“Thanks,” she said when the water was settled and the car door shut.
“I’ll just put it on the tab,” Amanda said. Then after another lascivious wink, she waved them on. “Have fun!”
Not likely. Not since she was kidnapping a crazy grizzly man. But what other choice did she have? Vic said he was the only one who could help. But even knowing that, she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“So are you and…um…the redhead dating?”
Simon shook his head. He took his time answering, forming the words slowly as if he had to dredge them up from deep in his memory.
“We dated. Twice. I have gone on two dates with most of the women up here.” He looked at her and lifted a shoulder. “We did not suit.”
He sounded like he was reading the words—badly—off a cue card. And then she understood.
“It’s another system, right? A dating protocol. Two evenings with a woman makes her think you gave her a chance. If you treat her nicely and talk awkwardly, then she doesn’t push it when you say you two don’t suit. End of story and they stop bothering you.” She snorted. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or appalled.” Then she tilted her head. “You could just tell them you’re gay?” She lifted her voice at the end hoping he would answer the implied question.
It worked—sort of. “Lying is too complicated. I don’t do it.”
Well, that answered that. The man didn’t lie. Big point in his favor.
Meanwhile, Simon continued to sit staring at her though the food lay on his lap in neat cardboard boxes. The smell must be driving him crazy. She could hear his stomach rumbling over the road noise. But he just sat there staring at her.
“What?” she finally asked.
“I cannot help Vic. I can barely help myself.”
She looked at him. Not just the hard cut to his jaw or the muscles that wrapped his frame. He was a powerful man to be sure, but it was the darkness in his eyes that cut her now. Blue like deep water but shadowed even though he sat in the full sunshine.
Wait. Hadn’t his eyes been green? She shoved that thought aside and focused on getting him on board with Vic’s plan.
“Vic says you can help him.”
“Vic is full of shit.”
Often. But she couldn’t admit that. If she did, then that meant there was no hope for her only brother. “He was right about you turning into a bear.”
Simon’s expression didn’t change. It was flat. It was emotionless. And it still held shadows of what? Grief? Fear? She didn’t know. And worse, she couldn’t afford to find out. She only had emotional space in her heart for Vic.
“It’s the only Hail Mary pass I’ve got,” she confessed.
His silence told her clearer than anything else that her brother was doomed. She didn’t care. She’d been trying for hours to get a hold of Vic and he hadn’t answered. Which meant it might already be too late. But she was going to do what she promised. She was going to bring Simon to Detroit. If he couldn’t help, if they arrived too late, if any of a thousand terrible things happened, it wasn’t her fault. She was doing her part now.
So she put the car into gear and headed for the freeway. “You should eat the food. Your stomach is deafening.” And it was. It hadn’t stopped growling since the scents of pizza and cheeseburger filled the car.
His gaze turned to the topmost small box and opened it. Thick burger, melted cheese, tomato, mustard. The sight made her mouth water. He lifted it up in both his hands, but he didn’t eat.
“Sometimes the food quiets the grizzly. It lets the man take control.”
“Good.”
“Sometimes the opposite happens.”
It took her a moment to process that. So the grizzly would take over? While they were in a car together speeding down a freeway at eighty miles per hour?
She shot him a terrified look. His head was tilted and a single brow arched. It challenged her to turn the car around right then and dump him at the nearest tree. Common sense told her that was the best thing to do. But common sense wasn’t trying to save her brother.
“Eat up,” she said, her voice ringing with challenge.
He nodded and chomped down.
