He knew perfectly well what she was referring to. He just didn’t know how to answer.
“You were the arrangement, weren’t you? You were going to pay the fees so that I could stay there. I know how much money that takes. Mrs. Grabinski told me what she has to pay for Mr. Grabinski.”
He exhaled loudly. “Does it matter?”
But she wasn’t finished with out-of-the blue questions, it seemed. “Do you know what he looks like?”
Linus. Of course she meant Linus.
“Although I guess you wouldn’t have any reason to,” she answered before he could.
“I saw him at the hospital,” he admitted. “Through a window.”
“And?” She sounded almost breathless.
“And he’s a baby.” He wasn’t the artist. Nor a man blessed with the gift of words. “He’s got a round little head and kind of a pointed chin. Not much hair. One day it’ll be the color of an oak barrel, but right now, it’s just...wisps of brown. He didn’t even really look sick. He had a blue blanket in one hand and was beating the hell out of the floor with the plastic toy in his other.”
She undid her safety belt and started clambering over the seat. Her hair slid over his shoulder as she pressed a kiss to his cheek along the way. “Thank you,” she whispered.
His cheek burned. “For what?”
“Being you.”
Then he heard rustling as she arranged herself in the back seat, followed by the distinctive click of a safety belt.
The rearview mirror told him she was lying down. He figured it wouldn’t be long before she was sleeping. The silence that ensued seemed to confirm it.
He lifted the water bottle again and drank. He’d stock up on more caffeine when they hit Albuquerque. He was going to need it. Caffeine and another packet of aspirin. Because his back was killing him again.
“I don’t think it was Eric I was afraid of.”
Her words were soft. Not at all asleep.
“I think it’s just me,” she went on huskily. “I think I’m the one I’m afraid of.”
He looked in the rearview mirror again. She was still lying out of his sight. “Why do you think that?”
But no answer came.
And he kept driving. The tires inexorably eating away the distance between them and the son she still didn’t know was his.
Chapter Twelve
It was the cessation of motion that woke her.
Laurel’s eyes felt gritty when she blinked them open. The twisted safety belt was strangling her and she unfastened it and stiffly pushed herself up to a sitting position.
She was alone in the car. And it was dawn, but only just.
A gas pump sat outside her window. Out the other side, pink fingers of light were just creeping along the horizon. She felt around for her shoes, then remembered she’d kicked them off when she’d been sitting in the front seat with Adam.
Adam.
She rummaged through her canvas bag until she found her hairbrush and quickly restored some order. She still probably looked like she’d been put up wet, but given the limitations, it was the best she could do. She could see that while she’d slept, he’d gotten into more of their provisions. One bruised banana and only half a package of cookies remained.
“Still love your Oreos, I see.” The memory of lying on a couch, her head on his lap while she sketched and he studied and demolished cookies was disturbingly bright in her mind.
She grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and awkwardly climbed into the front seat again to push her bare feet into the tennis shoes before getting out of the car. The air was dry and cool enough to send chills dancing all over her.
The gas station seemed to be located in the middle of nowhere.
She had no way of knowing what state they were in, much less what town—if there even was a town—since the only thing in every direction were wide, flat plains.
She assumed Adam was inside the small building on the other side of the lone pump and headed toward it. Gas stations always had a bathroom. Even ones on an empty road in the middle of nowhere.
The dirt-streaked glass door let out a musical ping when she entered and Adam, standing in front of a gigantic coffee machine, glanced around. His five o’clock shadow had darkened even more. It would only take another day and he’d have a beard. His thick brown hair was rumpled over his forehead and the too-small shirt clung to very, very male muscle and sinew.
Her skin suddenly felt one size too small and her cheeks felt five shades too hot.
She held up her toothbrush, desperately trying to banish the alluringly graphic memory of him rising over her. Of his hands and his mouth—
“Bathroom,” she squeaked.
Adam jerked his head. “Through the door over there. You want anything to drink? We have another twenty-five miles before we reach Horseback Hollow. We’ll stop for breakfast there. Ernie’s been telling me there’s a good place to stop.”
“That’s right. The Grill,” the clerk—Ernie—advised sagely from his position behind the register. “Place isn’t much to look at, but they slap down the best waffles and bacon this side of Vicker’s Corners.”
“Can’t ignore such a rousing recommendation,” Adam said, sending her another look. “So?”
She was grateful to her eternal soul that he didn’t know what was going on inside her head. She crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. She’d do better with a cold shower than something to drink. Her nipples were so tight they hurt, and there was a hollow warmth deep inside her that she hadn’t experienced in...
“Laurel?”
She gulped. “O-orange juice?” Thankfully, her words didn’t sound as strangled as they felt.
“Oh, yeah.” The clerk seemed to take it as a question. “I’ve got all kinds of juice. Far end of the cold case there.”
“Great.” She didn’t dare look at Adam again. “I’ll just, ah, just, ah...be quick.” She bolted through the door he’d indicated.
She slammed the door behind her and flipped the lock.
