An oldies station was playing on the radio. The song was one Rachel and Lucas had listened to on his portable radio during those stolen afternoons at the bluff. She winced, and tried to keep her thoughts focused on the present.
“What do you do? For a living, I mean,” she asked in a lame attempt to keep the conversation moving.
Lucas shrugged. “I play around with computers.”
“And you live in California?”
“Most of the time.”
For someone who’d wanted to talk, he wasn’t being overly communicative. “You, er, haven’t married?”
“No. Have you?”
“No.”
She’d been engaged—very briefly. A few years ago she’d impulsively accepted a proposal to ease the loneliness inside her, but she’d known almost immediately that she couldn’t go through with it. She hadn’t been waiting for Lucas, of course, she assured herself. She just hadn’t yet found anyone who could compete with her memories of the time she’d spent with him.
She said none of that now, of course.
Lucas drove past the Honoria city limits and kept going. Rachel leaned her head against the high back of her seat and left their destination in his hands. For now.
She still couldn’t quite believe she was doing this. A few days ago, when she’d come to Honoria, she hadn’t even expected to see Lucas. In fact, she’d even gone out of her way before coming here to make sure Lucas hadn’t been seen or heard from since he’d left on that rainy night fifteen years ago.
If anyone had told her that not only would she see Lucas, she would slip out of her grandmother’s house to go for a moonlight ride with him, just as she’d done as a teenager, she’d have laughed herself silly. All these years, she’d told herself she never wanted to see Lucas again. That she would never forgive him for the way he’d hurt her. And now here she was, tagging along with him again just because he’d asked her to. Unable to turn him away, even though he hadn’t been particularly friendly to her since they’d run into each other again.
What was the hold this man had always had over her? And what would it take for her to break it once and for all?
“Run out of innocuous questions?” he murmured when they’d ridden several miles in silence. “We could always talk about the weather.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Did you only want me to come along so you continue to be snide to me?”
“Am I being snide?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
He glanced at her, the passing streetlights throwing intriguing shadows across his face. “I didn’t think you would come tonight.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
“Because I wanted you to,” he answered after a moment.
She turned to look out her side window, hiding her face from him. “I probably shouldn’t have come. I’ve worked very hard to forget the past.”
“I haven’t forgotten any of it.”
She almost winced. “Emily’s fiancé seemed nice,” she said, grasping the first “innocuous” topic that came to mind. “Tell me about him.”
“He’s a cop. A widower. He’s got a kid—a boy named Clay. They’re both crazy about Emily.”
It wasn’t easy making conversation with this man, but Rachel persisted. “Why aren’t you staying for the wedding? Do you have to get back to work?”
“No. I just think it will be better for Emily if I’m not there.”
“Emily doesn’t seem to agree.”