“Looks that way, sweetheart.” Jared laughed. “And his name is Garrick, by the way.”
I looked at him. He stopped.
But he pulled his keys from his pocket anyway. He’d had this whole thing worked out before he opened his mouth. “Take the truck.”
I took the keys without a word. I was going to have a long conversation with him about all of this.
I looked back at Amy on the tailgate. She was watching me with those dark eyes, tired now.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said quietly. “I can figure something out.” She said it like she meant it and like she expected me to take the exit.
I didn’t answer. I bent down and picked her up, settling her against my chest before walking across the lot to Jared’s truck. She was quiet while I buckled her in. No jokes. No Bigfoot. Tired, and hurting, and trying not to show either.
I closed her door. Walked around. Got in. The cab was small, which put her close. Close was exactly what I’d been fighting all afternoon. I started the engine.
“Garrick.”
I looked over.
“Thank you.” That was all.
I nodded and put the truck in gear.
CHAPTER THREE
AMY
The truck smelled like… him.
Not in a cologne way. In a mountain wrapped in pine kind of way. The kind of scent that made a woman forget basic survival instincts and consider terrible ideas. Like licking his neck.
Which was concerning.
Garrick’s hands were easy on the wheel despite the road being little more than a track with the mountain on one side and a drop-off I couldn’t look at right now on the other. There was a pulse of pain behind my eyes that I hadn’t shared with the EMT and that got worse every time we hit a rut.
“How far?” I asked.
“Ten minutes.”
“Great.” A pause. “Is it always this bumpy?”
He glanced over. The look was brief and assessing, the same one he’d been giving me since the river.
“Why’d you come here?”
I blinked at him. “To the rafting trip?”
A nod.
“I wanted to prove I could do it,” I admitted.
Garrick frowned slightly. “Do what?”
“Hard things.” I gave a small shrug. “Everybody always assumes curvy girls don’t do outdoorsy stuff. But mostly…” Ilooked out the window again. “I got tired of being scared all the time. I’ve said maybe next time so many times I decided to change that.”
Garrick settled deeper into his seat and the move drew my eyes to his legs. Legs that were long and hard and big. I blamed it on the concussion that my gaze wandered where it shouldn’t have. “So, you came whitewater rafting?”
“I took swim lessons first. At a YMCA. I will have to go back and give them a better rating. The first thing they did was teach — or at least try — to teach me how to float.”