A Journey's End (Journey's End #1)

by Ann Christopher

  “You're going to make me say it, aren't you?”

  Dimples bracketed his mouth. “Absolutely.”

  “Please, sir. If it wouldn't trouble you too much, kind sir,” she said with all the elaborate politeness she could muster while shivering, “I’d be most grateful if you could please help me—”

  “Forget it.” He swung the door open and climbed out, forcing her to hustle out of the way or get whacked. Then he produced a baseball cap from inside the car and put it on to keep some of the rain out of his face. “The British accent was a nice touch, but you don't do humble well.”

  He yanked the tire iron out of her hand and strode off toward her car before looking back. By this point, she surely resembled one of the drowning rats on the Titanic, but he took pity on her anyway.

  “Have a seat inside. Warm yourself up,” he called.

  This thoughtful offer made her feel even worse for being so suspicious.

  “I'll drip,” she pointed out. “I don't want to ruin your—”

  His jaw dropped. “Are you always this oppositional?”

  “You have no idea.”

  More dimples. “I’m trusting you with my car. Murderers don't do that. Go.”

  He pointed and she went, gratefully climbing behind the wheel, cranking up the wonderful heat and directing all the vents straight at her face. He had seat warmers, too, so she turned hers on and prayed that a seat warmer plus a wet butt didn’t lead to immediate electrocution.

  After a minute or two, her chills eased up enough for her to appreciate the car, which was perfectly clean and fresh. He had a black gym bag on the passenger side floor, a battered book on the seat, and a Swiss Army knife dangling from his key chain.

  Not that she was curious about him.

  With nothing else to do, she picked up the book. It turned out to be Moby-Dick, one of her all-time favorites. She sat for a minute, digesting this improbability. God could produce a guy who looked like that and read the classics, too? But He couldn’t make a pair of jeans that didn’t make her ass look like a VW Beetle?

  You need to think about what you’re doing, God.

  She tossed the book back onto the seat and that was when she noticed something sitting in the cup holder: a black velvet jeweler’s box small enough to hold an engagement ring.

  Something inside her sank a little.

  Nosy though she was feeling at the moment—what kind of powerhouse woman had he fallen for? A model? A Fortune 500 CEO-to-be?—she’d never snoop so low as to rummage through someone’s stuff. No matter how much her fingers itched to open the box and see what was in there.

  Determined not to let temptation get the best of her, she checked the rearview mirror in time to see the guy wheeling the spare tire into place and crouching to put it on. He was just a Good Samaritan, then, and an efficient one at that. But no good deed went unpunished, because she’d rewarded his kindness by behaving like a nut job.

  Her idiocy felt complete.

  Time to apologize.

  Climbing out of the warm little slice of heaven, she braved the ongoing monsoon to walk back to the Saab.

  Hearing her squishy approach, the guy gave her a swift once-over, but kept working with the tire.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “And thank you. I really mean it.”

  “Forget it,” he told her.

  She smiled, grateful he wasn’t going to make her grovel. “It's just that you can never be too careful,” she continued, “and I wasn't sure that—”

  He stood to his full height (six one or two, if he was an inch) and fixed her with his gaze, which was piercing under the shadow cast by his baseball cap. Something in his expression rearranged itself, softening. She watched him, arrested, fighting the unsettling sensation that he could see all sorts of things about her that had nothing to do with her physical appearance. Things she wanted left in the dark and hidden under a blanket.

  “I get it,” he reassured her. “I’m a stranger. You were being careful. Actually, you were being paranoid, but it's all good.” He swiped his wet hands on his thighs, smearing his jeans with grease and dirt.

  “Plus, I saw your copy of Moby-Dick,” she added. “Which proves you’re a good guy, right? Or a smart guy, anyway. Assuming you didn’t steal the copy from the library.”

  He grinned, a startling and disarming flash of white teeth and dimples that made her skin prickle with heat. “It was my grandmother’s favorite. She talked about it all the time. So I thought I’d get around to reading it.”

  “Oh, you’ll love it.” She blinked, using the back of her hand to swipe raindrops from her face. “And when you finish it, you and your grandmother can sit around discussing the nature of evil and justice. And then you should both read Crime and Punishment, if you haven’t already.”

  The light in his eyes dimmed.

