He had been stunned to learn of her past.
He was still stunned. He’d been thinking of it all morning—or trying to. What he kept thinking about was the way her perfect skin trailed down her neck to her breasts and under the covers. He knew that she would be beautiful all over.
The thought made him even more uncomfortable than he had been before. He shifted in the driver’s seat.
“You want me to drive?” Emma didn’t even look at him over the paper. She had asked that same question every half hour.
“No,” he said. “I need something to do and I can’t read while we drive.”
“Okay.” The paper rattled as she turned the page. In the backseat, Darnell sighed.
Michael resisted the urge to sigh too. Emma had been reluctant to talk with him this morning. Of course, he wanted to talk about the big event of the day—the magical mystery restaurant—but she seemed embarrassed by that. Or maybe she was embarrassed by the way it ended.
He was so attracted to her. The way she had felt against him that morning at the front desk, when that silly hotel employee had been ogling her. Men always looked at her that way? No wonder she was skittish. But she had to know Michael was different. He hadn’t done anything, even when provoked.
And God knew, he had been more provoked than usual when he had ended up in her bedroom, at her invitation this morning.
She had been so beautiful lying there, her black hair sprawled around her, her red lips parted, her dark lashes spread on her cream colored skin. Like the wonderful fantastical drawings he’d seen of Snow White—the amazing contrast between the darkness of her hair and the whiteness of her skin. Who was the fairest of the all? Emma, of course.
Only Snow White wouldn’t be her legacy, would it? She was more like Sleeping Beauty—lost for years, waiting for her handsome prince to wake her with a kiss.
He glanced at her, keeping one eye on the road. Her glossy black hair shone in the sunlight pouring in the car. He could see the nape of her neck and just a bit of skin disappearing under the color of her blue shirt.
“What are you looking at?” Emma asked, putting down the paper.
“Nothing,” he said, turning his attention back to the road.
“You were staring at me. Why?”
“Trying to read the headline on the back page,” he lied.
“Well, you can read if you want. I’ll drive.”
“No,” he said. “Go on.”
She raised the paper. He pushed the “seek” button on the radio, trying to find something other than oldies to listen to. Emma didn’t seem to care, if there was no baseball available. She loved the sport with a passion he didn’t quite understand.
Otherwise she listened to news or classical music. Which, he supposed, had been as new to her ten years ago as everything else.
He shook his head, still trying to comprehend it all. It would almost be like being a newborn, only with the ability to speak and understand, and with a memory of a previous life.
The radio control went through every number on the dial. Twice. “I’m going insane,” he said. “You’ll have to talk to me.”
“I’m not here for your entertainment,” Emma said.
“Too bad,” he said. “You’re succeeding.”
She slammed the paper down and glared at him. He laughed. “You’re too easy, Emma. I’m beginning to learn which buttons to push.”
“You angered me deliberately?”
“I told you. I need entertaining.”
“What do you want me to do? Give you a row of dancing girls on the dashboard?”
As she said the words, a tiny puff of white smoke flared from her fingers toward the dashboard. A hundred tiny Rockettes kicked their marvelous miniature legs right in front of him.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
He could barely hear the music they were dancing to. And someone was controlling stage lights. The women didn’t seem to notice that they were dancing in front of a giant who happened to be driving a car. Maybe they weren’t Rockettes. Maybe they were the Ziegfeld Girls brought back from the dead.
“Michael!” Emma screamed and launched herself at the steering wheel. Michael pushed her away with one hand and swerved with the other.
A truck zoomed by, horn blaring.
He had been driving into the oncoming lane and he hadn’t even seen it. He’d been watching the damn dancers.
“Um,” he said as calmly as he could, “this was not what I meant by entertainment.”
She was already muttering the reverse spell. The dancers disappeared as if they never were.
His heart was pounding. Darnell had climbed the back of the seat in his terror and was peering over it like a feline imitation of Kilroy. The idea of someone sketching a picture of Darnell, his face visible only from his nose upward, his two front paws framing his cheekbones like fists, with the sign Darnell Was Here beneath it was more than Michael could mentally take.
He snorted.
Emma whirled toward him, her expression panicked.
Then he chuckled.
Her eyes widened. So did Darnell’s. Only his claws were digging into the expensive leather seat back. He whimpered and slipped, landing behind Michael with a thud.
Michael laughed. He couldn’t hold it back. The laugh had a bit of hysteria in it, but not that much, considering all he’d been through that day.
He pulled the car to the shoulder, then bent over the wheel, laughing so hard he could hardly breathe.
Emma put her hand on his back. “Are you all right?”
Finally he sat up, rubbed the tears from his eyes, and tried to catch his breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just that they looked like some kind of children’s toy, those legs rising up like a wave, and then sinking again. And then Darnell—”
Michael heard claws scraping up the back of the seat again, and thought the better of what he was going to say.
