setting up my latest prank.”
She glared at him. “The snake in my bed was the worst.” A memory stirred, much as the coiled snake had. “No, I take that back. The time you hid in the closet dressed all in black with that monster mask was the scariest.”
“Yeah.” To his credit, he looked chagrined. “Dad was seriously pissed that time. He put me on restriction for a month. I was the star pitcher for my Little League team, and I had to drop out.”
“Which made you hate me even more.”
“Possibly.” He sounded annoyingly cheerful.
It felt really odd to be reminiscing with her former tormenter. The bitterness she’d always felt seemed to be missing. In fact, she realized at one point during the middle of the meal, it felt odd to be reminiscing at all. Had she ever talked about her childhood with anyone, besides the superficial level that was exchanged with new friends, college roommates and whatnot?
No.
Jakob, she figured out as they talked, hadn’t exactly had the ideal childhood, either. First his mother was killed in a car accident, then his father married a woman who had no interest in mothering the little boy. Grand entrance: cute baby sister who entranced Dad. A divorce, another change of school. Then yet another move, this one to Arizona, followed by his father’s third marriage when Jakob was seventeen.
“I’d forgotten you were still living at home when your father remarried again,” Amy said thoughtfully.
“I spent as little time there as possible.”
“You don’t like Martina?”
He shrugged. “She’s fine. I never actively hated her. Truthfully, it was never her at all.”
Amy nodded her understanding.
“She had the sense to stay hands-off, so we’ve developed a decent relationship. She’s good for Dad, which is what counts.”
That might be, Amy couldn’t help thinking, except that Jakob had chosen to make a life a good distance from Phoenix. Of course, that could have more to do with the fact that the young Jakob Nilsson had been hooked on mountain climbing—or at least the idea of mountain climbing—and had immediately headed for Colorado and college in Boulder, within easy reach of a whole lot of impressive peaks he could scale.
“What about your stepdad?” he asked. “Is he okay?”
“Ken’s a good guy. In fact, I like him better...” Appalled, she stamped on the brakes. Oh, man. Had she almost told Jakob, of all people, that she liked her stepfather better than her own mother?
Yes, indeed.
They stared at each other, his eyes slightly narrowed. He’d heard the unspoken part of her sentence, loud and clear. Amy didn’t like the sense that Jakob saw deeper than she wanted him to.
“So.” Intent on her face, he kept his voice low, the reverberation jangling her nerves. “You think you’ll go to that time capsule thing, or not?”
“Why do you care?” That sounded rude, but was real, too. Why was he interested?
His shoulders moved in an easy shrug. “Like I said, now I’m curious. I was kind of thinking, if you wanted company, that maybe I’d go with you.”
She had to be gaping. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
His grin was irritatingly smug. “Nope. What’s family for?”
Amy rolled her eyes, which seemed the expected response, but she also had the really unsettling realization that she had absolutely no idea what family was for. Or maybe even what family was.
Jakob was implying that it meant having somebody to stand beside you. The notion was downright foreign. Amy couldn’t have even said why it was also strangely appealing. It shouldn’t have been, not to a woman who never considered surrendering her independence for anyone, for any reason.
“Do you mean that?”
His eyebrows rose. “That I’d come with you?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.” He looked a little perplexed, as if he didn’t know why he was offering, either. “Yeah,” he repeated more strongly. “I mean it.”
“Okay,” she heard herself say. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.” Why was she pretending? Of course she’d made up her mind. In fact—had there ever been any doubt? Trying to hide her perturbation, she offered, “But if I do decide to go... You can come if you still want to.” She’d tried so hard to sound careless, as if she were saying, Suit yourself, doesn’t matter to me. Instead...well, she didn’t know how he would interpret her invitation or the way she’d delivered it.
“Good” was what he said. Jakob’s eyes were unexpectedly serious. “We have a deal.”
So not what she’d expected from the evening. But...nice. Something warmed in Amy despite the caution she issued herself: if he ran true to form, her darling half brother was setting her up for a fall. The splat-on-her-face kind.
He was signaling the waiter and she understood that the evening was over. He had whatever he’d wanted from it.
She just didn’t quite get what that “whatever” was.
CHAPTER TWO
JAKOB SNEAKED A glance at Amy, who was gazing out the passenger-side window at the stark red-brown beauty of the Columbia River Gorge. She might be fascinated, but he suspected she was pretending. She was a Northwest native, and had seen the admittedly striking but also unchanging landscape before.
He couldn’t quite figure out why he’d insisted on coming on this little jaunt. His being here didn’t have anything to do with his father. In fact, he hadn’t talked to Dad since the one peculiar call. Just yesterday, his father had left a message that Jakob hadn’t returned. Maybe because he didn’t want to tell him that Amy was going to the damn opening—but maybe because he didn’t want to try to explain his own part in this, when he didn’t get it himself.
The one part he did understand was why he’d insisted on driving. Polite man that he was, he had walked her to her car the night they’d had dinner together. She drove, he discovered, an ancient, hatchback Honda Civic. He recalled running his hand over a rust spot on the trunk.
Two days ago, when they discussed final arrangements, he had suggested that his vehicle might be more reliable.
“Just because my car’s old doesn’t mean it’s unreliable!” she had snapped.
“We’ll be making a long drive across some pretty barren country. Not where you want to break down.”
“I didn’t break down when I drove down here from Seattle.”
He knew stubborn when he heard it. Unfortunately, that was one trait they shared. A family one?
“How many miles does it have?” he asked.
There
