Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
A nother broken-sleep night. He’d lain stiff as a board beside Sunny, his arm a barrier to her encroachment, when all he wanted to do was hold her close, breathing in her scent, the way he had while they’d watched TV. Through the dark hours, he’d tried to stuff his burgeoning, unwanted feelings for her into a compartment inside him, next to the one where he’d kept his sorrow over his parents’ deaths. They hadn’t stayed. Neither would she.
Squinting in the bright sunshine, Gabe loaded their suitcases into Cinderella’s trunk and plodded through the snow to the road. He scanned the asphalt like he was inspecting one of the Beach Island rides before the park opened. Plows had scraped away most of the snow, but a compacted layer remained. It was pocked and melting in places where the town had scattered ice melt pellets, but plenty of places were crusted with ice. What would the road be like outside town, where there was less traffic, fewer passes by the plows?
He trudged back to the Mercedes and winced at the scrape on the front bumper from the barrier they’d hit. He circled the car to the driver’s side door and opened it. Sunny looked up and tilted her head.
“Slide over,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
She didn’t move. “What did you say?”
He took a big breath of cold air. Let it out in a cloud. “I’m driving. I have more experience driving in snow on partially cleared roads than you do.”
“But you?—”
“Slide over. Please.” He shook his head in irritation. Why had he thought a drive through the plains and Rockies in February was a good idea? That was exactly it: he hadn’t thought. Sunny had burst into his life, all strawberry-blond hair and self-confidence, and she’d spun stories of long-lost siblings for a lonely man. He’d been powerless to resist.
And he was even more powerless now that he knew her. Her fire. Her kindness. And those goddamned drugging kisses that turned his brain to soft-serve. Sunny was more dangerous than the snow-crusted road ahead.
When she levered herself over the console into the passenger seat, he tried not to look at her butt. Failed.
He lowered himself into the driver’s seat and pushed it back. He checked the mirrors and flipped on the headlights. Silently, Sunny switched their coffees in the sturdy cup holder he’d installed to replace the broken factory-original one. He released the brake, checked the backup camera, slowly backed out of the parking space, and churned over the slush to the main road. The tires spun a little as he accelerated onto it, but they caught the road and held. He was glad he’d replaced the worn tires.
Driving, he wouldn’t have to think about what Sunny had offered him and the pain that hid just below that offer. Focusing on the road meant he wouldn’t spend the day regretting turning down no-strings sex with his dream woman.
He took careful sips of his coffee to keep the slightly burnt odor in his nostrils instead of the orange blossom scent of her shampoo that filled the car. Last night while supposedly watching that cooking show, he’d inhaled it shamelessly. When he’d finally fallen asleep despite the erection he couldn’t do anything about, considering the paper-thin bathroom door, he’d dreamed about sitting in an orange orchard with Sunny, sunlight filtering through the canopy above. Well, not only sitting. Some of his dreams involved other activities.
Activities he wasn’t about to do in his waking life with a woman who’d leave him without a backward glance once they hit Vegas. Even if they slept together, she might not even stop the car to punt him out of it on his relations’ driveway. She’d said as much. An end date.
She didn’t believe in the happily-ever-after he’d seen his parents living.
Gabe didn’t do end dates. Usually, he was cautious about starting relationships because he knew once he was in one, he’d never want to stop. Like with Riley, even after they’d started to feel more like friends-with-occasional-benefits than soul mates. The only thing different about Sunny was how quickly it’d happened. Even now, sitting silently in the car with her, he wanted to reach out, take her hand, beg her to stay.
But she wouldn’t.
Sunny was like a vintage pickup truck, all American-made steel, replacement parts, and duct tape; nothing was going to take her down. Gabe was one of those paper-thin fiberglass compact cars that’d crack if you gave it a stern look. If they slept together and she left, she’d crush his soft, aluminum heart.
She’d never make her heart vulnerable to begin with. She was reinforced steel, strong at the seams.
They were opposites, but Gabe couldn’t figure if they were the kind of keep-them-separated opposites like fuel and flame or better-together opposites like red paint on a burly Jeep.
“Donut?” Sunny asked.
