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“I’d clammed up earlier. It was a rather feeble response.” She stole another glance at him and thudded through a pothole, deep and avoidable. “I planned a whole speech. But you were occupied elsewhere.”

He returned her sidelong look. “And now you want to know where I was and what I was doing?”

She blushed. She did, most definitely. “That’s beside the point.” She nerved herself, eyes back on the road. “I want to say what I intended to say. If you’re interested in hearing it.”

“Very.”

Dammit. Her mind blanked.

After a minute, he made a noise, something between a knowing sigh and a scoffing laugh. “Right. Well. In that case…”

“I lied,” she blurted. “There wasn’t a caterpillar.”

“No caterpillar,” he repeated. “Noted. Is that all?”

She shook her head.

“I touched you to touch you.” It was little more than a whisper. He heard her, though. She could feel the air thickening between them.

She licked her lower lip and tasted salt. “Since we met, I haven’t gone an hour without recalling the feel of your mouth on mine.”

The little silence was filled with the skittering ping of unsettled stones, the mechanical whir and creak of the bikes.

She was gripping the handlebars with such force she thought she might rip them away from the frame.

“I don’t kiss people very often. Or ever, really. Only my husband, and only in the beginning. This is new for me—all of it. I want you.” Cold sweat slid down her neck. She was saying more than she’d intended, her tongue loosened by the sleepless night, by the landscape, vast and wild, remote from her everyday life.

“But I have been wrong about you,” she continued. “Again and again.”

“I’m glad you were wrong about the cat,” he murmured. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

She dared a glance. His hands were off the handlebars, tucked under his biceps. He wore a faint, ironic smile, but his eyes smoldered with quiet intensity.

“I don’t want to get this wrong now,” she said. “Yesterday, I was all mixed up by what you told me. To be honest, I’m still a bit mixed up. But we have ten days to…” Her voice caught. She wasn’t sure how to exit the sentence.

Griffith’s smile widened. “Ten days to see how mixed up we can make each other? What a glorious prospect.”

Glorious? Try chaotic. Reckless. Irresistibly enticing.

Her feet went clumsy on the pedals. This wasn’t the moment for her knees to turn to water. She focused on riding.

“Out of curiosity,” he drawled. “How long did you wait for me?”

She bristled. “Out of curiosity, what time did you return?”

An impasse. He broke it by laughing.

She glared at him.

“The sun was coming up.” He held her gaze. “I regret that I wasn’t there to answer your knock.”

The look in his eyes…

She had to swerve to keep their front wheels from touching.

“But I didn’t expect you.” He sounded amused.

“I should have expected you’d be out.” She engaged her protesting muscles and corrected her course, surging up the slight rise in the road.