Looking for Trouble (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 1)

He and Andrea had tried it that way for a while. She’d traveled with him on and off for a year. She’d thought it would be fun. He’d loved it for a while. But then it had been a disappointment for them both. She’d been homesick and lonely while he worked; he’d hated coming back to the hotel to an argument.

So they’d tried it her way instead. They’d rented an apartment outside Seattle. Picked out furniture. He’d moved his few belongings in with hers. That had been happy for a while, but only a while. Then Alex had gotten a little too relieved when it was time to hit the road again, and Andrea had gotten a little too pissed about each successive trip.

He wasn’t made to settle down, and nobody wanted a relationship with a man who couldn’t stay in one place for more than a few months.

Or had his childhood made him so afraid of holding on tight that he just let everything go?

“Tell me more about your travels,” she finally said.

He shook his head. “Tell me about your dad’s ranch.”

“Ha. Your family is in ranching. You know all about it. There’s nothing to tell.”

“Cattle?” he pressed.

She nodded.

“South of here, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “About forty minutes out. That’s all there is to tell. It’s beautiful, but I only stay to help my dad. He’s always been good to me.”

“He sounds like a good guy.”

“Yeah. He is. He’s my stepdad, you know. I mean, I assume you know everything.”

He nodded. Of course he knew. Everybody knew. Greg Heyer had met a woman on a trip to Casper and brought her and her young daughter home to live with him just a month later. What had he expected from such a quick and dirty start? Nobody even knew her people.

Yeah. He’d heard all about that. Many times.

“Tell me where you’d go,” he said.

She frowned in puzzlement.

“If you left here, where’s the first place you’d go?”

“Oh.” She kept frowning, but now he could see the thoughts turning in her eyes. “There are so many places. Alaska, for sure. But first?” She looked at him like he might have the answer, but he couldn’t help.

Finally, she smiled. “I’ve never seen the ocean. I’d go to California. But not L.A. or San Francisco. Not to a city. I’d go to the coast and see the ocean and redwoods and... God,” she sighed. “Can you imagine?”

Yes. He could. He’d seen that coast a dozen times. But he didn’t say that. “It’d be beautiful.”

“Yes. Everybody always says you can smell the ocean. Is that true?”

“Sure.”

“What does it smell like?”

Alex opened his mouth to answer, then realized he wasn’t sure how to put it. “It smells...humid, I guess. But cool.”

“Like rain?”

“No. More complicated. Sometimes a little fishy or a little green. And salty.”

Her head tilted and a frown showed between her eyebrows. “Salt doesn’t have a smell.”

Alex laughed in exasperation. “You’re right. I don’t know. It’s like trying to explain that aspen smells crisp.”

“Okay, you got me there.” She watched him, her mouth soft with amusement, her eyes still bright.