Flirting With Disaster (13 page)

Katie leaned forward to fiddle with the volume on his stereo. Her scent washed over him, fresh as a beam of sunshine.

He wasn’t going to touch her. Not today, not tonight, not ever.

“Wuh-wuh-why d-did you d-decide t-t-to sstart fffieldwork?”

Oh holy mother, that was bad
. If every sentence that came out of his mouth was that much of a catastrophe, he would seriously have to consider going back to silence.

Katie had to have noticed, but there was no pity or disgust in her expression when she turned toward him, rising slightly in the seat to tuck her sock-clad feet beneath her butt. “Do you want the short, pithy answer people find comforting, or the long, painful one that’s actually true?”

“Wuh-we have t-t-two hundred ffifty nine miles to g-go.”

“So, the long one then?”

“B-both.”

She smiled a little, touching her right thumb with her index finger and rubbing at the spot where her ring had been. Looking down at her hands, she said, “The short version is, I got sick of sitting around in an office all day, and I thought going out in the field would make my life more interesting.”

“Has it?”

She glanced at him, then away. She’d been doing it all morning, flicking her eyes in his direction for a few seconds at a time. Assessing him. Or reassessing him, as if she hadn’t taken his measure right the first time. He wondered how he compared to Judah. In California, Sean had never had much trouble finding a date, but in Camelot, California didn’t count for anything. Did she even see him when she looked at him, or did she see the silent shrimp who’d sat behind her
in math class?

“Sure,” Katie said. “It’s been fun, learning new stuff. Caleb took me to the firing range one day, and he’s been teaching me self-defense—how to poke attackers in the eye and whatnot. How to read a room and interrogate people. I like it.”

She looked at the window and fiddled with the missing ring again. He waited for the long version of the story, but she kept her peace, and finally he asked, “D-did you luh-lose it?”

“Lose what?”

“The ring you k-k-keep p-playing with. The sssilver one you d-don’t wear anymore.”

Katie frowned. “No. I didn’t lose it. I put it away.” She glanced at his hands on the steering wheel, then at his face, and let out a long breath. “It was my wedding band. I stopped wearing it a couple weeks ago, when the divorce came through.”

“You were muh-muh-muh—” He gave up on the word “married.” It wasn’t happening. “To who?”

“Levi Rider.”

“You’ve g-got to b-be fuh-fucking k-k-k-k—” Sean pounded the steering wheel with the heel of one hand. “You muh-
married
that guy?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

Levi Rider was the kind of asshole everybody loved. Good-looking, smart, and smiley, in high school he’d had a compliment for every teacher and a hundred best friends. Weekends, he and the guys he hung out with would round up some alcohol and host a party under the railroad trestle in the woods near campus. Sean had been out there a few times, a fringe participant, and he’d resented the hell out of Rider, who told funny stories about himself that always made him look good.

When you couldn’t make your own tongue work, it was irritating to be around someone who used words as well as Levi.

Rider had treated Katie like a sidekick, and once in the locker room Sean had overheard him bragging to his friends about how he’d talked Katie into giving him head when his parents were out of town the weekend before. Sean had ditched school for the first time in his life and thrown rocks in the Coshocton River, winging them as far as he could, one after another, until he couldn’t lift his arm past the shoulder anymore and the pressure in his chest had begun to ease up.

“Wuh-why would you d-d-d
-do
that?”

She looked at him, forehead furrowed with dismay, and said, “He asked me to.”

“Juh-Jesus.”

He watched the road and took a few deep breaths. It was all water under the bridge. What did it matter that Katie had married Levi? Probably everyone had called it the perfect match. Levi and Katie. Such a cute couple.

It was none of his damn business.

“We needed residency,” she said. “We moved to Anchorage after we graduated, but the university’s tuition was too expensive without residency. He hadn’t paid attention to how hard it would be to get it—they don’t just give it to you if you move up there. But a married couple can get it more easily than a single guy, especially if the wife is working full-time. So he said, you know, maybe we should just get married. And I said yes.” She pinched a fold in her jeans at the knee. “I didn’t tell my family until earlier this year. That’s why I wore the ring on my thumb, though I don’t know why I bothered. I bought Levi one, and he stuck it in his underwear drawer.”

