“That’s long enough to do some research.”
“And I did a little. What do you want to know?”
“How about what I would’ve found if I’d done my own?”
“Portal sits at one end of a large canyon, with the Chiricahua Mountains to the west and New Mexico to the east. Paradise is an old mining town, five miles up the mountains.”
“Mountains? You mean, real mountains—in the desert?”
“Real enough. The highest peak is almost ten thousand feet.”
She nodded. “I’d say that’s a real mountain.”
After driving in silence for several miles, she glanced over at him again. “It won’t be easy keeping our stories straight. The longer we live in Portal or Paradise or wherever we wind up until this job is done, the more we’ll get to know other people, and the more we’ll talk and share anecdotes. We’ll seem strange, reclusive, if we don’t make friends. That’ll make folks uncomfortable and less likely to trust us. Yet the more we open up, the greater our risk of exposure.”
“We’ll manage.”
“But we won’t even be sleeping together. How do we fake intimacy that’s not there?”
She was putting him on notice, drawing the line at her bedroom door. But he had some ammunition he could use, too. “It’s not as if we haven’t made love in the past, Rachel.”
Her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. That was the first time he’d ever referred to the night he’d found her waiting in his bed. He generally chose not to embarrass her, but what had happened sat so awkwardly between them. If they were going to play husband and wife for the next few weeks, they needed to address the issue and get it out of the way. Then maybe they could both relax.
“That was a long time ago,” she said, but he wasn’t about to let her off the hook that easily.
“Not that long ago. I know your body, and you know mine. We’ll go by memory.”
Her chin jerked up. “I don’t know your body. I—I can’t remember a thing. I was drunk or…or I never would’ve been so bold.”
She hadn’t been drunk at all. As a matter of fact, he’d only ever seen her drink one glass of wine, even at company parties, where most employees drank much more. “You’re saying that wasn’t the real you.”
Unwilling to meet his eyes, she kept her head at a jaunty angle. “Not at all. You know what it’s like. Sometimes you have too much to drink. You get a wild idea like ‘hey, why don’t I surprise my boss?’ and you act on it. Then you wake up feeling like an idiot, wondering what on earth possessed you to do something so stupid and normally unappealing.” She glanced over to see if he was buying her act, so he pretended to believe her.
“Normally unappealing.”
“Yes.”
“And the details are…gone. You’ve forgotten them all.”
“Every single one.”
“Bullshit,” he said with a laugh.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You remember the details as well as I do.” And for him, they remained in sharp focus, including the taste and texture of her skin, even the smell of it. He’d never forget how greedily she’d responded to his touch, how she’d given herself so artlessly, so honestly—then brought all pleasure to a screeching halt when she told him she loved him. Talk about getting sucker-punched.
Her grip on the steering wheel grew noticeably tighter. “No, I don’t.”
He waved a hand. “Fine, if that’s what you want me to believe, I’ll play along. So…you’ll just have to fake the attraction.”
She tossed him an overconfident grin. “No problem. I’m a pro at faking.”
Now she’d gone too far. “You weren’t faking anything when you were with me,” he said simply.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, she yawned and stretched. “Like I said, I wasn’t myself. I didn’t know what I was saying or doing. Or saying,” she added again. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I was going through a rough patch, so you were just one in a long line of screw-ups. I mean, men.”
“You were sleeping around?” That statement took him off guard.
“Not a lot, but…I live on the beach, you know? I have my share of men.”
Nate sincerely doubted it. The woman he’d had in his bed had been exciting as hell, but not because she was well practiced. Part of the fun had been introducing her to so much she found completely new. And, considering her background, it made sense that she wouldn’t be particularly experienced. “Taking strangers in off the beach isn’t a safe thing to do,” he commented. Especially because she didn’t know how to pick one who wouldn’t break her heart. Take him, for instance…
“I keep a few condoms on hand just in case. What’s wrong with having some fun once in a while?”
Fun… The strap of her dress had fallen off her shoulder. He stretched his arm across the seat to slide it back into place, but she flinched and ducked away before he could touch her.
“Whoa! For someone who sleeps around, you’re pretty skittish.”
“I’m not skittish. I’m…I didn’t know what you were doing, that’s all.”
This time he moved more slowly. She sat perfectly still as he slid that strap up, but she wasn’t as unaffected as she wanted to appear. His touch had created a swath of goose bumps. “If you’re so free and easy with everyone else, I guess there’s no need for me to be any different, right?”
“I’m afraid I’m on hiatus right now,” she said. “It all got to be a bit boring and stale…you know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
A furrow formed between her eyebrows. “That happens when you do it too often.”
“I’ve never reached that threshold. But then…I don’t live on the beach.”
“That must be it.”
“You’re not remotely tempted? Even though we’re sort of married?”
“Not remotely. If we were any good together, I’m sure I’d remember more than I do about the last time.”
“Let me get this straight. You were drunk. You weren’t yourself. You don’t remember making love with me. And it stank?”
Her lopsided smile finally righted itself. “Now you’ve got it.”
5
Where was Courtney Sinclair? Sarah Myers paused in the doorway of the tent where the children attended classes. After the glare of the early-afternoon sun, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dimmer light, but even when she could see clearly, she saw no one resembling her young friend. Courtney hadn’t shown up at the cheese factory this morning, either. And when Sarah had visited her tent to ask her roommates, everyone said Courtney hadn’t even rolled out her bed last night.