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  As she dried off with a hand towel, she took a deep breath then blew it out.

  Just go over to Eddie’s room, she thought, glancing in the direction of the adjoining door. He’s proven himself to be a considerate guy, so what’s stopping you?

  But that wasn’t really the question, was it?

  Carmen tossed the towel to the counter. Instead, she should be wondering if she was entirely comfortable with a guy who treated her well but didn’t share squat about himself.

  Standing there wouldn’t give her any answers, so she walked over to the door, hearing the mumble of Eddie’s TV through the wood. The immediate sound probably meant that his own adjoining door was open, welcoming her if she chose to turn the knob and step over the threshold.

  When they arrived, she had checked into her own room before the issue of spending the night together had even come up. It had been a preemptive strike, allowing her to make the ultimate decision tonight. And from the knowing look on Eddie’s face as they’d walked out of the motel’s office, he’d known just what she was up to.

  But he hadn’t complained. It wasn’t his style.

  She laid her hand flat against the door, heart jackhammering as if to chisel away all her doubts.

  Why not go for it like Lucy had done? Carmen kept thinking. Why could her friend do it but not her?

  Forcing herself to get over the theatrics, Carmen knocked, then swung the door partway open, waiting for Eddie to answer before coming all the way in.

  “You still up and about?” she asked.

  “For you? Always.”

  She peered around the door to find him still dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, sitting in a corner chair with one ankle casually resting on his thigh. He put down the road map he’d been scanning, his grin at full wattage, inviting her to walk all the way in.

  Buh-bang, buh-bang…

  Her pulse wouldn’t calm itself down. She would even bet he could see her heart pounding through her T-shirt, like in a surreal cartoon.

  “Did you end up talking to Lucy?” he asked.

  “No, it’s too late to bug her.” Carmen had seen the cowboy’s truck a few doors down, so she didn’t feel as rushed to find her friend now. “Tomorrow will be soon enough. Her man’s going home, and that’ll be the end of things.”

  An end. Carmen’s time with Eddie might be over, too. Maybe this was the last night she’d ever see him. Maybe this was her last chance to do what her body was suggesting with every throb, every shiver.

  Eddie tossed the road map on a table, and they just looked at each other. Carmen’s belly went hot and tight.

  She sure wished she had that old redhead, punk-girl confidence now. But…what if it had never even existed? Maybe being Malcolm’s girlfriend in college had sheltered her from all the anxiety and doubt that dating brought on a girl.

  Had losing Malcolm—her significant other, no, her crutch—made her this insecure?

  Another thought gave her pause. What if being here with Eddie was her way of seeking that shelter again—if only temporarily?

  On TV, a late-night movie provided thankful noise. Cops and bad guys. Gunshots and yelling.

  Finally, she laughed at the tension, making Eddie do the same.

  “You’d think I’ve never been alone in a room with a guy,” she said. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Too bad I make you nervous.”

  “I’m not…” She’d been about to deny her anxiety, but she would be lying.

  “I was hoping you’d come through that door.” Eddie leaned his forearms on his thighs, lowering his chin as he gazed at her.

  He seemed so young right now, and so alone without his group in the background. His camera stood on the table, and Carmen wondered if it was a better companion than the people he traveled with.

  “Eddie,” she said, sitting on his bed. “What’s really going on here?”

  He knew exactly what she was talking about—she could see it in how he didn’t answer, in how he fixed his gaze on the TV instead.

  “We started out flirty,” Carmen continued, “then ended up tonight in separate motel rooms.”

  “Not by my choice.” He shrugged one shoulder. “On that first day, it seemed so easy. Too easy, maybe.”

  “And then I started blabbing about Malcolm. That probably heightened the romantic mood considerably. I probably scared you off.”

  “No, I understand everything you’ve said about trust, and believe me, I don’t mean to be so secretive around you, Carmen. It’s only that…”

  Silence, except for the TV. She reached over to the night-stand and grasped the remote, lowering the volume and catching his full gaze again.

  “It’s only that,” she finished for him, “you realized I wouldn’t sleep with you unless I felt more comfortable?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  She traced a seam on the bedspread. “Why is it that I thought it’d be so much better to have sex with someone I didn’t know? I don’t even think it’s possible for me.”

  “Not everyone can hop into bed with the first person who seems interested.”

  “Can you?”

  She’d been compelled to ask. If she didn’t get any answers about him tonight, she never would.

  Eddie crooked an eyebrow, as if not wanting to cover this territory. It was to his credit that he ended up answering.

  “I’m only a red-blooded American male.” Then he smiled a little. “But I do have standards, and you meet each one of them.”

  Her heartbeat intensified, throwing every rhythm of her body off-kilter.

  “Sounds like you’re just trying to get me into bed now,” she said.

  “I’d do my best if I thought a seduction would work on you.” Eddie pushed the hair back away from his face. “I mean, hell, here you are right now in a T-shirt and boxers, and I’m ready to explode like you’re wearing lingerie.”

  She clasped the hem of her oversize T, bringing it away from her peaked nipples. Meanwhile, her blood simmered, as if his confession had lit a fuse, setting it to sizzling on its way to a bang.

  Still, she didn’t close the distance between them. Then again, neither did he.

