Page 32 of Faking Forever
“Did you fall asleep?” he asked, looking irritated and confused and concerned all at the same time.
“No. I was just thinking.”
His brow furrowed, as he stared at her skeptically.
“About wh—” He stopped then shook his head abruptly. “You know what? I don’t care. We’re done here and ready to leave.” They were?Already? How long had she been sitting here navel gazing and slowly unraveling? “Harris will follow us in your piece-of-shit rental.”
“Oh, no…” Her protest was automatic although somewhat foolish. “I can drive.”
His sighed, nostrils flaring slightly on the irritated, closed-mouth exhalation. “You’re not driving anywhere with that injury.”
“Oh. Of course. I wasn’t thinking.” He stared at her again for a long moment.
“You’re being surprisingly agreeable.”
It took a great deal of effort not to be offended by that statement.
“I’m tired and in pain. And you’re right, I can’t drive until after my toe has been assessed and treated. So there’s really no point in arguing.” Each word dropped from her lips like lead weights. She sounded as exhausted as she felt and the furrow in Smith’s brow deepened.
He didn’t speak, merely shut the door again, said something to Harris on his way around the front of the Land Rover toward the driver’s side.
Then they were on their way.
His four-wheel drive made the road seem easy.
“Where would this road eventually have taken me?” she asked, sluggishly dragging her seatbelt across her chest and clipping it in with more difficulty than the task warranted.
“Nowhere good. It’s abandoned, and only occasionally used by the odd quad biker.”
“I could have been there for days,” she said, her voice taking on a luridly morbid tone as she considered the ramifications, had she continued even farther. “Weeks. Nobody would’ve known where to find me until someone stumbled across my desiccated corpse months from now.”
The look he slanted at her was incredulous and contained a hint of horrified amusement.
“I’m sure the car is fitted with a tracker.” He choked out the words in a bemused tone before coughing. “The rental company would have found your corpse long before it reached desiccation. And surely you told your family where you were going?”
“I told them you were vacationing at your sister’s place and I intended to join you. The GPS suggested this route as a shortcut. It wassupposedto cut an hour off my journey.”
“Nuts when you consider that Riversend is only half an hour away from the turn you took.”
“Seriously?” Kenny didn’t know why, but that pissed her off even more than the damned GPS guiding her to certain death. “It’s supposed to make life convenient. How is adding an hour to a half-hour trip convenient?”
“Since this road would’ve taken you nowhere near Riversend, and you would’ve been stuck out here for Godknows how long if you hadn’t found a signal, I think you’re directing your outrage at the wrong thing.”
“Don’t gatekeep my outrage, Smith. I can damned well be outraged at whatever the hell I want.” She whipped her head around to glare at his profile and caught the whisper of a smile at the corner of his mouth before he schooled his features into neutrality again.
He shot a quick, inscrutable look at her, before directing his gaze back to the awful road again.
“You’re not usually so easily riled.”
Why did he have to make her sound like a fractious child?
She shrugged and threw caution to the wind to tell him, “As you pointed out the night before you left, you never really knew me.”
The only indication she had at all that her words affected him was the bunching of muscles along his jawline.
“And why is that, Kenna?”
“Fear, I suppose.” His head turned sharply and his eyes narrowed on her face, as if he was trying to gauge her honesty.
