Not to mention some sorely needed alone time. “And the sooner we get—” home, he’d started to say, startling himself “—back to the Vista, the sooner I can make that happen.” Slinging the duffel over his shoulder with the camera bag and commandeering the smaller two of Emily’s bags, he nodded toward the rental car desk across the floor. “So let’s go get our cars and get out of here.”
Jerking up the handle of the larger bag, Emily frowned. “Um...why rent two cars? Wouldn’t it make more sense to share one? Besides, don’t take this the wrong way, but you do not look like someone up for driving through a couple hundred miles of nothing. In the dark, especially. So I’ll drive, how’s that?”
That got a momentary sneer from the old male ego—because Old Skool Dude here, the man was supposed to drive—until weariness slammed into him like a twenty-foot tidal wave. And along with it logic, because the woman had a point. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense to rent two separate vehicles when they were going to the same place.
Not to mention the fact that passing out and careening into a ravine somewhere wasn’t high on his to-do list. However...
“You might not want to be confined with me in a closed space for two-and-a-half hours.” Her brows lifted. “I think I smell.”
She laughed. “Not that I’ve noticed. But it’s warm enough we can leave the windows open.”
“Once we get up past Santa Fe? Doubtful. Spring doesn’t really get going good until May, at least.”
A shrug preceded, “So I’ll put on another layer—”
“But what’ll you do for a car once you’re there?”
“Dee said there’s a truck I can use, if I want. So I was gonna turn in the rental tomorrow in Taos, anyway...”
First off, that shrug? Made her hair shimmer around her shoulders, begging to be touched. So wrong. Second, the image of Emily’s perfectly polished person collided in Colin’s worn-to-nubs brain with whatever undoubtedly mud-caked 4x4 her cousin was referring to. The ranch vehicles weren’t known for being pretty.
Unlike the woman with the shimmery hair who’d be driving one of them.
So wrong.
Then he dragged his head out of his butt long enough to catch the amused smile playing around her mouth. “You really have a problem sharing a ride with me?”
Colin’s cheeks heated. “It’s not you.”
“Actually, I got that. No, really. But I’m beginning to understand what Josh said about you being a loner—”
“I’m not—”
“Even I know you haven’t been home in years,” she said gently. “That you’ve barely been in touch with anyone since you left. And then you don’t even tell your family you’re coming back? Dude. However,” she said, heading toward the rental desk, her hair swishing against her back. Glimmering. Taunting. “My only goal right now is to get to the ranch.” She glanced back over her shoulder at him, and once again he saw a flicker of something decidedly sharp edged. “Expediency, you know? Your issues are none of my business. Nor are mine yours. In fact, we don’t even have to talk, if you don’t want to. I won’t be offended, I promise. So. Deal?”
With the devil, apparently.
“Deal,” Colin grumbled, hauling the rest of the bags to the desk, wondering why her reasonableness was pissing him the hell off.
* * *
An hour later, Emily had to admit Colin had been right about two things: the farther north they went, the colder it got; and he was definitely a little on the gamey side. Meaning she’d had no choice but to keep the windows at least partly down, or risk suffocation.
Also, it was dark. As in, the headlight beams piercing the pitch blackness were creepy as all get-out. To her, night meant when the street lamps came on, not that moment when the sun dived behind the horizon and yanked every last vestige of daylight with it. Her heart punched against her ribs—so much for her oh-I’ll-drive bravado back there in the airport, when for whatever reason it hadn’t occurred to her she’d never actually driven the route before. Somebody had always ferried her to and from Albuquerque. Sure, she would’ve made the trek herself in any case, but being responsible for another human being in the car with her...
“Jeez, get a grip,” she muttered, turning up the Sirius radio in the SUV, hoping the pulsing beat would pound her wayward thoughts into oblivion. Not to mention her regrets, crammed inside her head like the jumbled mess of old sweaters and jeans and tops she’d stuffed willy-nilly inside her pretty new luggage. Clothes that predated Michael, that she’d rarely worn around him because he’d said they made her look dumpy.
Emily’s nostrils flared as her fingers tightened around the leather-padded wheel. Someday, she might even cry.
Someday. When she was over the hurling and cursing stage.
Beside her, a six-feet-and-change Colin snorted and shifted, his arms folded over his chest as he slept. They’d barely made it out of Albuquerque before he’d crashed, his obvious exhaustion rolling off him in waves even more than the funk. If it hadn’t been for that picture Dee had shown Emily—a very serious publicity shot of Colin the photojournalist—she would’ve never recognized him. As it was, between the five days’ beard growth and shaggy hair, the rumpled clothes and saddlebags under his eyes, she still wasn’t sure how she had. It must’ve been the eyes, a weird pale green against his sun-weathered face—
Emily released another breath, aggravation swamping her once more. Although with herself more than Colin, she supposed, for not having the good sense to leave well enough alone. Gah, it was as though she’d been totally incapable of stanching the words spewing from her mouth. Apparently heart-slicing betrayal had that effect on her. But seriously—after a lifetime of making nice, now she couldn’t resist poking the bear? And a grumpy, malodorous one at that?
From her purse, her phone warbled. Her mother’s ringtone. Good thing she was currently driving, because... No.
The man shifted again, muttering in his sleep, the words unintelligible. She imagined a frown—since that seemed to be his face’s default setting, anyway—
“Crap!”
At the laser-like flash of the animal’s eyes, Emily swerved the car to the right, hard, the wheels jittering over rocks and weeds before jerking to a spine-rattling stop. Colin’s palm slammed against the dash as he bellowed awake, a particularly choice swearword hanging in the cold air between them for what felt like an hour.
“What the hell?”
“S-something darted out in front of the c-car,” Emily finally got out, over the sudden—and horrifying—realization of exactly how close she was to losing it.
“You okay?”
How a gruff voice could be so gentle, Emily had no idea. How she was going to keep it together in the face of that gentleness, she had even less of one. But she would. If it killed her.
Her neck hurt a little when she nodded. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
On
