“I can feel you watching me, creeper.” She glanced at me with a full smile. “And I’m not the only one who sleeps like the dead.”
“But the important question is, did I snore?”
“Like a chainsaw.”
“Seriously?”
She laughed. “You’re too easy.”
If only she knew. I pushed the seat lever and raised the back into an upright position. I stretched my neck and shoulders, slowing down when I noticed her stealing glances.
“Show off,” she said.
“Only when I have an appreciative audience.”
“That, you do,” she admitted.
So, we were doing this, moving to outright flirting. That was a terrible idea when later that night we’d be staying together at a hotel. Not in the same room, but close enough. Anywhere in a fifty-mile radius would be close enough for me to go sniffing around her door at the slightest encouragement. I took a deep breath and sighed. I focused on the scenery outside the window, reminding myself there was a whole world full of obligations and expectations out there.
But something was wrong. I squinted, then tilted my head. “Are we off schedule?”
“No,” Cara said quietly. Too quietly.
“We should be in Little Rock by now,” I said, “but we’re not.” I studied the terrain more carefully. “Are we even in Arkansas?”
“We are not.”
When she didn’t offer any more explanation, I turned toward her as a lead ball sank in my gut. “Where are we?”
She flashed me another beautiful smile. I wanted to fall for the distraction, but I couldn’t. The next words out of her mouth were too important.
“Cara, where are we?”
“Missouri.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s the northern route. The snowstorm is moving in tomorrow.”
“Not likely,” she said. “I mean, the weather Doppler now has the chance of significant snowfall at less than twenty percent.”
My extremities went cold and numb. “What about the wind? The sleet? The mixed precipitation?” All the things that killed more people than snow did every year.
“I...” She went pale.
I almost felt guilty, but fear overrode that. The fear wanted to come out as anger, but that wouldn’t solve anything. What we needed wasn’t me being an asshole. We needed me coming up with a solution.
“All right,” I said, pulling out my phone. “We’ll reroute from here, join up with the southern route as quickly as possible.” I pulled up our location and studied the screen, not liking what I was seeing as I crossed off possibilities. “A lot of smaller roads are closed in preparation for the storm. No matter which direction we go, it’s going to slow us down.”
“Nick, I didn’t realize. I...”
“It’s okay, Cara. We’ll figure it out. There have to be major highways that will work.” And there were, but we were far away from them. The best option would add eight hours—the better part of a driving day—to our schedule, and that was if we beat the storm. And to do that, we would have to drive through much of the night again. Cara had already driven all day, and I was functioning on too little sleep to do it safely.
“Where are we headed?” I asked. “I assume you booked a hotel.”
“A bed and breakfast,” she corrected. “It’s in a great little town. I’ll do a photo shoot first thing in the morning, then we’ll leave.”
“What’s our ETA tonight?”
“We should arrive around eight.” She smiled at me again. “And tomorrow night, we’ll arrive at the most important town for my photo shoot around six p.m. I’ll need a couple of night shots, then a few the next morning, and then we’re one-and-a-half really long driving days or two sane ones from your destination.”