  His eyes weren’t as dark as she’d first thought, she realized, simultaneously realizing they’d drifted closer to each other as they talked. His eyes weren’t black at all. They were hazel.

  “My grandmother died.” He swallowed, a rough bob of his Adam’s apple. “Last month. Her name was Ella.”

  “Oh, no.” Her hand reflexively came up to cover her heart. “I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded, pressing his lips together.

  “Well,” she said, fumbling for a new topic that wouldn’t make him look so bleak. “Need any more light reading suggestions?”

  He snorted out a laugh. “Not if you’re going to suggest another thousand-pager.”

  “Oh, I’m much more diverse than that. If you want suspense, you must read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

  “Loved it.”

  “For history, you absolutely must read Band of Brothers and Team of Rivals. Immediately.”

  “Done.”

  “Game of Thrones? Sherlock Holmes?”

  He faked a yawn. “You’re wasting my time.”

  She laughed. “Oh, so you’re a player. Okay. Let’s see. Thinking...Thinking...” She snapped her fingers. “Got it. For true crime, it’s got to be Fatal Vision.”

  He wavered, scrunching his face as he tried to recall it. “The one about the Green Beret who killed his family?”

  “Yep. It’s a big one—”

  He groaned.

  “But it reads really fast. You’ll love it.”

  He nodded, grinning. “Thanks.”

  She grinned back, trying not to fall under the spell of his bright eyes. “Any time.”

  They stared at each other, the moment stretching into something deliciously unsettling.

  He really was an interesting guy. The kind of guy she’d be interested in, if she was in the market.

  What about me, Reeve? asked Adam.

  Reeve’s smile slipped.

  “So...Bad news,” he said, also sobering. “The spare’s flat, too.”

  Before she could react, a semi sped by, creating a gust of wind that reminded them both of where they were. Without a word, he grabbed her waist and steered her back into the berm. This purely functional move, designed to keep her from being flattened into roadkill, made her flesh tingle.

  His hand was big. Strong. Warm.

  Adam’s hands were smaller than that.

  Flustered, she fidgeted nervously under cover of smoothing her hair out of her face. This led to the discovery that the rain, which was tapering off, had turned said hair into a squiggly mess best described as ramen noodles dyed black.

  “Sorry,” she prattled. “My hair does this Medusa thing whenever it gets wet. You probably shouldn’t even look at me right now. It’s not safe.”

  This little joke made his jaw tighten. He blinked and his pointed gaze dropped from hers, skimming over her and lingering on her legs on the way down and her breasts on the way up.

  Her body reacted with exquisite sensitivity. Goosebumps erupted all over her skin, and her nipples tightened down into achy beads that made her breath shallow.

  That was when she looked down and belatedly realized tha
t rain plus white tank top plus thin bra equaled unobstructed and detail-rich view of her breasts—nipples, aureoles and every other tiny detail of her cleavage. He could probably even see the mole near her armpit.

  And yet she waited, unabashed and unmoving, and let this man whose name she didn’t even know look his fill at her. In the end, he was the one to put a stop to it, not her.

  The whole incident lasted only two seconds. Three at the most.

  Adam never once entered her mind.

  At last the guy blinked, freeing her from his spell.

  “You’re right,” he said lightly, backing up a step. His voice sounded husky. “I shouldn’t look at you now.”

  Her cheeks flooded with sudden heat and guilt, making her look away as she hurriedly crossed her arms over her chest.

  “So.” She paused while her buzzing thoughts settled down. “Thanks again.”

  “Any time.” There was that huskiness again. He gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “Let’s wait in the car. Just, you know, until your friend comes.”

  “Ah...” She hesitated. Waiting in his gorgeous car would be great, but now, suddenly, she was wary of being alone with him for reasons that had nothing to do with his potential for violence. “I think I'll just stay in my car with Muffin.”

  His smile, she was discovering, was a blindingly beautiful event in the category of rainbows, solar eclipses and Tahitian sunsets. It made her knees weaken and her thoughts fuzz.

  “Muffin? That’s what you call that tiger in your front seat? Muffin?”

  She laughed. “I know, right? I didn't name him. He was a rescue.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  His body turned toward his car, but he lingered, in no apparent hurry to be anywhere else. This led to her lingering. Muffin, she figured, could fend for himself for a minute. They watched each other, the silence growing awkward. The guy opened his mouth. Seemed to think better of whatever he'd been planning to say and closed it again. Adjusted the bill of his baseball cap. Looked to the sky.