“Yuh-you were only eighteen?”

“Yeah. I knew better, though. I was just … seduced, I think.”

Sean’s hands hurt. It took him a second to realize he was gripping the steering wheel so hard, his joints ached. He forced himself to loosen all the muscles in his hands and arms.

Not your concern
. This was exactly the problem with Katie—the way she made him care about shit that had nothing to do with him. All these feelings she dredged up from somewhere that he’d been happy to ignore for over a decade.
Lock it down
, he told himself.

But Katie kept talking, her face turned toward the window and her tone faraway, untouchable.

“Levi had this grand plan. He’d always wanted to move to Alaska and live kind of wild, and he used to talk about it a lot. We’d go up there, learn to camp and hike and everything, work for wilderness people in the summers to pick up all the skills we needed, and then after we graduated we could start our own outfitters. Live the good life, you know? Commune with nature and all that.” She wrinkled her nose. “It sounded better when Levi said it. And to his credit, we did all that. I’m quite the accomplished camper, I’ll have you know. We started up an outfitting business, Wild Ride, and ran it for three years before it all kind of came apart.”

She looked over at him. Unclenched her hands in her lap. Shrugged. “So that’s the story.”

That was the story? She hadn’t told him anything except what he already knew—that Levi Rider was a selfish prick. What Sean wanted to know was, had she loved the guy? Did he break her heart? How was the sex?

What he wanted to know was whether she’d grown to resent the way Rider treated her or still didn’t see it, even after the divorce. And none of that was any of his fucking business, so he looked at the highway and kept his hands loose on the wheel and kept his mouth shut the way he should have in the first place.

When he’d calmed down enough to glance at Katie again, she was watching him. “Do you remember me?” she asked.

“What?”

“From high school. Do you remember me?”

“Sssure.”

“Did you like me?” she asked.

“I d-d-didn’t
know
you.”

“Yeah, but did you like me?”

He looked back at the highway. It wasn’t meant to be an embarrassing question. She couldn’t see into his soul, couldn’t know how much he’d liked her and for how long.

He nodded.

“Did you like Levi?”

“Fuck no,” he said.

It was the first clean sentence he’d managed since she climbed into the car, and it got a smile out of her.

“That makes one person.”

“Wuh-wuh-one p-person what?”

“One person who liked me more than Levi.”

She untucked her feet from underneath her and stuck them on the dashboard. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d normally stand for, but he made an exception.

“That’s why I married him,” she said. “At least, that’s what it seems like to me now. That was the seduction. I loved him, or I thought I loved him, but he was the only guy I’d ever gone out with. I don’t think I married him because I loved him. I think I married him because
everybody liked him so much, and I thought, ‘This is the guy to spend your life with. The guy everybody wants to be around. He needs you, and so you’re lucky just to be with him.’ ”

Fiddling with her thumb again, she said, “He’s a complete horse’s ass. That’s what I decided. People are just stupid. I was stupid, too.” She looked out the window for a while, then turned to face him, and she seemed taller, her voice taking on the sharp edge it had in Louisville last weekend. “I’m not going to be stupid anymore. That’s why I changed jobs. I’m going to be a different person. Smarter, and stronger, and all-around tougher and less idiotic. So, you know, fair warning if you liked the old Katie. I’m killing her off.”

Sean watched the road. They blew by a green highway sign that told him Buffalo was 243 miles away.

The situation was so much worse than he’d thought.

At her house this morning, he’d just about talked himself into going for it. Katie didn’t fidget or flick her eyes from side to side when he talked, looking for a way to escape the conversation. Nine times out of ten, when you stuttered in front of people, they got so busy feeling sorry for you and worrying about what to say, they couldn’t even hear you. You started to feel infectious. You started avoiding opening your mouth, because God forbid you should make someone uncomfortable.

With Katie, it wasn’t a problem. Either she didn’t care, or she was exceptionally good at pretending she didn’t. Her lack of reaction had relaxed him enough that he’d started talking to her openly, without thinking too hard about what he was saying.

