“A motor vehicle?” I swung into the driver’s seat. “You didn’t get here out here on foot, did you?”
He settled into the passenger’s seat. “My car’s parked just off your property. I meant pickup trucks. They haven’t been on the assembly line for a century.”
“We make do with what we have.” I turned the key and eight cylinders coughed to life, growling happily once it got the rust out.
The sound of it put a smile on his face, even though he shook his head in the way people do when they’re remembering fond things.
“Are you really over three hundred years old?” I asked.
“I’m galvanized.”
“Is that a yes?” I released the clutch and eased the truck down the rutted dirt road.
“I was born in 1880.”
That made him three hundred and thirty years old. He didn’t look a day over thirty. “Wow.”
“What year were you born?” he asked.
“Twenty-one eighty-four.”
He laughed. I glanced away from the road to see what that looked like on him. It looked good. He laughed with his whole body, head tipped back, eyes curved tight, mouth open in a big smile, as if nothing in him hurt.
If he weren’t laughing about my age, I might even join in.
“You’re not twenty-six,” he chuckled.
I slapped his arm. “Yes. I am.”
He jerked and all the laughter was gone. “That . . . hurt.”
“You bet it did.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Why? Because I’m a girl?”
“No, because I’m galvanized. And so are you. We don’t feel pain. We don’t feel physical sensation.”
“Speak for yourself. I feel.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do. And obviously you do too.”
“I feelyou,” he said quietly.
“Me?’
“You. Only you.”
There was heat behind his words, but it wasn’t anger. It was the kind of heat that made me want to reach over and kiss him to see what that would be like. To see if that would be enough to end this fire he had set off in me.
Steady now,I told myself. The only thing I was going to use him for was information. All the rest of the needs and feelings he stirred up inside me weren’t important.
Which would be fine, if I believed it.
8
