Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

All he had to do was not notice the way her sweater skimmed over that slim little body and her jeans hugged her ass. The way she smelled. Her soft lips. How much he fucking liked her.

“It wasn’t you,” he said.

The comment seemed to surprise Katie almost as much as it surprised him. She’d been staring out at the bleak interstate landscape, her body slumped against the passenger door, but now she turned to look at him, her eyes returning from wherever they’d been. Far away, he thought. She was a daydreamer. She always had been.

“What wasn’t me?”

“It wasn’t your ffault,” he said. “You were n-never ssstupid.”

“How would you know?”

It was an uncomfortable question, and one he didn’t know how to answer. He could hardly tell her he’d memorized her in high school. That he’d known all the colors of her nail polish, her favorite clothes, and the names of her friends. What celebrities she liked. Every score she’d gotten on every math test they took.

He could hardly tell her she’d worn the sweater she had on today to the office two weeks ago, and her silver necklace had shown up in September and quickly become a favorite. She’d think he was a freak or a threat, some kind of stalker, but it wasn’t like that. He couldn’t help it. He noticed things. He noticed her.

“I juh-just know.”

He turned his eyes to the road, but he could feel her watching him. After a while, she said, “I liked you too, you know. In high school.”

“You d-d-did?”

“Yeah. I did.”

The claws in his shoulders lost their grip, and he smiled at her. “You were never stupid,” he said again. “Trust me.”

She didn’t reply. A frown appeared between her eyebrows, and it stayed there as she turned to look out the window again.

They covered the next forty miles silently, listening to Yo-Yo Ma play the cello and thinking their separate thoughts.

Chapter Fourteen

When they stopped, Sean gassed up his SUV, and Katie headed toward the Lake Erie Kwik Stop to pee and forage for food. “What do you want for snacks?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Whatever,” he said. “I’m not p-picky.”

She wandered the aisles of the convenience store, wondering what Sean Owens liked to eat. The guy who’d doubled over laughing on her couch probably ate junk food—potato chips and snack mix and Hostess cupcakes—so she got some of that stuff. But she hadn’t seen funny Sean since this morning, and she figured Granite Man ate healthy food. Carrot sticks and veggie burgers and sushi. California food.

The Kwik Stop didn’t have much to choose from in that department. He’d have to settle for junk.

He had a book in his hand when she returned to the SUV. Reading, he squinted slightly, the faintest expression of concern on his forehead, as if his brain were tussling with the story. Most of the time, it was hard for her to remember they were the same guy—the high school version of him and this one—and then at moments like this, it wasn’t. He’d looked exactly the same, reading on the bus.

She scaled the Man Fortress and buckled herself in, refusing for the fourth time today to permit herself any questions about his ride. She knew nothing of cars. It was possible this one had cost a lot less than it appeared. Perhaps brand-spanking-new hybrid SUVs with black leather seats and expensive-new-car smell had become more affordable since she last checked. Or it could be he was the sort of guy who liked cars so much, he spent all his money on them. In any case, it would be rude to inquire.

“What are you reading?” she asked instead.

He handed her the book and started the engine. It was called The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and it had a pensive man with a robot arm on the cover.

“Sci-fi?”

“You say that like you’re s-saying, ‘K-kiddie p-porn’?”

Katie laughed, flipping through the pages as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed back onto the freeway. The paperback was old, yellowed at the edges, and it had the silverfish smell of a book that had been shelved for years. “Sorry. Not my favorite genre. I think it’s the covers. Robots and boobs don’t do it for me.”

“There aren’t any b-boobs on the c-cover,” Sean said.

“No, but that makes it the exception to the rule.”

“Granted. But c-covers aren’t everything. It’s a good b-book. The moon is a c-colony of the earth, and this sssupercomputer becomes intelligent, so they make it the leader of a revolution. Everybody talks this ssslang language, too. Pretty c-cool.”