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Rosalie was looking at her expectantly, and Lexie scrambled to replay her mental tape of the woman’s monologue, searching for the right response. Dimly, she remembered Rosalie saying something about the importance of pursuing your dreams.
“Oh, you’re right,” Lexie answered. “When you want something, you’ve just got to go balls to the wall and refuse to give up until you’ve got it.” She put on a bright smile, ignoring the hostess’s shocked expression. “It’s been so nice talking to you. I hope you won’t mind excusing me, but I don’t want to keep my husband waiting any longer.”
The other woman’s reply drifted over her shoulder as she walked away. “Believe me, honey, if I had that man in my bed, I wouldn’t keep him waiting either.”
Lexie slid into the booth with a smile in her eyes and picked up her menu, leaving Tom to wonder what she and the other woman had been talking about that had gotten her so fired up. Maybe he should’ve stuck around to hear the conversation, but he’d been enjoying the voyeur’s version. The booth gave him an unobstructed view of Lexie’s backside, and it was far enough away that he didn’t have to listen to the hostess asking where they were headed, how long it was going to take them to get there, and why in God’s name anyone would want to cross the country by bicycle.
Accustomed to the curiosity bike travelers provoked, Tom had been weary of the questions before they even started riding, but Lexie’s patience for polite conversation showed every sign of being inexhaustible. She couldn’t seem to order pancakes without finding out their waitress’s name, hometown, and whether she was a Pisces or a Capricorn. When they’d arrived at the campground last night and had been assigned a site number, Tom had located their patch of grass, pitched his tent, and taken a shower before Lexie was finished swapping tales with the manager on duty.
It was even worse when she got talking to other cyclists. Anecdotes about adventure and mishaps on the road ri
veted her, and she would listen with eyes like saucers, her cheeks pink, her whole torso tipped slightly toward the speaker, hands clasped between her thighs. If she ever got off her high horse and started talking to him again, maybe he’d tell her about the bull that had run him off the road on the Great Divide trail. Or the time he’d gone ass over teakettle crossing a river in Costa Rica and lost one of his panniers, leaving him without a tent, a change of clothes, or a toothbrush for three days. Solo touring certainly came with its fair share of disasters, amusing only in retrospect.
When their waitress brought them a basket of chips and a few different kinds of salsa, Tom ordered a beer. “Same for me, please,” Lexie said, to his surprise. She hadn’t shown any interest in sharing his beer at the campsites, though he always had a few to spare. He’d figured she didn’t drink. Women like her couldn’t stand to lose control. Not that one beer had ever killed anybody.
She caught his eye as the waitress departed, holding his attention with a mischievous twist of her lips. Raising one elbow high, Lexie let her hand hover dramatically over the selection of hot sauces on their table before plunging her fingers down to pluck out a tiny bottle. She rolled it around in her palm, studying the label with great concentration, and then set it down midway between the two of them.
This performance was clearly for his benefit, but Tom couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He leaned back in the upholstered booth, cradling his head in both hands, and watched.
Lexie went through the whole ritual again, making sure she had his attention as she selected another type of hot sauce, read all the claims on the label, and found it a place on the tabletop a few inches to the left of the first bottle.
Whatever she had planned, she was finding it highly amusing. Her lips kept twitching with the tiniest of smiles as she rearranged the bottles, glancing at him every now and again with a twinkle in those whiskey eyes. She kept it up until she’d examined all the bottles and lined them up deliberately, seven little soldiers in a row dividing his side of the table from hers.
Then she brought her eyes to his and raised an eyebrow. Ready?
He shrugged. Knock yourself out.
Lexie picked up the bottle of hot sauce at the far end of the line and presented it to him in her palm for inspection. He knew this one. It was a pretty tame West Indian picante, really more of a salsa. She made a big production of unscrewing the lid, selecting the perfect chip from the basket, dribbling it with hot sauce, and eating it. When she was finished, she squinted her eyes and compressed her lips in a remarkably good likeness of Clint Eastwood’s steely expression from the spaghetti westerns, aimed at the hot sauce bottle with her index finger, and shot it. Pow.
Caught off guard by the playful gesture, Tom smiled. He hadn’t seen this side of her before. Who knew Ms. Annotated Route Map could be funny?
The waitress arrived then with their drinks, and Lexie sat back in the booth as Tom ordered his food, busying herself with squeezing the lime into her Corona and taking a long swallow. When it was her turn, she requested a burrito with the works and handed the waitress her menu, for once without engaging her in conversation.
As soon as the woman departed, Lexie turned her attention back to Tom. She leaned forward and gave the bottle of hot sauce she’d just shot a push in his direction, raising both eyebrows at him in an obvious dare. You man enough for this?
Now he got it. Lexie was challenging him to a duel.
4
The glimmer in Tom’s eyes and the set to his jaw said, You’re on. Lexie could barely restrain herself from doing a little victory dance in the booth. He didn’t know it yet, but she had his number now. She had never met a hot sauce she couldn’t handle. Sooner or later, they’d get to one that was too hot for him, and then he’d slip up and say something, and she’d win.
Smirking, Tom found himself a chip, sauced it, and took a bite. He obviously rated his chances of coming out on top a lot higher than Lexie did. She couldn’t detect any signs of discomfort as he chewed, but then again this first selection hadn’t been anything to write home about. It had a little bit of pop, but hardly enough to merit inclusion on the table. She supposed the weenies deserved condiments, too. Tom leaned forward and knocked over the bottle with a flick of his finger against his thumb, then glanced at her with a cocky curve to his lips.
Lexie got the message: You shot it. I killed it.
Next up.
The second bottle in the row was a chipotle-garlic novelty sauce called Bite Me. It was just hot enough to make her mouth water, with a nice roasted garlic aftertaste. She’d have to remember to put some on her burrito later. After she swallowed and put an imaginary slug through the bottle, Tom took his turn and knocked it flat.
Next.
Number three, which claimed to be “pure death,” was a big disappointment. She’d tried to rank the sauces from wimpiest to hottest, but it was difficult. Hot sauce manufacturers were such a bunch of braggarts. Because this one had let her down, Lexie shot it with both guns and blew the smoke off her index fingers before reholstering them at her hips. That coaxed a full-size smile out of Tom, which upset her equilibrium a heck of a lot more than the first three hot sauces had done. There was something so infectious about this man when he smiled that she beamed back at him without even thinking about it, feeling the tension that had been coiling tight in her chest start to unwind. It was a wonderful, heady sensation.
And then she came to her senses and realized she was sitting there grinning at Tom like a toddler with an ice cream cone. Whoops. This was serious business. She couldn’t let him dazzle her with those white teeth and laughing eyes of his when there was a battle to be won.
Give the man his hot sauce.
Tom smiled a little wider, shaking his head at her antics, and prepared his next chip. While he ate it, she tried not to look at his mouth. And failed. Then he tipped back his head and drank from his beer, and she willed herself not to stare at his throat. And failed. She wanted to reach over and run a fingertip along his jawline, testing the rasp of his midday stubble against her skin. He was the most hypnotically attractive man she’d ever met.
