He looked ahead, steering her past a thick overgrowth of poison ivy. The kid did not need exposure to that. At least the dust was thinner here than in the city.
“I’m not much into vacations. Too boring for me. What about your job?” He wanted to hear, and how strange was that? They had this in reverse, sleeping together and then doing the bar-style pickup conversation, getting to know each other. “You have a high-pressure career of your own.”
“Go ahead and get the lawyer jokes out of the way.” She peeled the remaining banana for herself. “I believe I’ve heard them all, but you’re welcome to give it your best shot.” She bit the top off with a wicked smile.
Was she playing with him? “I wouldn’t be so rude.”
“Then I’ll go ahead for you…” She danced ahead of him, walking backward along the sand. The landscape stretched ahead with trees and more trees hemming them in, closing off any view of the city still miles away. “There are only two lawyer jokes, you know.”
“Really? Only two lawyer jokes?”
“That’s right.” She winked. “The rest are true.”
Her words jolted a laugh out of him. Beyond not coddling him this morning, she’d managed to do what not many could at times like this. She made him smile. “You have a sense of humor about yourself. That’s rare.”
“Believe me, in this profession, you have to laugh or you would go crazy.” She turned away, walking ahead with her stick in front of her again, stabbing at bushes. “People lie…”
She jabbed. “And they lie.”
Again Amelia jabbed. “And they lie some more. Even upstanding people flinch at telling the complete truth. I can spot bullshit a mile coming.”
“You still haven’t told me why you became a lawyer.”
“And I don’t have to tell you.” She glanced back with another of her glittering smiles, but there was ice in her blue eyes this time.
“Ah, lawyer skills.” He couldn’t resist jabbing too, with words. “You get me to spill my guts, then you don’t say a thing.”
“No one forced you to talk.” Her whisper drifted over her shoulder, the edge carrying something else he recognized well.
Pain.
“You’re right. You didn’t.” He lengthened his stride and walked alongside her, the soft sand giving under his boots. “My apologies.”
“No”—she glanced up at him—“I’m sorry. We’ve gone past the holding-back stage, I think.”
“Getting naked—or almost naked—together does take away certain boundaries.” And just that fast the air crackled between them, the awkwardness that he’d caused last night finally—thank God, finally—easing.
“I was thinking more of the life-and-death thing, but whatever.”
“Ah, that’s right. The sex meant so much to you that you walked away before I could pull up my pants.” That stung now even more than before.
Her hand fell on his arm, soft and cool against his sunburned skin. “That wasn’t very nice of me. I’m sorry again.” She reached past to tickle the chin of the kid squirming in the pack. “I don’t do so well with relationships these days. The past has a way of dogging a person, you know.”
That he did. He reached back to pat the wriggling kid’s shoulder. “You would blame all men because your ex was a jerk?”
“Are you really sure you want to have this kind of conversation?” Her feet slowed, her smile fading. “I got the impression this morning that you want to keep things lighter…”
That he did.
He grasped the shift in conversation with both hands and settled on the first topic that came to mind. Easy enough, with the kid grabbing hold of his ears tightly. “Your parents must be excited about their first grandchild.”
The air went thick, heavy with more than humidity. He ducked under a branch.
Her hand slid from her nephew and she stepped over a turtle lumbering across their path. “My mother doesn’t speak to my brother and me anymore.”
Surprise slowed his stride for a step. “And your father?”
“Is dead,” she said unemotionally, smoothing a hand over her pulled-back hair as if to restore… composure?