“Darnell?” Emma prompted.
“Looked as startled as you did,” Michael said.
“I thought you were going to kill us.”
“I thought you couldn’t die,” he said.
She shook her head. “If you’d hit that truck, we’d both be dead now. If I had had control of my magical abilities, I could have gotten us out of the way, but I didn’t, so we would have died.”
The laughter died in his throat. He turned to her, startled. Somehow he had gotten the impression, after last night, that only magic could kill her. “Well,” he said, “never grab the wheel away from the driver. He’ll fight you instead of the road.”
“You didn’t,” she said.
“That’s because it’s happened to me before.” The words left his mouth before he thought about them. He winced and turned away.
“Was everyone all right?”
“No one died,” he said and got out of the car. He stretched and stared at the horizon. The sun was beginning to move toward the west.
He heard Emma’s door open. She walked around the car to join him. “Are you all right?”
“That was a bit close, wasn’t it?” he said. “I guess I hadn’t realized.”
“It was my fault.” Her voice was soft.
“No,” he said. “I came along to protect you. I should have been prepared for anything.”
“Oh, really?” She leaned toward him. “They cover miniature dancing girls in the driver’s training manuals?”
“No, but they do cover distractions.”
“Michael, you can’t blame yourself—”
“Actually, I can. You’re supposed to be in complete control when you drive a car. I almost plowed us into a truck. Then I blamed you for grabbing at the wheel.”
“I was the least of your problems.” She leaned against the car and kicked some
loose gravel.
A Datsun went by, much too fast. Another truck, going the opposite direction, and then a Subaru, with two women in the front seat.
“What memory did I invoke?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“When I asked about grabbing at the wheel?”
He felt his breath catch. “Nothing important.”
She bent her head, then kicked a little more gravel. “All right. When you’re ready, we can go again.”
To his surprise, she walked to the passenger side and got in. He would have thought, after that little incident, that she would have insisted on driving.
He ran a hand through his hair. The breeze was cool even though the sun was out, reminding him that it was still spring. The air had an unfamiliar scent here, something a little spicier than he smelled in Wisconsin. Probably some plant he didn’t recognize.
Another truck went by and then another. The interstate system, which kept America fed.
He sighed. He wasn’t being fair. Emma had told him all her secrets, and he hadn’t told her much at all about him. And only because he was embarrassed.
He slid back into the driver’s side. Time to tell someone the story he’d buried long ago.
“Okay,” he said. “I was sixteen. I had just gotten my license and I thought I knew everything.”
She looked at him with surprise. Darnell sat up in the backseat as if he felt he should take feline notice. “You don’t have to tell me. I mean, if it’s personal—”
“No,” he said. “You’ve been honest with me. It’s the least I can do. And I mean it. It’s the very least. It’s not a life or death secret.”
She turned toward him, folded the newspaper, and tucked it on the mat beside her feet.
“I was cruising with my friends in the car I’d bought and rebuilt from parts. I grew up in Northern Wisconsin and a mechanic’s skills were prized. Most guys don’t do that anymore, but then, those of us who could were like gods.”
She smiled as if he’d told her a private joke.
“My girlfriend was in the front seat, my best friend in the back with his girlfriend, and they were having waaay too good a time. I was—shall we say, inexperienced?—but my friend wasn’t and neither was his girlfriend. And I was sixteen. Did I say that?”
“Twice,” Emma said.
“It was night. It was winter. We were driving along the main drag just inside town. That’s what we did when we’d seen all the movies showing at the mall.”
“Sounds like fun,” Emma said.
Michael stopped and looked at her. She meant that. “No, Emma. It wasn’t fun.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“It was a way to fill time.”
She frowned. “You could have watched television. Or worked on your computer. Or played games. There’s a lot to amuse people now.”
“First off,” he said, “we couldn’t afford computers. That was in the days when only rich kids had them. There was no Internet, and staying home with the folks watching television Just Wasn’t Done.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks colored a little. He liked the way she blushed. It made her face seem rosy.
“Anyway, I was doing okay with all the sounds coming out of the back.”
“Sounds?” she asked.
“Moaning, kissing—actually, I think now, as an adult, I’d call it slobbering—”
“Ick!”
“But then, you know.”
But she probably didn’t. This was as far from her teenage years as, well, Sweyn Forkbeard’s six-month rule over England was from Queen Elizabeth the Second’s.
“Anyway,” Michael said to cover his discomfort, “I was getting a little too intrigued, if you know what I mean. And my girlfriend was hiding her embarrassment at the whole thing by huddling up against the door and staring at the road ahead of us.
“I really wanted to turn around and see exactly what they were doing—I used to tell myself that I want to tell them to knock it off—but I was a sixteen-year-old boy. I wanted to look.”
She grinned. “Some things never change.”
