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“That doesn’t tell me anything,” I say, but I can’t suppress a ghost of a smile. He’s so excited, almost boyishly so, it’s hard for me not to appreciate the change in his demeanor. Even if he’s kidnapping me.
“It’s not a well-known place, but I’ve been here before,” he says. “It’s a nice, small resort in the mountains. They have private cabins, and all of the comforts of home, with room service.”
“Ah, we wouldn’t want to go without room service,” I say before turning to look at him. “How many cabins did you rent?” My stomach’s nervous as I wait for his answer.
“Two, but I’m hoping one of them remains empty,” he says, and I let out the breath I was holding.
That he’s rented two means a lot to me. He’s obviously hoping for sex this weekend, but he’s also showing enough respect to offer separate sleeping quarters if I insist on them.
“Considering that I want to pull this car over onto a nice little logging road right now, strip your clothes off, and touch every single inch of your silky skin, it might be a good idea for you to distract me,” Byron tells me, making my head whip around.
I gape at him in partial shock and awe. “Um... I don’t... um... What do you want to talk about?” I finally manage to ask.
“Tell me about yourself. How did you end up in Seattle?”
This is a subject I really,reallydon’t want to discuss. “How about anything other than that?” I ask in my lightest tone. He isn’t buying it.
“Everyone has a beginning, McKenzie, even if that beginning isn’t what we think it should be.”
I decide to challenge him. “Why don’t you tell me about your youth, then?”
His shoulders tense, but he doesn’t back away. “I might do that, but you go first.”
I pause for a moment. If there’s anything I know about Byron, it’s that he doesn’t lie and he doesn’t make promises he won’t keep. He hasn’t said outright that he’ll tell me about his past, but it’s a big step for him to consider it and enough to loosen my tongue.
“I had a typical childhood. Or are there any ‘typical’ childhoods anymore? Divorced parents, a sister...” I choke on the last word.
“Wait!” he says, jerking his head in my direction. “You have a sister?”
“Please pay attention.” I gasp when we swerve toward the ditch. He quickly corrects the wheel, then faces forward.
“Yes, Ihada sister,” I say quietly.
“Where is she? Why doesn’t anyone know about her?” He obviously hasn’t picked up on the wordhad.
“When we were fourteen—”
Byron interrupts again. “We?”
“Susie and I were twins,” I murmur.
“I’m sorry. I won’t interrupt again,” he says before throwing me a sheepish smile. “Or I’ll try really hard not to.”
“When we were fourteen, my dad gave us a quad. One of few nice things about being the children of divorce is when Daddy comes to town, he tries to be the cool parent, so we always got really expensive, outrageous gifts that would drive our mother crazy. She told us we couldn’t ride the quad until we were trained. Of course, she worked two jobs and couldn’t exactly monitor us. We lived in a small town outside of Sacramento, up in the hills, and it was summer. We wanted to try out the new toy.” It hurts to even think about this day.
“Please go on, McKenzie,” Byron gently says.
“We took turns racing down some old logging roads, each of us fighting over who got to drive and who had to hang on for dear life. Yeah,dear life... It was her turn to drive, and she was all sorts of confident at this point. And our father, being who he was, had bought us the toy but not the safety items needed with it. Neither of us had helmets...” I close my eyes as I relive a brief second in time that changed my life forever.
“You can stop,” Byron says, squeezing my thigh, this time not as a come-on but in reassurance.
“She didn’t die,” I whisper so softly I’m not sure Byron hears me.
“What?” he gasps, turning toward me again before realizing what he’s doing, and then quickly faces the road again.
“No. And I felt guilty for years because I wished she’d died. It would’ve been easier,” I say.
“Tell me, McKenzie.” It’s a soft plea.
