He rapped once on the door and footsteps approached from within. It was soon opened by her roommate.
“Hello, boyfriend.” Liza smiled but it didn’t come as easily as the one she’d displayed during their first meeting.
There was something guarded about her friendliness. Or perhaps that was her resting expression in which case there was nothing unusual about it. Dayton wondered if he was overdue for his own psychiatric evaluation.
A tic came over his jaw as he registered the shower running in the background.
“Would you let her know I’m downstairs?”
“Sure thing.”
He retreated down the steps and waited in the car, contemplating whether she was having second thoughts or if she simply had no regard for punctuality. No, that wasn’t it. More often than not, she was early rather than late.
Twenty minutes later, Kenna crouched and peered at him through the passenger side window, pulling the handle to no avail as her speech echoed through the glass.
“Let me in.”
With a flick of his index finger, he unlocked the car and she collapsed in the passenger seat, bag in her lap. He promptly grabbed it and discarded it on the rear floorboard.
“You’re late,” he clipped, already in reverse.
Her wet hair framed her face as she angled her head to buckle the seatbelt and it triggered a fluttering in his chest. The visual reminded him of the days she’d spent by his hospital bed.
“I overslept.”
“That doesn’t seem like you.”
“Don’t presume to know me solely based on our working relationship.” Tucking a damp lock of hair behind her ear, she went on. “We hardly know each other.”
“I’m hopeful this trip will change that.”
Dayton understood all that was amiss between them couldn’t be solved in a two-day trip, but he hoped it would set them on the right course; and, somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped it gave Reynolds time to figure out where the Sanders boy had gone. Likely, he was somewhere remote, laying low in the foothills of Montana or hiding among Olympic National’s hemlocks, living free of consequence.
No further words were exchanged between Kenna and himself until they’d conquered 10 miles of interstate.
He nodded to a sign indicating a rest stop a mile ahead. “Would you like to drive a sports car for the first time?”
She scoffed. “And kill us both? No, thank you.”
“Suit yourself. You know, we could have fun together, you and I, if you were receptive to it.”
Despite her protest, he pulled off at the rest stop, if only to rile her. He threw the car in park and looked at her expectantly, offering her the keys.
Gently, she pushed his hand away. “I’m not really interested in us having any kind of fun together.”
“Why not?” He leaned into her, their faces inches apart, but she did not recoil. Rain battered the windshield. “I want to have fun with you, laugh with you, cry with you. I want to die with you, Kenna, and I won’t stop until you want the same things.”
“Are you sure you’re not psychotic?”
Her warm breath tickled Dayton’s lips and it was pure madness to endure their proximity without ensnaring her in a kiss. He was of the opinion that the last thing she wanted was his lips on hers and so he opted for a safer point of contact. His fingers threaded through her hair and he brought his mouth to the shell of her ear.
“No, darling, that’s love. The greatest emotional disturbance known to mankind.”
The car door slammed and the rain continued to fall and Kenna was alone, briefly, with her racing thoughts and flittering pulse. Dayton was gone but his scent lingered in the cabin. That strange mint cologne. She remembered his breath on her skin, his whisper in her ear, and her toes curled as a familiar heat pooled low in her stomach.
He returned to the running car with drenched hair. Glancing over his shoulder, he backed out of the space.
“It’s freezing out there.”