by Amie Denman
She smiled at him and held up the paper. “Here we go. This says we can use any form of transportation we want, but we have to stay together as a team and prove we were together at each location with pictures.”
“I’ll drive,” he said. Without a word, he and Kate dashed toward his gray pickup and hopped in.
“Mermaid statue,” she said. “First stop.”
* * *
KATE TOOK A deep breath as she put on her seat belt. “I’ve never been in the fire station, so I can’t tell you if it smells like that in here, but I’m not smelling a mountain pine, either.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Brady said.
“Do you park inside the fire station?”
“No, but it lingers on me. Smoke, trucks, tires.” He smiled. “It’s a good smell.”
“Then you shouldn’t try to cover it up. I don’t mind truck smell,” Kate said. “I enjoyed most of my time driving across the country in one.”
“You didn’t get lonely? I’d lose my mind with only myself to talk to all day long.”
Kate laughed. “I listened to audiobooks, called my parents every few days and talked to waiters at restaurants. It wasn’t so bad.”
The hours of solitude in the cab of her freight truck weren’t the thing she remembered most. She could pull up detailed mental images of the road ahead, the mountains, the fields, even the cities she’d driven through. In just a few months, she could be experiencing the same freedom from the air.
Kate concentrated on the list of items they needed to find in Cape Pursuit. The list was long and daunting, and even though they weren’t required to collect every single item, they would receive points for each thing they checked off. “Place mat from the Seafood Shack, that’s an easy one,” she said. “One plastic sandwich bag filled with beach sand. Three pieces of beach glass. A used Frisbee. One half of a bikini—your choice which half. One pair of red sunglasses. A used trolley pass. A parking ticket from the public lot on the south edge of town. A selfie with a police officer or firefighter—that one will be easy—one tourist map from the chamber of commerce office, two—”
Brady slammed on the brakes and Kate put a hand on the dashboard of the truck just as Brady reached over to keep her from jerking forward. His large hand rested on her shoulder, but her list of scavenger hunt items and her pen slid to the floor of the truck.
“Sorry,” Brady said, pointing at the road in front of his truck. “Ducks. They’re never in a hurry, waddling across the road.”
A family of ducks slowly made their way across the street that lead through downtown Cape Pursuit. Traffic from the other direction had also stopped and she heard someone blow a horn. Kate glanced in the side mirror and recognized Holly’s car behind them.
“We have tailgaters,” she said. “Holly and Tom are right on our bumper. I wonder if they’re going to follow us and piggyback on our success? I don’t mind helping a friend, but she had her chance to have a great local partner like you and she blew it.”
Kate wasn’t at all sorry her roommate had decided to use the activity as a way to get Tom the Summer Heartbreaker’s attention. If she had to run all over town with anyone, Kate was happy it was Brady. And, she had to admit, Brady was too nice of a guy to be stuck working with Holly, who was likely to lose interest or find something else to do before they were halfway through the list.
Brady grinned. “Do you want me to try to lose them?”
“No. We’ll play nice at the mermaid statue while we pick up a brochure and take our picture, but we could employ some subterfuge and tell them we’re going to go get coffee and take a break before we make any more stops on the scavenger hunt.”
“Coffee sounds great,” Brady said.
Kate swatted his shoulder playfully. “I was kidding about that. We should knock out as many stops as we can early if we want a shot at winning this.”
Brady ran a hand through his short hair and took his foot off the brake as the ducks finished crossing. He pulled into a parking spot in front of the coffee shop downtown, and Holly’s car sped past them.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked.
“Giving them a head start. This way, we don’t have to lie to them and we have the added bonus of doughnuts.”
Kate almost protested at the way Brady had taken charge of their strategy, but she had to admit coffee and pastries sounded good. She nodded and took off her seat belt. “I see the wisdom of your plan. We fuel up, play it clean, and the victory will be even sweeter.”
Brady smiled at her, their eyes lingering on each other, and Kate felt a wave of electricity run through her. If she were ever going to lose herself to a person or let herself fall into someone else’s world, it would be with a man like Brady. It would be Brady. And that was exactly why he was so dangerous.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, Kate got up early even though she had been out late. It didn’t have to be so late. She didn’t have to take a walk on the beach and have a glass of wine with Brady at a beachfront bar after they had finished their scavenger hunt just before ten. She and Brady had checked off every item on the list, making sure to document their progress with numerous selfies on her phone. At the end of the summer, when she would leave for Florida, Kate would take with her at least twenty pictures of herself and Brady. They had used her phone each time with the intention of making it easy for one person to upload the results to the employee app. Kate was the more tech-savvy of the two, and she was happy to volunteer to be the keeper of the pictures.
Not that there was any other reason she wanted them. Her time with Brady was brief and sweet, like summer itself. She scrolled through the twenty pictures as she waited for her bagel to pop up. In one of them, she had her eyes closed. Brady had his eyes closed in another one. And a third picture had caught them both in an unprepared moment. She had a look of concentration on her face, but Brady was staring at her in the picture with an expression that was... She enlarged his face on her phone’s screen. What was that look? Admiration? Friendship?
