by Cindi Madsen
I’d been so nervous to ask Evan along, but he’d said it sounded fun, and the thought of having him by my side made it easier to check the RSVP box on the fancy, gilded wedding invitation I’d received. All those weeks ago, I was optimistic that more time would fix the missing spark issue.
It hadn’t, though. Considering he sometimes went a day or so before texting or calling me back, and that he hadn’t acted very excited about our road trip a couple nights ago when we’d set up this final planning meeting, I concluded he must not feel the spark, either. Even if a wedding wasn’t your first choice for capping off a road trip—it sure as hell wasn’t mine—when you cared about someone, you were still excited about spending time with them. Right?
Perhaps we weren’t destined to have an amazing love story that lasted the ages, but I knew he’d be down for some fun between the sheets, and holy crap, it’d been a long time. Both since I’d had sex, and since he’d started putting out signals that he hoped we’d go there. I was sure he was wondering why we hadn’t already. If I put him into the strictly fun category, maybe I could be the girl who slept with hot guys without getting too attached.
Says the girl who’s only slept with one guy, and look how that worked out.
The barista handed me two steaming to-go cups and I quickly doctored them. After testing mine—and adding more sugar, along with extra cream to cool it down faster—I pushed out the door. The weather was perfect, that low seventies with a hint of crispness that made early summer mornings so magical.
At first I was going to sit at one of the cute wrought iron tables, but the chairs, while also cute, were hard on the butt, and I had too much frantic energy coursing through my veins to sit around and wait.
I’m just going to do it. Tell him that he’s great, and the past three months have been super fun, but something’s missing, and it’s probably for the best if we skip our road trip.
Oh, and I’ll mention that I hope we can remain friends. Even if he doesn’t want to, I’ll feel better putting it out there.
Unless he’s mad and he says he doesn’t want to. That’d suck.
“Gwen?”
I spun around, nearly bumping into Evan and smashing our coffees to his chest. Luckily they didn’t spill down him, because that would’ve only made this harder. “Hey, Evan, how are you this morning? I was thinking we could sit at a table in the sun. I already bought coffees, which you probably already deduced when I practically rammed them into you.”
Amusement curved his mouth as he made a slow sweep of me, head to toe, almost like he didn’t remember that I looked… however I looked. “How much of that coffee have you already had?”
I stuck the bag with the muffins on the nearest table and held my cup up to the light. “An inch at most.”
“That’s it?” he asked, and I realized he was teasing me for the verbal spewage.
I tended to talk fast when I was nervous, and I was nervous, not to mention I often spoke in quick bursts as it was. There was just always so much going on in my head that I couldn’t help it.
I grinned at him and gave his arm a teasing smack—wow, I remember it being solid, but it was, like, extra solid. “Have you been working out?” I poked a finger to his biceps. “I mean, I know you work out, but serious iron pumping has definitely taken place.”
He dipped his head and rubbed his neck. I didn’t know he even got nervous. That was usually my racket.
“Shall we sit?” I plopped down before he answered. “I got you a blueberry muffin because I know how much you like them.” I pulled it out and frowned at it. “Um, it’s kinda squished, but I’m sure it’ll still taste good. Possibly also a little like chocolate since your muffin was clearly making a move on mine.”
He muttered something about getting the hurricane thing, and I glanced up at him. “Did you just say you understand hurricanes now? Did you not understand them before?”
“Um. Nothing. Never mind.” He sat across from me and took the extended muffin. I’d warned him that I’d squished it, so why was he frowning at it like it was the most offensive thing he’d ever seen?
I tilted my head and took him in, from the blue eyes trained on me to that jaw I occasionally dreamed about, and then I got a wee bit lost in the undone buttons on his dark green shirt before returning my attention to his expression. Still amused, but something else was in the mix as well. “You seem different this morning.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m kinda hungover, to be honest. Partied it up a little too much last night.”
