Damn it!

He should be roaring mad at her. Stuck in a God-forsaken, dinky-ass, wide spot in the road to nowhere, not a clue where they were headed, with this foul tempered, bubble-headed nut job…for three months no less…who’d just scared the shit out of him and made him look like a jerk in front of his best agents. Why he hadn’t spanked her on sight he didn’t know.

Yet, after everything, with a single word and that wounded look, she’d managed not only to undo his rage but make him feel guilty as well. And his stomach was killing him.

“Damn,” he muttered as he started back across the street, “it’s only day one.”

It had been coming on gradually, lurking like a stalking predator waiting its chance to strike. He’d tried to ignore it, force it away but it had continued its slow, inevitable march and he knew now for sure. He was going to be sick.

Never prone to car sickness, even as a child, the combination of the huge, greasy meal, the anger and adrenaline of her vanishing act and the increasingly steep, winding road had converged and descended on him.

Terrific, he mused, not only did I take the bait about breakfast, but she knew about this lousy snake road. She made me look like an idiot and now she gets the satisfaction of watching me heave as well.

Get off it, stupid, another voice piped up in his head. Sure, she dared you to take on that Godzilla-killer snack but you’re the one who fell for it. And you should have known by the scenery and the climbing road you were headed into the mountains. What did you expect? An eight-lane super highway? Granted, she might be a bitch, but you’re a jerk so I guess we’re even all around.

“There’s a rest area up here on the right,” she told him without looking at him. “I’d like to stop, please.” They were the first words she’d spoken since the sidewalk in French Creek.

“Sure,” he responded, trying to sound casual but secretly overjoyed. If he could get to the restroom, at least he wouldn’t have to pull off the road and put up with her smirking.

Slowing the SUV into the large, empty lot, he parked in a spot directly in front of the small restroom building. His stomach rumbled like an active volcano but he still had to play it cool. Waiting as she retrieved her paper bag and a blanket from the back seat, they exited.

“I’m going to sit over there on the grass,” she nodded to her left, “under the trees.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back. Don’t go wandering off.”

Thankfully, he had the men’s room to himself. Kneeling on the surprisingly clean but chilly cement floor, he leaned over the toilet and stuck his finger down his throat. A gag and the volcano erupted.

In about five minutes, shaken and slightly dizzy but the load in his gut lifted, Harm came back out into the bright sunshine, slipping his dark glasses on, as much to hide his pale face and red, watery eyes as for protection from the sun.

She’d spread the blanket just under the shade of the towering trees but facing out on a vista of pine-carpeted mountains and foothills rolling back toward the flat farmland stretching to meet pale blue, cloudless sky at the horizon.

“This is a beautiful spot,” he remarked as he sat down on the small blanket, his leg only about six inches from her.

“It is,” she agreed reaching into the bag beside her. “But you’ll probably enjoy it more with these.” She handed him a plastic quart bottle and a small box. “Those little pink pills really do relieve the nausea and the seltzer will help settle your queasy stomach.”

“How long have you known?” he asked, surprised by her gifts but braced for the razzing he felt sure would come.

“I didn’t. Not for sure anyway. But after that Country Breakfast and knowing what this road is like…well, actually I expected you’d be sick before this.”

She pulled her legs up, circled them with her arms, set her chin on her knees and considered him for a few silent moments.

“I didn’t actually think you’d order it after you read what it came with,” she said slowly, “and after you did, I thought for sure, even as big as you are, you couldn’t, wouldn’t finish it.”

A smile lifted the corners of her mouth a little.

“After you did, you looked, as Mimi, my little Jewish friend would say, like you were about to plotz. You know, explode from overeating. When you got up to go to the men’s room, I thought maybe you were going to be sick then.”

The smile disappeared.

“I…I felt sort of responsible so I figured the least I could do would be get you something for the indigestion. I didn’t want to say anything to you because I didn’t want to embarrass you about the breakfast. Make you think I was rubbing it in. I thought I’d run across to the store and be back before you missed me. Then, if you did start to feel bad I could just whip out the tablets and seltzer and tell you I always carry them into the mountains, just in case. I even thought of suggesting we lay over in French Creek until you were feeling better but…”

“But I came charging at you like an angry bull,” he finished, popping a couple of the pink tablets in his mouth, chewing them and washing them down with the bubbly seltzer.

“No, you were right. I should have waited and at least told you where I was going. I could have told you I just needed something. It never occurred to me that you might worry.”

An apology. Not the words exactly, but the sound of her voice, her body language.

Stunned, he took several sips of water and turned his head as if studying the view.

It was totally unexpected and she’d caught him off guard. Again. Why did it seem that just when he thought he had her figured out, she’d turn into something else?

“I guess I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he admitted without looking at her. “I should have known you were okay. I mean, I didn’t see anyone following us and I checked the rearview mirror pretty carefully.”

He turned back to face her then.

“Almost as carefully as you did.”

Her smile, warm and genuine, lit up her whole face, even, he imagined, those beautiful eyes still hidden behind the sunglasses.

“Was I that obvious?”

Almost in spite of himself, he smiled back.

“Only to someone paying close attention. For the most part, you look cool, calm and collected.”

Elgin laughed, triggering a pleasant tingle from somewhere south of his belt buckle through his entire body.

“I wish. Inside, I’m just one raw, exposed nerve ending.”

“You hide it very well.”

“Something I learned as a child but I wonder sometimes if it’s a blessing or a curse. All I know right now is that I just want to sit in the sun and read and not think ever again, about anything. I’m so tired of being scared all the time.”

Without thinking, he laid his fingers gently on her arm. Instantly, the tingle became a lightning strike, welding him to her.

“You don’t have to worry about being scared,” he assured her. “You have my word on that.”

“Take the next off-ramp,” she told him, a small note of excitement in her voice. “State Route 2. At the light, make a left and pull into the vista point.”

Doing as she directed, Harm pulled the SUV off the road and into the parking lot of a scenic overlook. Elgin jumped out of the car almost before he could get it stopped. She almost ran to a low rock wall running around the lip of the flat area.

“I love this place,” she sighed as he came up beside her. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”

Below them, the same textured green-black carpet of pines that had surrounded them since they’d left French Creek, flowed down to the very shore of a huge lake, lying in a bowl of rugged mountains like a polished sapphire. The sun, hanging in a cloudless pale denim sky, sparkled off the calm surface like a spotlight on the facets of a perfectly cut gem.