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Tom chuckled in response. “Uh-huh. I’ve been here before, lots of times. And I come from a family of chili lovers. My dad is from Oaxaca. They like their peppers down there.”
“Why didn’t you say something? I can’t believe you let me eat that!”
Tom shrugged. “You’re a grown woman. I wanted to see if you could hack it. You should be proud—I’ve seen that stuff bring men to their knees. Anyway, now you have a good story from the trail to tell all those other bikers we meet.”
“This is not a good story,” she grumbled. “This is a humiliating story.” Somehow, she’d gotten what she wanted, but Tom had taken charge of the game, and she didn’t like it.
“All the best stories are humiliating, Marshall. If you’re not getting humiliated pretty regularly, it’s not an adventure.” He paused to take another bite out of his burrito, adding after he’d swallowed, “See how much fun it is to ride off the beaten path?”
“I think I’ll stick to the route from now on, thanks.”
He clucked his tongue at her. “That would be a real shame.”
“You’re horrible,” she complained, though she didn’t really mean it. The man sitting across from her was turning out to be a good deal more likable than she ever would’ve imagined.
Tom sipped his beer and set it down on the table. “I can be nice,” he said, his voice pitched low and intimate. And then he smiled again, slow and sexy this time, and she realized she was in really big trouble. Because this wasn’t Angry Tom—this was somebody else. Somebody he’d kept under wraps for three days. And she was more than attracted to this Tom. She wanted him bad.
It wouldn’t do at all. She couldn’t ride across the country with Tom if she wanted to jump his bones. She needed a riding partner, not a—well, not whatever Tom would be if she slept with him. A hassle, that’s what he’d be. He’d start thinking he could call all the shots, make her follow him off the route for burritos and beer when they were supposed to be riding all the way to Eugene this afternoon. No. This was her trip, and no way was she letting that happen.
She needed Angry Tom back. Angry Tom she could totally handle. He wasn’t much fun, but he was no threat.
The problem was, she didn’t know how to put the hottie back in the bottle.
5
McKenzie Bridge, Oregon, to Prineville, Oregon. 367 miles traveled.
They spent the morning climbing. It was twenty-seven miles uphill from their campsite to the top of McKenzie Pass, nine of them a long, slow, steep grind to the summit. Tom took the lead, sometimes cranking along in a low gear, sometimes shifting up and standing on the pedals for a while to give his legs and hands something different to do. Though the scenery improved as they ascended, it was tedious riding, leaving his mind free to turn over the problem of Lexie.
They’d been riding together for a week, and so far, they’d only encountered a handful of other people who were riding the TransAm west to east
. The vast majority of riders who decided to test their mettle against the trail followed it in the opposite direction, in part because it was still early in the season to be camping in Oregon. Overnight temperatures often dropped into the forties, and the occasional random June snowfall wasn’t unheard of. Most of the bikers he and Lexie had met so far had been locals.
All of which meant Tom hadn’t made any headway toward finding Lexie a new escort. The first candidate had looked at her like he wanted to eat her with a spoon, so that guy was out. Then there was the married couple from East Germany. They were friendly, but their English had been barely passable. He’d briefly entertained the hope that Lexie spoke German, but she hadn’t been able to manage more than guten Tag, and he could hardly leave her with folks she couldn’t communicate with. None of the other riders they’d encountered were planning to go all the way to Virginia, so they were disqualified automatically.
If he ever met Mr. Lexie, he was going to give the man a piece of his mind for sticking him with this protection gig. What kind of husband turned his wife over to some guy he’d never met? If Tom had a wife who looked like Lexie, he sure as hell wouldn’t let her out of his sight to ride across the country with a stranger for three months. Not willingly, anyway.
Of course, it was a moot point, because he never intended to have a wife again. Not after Haylie. Losing his wife to his brother had pretty thoroughly soured him on the concept of matrimony.
He’d wondered briefly that first day if Lexie really had a husband. But then he’d overheard her on the phone, affectionately teasing someone she called “James” about how he was missing out on the ride of a lifetime. Talking to her husband, she became the woman he’d been introduced to across a row of hot sauce bottles in Corvallis—funny and brassy, playful and clever. The kind of person anybody would want to spend time with.
He didn’t see that Lexie often. Most of the time, she was polite but distant with him, almost curt. But he’d been watching her, and he was starting to figure her out. She wasn’t as bad as he’d thought on the beach in Seaside. Yeah, she was hyper-organized, and she had this idea that if she didn’t follow all the touring rules, the whole ride would go to hell. Not a big risk-taker, our Mrs. Marshall. But she didn’t try to control him, and she wasn’t mean. Lexie had found a compliment for every stranger they’d encountered, and she went out of her way to convince them what a great trip she and Tom were having, as if she didn’t want anyone to worry about her.
It was her eyes that gave her away. In unguarded moments, they were troubled, even defeated. Lexie wasn’t having any fun.
Probably she was missing her husband. Probably she was wondering how she’d ended up on the trip she’d been looking forward to her whole life with a bastard like Tom.
Not that it was his problem. But it nagged at him anyway, and he kept catching himself trying to think of ways to cheer her up. It was the hero thing rearing its ugly head again. He thought of her as his responsibility, and he wanted to rescue her, even though he couldn’t imagine anyone less suited for the job than him. What Lexie needed was a riding partner who was young at heart, carefree by nature, and as talkative as she was. Somebody like Tom Vargas, actually. Too bad that guy wasn’t around anymore.
Tom could almost hear his sister tearing him a new one for the thought. When he’d spoken to her about Lexie, she’d been so coy, he’d wondered if the surprise she professed was genuine. It seemed entirely possible Taryn had suspected “Alex” was a woman all along. If she had, she’d fixed him up with Lexie for just this purpose—to drag him unwillingly out of his shell and force him to interact like the sociable person he used to be.
Imaginary Taryn had a point. When it came to Lexie, he’d been clinging to a coward’s attitude. Maybe he wasn’t the same guy he’d been before the trial, but he wasn’t a complete loser. He could manage the occasional friendly conversation with Lexie. And anyway, he’d told her in Corvallis he could be nice. It was probably time to give it a shot.
But what did he have to say to the woman? He couldn’t ask her any of the typical getting-to-know-you questions, because he’d been listening to her talk to other people for a week. He already knew she taught high school in Portland, that this was her first cross-country tour, and that her parents had met and fallen in love doing Bikecentennial back in 1976—a romantic story he’d heard her tell three separate times. He knew why she’d decided to ride west to east (more convenient) and why she’d chosen a trailer over panniers (more stable). He knew a lot about Lexie Marshall. He just didn’t know how to talk to her.
Since most cyclists liked to yammer on about their gear, he decided to try a bike question.
When he dropped back to ride beside her, she didn’t even look over at him. Not a great sign.
