“Wasting daylight, sweetheart. Or don’t you feel as confident now that you’re behind the wheel?”
She gave him a tight smile. “Don’t be nast—Oh. I see.” She pointed her finger into his face. “I see what you’re doing.”
She put the car in gear and checked the road. It was as empty as it had been when he’d pulled over, and she started accelerating.
She could feel her heart climbing up into her head where it pounded noisily in her ears. Her fingers were so tight it was as if they were trying to strangle the steering wheel. She unwound them, one at a time, flexing them until her knuckles were no longer white.
How many times had she seen Adam do the very same thing?
The wheels bumped off the shoulder as she steered back onto the highway and sped up even more until the speedometer needle was squarely on top of the bright white sixty.
“Speed limit is ten miles faster,” he said a while later.
She grimaced. “I know.” She managed to edge up five more miles per hour, which made it feel as though she was speeding hell-bent for leather. “Just...don’t bother me.” At least there were no other cars to be annoyed with her failure to drive at the full speed.
He adjusted the back of his seat so that it was reclining several inches. “One hour,” he reminded sternly.
“You’re going to sleep anyway.”
“No.” He crossed his arms over his wide chest and exhaled audibly. “Just giving you a chance to spread your wings.”
She was quite afraid that he meant it.
The road ahead was one narrow sweep bisecting closely shorn fields of earth green and flaxen gold. The sky was a big round bowl of pale blue, striped with nearly translucent streaks of white cloud.
“Last summer. You said we ran into each other.”
“Hmm.”
She glanced at him. His eyes were closed. But there was nothing relaxed about him.
She watched the road again, felt the vibration of the tires. And she hated the fact that—even though the road was bone-dry, the sky clear—she still felt nervous. As if she were riding a bronco that could break out of control at the drop of a hat. She peeled one of her hands away from the steering wheel and tested the reception on the radio. She found one station. The Tejano music was faint but it wasn’t riddled with static. She turned up the volume a notch. “Where did we see each other?”
He didn’t answer right away. A woman singing in Spanish underscored by bright horns filled the silence but didn’t keep it from feeling much too thick. “Does it matter?”
“The fact that you’re asking makes me tend to think it does.” She could see a semi now in her rearview mirror. Gaining rapidly.
She chewed the inside of her lip, feeling tense until it buffeted the car as it passed them. Only once it was speeding ahead of her, the mud flaps bearing silhouettes of a buxom girl, did she let out a long breath.
“You’re doing fine.” His eyes were still closed.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
The corner of his lips lifted slightly. He looked vaguely piratical with his dark whiskers and tumbled hair. She’d never thought she cared for facial hair on men, but there was no denying his dark appeal.
She nudged the vent so the air-conditioning blew more directly at her face.
“In Houston. At the art museum.”
She almost thought she’d imagined his words. She glanced at him. “I worked there.”
He opened his eyes. “You remember?”
She shook her head and focused on the road again. “Did we really just run into each other, or did you come to see me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It feels like it does.”
“I came to see you,” he said eventually.
“Why?”
He shifted. “Because I was in Texas for Gerald Robinson’s wedding. Decided to look you up.”
“Just for old times’ sake.”
“Yup.” His voice sounded clipped.
He wasn’t telling her everything. She knew it in her soul. Part of her wanted to force the matter. Part of her—the larger part—wanted to pretend she’d never asked. Wanted to rewind the moment altogether. “Was I engaged?”
He shifted again. “You had an enormous diamond on your finger. Two of those bridal magazines sitting on the desk in your office. You were looking at gowns. And flowers, if I remember.”
She wished she could remember.
“Did I tell you Eric and I were pregnant?”
“No.”
No hesitation in that answer.
She chewed the inside of her lip for another quarter mile. “Did you meet him then? Eric?”
“I didn’t meet him until the day of the transplant.”
She tried to make the pieces fit inside her mind. But it felt as fruitless as pounding a square peg into the proverbial round hole. “How could I abandon my own baby, Adam?”
“Pull over.”
“What? No! No,” she added more calmly. “You’re the one who needs to sleep. How long have you been awake now?”
“Too long. Pull over.”
Her hands tightened. “I don’t want to.”
He swore. “Laurel, pull the damn car over.”
He hadn’t raised his voice. She was pretty sure that if he had, she could have ignored him. But he hadn’t.
She slowed and steered onto the shoulder. “If we keep stopping like this, it’s going to take forever to get to Houston.”
“We’ll be there soon enough.” He barely waited for the tires to stop before he pushed open the car door and got out. His long legs ate up the ground as he paced, then turned around and strode back to the car. He gestured at her. “Get out.”
She put the car in Park, exhaling. Then she got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side, prepared to get in, but he held out his hand. “Wait.”
She went on the toes of her smiley-faced tennis shoes. Then back down again. She nervously fingered her necklace just below the buttoned collar. “Okay. I’m waiting.”
He shoved his fingers through his hair, then hooked them in his front pockets. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m
