“You. It’s like, we stop for cherries, and you come away with her life story.”
“Chris says I overshare.”
“You asked about her farm.”
“Because I was interested. Also, if I ask questions, I don’t talk so much.” She made an embarrassed face. “Were you awfully bored? Did I make us late?”
“No. It was nice.” He hesitated.Nicewas such a lame word to describe her. “Friendly,” he amended.
Her lips curved. “It’s like you and your wood.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You interested in my wood now?”
She punched his arm. “Don’t be a jerk. I meant…You can find a story in most things, if you look for it. You see it in wood. I see it in…” She waved expansively. “People.”
Like they had something in common. The thought stirred inside him, like a disturbance on the bottom of the lake, billows blooming under the surface of the water. He started the truck.
Anne punched up her playlist. “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”…
She tipped the bag toward him, smiling. “Want one?”
The miles rushed by in a blur of green and gold. They ate cherries in the truck, spitting out the stones into an empty cup, passing it back and forth. Anne made this little noise inher throat, and when Joe glanced over at the passenger seat, her eyes were half-closed. Red, red juice stained her lips and fingers. She looked sweet and sticky and sexy as hell. A jolt of lust electrified him.
“I should have bought Chris cherries,” she said.
The jolt flickered into irritation. At her. At her boyfriend for thinking she wasn’t enough. At himself for caring. It’s not like he’d been stuck on her all these years. He’d been married, for fuck’s sake. Divorced. He wasn’t going down that road again, no matter how sweet or funny or friendly she was.
There was construction on I-94, just over the Indiana border. The sun struck through the windshield, glittering on the long line of vehicles ahead.
Anne stopped singing.
It was fine, Joe told himself. They weren’t late yet. He could fix this. He turned off the music so he could focus on the map directions.
Gradually, the bright orange barrels gave way to concrete barriers and guardrails. The Chicago skyline rose in the distance.
“Now what?” Anne demanded as the cars ahead slowed to a crawl.
“Accident,” Joe answered. “On the Dan Ryan Expressway.”
Stop. Go. Stop.Beside him, Anne was white and uncharacteristically silent, fidgeting as if her twitching could move traffic.
“What time is this dinner?” he asked.
“Seven.”
He glanced at the clock on the console. “Almost there.”
“I have to change.”
She turned around, reaching over the back of her seat torummage in her suitcase. Her butt wriggled next to Joe’s head.
“We’ll be at the hotel in another fifteen minutes,” he said tersely.
She flipped back around in her seat, clutching an armful of flowered fabric. “Don’t look.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She yanked off her T-shirt—red bra, pale stomach,don’t look—before pulling the fabric over her head. Her arms waved in the confines of the cab.
