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Roman always used to hide behind his sister, Samantha, when the monkeys came on. Now he had no one to hide behind. He’d found, though, that it was possible to hide inside yourself. It took patience, and practice.
He was very good at it.
“I grew up in Wisconsin.”
“Not Canada?”
“Not Canada.”
“Damn. Canada would have been a lot cooler.”
He let out a long breath. “Now will you please tell me how to jack up the trailer?”
“I’ll do you one better, Cheesehead. I’ll show you.” She bent over, staggered, and put her hand out to balance against the hitch, knocking the block of wood to the ground. “Oopsie. Little light-headed.”
She remained bent over for so long, breathing and unmoving, that he had no choice but to help her up and support her by the elbow as he guided her to sit on the wet metal steps beneath the Airstream’s entry door. She recovered for half a minute, then began issuing vague instructions for hooking up the trailer hitch that he could barely understand, much less carry out.
By the time he had it ready to go, Roman was freezing, Ashley couldn’t stop shuddering, and Carmen and Heberto were in the air, well on their way to New York.
CHAPTER THREE
“So where am I dropping you?”
Ashley picked her purse up off the immaculate passenger-side floor mat and began rummaging around for a piece of gum. Anything to stall.
It was a miracle he hadn’t asked sooner, really. Most people would have. But Roman was efficient, and U.S. 1 was the only way out of the Keys, a bridge-studded north-south corridor that linked the islands together. Because of the evacuation, all the lanes were northbound.
He’d had no reason to ask. He’d simply merged into the stream of traffic and kept his questions to himself. Until now.
So why was he asking?
He can smell your fear.
Maybe he could. She’d been growing more rank with every passing mile, mentally calculating their speed against the number of miles they had to go and trying to anticipate how far north they would need to get before the traffic thinned out and they started making better time.
On a good day, it took her nine or ten hours to drive to Mitzi’s from Sunnyvale. At their current speed, it would take them until the End of All Things.
Ashley had evacuated before. She knew the drill—once they got to Miami, people would start forking off in different directions, and everything would speed up. Still, that could take hours. They might not make Georgia tonight. What if they had to find a hotel room together? What if there were no hotel rooms? She could bunk down in the Airstream, of course, but she doubted Roman would go for that.
No worries, Roman, there are twin beds. You sleep on that one, and I’ll sleep over here. Thirty-six inches away.
She could only imagine what sort of dreams she’d have in that situation.
But even sex dreams would be better than the fear-visions plaguing her. Roman finding out where they were going and pulling over to the side of the road. Unhitching the trailer and leaving her there in the rain, alone.
He wouldn’t do it, she was ninety-nine percent sure. He’d gone along with the trailer thing, and it seemed safe to assume he’d follow through on the rest of his promises.
And even if he did do it, she had her address book, her phone, and the green canvas duffel bag that had accompanied her all over the world. If he left her behind, she could find someone to pick her up within an hour or two.
Ashley had a lot of friends. Tons. All over the world, she had friends.
No matter what happened, she would be fine.
So why did the very idea of Roman driving away from her, leaving her alone in the rain, force her heart up into her throat? And why, when she imagined it, did she keep seeing Roman’s stern face as he drove away, rather than her own sad, abandoned roadside figure?
Ridiculous, to care that he might be disappointed in her.
She was tired, that was all. This was a lingering effect of her time on the palm tree, not guilt at the way she was testing him or some bizarre, inappropriate attachment to a man she didn’t like. A man who was right now ruining her life.