“And probably never will,” Michael said. “We got to a bend in the road, and about that point, a bra came sailing over the backseat and wrapped itself around the rearview mirror.”
Emma put a hand over her mouth.
“I—I—I—” He laughed suddenly. “I still get embarrassed thinking about this.”
“Well you can’t stop now,” Emma said.
“Which is exactly what my friend’s girlfriend said.”
“You’re kidding. I thought modern American girls were supposed to say no at that point.”
“They were,” Michael said. “She didn’t.”
“Oh.”
“I was sixteen.”
“We established that.”
“So I turned around. I mean, it was more than I could take. I knew there were naked breasts back there, and I’d never seen any, not in person—” He felt a blush building. He had seen some just that morning. Emma’s gaze met his and he willed himself not to show the sudden embarrassment he was feeling. “—and I wasn’t thinking or maybe I was using the wrong part of my anatomy.
“The next thing I know, my girlfriend is screaming, the car is sliding on ice, and I whip my head back toward the front of the car. We’re going sideways down the road. My girlfriend is grabbing for the wheel and I’m trying to push her away, and we slide in circles all the way off the road and into a deep ditch.”
“Was everyone all right?” Emma asked.
Michael nodded. “Bruised. But my car was totaled. It filled, almost instantly, with icy cold ditch water, which smelled pretty rancid. I have no idea what was in that ditch, and I don’t want to know.”
“Were you in trouble?”
“No,” Michael said. “My dad said the loss of the car was punishment enough. I had put a lot of work into that car, and we’d only insured it for blue book at the price we’d paid.”
“So you lost money?”
“And time.”
Emma looked at him. “Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
This time, he did flush. “I never told anyone this, not since I was sixteen. It was like my little secret.”
“Because you were looking in the backseat?”
“I had no business doing that.”
“And neither did they,” Emma said. “Not in your car anyway.”
He smiled. He hadn’t told his father that part. He hadn’t even spoken of it with his friend. Only Emma. And she, miraculously, had put it all in perspective.
“So,” Emma said matter-of-factly, “did you get to see any?”
He frowned. “See any what?”
“Breasts.”
Again his gaze met hers. In her eyes was a challenge, as if she wanted him to say something about the morning. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It was dark—there were hands everywhere, and a lot of white skin. I’m hoping what I saw was breasts.”
“I would have thought you’d have seen them after the accident,” Emma said.
“Nope. Somehow she managed to get her shirt back on before the rest of us came to our senses.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I got over it.” Michael paused. “Thanks to this morning.”
He was rewarded with her deepest blush yet. “I had forgotten that I sleep naked.”
“No need to explain,” he said. “It was my pleasure.”
She looked down, and he felt her withdraw. A moment before, he had felt that intimacy again, the closeness that they seemed to flirt with, and now it was gone. Why? Was he doing something wrong?
“Emma—”
“We sho
uld probably get going again,” she said in that prim little voice of hers. “Do you want me to drive?”
He sighed softly. The moment was gone. “No. I can do it. I promise to keep my eyes on the road.”
***
Rapid City had tourist trap written all over it. From the time they’d entered the Badlands to the time they left Wall Drug (which fascinated Emma to no end—Michael finally had to drag her out of there), Michael had the sense they were getting deeper into a world where no sane man would travel.
It all had a very 1950s feel—the signs, advertising attractions that would probably bore today’s children within hours. Mount Rushmore had held a fascination for him as a child, probably because of North by Northwest, but today’s kids would probably stare at it, proclaim it cool, and wonder where the high-tech roller coasters were.
A lot of the locals worked in the service industry, but he’d spent enough time here to know that the major employer was Ellsworth Air Force Base. Once you got past all the shops selling Black Hills Gold and attractions from the Crazy Horse Memorial to the Sioux Indian Museum, it became clear that the city had a military presence like few others he had ever encountered in the United States.
Emma seemed oblivious to it. But Michael, after having lived in liberal Madison, felt as if he were in an armed camp. Humvees and trucks and military vehicles drove side by side with the cars on the highway. Planes zoomed overhead, and in the parking lot at the Rushmore Mall, he saw young soldiers with their wives and children, heading for an evening out.
Michael had known finding a hotel room in Rapid wouldn’t be hard this time of year, and he was right. Most of the hotels, which catered to tourists from all over the world, had no problem with cats. He and Emma got two rooms in an upscale chain—after he had made sure that there was a restaurant and it wasn’t under construction—and they went their separate ways before dinner.
He had planned to do research into fine dining for the evening, but he didn’t have the energy. The strange morning had worn him out, and after the breakfast he thought he had, but actually hadn’t, he really didn’t want a lot of rich food. So he decided that chain dining would be just fine.
He found that he couldn’t stay in his room. He had already put in his run that morning—two, if his memory were to be believed—so he didn’t want to overtax himself. But he could walk and stretch his legs.
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