“Sounds like you,” I said, then immediately realized that didn’t sound very nice. He simply laughed, though, and when he aimed his grin at me, it kicked me right in the gut and made my heart beat out an erratic rhythm. “Sorry. I mean—”
“Hey, don’t apologize. The great thing about being me is I don’t have any worries. I just live it up and go with the flow.” The way his fingers traced the lid, pressing and securing it on the rim, were at odds with his words and his usual quick, almost careless actions. Then he wrapped those long fingers around his cup—had I checked out his fingers before? If not, that was totally my bad, because there was something sexy about them, and I suddenly wanted them on me.
Whoa. This is… I don’t know what this is, but I want more.
As a chronic overanalyzer and overplanner, one of the first things that drew me to Evan was his carefree spirit and the fact that he seemed so unfazed when things totally went wrong. He was one of those life-of-the-party-guys, and he always had fun, no matter where we were. “Sometimes I wish I could go with the flow and live it up a bit more. It’d be nice if my brain would just, like, take a vacation once in a while.”
“That all-expenses-paid brain-vacation can be yours if you drink enough alcohol. But then you end up making dumb decisions, and the next morning you have to deal with what your brainless self did. While hungover, nonetheless.”
“Hmm. Maybe don’t put that in the brochure if you’re trying to sell it. And ‘all-expenses-paid’ is sorta misleading, because last I checked, alcohol costs money.”
One corner of his mouth twisted up, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen that particular smile before. Speaking of vacations, I kind of wanted to stay in the curve of his lips and live in this moment for a while. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, but it only added to the cute, disheveled look he had going on.
After another beat or two, I felt like I was taking the staring into the creepy-long range, so I bit off some of my muffin, and a moan slipped out.
Evan’s mouth hung open a few inches, and he was gaping at me, eyebrows raised, like he’d never seen anyone enjoy a muffin quite that much before. In my defense, chocolate had been my main coping mechanism for a while, and Sacred Grounds took baked goods to the next level.
I tried to cover by taking a sip of my coffee. “The muffins are extra yummy this morning. Are you not hungry? Isn’t fatty food supposed to be good for a hangover?”
“Good point.” He lifted his muffin and took a miniscule bite. “Mmm.” He set the pastry aside, then shifted forward in his seat. “Gwen, I need to tell you something…”
It’s too bad I’ve decided we’re not destined to have an epic love story. He’s almost too good-looking to stare directly at. Like the sun.
“Isn’t it weird that looking at something that’s in the sky for most of our waking hours could burn your corneas right out of your head?” I risked a half glance, below where the sun would be but high enough to have to squint against the bright light. “It seems like something that dangerous should be… well, not hanging in the sky all the time. It’s like if I had a peanut plant in my apartment and occasionally inhaled really deeply as I brushed by it so I could see how many hives I could get.”
Crap. I just totally plowed right over what he was going to say. Why are my thoughts spinning so fast today?
“Sorry.” I placed my hand over his and turned my full attention on him, which wasn’t exactly a hardship. “You were saying�
�?”
3 Ethan
I stared at her hand on mine for way too long. It wasn’t just the way her soft skin warmed mine, but how it’d ignited a sensation I hadn’t felt in a long time.
When I’d woken up to find a Post-it note from Evan, reminding me of the time and location of this meeting, I knew I had to shut this whole thing down. I’d clean up yet another one of his messes—the last, I vowed—but not in the way he’d dictated. It was supposed to be quick and easy. Just tell her that I wasn’t Evan, and then explain she deserved a lot better than my brother. He was obviously stupid if he didn’t realize this girl was a catch.
But her mouth was off and running before I could make sure it was her. The more she said, the more I wanted her to talk. As I’d accidentally mumbled, I got why Evan had called her a sexy, redheaded hurricane of energy and brains. One minute she was spouting off advice on how to sell people on brain-vacations, and the next she was talking about the sun and a peanut plant.