She didn’t want to put a name on Brady’s expression because it looked as if it went two steps beyond friendship and skipped right straight to something much deeper. He’d asked her to send him some of the pictures, and she would. But not that one.
A text pinged onto her phone.
Did we win?
Kate smiled.
I uploaded all our evidence, but no results yet. One hour to go.
See you there.
Although the pictures were turned in, participants in the scavenger hunt had to show up at eight and turn in the physical evidence of their success. Both parties had to be there, and Brady had traded part of a shift at the fire station to make sure he was available. Kate had felt bad asking him to do that, but he said he didn’t mind owing someone a favor, especially if it meant a chance at a big win in the game. He’d also added he was happy to spend more time with her, but she hadn’t responded to that. Would she sacrifice work time for him? She’d already refused to do that several times, and she needed to remember her priorities no matter how much fun it was to be with Brady.
Her future belonged to her.
Kate pulled into the office lot and parked next to Brady’s truck. She hoped she’d see Holly’s car. Her roommate hadn’t come home the night before, and Kate wasn’t sure what to conclude about it. Had she spent all night on the scavenger hunt with Tom? There had been no message from Holly and it wasn’t the first time she hadn’t come home for the night, but Kate had an uncomfortable feeling about her friend.
“Everything okay?” Brady asked as she got out of her car. He was waiting for her, both arms resting on the bedframe of his truck. “You look worried.”
Kate shook her head. “I thought I’d see Holly’s car here. She didn’t come home last night.”
Brady glanced at his watch. “She still has a few minutes. She s
eems like she might be a last-minute sort of person.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Kate said. “But Holly is a doesn’t-always-come-through sort of person. One time last year, she was supposed to pick me up and she ended up going out with some guy.”
“Just one time, though, right?” Brady said.
Does the guy want to think the best of everyone?
“It was pouring down rain that night,” Kate said. “And it happened twice after that until I finally learned my lesson.”
“Sounds like Holly is good at training her friends,” Brady said. “That’s a useful skill, I guess.”
Kate laughed. “I just wish she was good at choosing the right friends. Or even just learning to trust and like herself. She’d be happier.”
Being around Holly every day reminded Kate that personal relationships could be like bumpy pothole-filled streets and that taking to the smooth lonely sidewalk had a greater chance of leading to happiness. Kate chose her own way because she knew she was the one person who would never let her down and she was the one thing in life over which she had total control.
Brady smiled at her in the morning sunshine and Kate’s heart flashed into traitor territory for a moment. She took a deep breath and got out her phone so she could focus on something practical. “I’ll send you some of those pictures while we’re waiting for the office to open and George to crown a winner.”
Kate and Brady walked over to the area outside the office door where the teams had gathered the previous morning. There were only about three-quarters of the people that had been there the day before.
“Did we have some dropouts and nonfinishers?” Brady asked. “It was tough, but not that tough.”
Kate have him a little shrug as she scrolled through pictures. Brady leaned in and looked at her phone.
“Of course, I was blessed with the best partner, so who am I to judge other teams for giving up in miserable defeat or sitting down and having ice cream on the beach instead of continuing the hunt?” he said. “Wait,” he added, pointing to a picture on her screen. “Will you make sure to send me that one? I look like a goofball, but I love the way you’re smiling at me, anyway.”
Kate had been so busy looking at Brady in all the pictures that she hadn’t noticed herself. Oh, goodness. The picture he was pointing at was of the two of them sitting on the sand. In the photo, Kate held out her hand, palm up, showing the beach glass they had found, but she was looking at Brady. And the look on her face showed every symptom of the attraction he tempted her with.
“It’s supposed to be about the beach glass,” she said, trying to keep her voice as level and practical as possible.
“It wasn’t about—” Brady began, but Holly trooped up alongside Kate and hip-checked her.
“Made it,” she said. “Bet you were doubting.”
Holly’s hair was ruffled and a flake of old mascara was stuck to her cheek, but she looked happy. Kate hoped she’d been beachcombing or sea turtle hunting all night, or had even been engaged in a long board game or Uno battle. Kate knew Holly had a lot of friends aside from herself, so she had probably been just fine wherever she spent the night.
“Did you and Tom get everything on the list?” Kate asked.
Holly leaned in and whispered, “Officially, yes, but we may have fudged a few things.”
Kate swallowed, not wanting to say anything negative. It was only a game and not worth arguing over. Not worth cheating over, either, but she decided to keep her opinion to herself. Kate glanced at Brady to gauge his reaction, but he had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground, revealing nothing. Kate didn’t know everything about his character, but she would have bet her car that he was a man who hated cheating, even if he forgave the cheaters.
“Great news,” George said, greeting the crowd outside his office. “We had fourteen teams compete in the first ever company scavenger hunt, and everyone earned points. The top prize of five hundred bonus points is going to be tougher to award than I thought. Believe it or not, there were five teams that completed all the items on the list and are eligible for the grand prize. So, you’re going to have a tough choice to make.”
