Page 84 of True Abandon

The side of his mouth rises in an impish grin. “Your legs are too killer to hide in a pant suit.”

It’s impossible to hide the red in my cheeks. I don’t have a mirror, but the heat and the way his eyes linger on my thighs has me wishing I had ice water.

“Okay, Stan.” He grins at my reference to Dorothy’s ex-husband.

“What ever happened with that guy you were dating?” His question catches me off guard. “The one who called you the night of the storm.”

There’s a small, yellow bird sitting on a nearby tree. I watch it peck at a piece of branch, and I answer him nonchalantly, “Kevin wasn’t too thrilled when I told him I was moving five-thousand miles across the country.”

“Do you regret it?”

I turn around with a tilted head.

He continues, “You said I’m the reason you walk away from relationships.”

A couple of bikers pass by—a tour group of about eight. I watch them zip down the mountain and passed us as I think about my last relationship.

“Kevin and I met at work. It’s easy to fall for someone when you’re with them every day. He is really funny and compassionate. He’s the type of guy who, if you needed him, he was right there. I was very dependent on him in some ways yet closed off in others. Like, if I felt lonely or scared, I called him. But when he wanted things like me to move in with him I panicked and avoided the conversation.” I bite my lip and look down at my Keds. “I blamed you, but the truth is after two years I should have wanted to take those steps with him. With or without you in my past, I should have wanted to be with him. I didn’t—so I ended it.”

“Two years is a long time.”

I look back up. “Yea. But like you said yesterday, you can know someone for two years, but it only takes a moment to determine if your souls connect.”

He raises that brow I love, and I find myself saying, “Next stop you get to tell me the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done.”

He doesn’t argue. At the fifth stop, he tells me how he lost a bet and had to go on stage in nothing but a pair of women’s underwear…with his junk falling out the side. The embarrassing part was Ella had surprised him by coming to see the show.

“At least you had your guitar to cover yourself,” I offer.

“Except I didn’t realize she was in the audience until after the show. I kinda played the part of the extrovert. The last thing I want is for my sister to see my bare ass as I let my drummer give it a whack with a stick as I read aloud lines from Fifty Shades of Grey.”

“I’m sure you put her Christian Grey fantasies to bed with that one.”

He cringes and makes a face like he’s gagging. “And now I’m picturing my sister in bed with Christian Grey.”

I couldn’t help my giggle. With each stop, we talked about just about everything. His favorite author, John Grisham, and mine, Nora Roberts and our mutual favorite food is a cheeseburger with cheddar.

He loves guitar driven music, the Discovery Channel, green Jolly Ranchers, and sex. While I adore 48 Hours, drinks with friends, dark chocolate, and (fine, I give in) sex.

I laugh at the fact he dislikes disco balls and mayonnaise. He finds it amusing I’m not a fan of words that start with the letter Q. He proves it by shouting as many of them as we head down the hill to the final stop. And damn him and his knowledge of the English vocabulary because he knows many obscure ones.

“Quagga, quahog, quarks, quaffed.”

“What the heck is a quahog?” I ask when we get to the base.

“A large, rounded clam.”

“Who knows that?”

He puts his shoulders back and puffs out his chest. “Me. I do.”

I push him in his over-confident chest and walk my bike to the attendant who waits to gather them at the bottom.

We’re about to board the van when I look back toward the canyon. “I’ve booked this tour a hundred times for guests but have never come. Thank you for suggesting it.”

“I just wanted to see the sunrise with you. Thank you for suggesting this.”

I pull on the strands of my braid, my fingers feeling every bump on the way down. “Why the sun rise?”