18. Chapter 18
“Go check the car,” Jase repeated in his most condescending tone. “Go. Check. The. Car.”
She wasn’t in it.
This. This was exactly why he never traveled with a woman. They were impossible to keep tabs on. Flighty, needy, always begging for attention, running off so you’ll chase them.
This one isn’t even mine.
A nagging itch on the back of his neck—which might’ve been a bug bite from last night—urged him to move his ass. Find her. He should’ve offered her a second beer after all. If something happened to her, Jase might’ve been the last person to see her.
No. He’d warned her to watch out for creeps.
She’d been pissed at Graham. She hadn’t said it, but it was obvious, and women left men for less.
Was she so pissed at his brother that she’d leave in the middle of the night without a word?
Jase searched the parking lot and headed to the main office. A man behind the desk with a hairy potbelly hanging out the bottom of a stained T-shirt was chewing on a burrito.
“Have you seen a woman with long brown hair and…”
He didn’t realize he was cupping his hands in front of his chest until the clerk smirked and said, “Oh yeah. She was here a half hour ago looking for coffee. I put a pot on for her, and she hasn’t come back for it. She went that way.”
Jase stepped outside and looked in the direction the clerk pointed a greasy finger.
Behind the motel, sitting under a tall oak tree, was Lindsey, unmistakable with her halo of wild hair and the huge sunglasses she wore yesterday.
He went back in to pour two foam cups of the muddiest coffee he’d ever seen from the ancient, stained coffeepot.
“She your girl?” the clerk asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
Instead of explaining Lindsey was the girl, not his girl, Jase said, “Thanks for the coffee.”
“Tell her I made it special!” the clerk shouted after him.
Lindsey didn’t lift her head from the red journal in her lap as Jase walked up. She had absolutely no situational awareness.
“Morning,” he called out to her. “Graham’s looking for you.”
“Then why did you find me?” she asked, her voice a few degrees cooler than it was last night.
“He’s not feeling too well,” Jase said.
“I bet. He didn’t have as good of a night as you did.”
“What?”
What kind of night did she think he had?
“Never mind.” She snapped the journal shut. “Are we leaving?”
“Soon, I think,” Jase said. “Here, I got you a coffee.”
“You what?”
Jase shrugged. “I didn’t know how you take it, so it’s black. Fair warning, it looks thick enough to chew.”
She took the cup. Something was off, but he couldn’t say what.
“You brought me coffee?” she asked.
“Is there a problem?”
She shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
“Do you not want it? The guy said—”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s not you.”
Lindsey used the tree to help her stand. With her journal and coffee, she said, “Thanks a lot.”
“No problem,” he said, and she walked away, the skirt of her sundress desperately trying to keep up.