Rafe looked over my shoulder and covered his laugh with a cough. “How unique,” he enthused.
“Eh. It’s mostly covers this time.” Chet shrugged modestly. “The Newsmen trying to show our vocal range, you know?”
I forced a smile. “I’m sure it’s delightful.”
“It was nice meeting you, Chet,” Rafe said, “but we’ve got a ways to go yet today, so… Best of luck to you getting home, I guess?”
A wildlyperfectidea occurred to me. “You know… we’re heading west.”
“Good job,” Rafe approved. “I knew if you practiced you’d be able to learn your directions. Soon, we’ll work on those ABCs, and there’ll be no stopping you.”
Smart-ass.
“Chet also needs to go west.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Right, Chet?”
“Yep. Just about an hour south of Kansas City. Dry Hump,” he explained to Rafe.
But Rafe was too busy staring at me to react. “That’s a heck of a coincidence, alright,” Rafe said in a hard voice. “But one thing has nothing to do with—”
“But it could.” I smiled brilliantly. “Itcould. And you know, Rafe, you really should be nicer to people. Stop being so suspicious and inclined to make snap decisions.”
Rafe’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“It’s okay! I forgive you.” I patted his shoulder gently. “Not everyone can have my relentlessly positive, sunshiny disposition.”
Rafe began to protest, but I cut him off by turning to Chet. “How would you like a ride as far as Kansas City, Chet?”
Chet gasped. “Ya mean it?”
“Sure. We’d be happy to.” I elbowed Rafe. “Wouldn’t we?”
Rafe’s reply was an audible grinding of teeth, but that didn’t seem to dull Chet’s enthusiasm at all.
He looked back and forth from the two of us to the van. “Oh ho! Road trip! Lemme grab my stuff!”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Rafe said through clenched teeth as Chet ran through the deluge to his rust box. “What happened to ‘low profile’ and ‘avoid the media,’ Jay Don? What happened to being in a hurry? What happened to—?”
“Chet doesn’t recognize me at all, and I didn’t give him my name,” I said reasonably. “Besides, what happened to ‘Be nicer, Jay’? What happened to ‘You used to be such a decent human, and now yousuckbecause you’re too afraid people will recognize you’?”
Rafe’s nostrils flared. “You keep putting words in my mouth! I never said that, and you need to stop making crazy-ass assumptions. I said you should give people the benefit of the doubt. I didnotsay we should pick up random strangers at truck stops and offer to chauffeur them to their destinations.” He leaned into my personal space, and his handsome face turned a spectacular shade of red. “I didn’t mean we should turn your kidnap van into a potentialmurdervan!”
Except I knew I’d done the right thing, because Rafe was now way too annoyed to remember what we’d been talking about before, let alone feel awkward about it.
Finally, this day was looking up.
I smiled sweetly. “So I take it that means you don’t want to drive?”
9
Rafe
“This isnotfunny,” I said, stalking around to the driver’s door, because at least with me behind the wheel, it was still only apotentialmurder van and not a guaranteed-vehicular-manslaughter van.
“I didn’t say it was funny.” Jay climbed in his door and shut it smartly. “I said we were being nice.”
He smelled like honey and oranges again, and I gritted my teeth. This trip could not be over fast enough.
I was so flustered—by his proximity, by what I’d admitted to, the whole shebang—that I spent half a minute patting my pockets for the damn keys before remembering Jay had them and that the engine started with a simple push button anyway.
