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“What is that? Why do you keep calling me that?”
“It’s Pashto. I served two tours in Afghanistan.”
He doesn’t continue and I doubt I can get any more out of him by pushing. For a writer, he’s infuriatingly chintzy with his words.
He pulls into the police station parking lot ten minutes later and tells me to lock the doors as he gets out. Not long after that, he comes out of the building holding a stack of papers.
“Mind if we make one more stop?”
I shake my head. I don’t care if he keeps driving until we fall off the ends of the earth. I’m on shaky ground and can’t get my bearings. All that’s keeping me from losing it is his quiet company.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks. I can feel his soft rasp on the back of my neck and a shiver ripples over my skin.
“Anything.”
“Mona doesn’t drive?”
This gets a reluctant smile out of me. He makes the most innocuous questions sound sexy. “I thought you were going to ask me something personal. I’m only telling you this because she doesn’t hide it. Mona’s legally blind in one eye and her vision isn’t great in the other. It’s one of the reasons she hired me.”
“You two are close,” he says as a statement of fact.
“Very close…” I don’t know where I’d be without Mona. Rudderless. Lost for sure. “She’s more of a mother to me than mine has ever been. I would stay with her even if she wasn’t paying me.” The Cobra turns onto Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica Bay glistening on my left, and we head north. “Where are we going?”
“My place. I need to pick something up.”
Ten minutes later, we pull down a dirt driveway and keep going until land meets air. A silver Airstream trailer sits on a bluff overlooking the coast, next to it a couple of lawn chairs and a card table.
“This is your place? It’s beautiful.” A view worth millions, no doubt.
“I bought the land when I signed my first contract and never got around to building. I’m away too much… so this works for me.”
He parks and we both get out. The breeze blowing my hair back feels good. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, fill my lungs with sea air and push out all the residual anger at my mother. It’s my fault. My father was right. She is who she is and expecting her to change is insanity.
“What happened with your mother?”
I look over my shoulder to find Shane watching me closely, his dark brown eyes turning amber in the sunlight.
“My mother’s getting married again. She’s in town to ask my father for a divorce, and to see her new stepdaughter… she’s thirteen and goes to boarding school here.
“I guess I was hoping for her to be different. To come to her senses and turn into the mother I always wanted her to be. But people can’t change their nature, can they?”
Hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, he walks up next to me and stares ahead at the sinking sun.
“No. I don’t think they can,” he murmurs in a resigned tone. I can’t help but wonder if he’s speaking about himself, or someone he loves.
“Grizzly bears like to roam,” comes out of my mouth without permission.
His brow wrinkles in confusion. “What?”
“Never mind… We should head back. I have to feed dinner.”
Looking down at me, he searches my face and nods. “Let me grab my laptop.”
While he disappears into the trailer, I glance around, drifting over to the lawn chair. I take a seat and stare at the horizon. Something about this place feels familiar to me. Homey, almost.
My gaze cuts left and I spot a paperback with the cover ripped off on the other lawn chair. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I reach for it and my suspicion is confirmed. My beloved copy of Simply freaking Sinful.
I pick it up and clutch it to my chest, whipping around in the chair. Shane is in the doorway of the trailer with a laptop tucked under his arm and a guilty expression on his face.
“You dirty, rotten, filthy liar!” I shout, standing. I’m not sure whether to be pissed or embarrassed, but somehow I end up laughing. I’ve been thoroughly played.
A grin splits his face. “You never asked me whether I had it.”
“You knew what I was looking for and you said nothing!” I charge up and he backpedals inside. I go to smack him with the book and he catches my arm in his free hand, the rough pads of his fingers wrapping gently against the fine skin on the inside of my wrist. My vitals spike; my pulse racing like I just ran a marathon, my breathing shallow as we stare at each other.
