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“Yes, you’re better. You’re the best, okay? The best I’ve ever had. Now let me come, please, or I’ll have to kill you.”
He scooted up to kiss her then, his fingers in her hair, and she forgot their game and gave herself over to him completely. Because only Tom had ever made her feel like this. Only Tom had ever lit her up body and soul at the same time.
When he broke the kiss, he whispered in her ear, “You’re my best, too. You’re absolutely perfect.”
Then he moved inside her and took them both exactly where they wanted to go.
14
Eureka, Kansas, to Marshfield, Missouri. 2,825 miles traveled.
No one had ever told Lexie she was constitutionally incapable of multitasking, but it was the truth. She was the kind of person who could only pay attention to one thing at a time. Her total absorption made her a great conversationalist and a lot of fun to be around. Sometimes, it also meant she ruined dinner.
He watched as she took the lid off the pot of Spanish rice and stirred, pressing her phone to her ear with her shoulder. It was hard to get the rice to cook through without burning. The portable stove was reliable, but it didn’t really do low heat. She started searching around with her eyes for a water bottle to raise the liquid level, but then her brother must have said something funny, because she laughed and walked away from the picnic table, spoon in hand, rice forgotten.
Tom grabbed the spoon and took over. Since he was going to be in charge of cleaning the pot, he was doing himself a favor.
Lexie gave him a grateful smile and sank down onto the bench while he added water. He cut thin slices of cheddar to mix into the rice after it finished cooking, along with some black beans for protein. It had become their default meal for days when they’d put in a lot of miles and were too tired to bother with going out to eat or cooking something that required thought.
“I don’t know,” Lexie was saying to her brother. “We were talking about maybe taking a detour, finding somewhere more interesting to ride.”
They still had a couple more days of Kansas left before they hit the Missouri border, and they’d been trying to think of ways to spice it up. Though the road had begun to roll a little with their arrival in the Flint Hills and had eased from farmland to the ranches of the state’s cattle-fattening belt, it was still nothing to write home about, and they were both getting a little weary of the daily grind. There wasn’t much to see or do in towns like Cassoday, Kansas, Prairie Chicken Capital of the World.
“Yeah, I had all the overnight stops worked out, but we’re not following that anymore,” Lex was saying. “It’s more fun to be spontaneous.” This made him smile. He’d really enjoyed watching Lex transform into a more spontaneous rider. Everything had changed since he’d ditched her computer in the field. She hadn’t asked for a new one, and she’d even let her little notebook drop to the bottom of her bag. Now they rode as far as they wanted to each day, stopped when they felt like it, and visited whatever sights caught their attention. Not to mention seeking out landscape features large enough to conceal two full-grown adults who couldn’t seem to make it through the day without getting into each other’s pants.
The spontaneous Lexie Marshall was a blast.
“That’s none of your business!” she exclaimed, then laughed. “Oh, now you ask me. Two months I’ve been riding with the guy and you had zero questions about him—” She paused. “Right, right, you did ask whether he was carrying an ax, but other than that you haven’t shown the slightest bit of curiosity.” She listened for a moment, smiling, then looked up at Tom. “James wants to know what you’ve done to the real me. He claims you must have brainwashed me, because I’ve never been spontaneous in my life.”
Tom dropped beside her on the bench and wrapped his arm around her waist, lowering his mouth to the ear that didn’t have a phone pressed against it. “You want me to tell him what I did?” he murmured, moving his fingers under the hem of her shirt and wiggling them down into her shorts.
She giggled and swatted at his hand. “No! G
o finish the rice, it’s going to burn.” He bit her earlobe and rose to give his attention back to the pot, leaving her to her conversation.
“What difference does it make?” she said after a bit. “Oh. Seriously? Wow, that’s really great! But don’t let them send anything heavy, okay? I’m not so sentimental that I’m going to carry a set of bookends to Virginia just because Mom bought them for me.”
When she looked over at Tom, he raised an eyebrow, and she explained, “My family wants to send me presents for my birthday. Can we commit to being somewhere in particular four days from now?”
“Marshfield,” he said. He’d been looking at the map earlier. There wasn’t anywhere more interesting to go.
When she got off the phone, he handed her a bowl of rice and a beer across the picnic table. “You didn’t tell me your birthday was coming up.”
She shrugged. “You don’t strike me as the sort of person who cares about birthdays.”
He didn’t care about birthdays. He cared about Lexie. It was something he’d only recently admitted to himself, and he’d only done so because he’d decided he wasn’t going to let it turn into a problem. He could care about Lexie and still leave her when the trip was over. This thing between them had an expiration date, which protected him from doing something stupid like suggesting they get together after they returned to Oregon. Tom figured the TransAm had its own rules. On the trail, he could care about Lexie. Once he got back to Salem, it was back to the woods for him, and she could get on with her life. She deserved better than him, anyway.
“Are you kidding? I love birthdays,” he lied smoothly. “Taryn and I always get together and whack a piñata in the backyard.”
She knew him too well to buy that. “Yeah, right. I bet you buy her a gift certificate online and send it to her by e-mail, and then she has to nag you to take her out for a drink.”
Pretty close. “Ouch, Marshall.” He shook his head and pointed his fork at her. “You’re just sensitive because you’re getting old. What are you, forty-five this year?”
“Very funny. I’ll have you know I’m about to reach the ripe old age of thirty.”
He winced and sucked air in through his teeth. “Ooh, sorry. You must be mature for your age.”
“Thanks for that. Don’t think I don’t know you have a few years on me, old man. I’ve seen that Nirvana concert T-shirt on you enough times to know you were flailing around mosh pits in Seattle when I was still in middle school. How old are you, anyway?”