It turned out he couldn’t have a normal conversation with Katie without hitting on her.

She was interested in him, too, no question. He’d coaxed a real smile out of her—the smile that showed her cute crooked tooth—and he’d caught her staring at his stomach. When he’d told her she was the farthest thing from terminally unfuckable he could imagine, her lips had parted, her pupils had dilated, and he’d known if he tried to kiss her again, she’d let him.

But then Caleb walked in, and Sean came to his senses. Katie wasn’t some random woman he could take to bed without worrying about the repercussions. It was never a good idea to fuck your friend’s little sister, not unless you planned to marry her. Caleb would wipe the floor with him if he found out, with good reason.

Now he had another reason to maintain his distance, and an explanation for the way she’d acted with Judah. Katie was wounded. Coming off a divorce, she was looking for some
excitement. Maybe looking for a man to convince her she was desirable after whatever Levi had put her through when their marriage fell apart. She wasn’t herself, and that made it a bad idea to get tangled up with her.

He needed to think with his head instead of his dick, because if he slept with Katie, somebody would get hurt, and he wasn’t completely certain it would be her.

All he had to do was not notice the way her sweater skimmed over that slim little body and her jeans hugged her ass. The way she smelled. Her soft lips. How much he fucking
liked
her.

“It wasn’t you,” he said.

The comment seemed to surprise Katie almost as much as it surprised him. She’d been staring out at the bleak interstate landscape, her body slumped against the passenger door, but now she turned to look at him, her eyes returning from wherever they’d been. Far away, he thought. She was a daydreamer. She always had been.

“What wasn’t me?”

“It wasn’t your ffault,” he said. “You were n-never ssstupid.”

“How would you know?”

It was an uncomfortable question, and one he didn’t know how to answer. He could hardly tell her he’d memorized her in high school. That he’d known all the colors of her nail polish, her favorite clothes, and the names of her friends. What celebrities she liked. Every score she’d gotten on every math test they took.

He could hardly tell her she’d worn the sweater she had on today to the office two weeks ago, and her silver necklace had shown up in September and quickly become a favorite. She’d think he was a freak or a threat, some kind of stalker, but it wasn’t like that. He couldn’t help it. He noticed things. He noticed
her
.

“I juh-just know.”

He turned his eyes to the road, but he could feel her watching him. After a while, she said, “I liked you too, you know. In high school.”

“You d-d-did?”

“Yeah. I did.”

The claws in his shoulders lost their grip, and he smiled at her. “You were never stupid,” he said again. “Trust me.”

She didn’t reply. A frown appeared between her eyebrows, and it stayed there as she turned to look out the window again.

They covered the next forty miles silently, listening to Yo-Yo Ma play the cello and thinking their separate thoughts.

When they stopped, Sean gassed up his SUV, and Katie headed toward the Lake Erie Kwik Stop to pee and forage for food. “What do you want for snacks?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Whatever,” he said. “I’m not p-picky.”

She wandered the aisles of the convenience store, wondering what Sean Owens liked to eat. The guy who’d doubled over laughing on her couch probably ate junk food—potato chips and snack mix and Hostess cupcakes—so she got some of that stuff. But she hadn’t seen funny Sean since this morning, and she figured Granite Man ate healthy food. Carrot sticks and veggie burgers and sushi. California food.

The Kwik Stop didn’t have much to choose from in that department. He’d have to settle for junk.

He had a book in his hand when she returned to the SUV. Reading, he squinted slightly, the faintest expression of concern on his forehead, as if his brain were tussling with the story. Most of the time, it was hard for her to remember they were the same guy—the high school version of him and this one—and then at moments like this, it wasn’t. He’d looked exactly the same, reading on the bus.

She scaled the Man Fortress and buckled herself in, refusing for the fourth time today to permit herself any questions about his ride. She knew nothing of cars. It was possible this one had cost a lot less than it appeared. Perhaps brand-spanking-new hybrid SUVs with black leather seats and expensive-new-car smell had become more affordable since she last checked. Or it could be he was the sort of guy who liked cars so much, he spent all his money on them. In any case, it would be rude to inquire.