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“I’m curious.”
She turned in her seat. “You’re never curious.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve known you for almost a week now, and you haven’t asked me a single personal question.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
She blushed and socked him in the arm. “You know what I mean.”
He grunted. “I was just wondering what our age difference was.”
“Oh.” She closed the guidebook. “I’m twenty-seven.”
He was thirty. He rubbed the heel of his hand over his chest. Lawrence had married his mom when he was eight. He wasn’t sure of the specifics, but it had been really fast. He didn’t know if his mother had been dating Larry before she introduced them, but all of a sudden Larry had been his stepdad and spending a lot of time getting to know him. He remembered moments of finding Larry staring out a window with a sad look on his face when he’d first married his mother, but Shane had been so happy to have a father in his life that he’d rush in and drag him outside to play ball.
Had Larry really left Kendall behind at such a young age?
It just didn’t make sense.
Of all Larry’s faults, being an absent father wasn’t one of them. Too involved would be more like it. The will was a testament to that. But why would he take away one more thing from Kendall? Shane wasn’t the first child to have a parent die without leaving anything behind.
“Going to clue me in on the personal conversation going on in your head?”
“We’ll talk about it when we stop for the night.”
She jammed the guidebook into the backpack she’d bought that morning. “I hate when you do that.”
He rubbed his palm on his jeans. He wasn’t going to play dumb. “It’s a little heavy to talk about. And it’s too pretty a day to fight.”
“Oh, and that makes me feel a million times better.” She tucked her back into the door and crossed her leg over her knee. His large bench seat was perfect to let her stretch out. Part of him wanted to pull her feet into his lap. Everything about Kendall invited intimacy. She was so tiny and limber. God, was she limber.
His fingertips bit into his thigh in memory. That last night with her had been too intimate, too intense, too everything. He’d pushed her away as far as humanly possible.
She sat up suddenly. “Can we stop?”
He looked at the dash. They hadn’t been on the road three hours yet. “Already?”
“There’s a rest stop, and I prefer not to use a campsite one. I’ve seen them.”
He sighed. “You aren’t one of those girls that has a bladder the size of a walnut, are you?”
“No.” She sneered at him. “I need snacks and a coffee. And you need something with caffeine too. Did you sleep at all last night?”
“Enough.”
“Oh, yeah, big strong man. I no need sleep.”
He knew she was looking for a laugh, so he kept his face perfectly stony.
She slumped. “Your sense of humor is nonexistent.”
He pulled off for the rest stop and parked. Kendall clambered down and jogged ahead to the visitor’s center. After a trip to the men’s room, he made a beeline for the mini-mart and decided to go with cold caffeine. He got in line. She was right. The road was starting to blur a little. Even with her Lonely Planet narration, he needed a quick stretch to get out of his own head.
He didn’t want to ask her about when Larry had left her and her mother. He had a sinking feeling he knew the answer to that question. He just wasn’t sure about the why.
She slapped a bag of Skittles and a Coke Zero on the counter in front of him. He looked down at her. “Are you sure you need sugar and caffeine?”
