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Tom knew better than to say any of that aloud. He stuck with “This is a bad idea.”
“Which part?” she asked, with a perplexed shake of her head. She had wavy reddish brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Very pretty.
Very definitely not a man.
“Riding together,” he clarified.
“But w
asn’t it your idea? You answered my ad.” She looked irritated with him, a little confused. Vulnerable. He wanted to help her out, except he was the problem.
This was exactly why he avoided getting tangled up with people. You reached out a helping hand, and the next thing you knew you were up to your neck in quicksand, trying and failing to figure out a way to get everybody back out again.
“My sister,” he said.
“What about your sister?”
“She answered it.”
“You’re kind of losing me here.”
“Yeah.” He crossed his arms and stared at her. Maybe if he was rude enough, she’d give up and go home. There was a risk she would cry first, and that would be unpleasant, but he could weather it if he had to.
She crossed her own arms, mimicking his posture, and stared right back. “Yeah.”
2
How on earth had she gotten Tom Geiger so completely wrong?
Lexie had prepared for this meeting as studiously as she had laid out all of her plans for the trip. The entire way from Astoria this morning, she’d thought about how she would respond when he finally figured out she was a woman. For every potential reaction—surprise, confusion, indignation—she’d considered the best way to overcome it, to smooth over his ruffled feathers and create a strong basis for camaraderie.
But obviously she hadn’t prepared as thoroughly as she should have, because she didn’t know what to do with the guy standing in front of her. She hadn’t expected him to be this hostile. Or this weird. Or this … young.
The Tom Geiger of her imagination had been fifty-five, jovial, and balding. This Tom wasn’t any of those things. Not at all.
She didn’t have the first clue how to cope with him.
He broke the standoff first. Running a hand over his close-cropped black hair, he took a few steps away from her and turned his attention past the parking lot to the beach. Not leaving—regrouping. Yet even this hint of his possible departure made her nervous.
Whatever happened, she couldn’t let him get away.
“Your sister?” she asked, hoping to elicit a fuller explanation.
“Yeah.”
That was it, just the one syllable. For crying out loud. She’d arranged to bike across the country with the most taciturn man in Oregon.
It’s either this guy, or you ride alone.
An option, but not a good one. Lexie had done the woman-camping-alone thing enough times to know her limits. It was one thing to be a strong, independent woman on the streets of Portland and quite another to fall asleep alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere without worrying about ax murderers. She could do it—she had done it—but she’d strongly prefer not to.
Of course, Tom was a stranger, too, with as much ax-murderer potential as the next guy. Still, you had to choose your risks, didn’t you? Even in his obviously aggravated state, he didn’t feel dangerous, and at least he was a biker. She knew his name and where he lived. He worried her considerably less than the alternative.
Lexie didn’t have the luxury of blowing Tom off. She needed to figure out what his problem was so she could fix it.
“She … tricked you into this?” He hadn’t said exactly that, but he was standing there with his arms crossed, frowning at the Pacific, and he had the look of a man who’d been outmaneuvered.
“Mmm-hmm.”