The dots connected, my brain taking a few extra seconds in its sloggy state. “Wait. You’re allergic to peanuts? But peanut butter is amazing and pretty much my favorite food ever.”
She scrunched up her forehead. “Yeah. Remember how we couldn’t eat at that Chinese restaurant near the harbor because they use peanuts in a lot of their dishes and eating there might make me go into anaphylactic shock?”
“Right.” I took another gulp of coffee. “The hangover is making my thoughts… not so great.” For example, I’d just said that sentence. The truth was, the hand she still had on mine was messing with me. Along with her energy and the way her mind worked, and holy shit, she was pretty. Her long red waves gleamed in the sunshine, she had these full lips that my lips wanted to explore, and every time she smiled, two dimples popped in her cheeks.
Don’t even get me started about the way she’d moaned when she’d bit into her muffin. I’d neglected my personal life the past year or so as I’d worked to ensure my desired career path, and it’d been a while since… well, since I’d been this close to a girl this hot.
“It’s also making your voice sound a little different, I think. Rougher, maybe?” Her eyes went to the top of my head, and I froze in place, as if moving might make the truth of who I was show up in one of those thought bubbles. “Did you do something different with your hair?”
“Sure,” I said, not because it was a good response but the first thing that popped into my head as a possible answer.
That earned me the smile with dimples. “Are you positive you’re not still drunk?”
I nodded, although at this moment, I felt pretty damn buzzed.
She leaned across the table and pushed her fingers into my hair, and I forgot how to breathe. Tingles erupted as her fingernails dragged over my scalp, and I wanted to grab her wrist, haul her over the tiny table, and kiss the hell out of her. “It looks like it grew a couple of inches in the past few days. How is that even possible?”
“New… hair gel. I mean, it makes it look longer; it’s not Rogaine or some kind of black market product or anything.”
Her laugh danced across my nerve endings and echoed through my chest. “Are you sure you haven’t been searching the black market? Because that would clear up the questions I had about your browser history.”
A flash of panic hit me, even though I was fairly certain I didn’t have anything to feel that guilty for, and of course she was only joking. “Hey, don’t knock it till you try it.” I gave in to the urge to touch her and wrapped my hand around her wrist. I resisted hauling her over the table, but just barely.
Her eyes met mine, and then her delicate throat worked a swallow.
“For example, name something you want that’s not easy to find.” Right now, I was thinking a girl like you, and my thoughts had no business going there.
She tapped the finger of her free hand to her chin, and I could practically see the moment the light bulb went off in her head. “I’ve always wanted a pet unicorn.”
“I’ll have my black market associates make a few calls.”
My heart battered my ribcage as my gaze dipped to her lips, and I was about to do the opposite of breaking up with her on behalf of my brother. “Anyway,” I said, releasing her wrist and wanting to kick my own ass when she slid back into her chair.
It’s for the best.
I didn’t know how to start, and we were already way past me admitting who I was, so evidently I’d be doing this as my brother. Now that the moment of half-truth arrived, I found it harder than expected to tell her that we needed to break up. Especially since if it was up to me, I’d vote for getting to know her better.
Her phone chimed before I could start parting words I didn’t want to say, and she lifted it. “That means we have fifteen minutes to…” She peered into my face like she wanted to find answers to questions she didn’t know how to word, and I got the scrunched-up expression for the third or fourth time today. Clearly she sensed something was off, but couldn’t put her finger on it. “To finalize our road trip plans so we’ll be ready to go bright and early tomorrow morning.”
Gwen nodded to herself, almost as if she needed to agree. With something she’d just said—the woman was a puzzle I wanted to put together, but I doubted I’d ever get all the pieces.
She dug into her laptop bag and pulled out her computer. “I checked out the route options like we talked about and made a list of sights we might want to see. Or we could just make it a straight shot if you want to cut the trip down to a day.”
If it meant spending more time with her, I wanted to see every damn sight from here to… My brain struggled to find it, but I was almost sure it was Pennsylvania.
