“All okay?” Lance asked.
A soft smile came over her lips. “Yep.” She flashed the screen so he could see a picture of her furball stretched across a laptop keyboard.
“Your cat’s running a computer?”
“I’ve kept her technological skills a secret from the government for years. Don’t betray us and make me hurt you.”
She was chaos incarnate, and Lance couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyedunpredictability so much.
Also, she turned out to be a moderately terrible canoer. Every time she tried to paddle, they ended up sideways. The first few times, she blamed him.
And he let her.
But eventually, she swung her body around on her bench. The canoe rocked. Lance grabbed one side and tried to center himself. He didn’t mind getting tipped, but they were pretty far downstream and it was November. Even southern Georgia would be nippy if they were sopping wet.
“I give up,” she announced. “I got the principles down. I can tell you all about the laws of fluids and motion and momentum and inertia, but I can’t for the life of me make my body work right.”
“Everyone has to have a flaw,” he said gravely. “Wouldn’t want you to be perfect.”
She cracked up, and he grinned.
“You hush,” she said. “Just because I got enough flaws for the both of us?—”
“Or for all of the state,” he said helpfully.
She reached into the river and flicked cold water at him. “I was fixin’ to treat you to a little something extra at lunch, but I’m reconsidering.”
“No, you’re not.”
Her pearly whites flashed in a big smile. “Got me there.”
She was crazy and she was loud and she was bullheaded, but she was more too. He had a funny feeling he’d only begun to see the Kaci under the surface. He slid his paddle back into the water and pointed them back downriver. “What’s your research about?”
He hadn’t asked if she was still planning on going to Germany, and he didn’t want to be disappointed if she was bailing.
Based on the way her eyes slid to the sidewhen she propped her elbows on her knees and settled her chin in her hands, he had a feeling she didn’t want him to know either. “Just some stuff I’ve been working on,” she said.
“About…”
“Efficient combustion.”
“For what applications?”
“Gas engines.”
He waited. Moved his paddle to the other side of the canoe. Dipped it in the water, pulled back. They slid through the river, picking back up with the natural current while the sun glinted off the ripples.
“You’re going to Germany to stand up in front of an audience and say, ‘Hi, I’m Dr. Boudreaux, and I study efficient combustion in gas engines’?” he prompted.
Her cheeks went pink. “We’re on a river. Don’t need to open the floodgates.”
“Is it proprietary?”
“No.”
“Is it boring?”
“If you’re trying to bait me, you’ll do better with the fish.”
