Kinsley blinked, startled by the words which were so far beyond what she anticipated, she couldn’t even process them for a long moment.
When she realized what he’d said, Kinsley laughed, shaking her head. “Nope. Not gonna happen.”
“Why not?” he asked, moving closer.
“Because,” she gasped, sputtering as she scrambled for a legitimate reason. “Because…!”
He moved closer, enjoying how flustered she was. Her cheeks were pink and her big, blue eyes wide with terror. “Don’t you trust me?”
She took a deep breath, and Lincoln moved even closer. He could smell her hair again. Damn, he was becoming attuned to her scent!
“No!” she laughed. “I don’t trust anyone who thinks it is a good idea to get on a motorcycle.”
He laughed again. “You’re going to love it. And you don’t need to go as fast as I drove. We’ll take it easy.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not doing it,” Kinsley replied stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. As if that might reinforce her position.
It didn’t. Lincoln only grinned at her tenacity. “I’ll make a deal with you.” With those words, he could see her interest.
“What kind of a deal?”
Closer still. There was less than a foot of space between them now. “I have to figure out my next project. I need a new idea.” He took her hand and turned, leading her out the side door. “If you’ll let me teach you how to ride a motorcycle, then we’ll take a trip, anywhere you want to go. That will be where I’ll contemplate my next idea.”
“Anywhere?” she echoed. What was he saying? And why was she letting him lead her out of the workroom? Was she nuts?!
“Travel,” he clarified with a nod. “Anywhere you want to go. I told you during the interview that I travel a lot. And I’m getting antsy now. I need to go someplace new. Some place that will allow my mind to relax so that I can figure out what I want to work on next.”
They were outside now, but she peered back through the door that was slowly closing. “But…Lincoln, you have several other projects that you’ve still working on. They are just sitting on those tables, waiting for you to finish them and make them wonderful.”
He shrugged. “They’ll wait. And besides, they aren’t really interesting me at the moment. I need a new challenge. Something more appealing and different.”
Despite herself, Kinsley was fascinated. Did she want to learn to drive a motorcycle? Not really. But she couldn’t deny that there was a certain…curiosity. Plus, the idea of traveling to some place new, some place different had appeal. Going some place outside of Seattle was more alluring than she wanted to admit. She so desperately wanted to travel and explore places that weren’t part of this dreary, rainy, cloudy city! She remembered begging her parents to take her some place new for vacation. But their idea of a vacation was a cabin up in the mountains. They’d gone there every year for a week during the summer months. She’d hated that cabin. She’d hated listening to her friends talk about the faraway places that they’d traveled during their summer vacations, leaving her behind all alone with only her books for company.
“I get to choose the place?” she repeated, not sure she should believe him.
He nodded, a knowing gleam in his eyes. “Anywhere you want to go.”
He pressed a button and the garage door at the back of the warehouse opened up, revealing the Ducati and several other vehicles. Was that a golf cart? Why in the world would Lincoln need a golf cart? No, it wasn’t a golf cart. It was more of a utility vehicle with a trailer on the back.
He walked in and brought the motorcycle out of the garage. “Should we do this here? Or down at the track?”
Kinsley looked off in the distance, then behind her at the relatively short driveway. If she chose the driveway, would this lesson be over more quickly? She certainly hoped so!
“Here,” she said, nodding her head for emphasis.
“Good enough.” He leaned the bike against the stand, then went back into the garage, returning with two helmets. “Here, see if this one fits you.”
She peered at the interior of the helmet, then shrugged, sliding it onto her head. “Its fine,” she told him, thinking that she wouldn’t need it to be on for very long.
“It needs to fit snuggly,” he explained, adjusting the strap carefully. “If it isn’t snug and secure, then it could come off in an accident.”
She pulled back, staring up at him. “But there isn’t going to be an accident, is there?” she asked.
He chuckled again. “We’ll just be driving around here. So, you’ll be relatively safe.”
She didn’t reply, being fully aware that “relatively safe” wasn’t the same as “Yes, you’ll be perfectly safe!”
“What if I can’t do this?”
He took her hand and led her to the bike. “Just trust me, okay?”
Kinsley sighed, but wasn’t sure she trusted him enough to agree. “I don’t think I trust you that much,” she admitted quietly. His only response was a gentle chuckle.
“I won’t let you get hurt, okay?”
She only glared up at him. For the next several minutes, he showed her the various parts of the bike, explaining the brake, the accelerator, the gearshift, and pedals.
“Okay, hop on,” he told her.
Kinsley figured that there was no danger in just sitting on the bike. It was easy enough to do. Since she was wearing jeans and a blue sweater today, her hair pulled up into a simple ponytail on the top of her head, there wasn’t any real harm.
So she swung her leg over the bike and carefully sat down on the bike. A moment later, Lincoln threw his leg over the bike as well, startling her.