She swiveled the computer screen toward me and came around the table to stand beside me. My attention snagged on the scoop neckline of her shirt. The dark purple contrasted her pale skin and emphasized her curves. As she leaned over the keyboard, I couldn’t help but notice the way her jeans hugged her ass, and my eyes did a quick sweep of her long legs before coming back to all that amazing hair I wanted to run my fingers through.
“Is your muffin okay?” she asked, eyeing it. “I can grab something else if you’re not feeling it.”
“No, this is great.” I lifted it and forced myself to take a big bite, one that triggered my gag reflex, thanks to the time Mom made me eat blueberry muffins when I had the flu. She’d insisted on seeing if food would make me feel better.
Spoiler alert: it hadn’t.
I took a giant swig of my coffee to wash the blueberry nastiness down as Gwen pointed at highlighted places on the map. “This website lets you save your trip. I kinda have this thing with lighthouses, and I’ve always wanted to go the one on Cape Hatteras. It’s the tallest brick lighthouse in the US, and the view’s supposed to be amazing.”
“Then we should definitely stop there.” What was I supposed to do? She’d said it with such longing in her voice, and I didn’t want to be the jerk who let her down.
Maybe I could just explain that my brother is an immature, blind idiot, but that I’m single and available. While Evan didn’t want to stay in a relationship with her, he cared about her, and that alone meant she was off-limits. Hell, the fact that he’d ever dated her meant she was off-limits.
“We’d shave off a couple of hours if we went to another lighthouse that’s not so out of the way, even if the others aren’t guarding the graveyard of the Atlantic. Like there’s one—”
“You expect me to settle for a different lighthouse after hearing a fact like that?”
Her smile shot me right through the heart. She clicked on the icon, adding it to our trip. “Okay, so once we get to Pennsylvania, I figured we could stop at Philly and check out the Liberty Bell. I saw it once, a long time ago, but I care more about how the country was formed now. Or, if you’re more into chocolate, there’s always Hershey…”
I had a slight obsession with how the country was formed, even before law school, and I’d never been to Philadelphia. “No offense to
chocolate, but I can get that anytime. Definitely the Liberty Bell.”
The excited way she clicked it made me think she preferred that option. “Okay, so backtracking a bit to before our Philly stop… Save time and go up through Delaware, which I’m sure is a very pretty drive? Or swing through D.C.? It’s about an hour difference, but with traffic and stopping to see the sights, it’d probably add closer to three.”
Three extra hours with her, on this road trip I was apparently taking? Sign me up. “D.C.”
She added it in and studied the map. “Thirteen hours in two days… Looks doable. And if we get several hours and sights into the trip and decide we need to shorten it, we can do that, too.”
“Perfect. Plus, we’ve got the Camaro to speed things along.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought we were going to take my car? I don’t want you to have to put the wear and tear on yours, and—”
“We’re taking the Camaro. I insist.”
“That’s probably the safer option, since my car’s been extra temperamental lately.” She glanced at the time and began gathering up our trash. I pushed out my chair and stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“I’ll get it.”
Touching her was a mistake—an amazing mistake I wanted to do again and again. Energy crackled in the air between us, and our gazes caught and held. Less than an hour together, and my resolve to do the right thing had crumbled. I could only imagine how many times I’d want to kiss her during thirteen-plus hours of traveling, not to mention the days we’d be in her hometown. Not just kiss her, either. Desire thrummed through me as I thought about pulling her close and getting my hands on her curves.
This is a bad idea. Abort, abort, abort! I quickly gathered everything and then returned to the table.
This was it. The moment I needed to break the news that the road trip we’d just planned needed to be a solo mission, but that I wished her the best and hoped she got to see everything she wanted to. She’d hate me and that’d suck, but the hatred would be aimed at Evan, and that… well, it didn’t make me feel any better. I understood all too well why he didn’t want to have to see her sad face when he broke the news.
