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Ben threw on his hazard lights and came out of the vehicle. He took her bag from her and hefted it into the car with an ease she hadn’t shown when she waddled with it from her apartment.
“Looks bad out there,” he said over the sound of steady rain hitting the windshield as he got in the car. It didn’t feel much better inside the vehicle. The tension was twice as thick as the humid air outside.
“They say we’re in for quite a few storms today.” She looked at him from the passenger side as he punched the button to start the engine with much more force than necessary, which couldn’t have been good for the car. And the hard set of his jaw couldn’t have been good for his teeth, either. Clearly, he was more aggravated about her coming on this trip than she’d thought. And she’d thought he was pretty ticked to begin with.
They rode without speaking for a little over an hour, with rain and an occasional deep sigh from Ben the only sounds in the car until she couldn’t take it any longer.
“I didn’t ask Darren to come on this trip,” she blurted, speaking the first words in ninety minutes. “He just told me I was going.”
He shot her a look, his nose as wrinkly as her fingers got every time she took one of her much-too-long bubble baths. “I know,” he said with a long sigh. He took his right hand from the ten-and-two position on the wheel and wiped his palm on his pants. When it was firmly back in place, he did the same with his left.
Was he nervous? This was a standard business trip, trying to get a client to trust them with their investments. True, it was a big client, but it certainly wasn’t their biggest.
The slight tremble in his hands did little to quell her own nerves. She turned to face him, to give him a little pep talk, though she wasn’t sure what to say. She’d never seen him so rattled. And then she noticed the opened can of ginger ale in the cup holder. He hadn’t touched it since she’d been in the car, but the beads of condensation racing down the side told her it was something he’d recently consumed. Dots of moisture glistened on his forehead and there was a sheen across his upper lip.
“Are you sick?” she asked, wondering how she hadn’t noticed the greenish cast to his skin when she got in the car. His color and grumpy demeanor were very on brand for a Marvel superhero, something that would have made Mia chuckle if she wasn’t so worried.
“I’ll be okay,” he said as he brought the can of soda to his lips with a trembling hand.
“That’s not an answer.” He blew out a slow breath, but the groan and puff of his cheeks were the final straw. “You need to pull over now.”
Now wasn’t a moment too soon. Because once Ben opened the driver’s side door, he emptied the contents of his stomach. Or, at least, Mia thought he’d emptied it. It took two more tries before he had.
“I’ll get you some medicine. Just hang in there,” Mia said to a slumped-over Ben as she came around the car. When he got out, she buckled herself in the driver’s seat and called up the nearest pharmacies on her phone’s GPS.
“I’m not sick.” Maybe he was telling the truth. From the sound of it, he was actually dying.
“Don’t play macho with me. That ship sailed when you yarked out the car door.”
“Yarked?”
“Exploded? Erupted? Take your pick. But don’t sit there and tell me you’re not sick.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of his lips, like he was too weak for both sides of his mouth to take part. “It’s food poisoning.”
“Ew. Where’d you eat? I’m gonna avoid it like the plague.”
“My apartment. I told you I was teaching myself how to cook.”
“Looks like you could use a little more practice.”
He chuckled again but stopped abruptly as his body tightened and he brought a fist to his mouth. Mia pulled over again and rubbed his back in slow circles as he did his thing. A couple of times.
“I know you’re the boss here, but I’m calling it.”
Ben’s head snapped up from his coiled position, and he swayed until he regained his balance. “What? The trip? No way. We have to meet with the investor in the morning.”
“And we will. If you make it through the night, that is.” They shared a smile, and his was a little less lopsided than the last. “Look, we have an hour and a half left to get to Cincinnati, so I say we find the nearest hotel, crash there for the night, and get up extra early to drive the rest of the way tomorrow.”
“I don’t think deviating from the plan is necessary.” He lurched forward as soon as the sentence left his mouth.
“And I don’t think we have a choice.”
Chapter Six
“Have a wonderful stay, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.”
“We’re not—we wanted—how…”
