Laughter.
“Well,” she said, hard-pressed not to join in, the curse had sounded so ridiculous falling from her lips, “at least that wasn’t at all enticing.”
He reached out and tucked a few errant strands of hair behind her ear, leaving a prickling trail in his wake. “You’re the only person who can make me laugh. That’sincrediblyenticing.”
She shucked off a glove, caught his hand and held it, looking at their intertwined fingers, thinking of their auras meshing at the point of contact. “We’ll have to stop spending time together, won’t we? One of us will give in, otherwise, and we’ll end up resenting each other.”
He didn’t disagree. He raised her hand to his lips, giving her another example of what she’d be missing, and let go.
She swallowed, trying to regain her composure. They couldn’t keep sitting here, or she might give in immediately. “What should we do about getting home?”
“Well ... calling in Ballantine isn’t a bad idea.”
She hated to admit it, since she’d suggested it, but: “I don’t actually know his phone number.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Really?” She found this as surprising as if he’d admitted to owning a collection of loudly colored shirts. She’d never seen the two men even talk to each other, except for that once at Mexican Foo. “How did you come to—”
“Sodit. There’s no signal.” He glared at his cell phone. “How can I be getting no signal in a state that’s so very—”
“Don’t you dare say ‘flat.’”
“So very much in need of reception to communicate with people in more interesting states. Check the other phone.”
He didn’t sound hopeful, which was just as well, because that didn’t work either. Emily handed it back to him.
“We know it works well enough for a call half a mile south,” she said, slipping her bare hand into her glove and trying not to think about his lips on her skin.
He looked out at the snow and groaned. “I suppose there’s nothing else for it.”
“I’ll go; you can stay,” she said, taking pity on him. He wasn’t dressed for the worsening storm. No gloves, no scarf.
“What sort of man would I be—”
“One who understands how royally pissed off I get when people treat me like I’m helpless.”
“Right then, equal-opportunity misery. We’ll both go.” He tucked the phones into his pockets. “But not half a mile back, not when there’s a restaurant over there that we can sit in while we wait for Ballantine.”
“Over there” was at the end of the ramp on theotherside of I-35. Uneasiness flared up like a candle. It would be far quicker to cut across the road than follow the eastbound ramp to 18 and double back, but it was, after all, an interstate highway. And it passed through Clear Lake, where the plane carrying Buddy Holly and a handful of other pop stars crashed all those years ago—a plane they’d taken because the bus kept breaking down.
This was obviously a place where irony hovered, waiting for victims. It had been snowing that night, too.
Hartgrave, who’d stepped out of the car, stuck his head back in. “Have you decided youarein fact helpless?”
“Sorry, I’m coming.” She pulled on her hat and jumped out. “I was just imagining the worst.”
“What, frostbite?”
“No, getting hit by a truck.”
His lips turned up in that half-smile that was sohim, the way she would always picture him. “The road’s empty, you know.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, gesturing to a vehicle so far off that its headlights were nearly indistinguishable from the snow.
“That’s five minutes away,” he said, exaggerating but not by much. “Let’s go, or I really will end up with frostbite.”
She took off at a sprint. She got as far as the middle of the southbound span when irony caught up.