  “Rain's easing up,” he said.

  “Thank God.” Rubbing her hands up and down her arms as she followed his gaze, she worked on repressing a shiver. Now that the storm was passing and taking most of the day's humidity with it, the air felt breathable again. Crisp. Clear. “Who knew the rain was so cold?”

  The guy's features lapsed into what she was beginning to think of as one of his signature expressions: wry smile with cocked eyebrow. “I believe I did mention—”

  “Yeah, you told me it was going to rain. Had you mentioned that the rain was going to be cold, maybe I would have listened to you. Don’t worry, though. I'm not mad. Just disappointed.”

  He laughed, triggering the renewed swoop of something thrilling and unfamiliar low in her belly.

  She laughed.

  Arrested, his eyes thrown into shadow by his cap again, he sobered until all his boyish and teasing attributes gave way to a clear-eyed intensity she found disconcerting. Then he stuck out a hand.

  “Edward,” he told her. “Harper. Pleasure.”

  “Reeve Banks.” She hesitated, wishing there was a polite way she could refuse to shake. She could say, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a cold—don’t want to spread germs! Then she wouldn’t have to engage in an act that, with this guy—Edward, his name was Edward—would feel way more intimate than a standard introduction.

  But her hand was already in motion, probably because it wanted to touch him.

  The actual contact was brief, a mere second and a half of his big hand, with nice fingers and well-kept nails, engulfing her smaller one in a firm grip.

  But the energy surge between them—did he feel it, too?—felt like a pronged lightning strike to some vague point inside her. And when he quickly dropped her hand, crossed his arms and backed up a step, he left a tingling wake of awareness, as though she was now more alive than she’d been seconds ago.

  “So,” she said, also backing up a step as she shoved her hands deep into her pockets.

  “So.” Keeping his gaze lowered, he gestured to his SUV. Took another step away. “I’ll wait in my car.”

  “Okay. But...What should I call you?”

  He stopped. “Call me?”

  “Ed?” she asked. “Eddie? Ned? Ted? Teddy? Please tell me you have a zippy nickname of some sort.”

  Laughing, he shook his head. “You could give me one.”

  Reeve thought about that and decided the strong name suited his commanding air, not that she planned to tell him that. “Edward is good.”

  “Glad to hear it. I’d hate to think I’ve been walking around with the wrong name all these years.”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  Another laugh from him, but then he seemed to catch himself at it and locked his expression down. He took another step toward his car.

  “Thanks again,” she called after him, fighting an inappropriate stab of disappointment. The man was soon to be engaged or, at the very least, in a relationship serious enough to warrant a gift of an expensive piece of jewelry.

  Taken was the word she was looking for. He was taken. And she...

  Well, she had plenty of unfinished business to keep her occupied when she wasn’t drowning beneath the workload of her pediatric residency. “For everything.”

  He nodded, a faint frown contracting his brows. “Reeve, huh? I like it.”

  “It’s original, anyway,” she said, thinking of all the times she’d vainly searched kitschy souvenir shops for a keychain, doorknob sign or ID necklace with Reeve on it. “I’ve never met another Reeve.”

  “Yeah.” Something in his expression warmed. Softened until the corners of his eyes crinkled with an unfulfilled smile. “Neither have I.”

  If you enjoyed this excerpt, buy LET’S DO IT now!

  About the Author

  A recovering lawyer, Ann Christopher has been published since 2006 and writes contemporary romance and romantic suspense. Her very first book, a tragically bad starter novel, will forever remain under her bed, where it belongs. She’s also written a young adult horror novel, Monstrum. Now available, it’s the first in her Bella Monstrum trilogy.

  When she’s not writing, Ann likes to do the following, in no particular order: read; cook; eat; hang out at Target looking for new stuff she doesn’t need; crochet; quilt; play with her 2 rescue dogs and 2 rescue cats; and travel the world with her family. Her favorite cities are Washington, D.C., Venice and Paris, in case you were wondering. She lives in Ohio with her husband and over-scheduled teenagers.

  If you’d like to recommend a great book, share a recipe for homemade cake of any kind, or have a tip for getting your teens to do what you say the first time you say it, Ann would love to hear from you!

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