was a sensible suggestion, but she wasn’t in a sensible mood. Despite her bone-aching weariness, she was too full of adrenaline to sleep now.
“But I’ll miss the sightseeing,” she told him. “I want to see the countryside.”
He glanced out at the gaunt, charred-looking buildings they were passing. “We’re not going through a lot of countryside right now. More like an industrial wasteland.”
She nodded, her eyes big as she peered out at everything, trying to take it all in. “I noticed that.”
“Our route is circuitous and it’s not going to take us through many of the nicest parts of England I’m afraid. I’m trying to keep it low key and stay away from places where I might see someone I know.”
“It’s smokestack city so far,” she noted wistfully. “Oh, well. Maybe I will try to sleep a little.”
“The views will be better in an hour or so,” he promised.
“Okay.” She snuggled down into the seat, closed her eyes and went out like a light.
He noted that with a sense of relief. As long as she slept, she couldn’t ask questions.
He really had mixed feelings about Ayme. Why had he brought her along, anyway? He’d almost left her behind and it probably would have been the reasonable thing to do. But he felt a strange sense of responsibility toward her and of course he wanted to make sure that she was protected.
On the other hand, she probably wasn’t going to thank him in the end for dragging her along on this wild-goose chase. She would be better off in a nice hotel in a touristy part of town where she could while away her time shopping or sightseeing or whatever. At the same time, he would have been free to slip in and out of various cities and countries without having to adjust for a baby. After a day hauling a child all over the landscape, she might be ready to accept a solution such as that.
It was a tempting proposition, but there was a major flaw in his thinking and it came to him pretty quickly. Someone out there in the world was fathering babies under his name. This was not helpful to the world situation or even to his own peace of mind. He had to find out who it was and he had to get it stopped. Until he’d managed that, it might be best to keep tabs on the young woman who’d dumped this particular problem in his lap.
Well, that was hardly fair. The problem had been there all the time. He just hadn’t been aware of it until she’d arrived on his doorstep carrying the evidence.
But when you came right down to it, all that might be an excuse to keep her around, just because he liked looking at her. He glanced down at her. She was super adorable when she slept.
He had never been one to be bowled over by a pretty face. After all, there were so many pretty faces and he’d had his share of romantic adventures back when he was indulging in that sort of thing. He wasn’t going to let a little fatal attraction get in the way of his plans.
He was hardheaded and pragmatic, as he had to be if he and his brother were going to succeed in getting their country back. Romance wouldn’t work in times like these, and even a casual flirtation could cloud a man’s mind and get in the way of the goal. What he and his brother planned to do was going to be hard, perilous and very possibly fatal.
Relationships were out. Period.
He wondered, and not for the first time, what Monte would think of what he was doing. He wanted to call him but this wasn’t the place—nor the time. He had to be somewhere secure. Later—once they found a place near the coast to stay for the night, he would find a way to contact his brother.
She slept for two hours and then woke, stretching like a kitten and looking up at him as though she were surprised to see him.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re still here.”
“Where would I go?” he asked, half amused.
She shrugged. “Since my life became a bad dream, I expect dreamlike things to happen all the time. Maybe a Mad Hatter at the wheel, or at the very least, an angry hedgehog.”
“It’s a dormouse,” he muttered, making way for another car to merge onto the roadway in front of him.
“All right, an angry dormouse.” She smiled, amused that he would know the finer points of the Alice in Wonderland story. “So you’re neither?”
“Nope. But I have been accused of White Rabbit tendencies in the past.” He gave her a sideways grin. “Always late for that important date.”
“Ah.” She nodded wisely. “Annoying trait, that.”
“Yes. They say habitual lateness is a form of selfishness, but I think it’s something else entirely.”
“Like what?” She was curious since she was always late for everything herself and would like to find a good new excuse for it.
But he never got to the point of telling her. Cici intervened with a long, loud demand for attention from the backseat.
“Wow, she’s hungry,” Ayme noted, going up on her knees to tend to her over the back of the seat. She pulled a bottle of formula out of the baby bag, regretting that she couldn’t warm it. But Cici wasn’t picky at the moment. She sucked on the liquid as though someone had been starving her.
“Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger, little girl,” Ayme cooed at her. “There’s a lot of that hunger thing going around.”
“Subtle hint,” he commented.
“I can get less subtle if it bothers you,” she said, flicking a smile his way. “Do we have any food with us at all?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Oh.” His answer was disappointing, but pretty much what she’d expected. “Are we planning to rectify that anytime soon?” she asked, trying to be diplomatic about it.
He grunted. “I guess we could stop when we see something promising.”
“Good. You don’t want me to start wailing away like Cici does. It wouldn’t be pretty.”
She spent the next ten minutes feeding the baby, then pulled her up awkwardly and tried to burp her. David noted the lack of grace in her efforts, but he didn’t say anything. She would learn, he figured. Either that, or she would find Cici’s father and head back to Texas, free of burdens and swearing off children for all time. It seemed to be one of those either-or deals.
“We need a real car seat for her,” he said as Ayme settled her back into the backseat. “If we get stopped by the police, this makeshift bed won’t cut it. We’ll probably both get carted away for child endangerment.”
She plunked herself back into her seat and fastened the seat belt, then tensed, waiting for the inevitable complaints from the back. After a moment she began to relax. To her surprise, Cici wasn’t crying. What a relief!
“When I was young,” she told David, “my father would put me in a wash basket and strap me to the seat and carry me all over the Texas Panhandle on his daily route.”
“Those
