your birthday?”
Okay, maybe not technically, since it was after midnight. “Well, it was when I fell asleep,” she muttered sulkily. So, close enough.
* * *
“CLOSE ENOUGH,” Finn unknowingly echoed Mags’s thought as guilt piled upon guilt. God, hadn’t he just been a prince among men with her today? His mom would be so proud.
But they needed to focus on the here and now, and he gently moved her back to her side of the front seat.
“I really am sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for and I have no excuse except that I’m tired, stressed out and pissed off, and I took it out on you. But as willing as I’d be to give you a couple of free shots at me, we’ll have to put that off. We gotta get the hell outta here and put as much distance between us and Joaquin as we can. For all we know, he and Mr. Handsy—”
“Frederico.”
“He and Frederico,” he amended, showing great restraint not spitting the name, “could be taking a villager’s car at gunpoint as we speak.”
Fear flashed across her face, but she simply nodded and leaned her head back against the headrest. So he stomped the gas pedal to the floor and sent them roaring down the highway.
He didn’t try to break the silence. He fully intended, in fact, not to say a word until Mags did. He sure as hell didn’t foresee that being a hardship—he was king when it came to keeping his own counsel.
His brothers had long ago elected him the Kavanagh Construction go-to guy when it came to dealing with difficult clients, suppliers or hired help. He could be counted on to sit quietly and simply listen to a complaint or an excuse until he had its measure. Then he’d either fix it if Kavanagh’s was at fault, which on occasion turned out to be the case, or he’d set the other party straight if he disagreed with the client/vendor/employee’s assessment of the problem. And if a discussion didn’t supply the solution when he knew they were in the right, he was known for simply looking silently at the other person until they started squirming or blurting out all manner of things to fill the silence.
He drove without saying a word for an additional forty-five minutes.
Something about Mags, however, had a way of turning all his usual moves upside down. Apparently she didn’t mind silence any more than he did. And where yesterday he could have outwaited her indefinitely, this morning he found it amazingly difficult.
“I’m playing with the idea of pulling off the road and letting Joaquin and company pass us,” he eventually heard himself say out of the blue. “Hell, we could go back to Senora Guerrero’s and get an actual night’s sleep, then find an alternate route in the morning. Because I sure wouldn’t object to being the trailer for a change instead of the trailed.”
“I wouldn’t mind going back to sleep,” she murmured—apparently to the ceiling headliner, which had curled away in a few places to hang in ragged strips. God knew she’d barely looked at him directly since her blowup. “But there are risks to consider.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, pleased she’d noticed when she’d spent most of the ride staring down at her fingers in her lap. “It’s surprisingly flat in this area and there aren’t a lot of places to hide a car.”
“Sure, that’s one difficulty.” Turning her head without lifting it from the headrest, she looked past his nose and out the side window. “Then there’s the possibility that they might wait to fix the car. Because who the hell knows what runs through Joaquin’s head? He might have thought of the coming-back thing and decided to stay put.”
“Are you kidding me? He’s too stupid to think of something that brilliant.”
This time she did look at him...as if he should be committed.
He snorted. “Fine, say what you want about me.” And after the way he’d dazzled her with his charm that would likely be an earful. “But trust me on this—it’d only be his unwillingness to trade down to one of the villagers’ cars, not any masterminding skills on his part that would keep him there.” He blew out a disgusted breath. “Which still leaves us in front of him.”
“I have to admit, I like the idea of being behind better. It seems a lot easier to keep an eye on what’s ahead of us than constantly having to look over our shoulders.” She straightened suddenly. Looked at him without the distance that had veiled those blue eyes since he’d messed things up. “But if we do have to stay ahead of him,” she said slowly, “we need to maintain our lead. Or, better yet, shake him entirely.”
“I’m all for that. You have an idea how to accomplish it?”
She gave him a decisive nod. “It’s that finding-an-alternate-route thing you brought up. We’ve pretty much been following the Pan-American.”
“It’s the best highway in South America.”
“Yeah, by far. But it’s not the only one.” She gave him a level look. “I’d bet my professional makeup kit, though, that it’s the only one Joaquin has ever considered.”
He felt a slow smile spread across his face and had to fight the urge to hook a hand around the back of her neck and plant a big kiss on her in sheer appreciation. Instead, he settled on saying, “You are brilliant!”
“Yes, I am,” she agreed coolly and pulled the road map out of the glove box. She opened it in her lap.
He knew damn well she couldn’t see a thing. But without missing a beat—or feeling the need to look up, apparently—she said, “Does that overhead light work?”
“You didn’t test all the car’s features before leaving the rental agency?”
She gave him a get-real grunt and he shook his head. She was clearly an in-the-moment woman and not big on planning, which as a carpenter, electrician and, hell, just an all-around builder, he didn’t understand at all. It irritated him. No, who was he kidding, it bugged the hell out of him. But that was his problem and, shaking off his exasperation, he tried the switch on the light above the rearview mirror. Reasonably bright illumination came on.
“Eureka,” she said, raising the map and turning it toward the light. She pored over it quietly for a few moments, then set the still-open map in her lap and turned to him.
“In what looks like fifteen or so miles after we rejoin the Pan-Am, the road to San Vito forks off to the east. The red line marking the roads is still fairly strong for that highway, but when we get to Cordoba and hang a right to head south again it’s not nearly as bold on the map. Which means it’s—” She shook her head. “Okay, I have no clue what condition we’ll find it in. But I bet it’ll be less than optimal. We might have to ask around about gas stations and such before we start down it.” She yawned hugely.
“But that’s for tomorrow,” he said, reaching out and plucking the map from her hands and deftly folding it. “We’re finally getting back into the type of terrain I’ve mostly seen today. So whataya say we find a place where we can get the hell off this road and grab some sleep?”
“Finally,” she muttered. “Something we can agree on.”
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