“No, thanks, not while I’m driving.” He gripped the wheel. Still in the eastern flats of Colorado, the road was pretty straight, but they were headed through the mountains later that day. The peaks loomed ahead, white-capped blue in the distance.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She shoved a piece of donut between his lips, and he fought not to close around her finger and suck off the sugar.
“Better than the boxed ones,” she said.
“Mmm.” Sweetness burst over his tongue, the delicate pastry melting in his mouth.
“Coffee’s better, too. I’m glad old Pete sent us to that bakery.”
Poor Pete. He was probably still praying for their souls. As good an actress as Sunny was, Gabe doubted they’d fooled him.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?” She licked sugar off her thumb.
Gabe ripped his eyes back to the road. “Another seventeen hours or so, according to the online map. Might take us another two days or a little more, depending on the weather and the mountain passes.” A cold ball of dread settled in his stomach when he imagined the switchbacks coated in ice.
“It looks clear ahead,” she said. “I can see the tops of the mountains. No clouds like the day before the storm.”
He grunted. “You can turn on some music, if you like.”
The music turned out to be a mistake. It was showtunes again, and when she sang along to “Defying Gravity,” her voice was so clear and beautiful that it snapped his heart like too much sun on a plastic dashboard.
After lunch, they started to climb through the mountain passes. The disadvantage of avoiding the interstates was that while the small highway they’d taken had been plowed down to black asphalt, it had an unsettling number of curves without guardrails. Gabe slowed Cinderella to a crawl and kept his eyes on the road, hoping another car wouldn’t come swinging wide in the opposite direction.
When Sunny sucked in a breath, Gabe stomped on the brake. “What?” Had she seen an avalanche? A mountain goat bounding onto the highway?
“Oh, sorry, nothing. It’s just that it’s so beautiful.” She waved a hand toward the gorge below, its sides lined in tall evergreens and the bottom coated in snow like frosting. “I never get tired of seeing the mountains.”
“It’s pretty,” he admitted. He’d never driven through the mountains, certainly never in winter. It was a lot for an Ohio flatlander to appreciate. He accelerated. Driving through the mountains in the dark was not something he wanted to do.
When they made it to Four Corners at sunset, Sunny insisted they get out. As she spun, arms out like a figure skater, on the medallion that marked the intersection of four states, looking utterly carefree, Gabe’s heart split open a little more.
She held out her phone. “Take a video to capture the moment? I’m not sure I’ll ever be here again.”
“Sure.” He hit the red button. Watched her spin, her grinning face turned up to the sky. Finally, she stopped, breathless. He almost asked her if he could send the video to himself, but that would’ve been creepy. And pathetic.
“Come here.” She beckoned to him and tugged him to her side.
His arm went around her waist, and he didn’t care that the strands of her hair slapped his face or that the wind blew away her scent. The soft warmth of her body was all he craved. More than he deserved.
Holding out her phone, she snapped a selfie of the two of them, the nearby rock formations lit up red in the background. “I’ll send it to you, okay?” She dropped her phone in her coat pocket and laid a hand on his chest. “We’d have missed this if we’d taken the interstate. Thanks for bringing me here.”
Gabe’s gaze drifted to her lips, reddened in the cold. He didn’t want to kiss her. He didn’t want to feel the slide of her soft lips over his, mingle his breath, his soul, with hers, feel the warmth of her body pressed up to his like in the motel room yesterday. Still, he couldn’t pull his attention off her mouth.
“God, you’re annoying.” Gripping the collar of his coat, she pulled him down to her and kissed him.
Her lips were cold, and so was her nose. Gabe wrapped his arms around her, sharing his heat with her, sharing this moment in the barren high plains. He burned it into his memory, recording the scent of her hair as it whipped around them, the chill breeze, the crunch of snow under their feet, and the last rays of sunset that made her hair glow like rose gold.
When he had it all down, he pulled away. “Let’s get going. We’ll stop for the night in the next town.”
“Okay.” As they walked back to the parking lot, she gripped his hand. Her power flowed into him through that connection. She’d shared her strength with him since they’d left Ohio, first pushing him to leave home and then propping him up as he’d allayed his fear of riding in the car and then of driving it. She was magical.
With Sunny by his side, he could’ve overcome just about anything. Too bad she’d leave him before he had to face his biggest dread: meeting the family that had thrown him away.