George named off the five teams, which included Kate and Brady and Holly and Tom. All the teams stepped forward and waited. Kate felt a flutter of nervousness. Were they going to have to compete with each other? Couldn’t George just award five prizes?
“I could divide the points evenly among you,” George continued, “one hundred each. Or we could draw names out of a hat and choose one winner. I don’t want to hand five hundred points to each team because it will inflate the values so much that other teams might be inclined to give up. I’ll give you a minute to discuss it.”
Brady turned to Kate. “I’d be happy with the one hundred each. Hate to turn down a sure thing and gamble away points.”
Kate had been thinking exactly the opposite. Her first instinct was to play for the big prize and take her chances. She shouldn’t be at all surprised that Brady wanted to play it safe. He was a play-it-safe kind of guy—as if she needed one more reminder. Before Kate replied to Brady with her opinion, she overheard the other teams discussing it with almost all the opinions going for a nice safe split. Holly was the only dissenter.
“You’re with me, right, Kate? Go big or go home?” Holly said. Kate cared for her friend, and she had to admit her first instinct was exactly Holly’s, but she had to choose sides and Holly’s competitive ethics weren’t looking very good in the morning light. Would Kate rather please Holly or Brady? Which choice would please herself—a measure she had always relied on since she became an adult and made her own decisions.
Kate flicked a glance at Brady with his patient smile, and she slowly shook her head at Holly. “I’m content to take my share of the points and go start my shift driving the trolley. Some points are better than no points.”
The eight-hour trolley shift was going to be a welcome diversion because she needed time at the wheel to sort out her complicated feelings. Torn between choosing Holly’s good opinion or Brady’s, she’d chosen him and settled for the sure thing. Was that what people did in relationships? Settle for safety?
Brady was smiling at her as if she had just handed him a whole sky full of stars, and Kate didn’t know what to say to him. She wasn’t perfect and she certainly wasn’t perfect for him. When he looked at her with his warm chocolate eyes and contented smile, it reminded her how much she was going to disappoint him at the end of the summer when she did exactly what she’d been telling him she was going to do. Did he believe she would really leave? Sometimes he didn’t act like it.
“It’s five after eight,” Kate told Brady, pointing at the time on her cell phone. “So I’m five minutes late getting the trolley on its circuit. Go ahead and enter my vote for splitting the prize, and I’ll talk with you later.”
“I’ll call you,” he said, his hand rubbing her upper arm and leaving a trail of warmth. “But I’m doing a twelve-hour shift starting this evening.”
She nodded and smiled. “Be careful,” she said, and then she went into the office to clock in for a shift, taking people wherever they wanted to go while she thought about all the places she hoped to go.
* * *
BRADY GOT OFF work at seven the next morning, went home and logged into his email on his computer. His brother told him he should set up his phone to receive emails and he would never have to worry about getting messages hours later, but Brady didn’t usually see the big deal.
Unless he was waiting for important news like his preapproval from the bank. It had been a week since he applied, and the bank had promised an email by today. But it was early in the morning, before the bank opened. Nothing interesting awaited him in the in-box—just the usual offers of discount travel, unsolicited requests for insurance or prescription medications and advertisements from the places where he’d purchased b
lack shoes for work and new floor mats for his truck.
One email from the bank could change his life. He could drive by that perfect blue house with the tree in the front yard and feel that—perhaps—his dream was close enough to touch. He’d already waited a long time, and it looked as if he was going to have to wait until at least later in the afternoon when he got home from his second, but necessary, job.
He tried to shake off his disappointment as he put on his Cape Pursuit Trolley shirt and shorts. He padded into his kitchen barefoot and made a quick peanut butter sandwich and tossed it in a bag with a bottle of water and a bag of chips. The eight-to-four shift driving the trolley was his favorite, but he already knew he wouldn’t be working with his favorite coworker. Kate was in the office during the day and then scheduled to drive from four to midnight—a shift that got pretty lonely after the sun went down, but Kate didn’t seem to mind.
As he drove throughout the day, he thought about his brother’s advice and wished he had taken it. He could have pulled out his phone at a trolley stop or during his quick lunch. Every time they passed a house along the route or he caught sight of a for-sale sign down one of the side streets, the flicker of excitement about his loan application took his thoughts straight to the blue house. No matter how many friendly tourists and cute kids got on the trolley, his heart was elsewhere on the long torturous day of waiting. When he finally parked the trolley a few minutes before four and saw Kate coming across the parking lot, his joy at seeing his replacement driver was even stronger than usual. There had to be an email waiting for him at home. He could know within fifteen minutes.
He bounded out of the seat, ready to greet Kate with a kiss in the empty trolley, but Kate’s expression as she came up the steps was a wet blanket on a campfire.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, immediately forgetting his email and taking Kate’s hand. “You look upset.”
Kate glanced around the trolley, clearly checking to make sure they were alone. “It’s Holly.”
