facing away from her, looking out into the distance ahead.
What he could see was anyone’s guess.
He rolled his head around a few times, propped his hands on his lean hips and stood there, looking tall and broad and so strangely alone that her throat got tight.
She blamed it on tiredness. She’d had more activity that day than she’d had since BA.
She rubbed her eyes and tugged at the cuff of her sleeve.
Then he was opening the car door and climbing back inside.
As soon as he was buckled in, they were off once more. “We’re stopping at the next town we come to,” he said. “Don’t care how big or small.”
They hadn’t seen a road sign for miles. But she wasn’t going to argue. Not that he’d asked her opinion. “Okay.” She started to reach for the radio dial but made herself stop. She didn’t want to annoy him by hunting for something besides static.
But he seemed to recognize her aborted movement. “Go ahead. See if we’re close enough to anywhere to actually pick up a signal.”
“Where’s satellite radio when you need it, right?” She didn’t need any second urging and began slowly turning the dial. She’d already learned the usual seek button skimmed right on past the weaker stations. “Feels like that old Chevy you had before you put in a radio.” She passed the faintest blip of music and turned the dial back again, trying to capture it. But it was too elusive and she continued hunting. “And then Kane borrowed the car for some reason—”
“He needed wheels so he could go see a girl.”
“—and the radio got stolen anyway.” A burst of country music suddenly exploded from the speakers. “Yes. Hello.” Supremely satisfied with herself, as if she were personally responsible for the reception, she adjusted the volume slightly before sitting back and grinning at him.
He was staring fixedly through the windshield and his long fingers looked tight on the steering wheel.
Her pleasure dimmed. “What?”
He shook his head slightly. The sun was hovering just above the horizon, perfectly etching his strong profile against the gentle rolling hills whizzing past. “It was a good car, radio or no radio. Got me to work on time. School on time.”
“And it had more leg room than—” Realization dawned. She exhaled and closed her eyes. “I’ve done it again.”
“So?”
She looked at him. “So it’s unsettling. It reminds me I have no control over my mind.”
“Do any of us?” He seemed to deliberately loosen his grip on the wheel. “You remember what color that car was?”
“Something hideous, I think.”
The corner of his lips kicked up and a small slashing dimple appeared in his lean cheek.
And all of a sudden, she found it hard to breathe. He really was too beautiful for any man to be. But what made her breathless wasn’t the physical perfection of him. It was something else.
Something deeper.
Was it serious?
“Puke green,” he said.
“Chartreuse,” she corrected. Cobbling her wits together took effort. “A perfectly wonderful color—”
“—except on that car.”
She could see it so clearly in her mind. Parked at the curb in front of her... Her what? “Did I live in a dorm?”
“You had your own apartment when we met.”
She could feel something about that hovering on the edges. Something she couldn’t quite grasp. But the harder she tried, the more elusive it became, making it as unreachable as recalling if she had been serious about him, but he hadn’t been serious about her.
So she thought about the car instead. A much safer focus. “Did you—” she’d almost said we “—take any road trips in that car?”
“Toronto a few times. Finger Lakes. No place further than the Adirondacks.”
“No cross-country trips like this, then.” Technically, she supposed Seattle to Texas wasn’t all the way across the country, but it surely classified as more than halfway.
“Not in that car, that’s for sure. This’ll be the longest haul for me.” He waited a beat. “First long road trip I ever made was last year. Kane and my dad and me. Buffalo to Paseo, Texas.”
“I’d say I’ve never heard of it, but—” She spread her hands.
That dimple peeked out again to express a wealth of wryness. “That’s not because of the amnesia. It’s a seriously tiny town that most people probably hadn’t even heard of until last year.”
She twisted in her seat so she could face him more fully. “What happened last year?”
He didn’t answer right away. And when he did, she couldn’t shake the sense that he’d been on the verge of saying something else. “You know what Robinson Tech is?”
She hadn’t forgotten common, everyday things. “Of course.” The company name was synonymous with the word “computer.” Maybe she’d even had one of its devices with her and lost it in the car accident.
“The founder of that company turned out to be my dad’s half brother. Gerald Robinson. He got married in Paseo. Last June.” His gaze slid over her briefly before turning back to the road. “Made the news despite his plans to keep it on the down low when his ex tried to kidnap the bride during the wedding.”
“Good grief! Was everyone all right?”
“Everyone except his ex-wife. She’s in a psychiatric hospital now.”
“Not your ordinary wedding excitement.” She was less
