Page 33 of Entranced
She gave up. “There must be a bus depot around here,” she muttered, tugging on his jacket as she headed toward the harshly lit store.
“This is where he stopped off with David.” Sebastian spoke quietly, and she stopped in her tracks. “Where they made the first switch. He didn’t make the kind of time we did, what with traffic, nerves, and watching the rearview mirror for cops. The meet was set for eight.”
“This is bull,” Mel said, but her throat was tight.
“The night man recognized him from the sketch. He noticed him because Jimmy parked all the way across the lot, even though there were spaces just out front. And he was nervous, so the night man kept an eye on him, thinking he might try to shoplift. But Jimmy paid.”
Mel watched Sebastian carefully as he spoke. When he was finished, she held out a hand. “Give me thesketch.”
With his eyes on hers, Sebastian reached in the top pocket of the jacket. Through the lining, his hand brushed lightly over her breast, lingering for a heartbeat before he lifted the folded sketch out.
She knew she was breathing too fast. She knew she was feeling more than that brief, meaningless contact warranted. To compensate, she snatched the paper out of his hand and strode toward the store.
As she went inside to verify what he had just told her, Sebastian secured his gas cap and rolled the bike away from the pumps.
It took her less than five minutes. She was pale when she returned, her eyes burning dark in her face. But her hand was steady when she tucked the sketch away again. She didn’t want to think, not yet. Sometimes it was better to act.
“All right,” she told him. “Let’s go.”
***
She didn’t doze. That could be suicide on a bike. But she did find her mind wandering, with old images passing over new. It was all so familiar, this middle-of-the-night traveling. Never being quite sure where you were going or what you would do when you got there.
Her mother had always been so happy driving down nameless roads with the radio blaring. Mel could remember the comfort of stretching out on the front seat, her head in her mother’s lap, and the simplicity of trusting that somehow they would find a home again.
Heavy with fatigue, her head dropped to Sebastian’s back. She jerked up, forcing her eyes wide.
“Want to stop for a while?” he called to her. “Take a break?”
“No. Keep going.”
Toward dawn he did stop, refueling himself with coffee. Mel opted for a caffeine-laden soft drink and wolfed down a sugar-spiked pastry.
“I feel I owe you a decent meal,” Sebastian commented while they took a five-minute breather somewhere near Devil’s Playground.
“Thisismy idea of a decent meal.” Content, she licked sugar and frosting off her fingers. “You can keep the pheasant under glass.”
Her eyes were shadowed. He was sorry for that, but he’d acted on instinct—an instinct he’d known was right. When he slipped an arm around her, she stiffened, but only for a moment. Perhaps she recognized that the gesture was one of friendly support and nothing more.
“We’ll be there soon,” he told her. “Another hour.”
She nodded. She had no choice but to trust him now. To trust him, and the feeling inside her. What Mel would have called a gut hunch. “I just want to know it’s worth it. That it’s going to make a difference.”
“We’ll have that answer, too.”
“I hope so. I hope the answer’s yes.” She turned her face into him, her lips brushing over his throat. There was a flare of warmth, of flavor, before her gritty eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I’m punchy.” She would have moved away, far away, but his arm merely tightened around her.
“Relax, Mel. Look. Sun’s coming up.”
They watched the dawn bloom together, his arm around her and her head resting lightly against his shoulder. Over the desert, the colors rose up from the horizon, bleeding into the sky and tinting the low-hanging clouds. Dull sand blushed pink, then deepened to rose before it slowly became gilded. In another hour, the baking sun would leech the color out of the landscape. But for now, for just this single hushed moment, it was as lovely as any painting.
She felt something here, watching this ageless transition with his arm around her. A communion. The first gentle fingers of a bond that needed no words for understanding.
This time, when he kissed her, his mouth soft and seeking, she didn’t resist and she didn’t question. The moment itself justified it. She was too tired to fight whatever was growing inside her. She was too dazed by the magic of dawn over the desert to refuse what he asked of her.
He wanted to ask for more—knew that at this moment, in this place, he could ask. But he could sense her fatigue, her confusion, and her nagging fears for a friend’s child. So he kept the kiss easy, a comfort to both of them. When he released her, he understood that what they had begun would not be broken.
Without a word, they mounted the bike again and headed east, toward the sun.
