Unfortunately, Remy’s doodling plan hadn’t yet paid dividends. So far, he’d drawn happy faces, suns hovering above mountains, stick figures, cars that resembled Hot Wheels, and one-dimensional houses like kids drew—a square front topped by a triangle roof. He was laughably bad at drawing. Every time he handed his creations to her, his mocking features said,Excellent plan, Remy.
Leigh continued to show up, to coddle him, and to search the web for leads.
No luck. The theory he’d raised—that no one was looking for him—started to seem like a possibility. Privately, Remy agreed with Leigh on the wrongness of that. Jonah was uppity and a handful. But surely, he had a whole network of family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. Surely.
“You drivethis?” Jonah asked as they approached Remy’s red truck.
It was Sunday, five days after she’d rescued him, and they were on their way to his hypnosis appointment.
“Not all of us are able to ride around in phaetons.”
“How old is this truck?” He was walking upright and without assistance, but still painstakingly slow.
“Seventeen years old. We make do with clunkers here. There’s no sense in bringing expensive cars into these conditions.”
He looked like someone who’d just smelled sewage. “There isn’t even a license plate.”
“That’s because this is an island-use car. It can’t be driven on the mainland, but all I need to drive it here is a decal from the state.”
He opened the driver’s-side door and eyed the distance to the cab as if eyeing whether it would be possible to swim from here to England.
Had she made a mistake? Maybe it was too early to test his ribs like this.
As he began to pull himself up, she lifted her hands to offer support, but they hovered in midair because . . . where to place them? His elbow? His lean lower back? Now that he was recovering, it no longer seemed as if there was a safe place to look or touch. “Need help?”
“I need help getting my hands on better coffee, better food, better alcohol, better sheets, better clothes, and better Wi-Fi. But I don’t need help getting into this piece of junk.” Moving at a snail’s pace, he made it to the driver’s seat.
She circled the hood and shut herself in on the passenger side.
“You keep the keyinthe ignition?” he asked.
“Yes. For one thing, no one here is going to steal this car because where would they go with it? For another thing, the key can no longer be pulled from the ignition.”
He started the engine, wincing at its uneven sound.
“Also,” she announced, suddenly relishing her vehicle’s deficiencies because they seemed to needle him and she liked needling him, “the radio’s broken and only the high-beam lights work.”
He stared at her across the interior.
She fidgeted slightly but held his gaze.
His stubble had grown in. It wasn’t a beard yet. But it did make him look disheveled, which somehow highlighted his bone structure and perfect hair.
Like those silver scratch-off squares that hide information on a lottery ticket, Jonah’s injuries had initially hidden some aspects of his personality. Time was scratching off those squares.
When she’d brought him to her house, he’d been mentally sluggish. No longer. His true demeanor oozed lazy, easy confidence. Which could make a person suspect that he was laid-back. He was and he wasn’t. You had to look closely to notice the intensity shimmering in the depths of those green eyes. Turned out, he was an observant man, alert, with swift and assessing intelligence. A man naturally very much in control of himself.
“Why are you driving this terrible car?” he asked.
“Because it’s serviceable and because I’m on a budget.”
“Do you really havenomoney, Remy?”
“I have more than you.”
“How much do you have?”
“None of your business.”