  Eddie was leaving the rest up to her, wasn’t he?

  Hell, was he wary of a rejection? He wanted her—he’d said so…

  Then why was he leaving it in her hands?

  She could venture a strong guess. Eddie was still hiding something, and maybe he’d started to feel guilty about that.

  At her silence, he leaned back in the chair.

  He wasn’t going to clear anything between them, and she wouldn’t force him to, either. Having him come clean on his own was the point.

  After all, she’d been the one who’d found out about Malcolm’s betrayal, and he’d admitted his wrongdoing only after she’d called him on it.

  Not that she would’ve forgiven him if he’d only come to her first, but…speaking up mattered. It didn’t make the humiliation any less painful, but it at least showed some character.

  Eddie had been gauging her this whole time, and when he spoke, he sounded pensive. “This is about your boyfriend. Because he broke your heart.”

  “No, he broke my spirit.” She’d blurted it out before even thinking. “Or at least my ability to take people at their word. Problem is, Eddie, you haven’t given me any words to go on. That’s why I’m sitting a canyon away from you, and you know it. Don’t be disingenuous.”

  “How else should I be?” He casually spread out his hands. “I didn’t think we’d see each other after that one night, so there was no reason to tell you anything. I’m just as surprised as you must be about how things…went from there.”

  Buh-bang, buh-bang…

  Her pulse was back to knocking her around.

  “I didn’t intend to like you so much, Carmen,” he said softly.

  Her heart lifted, then did a dive back to where it throbbed in her chest. She liked him, too. He seemed to know her better than anyone else in life, except
maybe her best friend. “Like” actually didn’t even cover it.

  “After that first night,” he said, “I suppose I deluded myself into thinking that if you formed a positive opinion about me before I told you anything, you might not run off.”

  She was floored. He thought that much of her? This near stranger? How? And in so little time?

  Then again, she’d been attracted to him the moment she saw him, as well. But it was only an attraction, right?

  How could it be anything more?

  Carmen moved to the middle of the bed. “Just tell me, Eddie. What could be so bad?”

  When he met her gaze, the sadness in his eyes nailed her.

  “You don’t recognize my name?” he asked.

  Not a good start.

  Kilpatrick. Eddie. Edward…

  “No, I don’t,” she said.

  He looked relieved, but only for a fleeting moment.

  “Should I?” Carmen asked, already thinking that she should’ve left well enough alone.

  The oxygen in her lungs had gone thin.

  “My dad—” Eddie stopped, then started again, probably thinking there was no way to avoid this any longer. “My dad is Lawrence Kilpatrick. Assemblyman Kilpatrick.”

  A minivortex drilled Carmen between the eyes. Kilpatrick. She did know the name.

  California State Legislature. A politician who was known as a bigot to some voters, such as her mother and her friends. Mama hated the man’s guts.

  Eddie was watching her closely again, and her reaction caused a rueful expression to take him over.

  “Yup,” he said, “as always. His name’s enough to suck the air right out of a room.”

  She remembered on the houseboat, when she’d made him the agua de melón drink and explained how it’d been passed down from her Mexican relatives. He’d gotten that cautious look on his face that she hadn’t fully read at the time.

  But now it made sense.

  She finally managed to speak. “Did you keep your silence and tell the rest of the group to do the same because you assumed that I disliked your dad? I’m not saying that I don’t, but—”

  “I don’t make a practice of admitting I’m related to him. The minute a person knows that I’m the son of one of the biggest political lightning rods in the state, they tend to associate me with him. So I just shut up about it. The strategy has never failed me with people who aren’t around for long—just as I thought you wouldn’t be.”

  So Eddie hadn’t wanted to lie to her, and that’s the reason he’d never come out with the truth?

  “Not that it matters now,” he added, “but I don’t usually agree with my dad, and he hates that.”

  She was still absorbing all of this. Assemblyman Kilpatrick. Yeah, her family would be really happy to know that she’d been hanging out with his spawn. Mama would flay her, and her normally easygoing dad would even ask Carmen what she was thinking.

  But they didn’t know Eddie.

  God, what was she talking about? She still didn’t even know him.

  “That only explains a fraction of who you are,” she said, pressing on, not wanting him to see the shock that had enveloped her. “There’re still about a thousand more questions, like what’s going on with the group you hang out with? And why do you almost seem separated from them?”

  And curly, blond Trudy? she wondered. What about his strange dealings with that girl?

  As if unwilling to see the fallout on Carmen’s face, Eddie folded back the edge of his road map.

  “How did I find myself on this trip with the brew crew?” he said, voice flat now. “That answer’s easy. Trudy’s my stepsister—”

  Carmen blinked.

  “And she roped me into coming,” Eddie continued. “She was on dad-mandated probation after getting into some trouble at a bar. Just a kid being irresponsible, really. But she wanted to go somewhere on spring break, and she came up with this idea for Lake Havisu. Without asking me, she told Dad that I’d already agreed to come along and monitor her behavior—like I didn’t have plans, myself. But I think he took great satisfaction in making that a condition of the trip. He made it clear that there was no way she would be able to hit the road if I didn’t, knowing that I had already booked a trip to New Orleans for some picture taking. He also knew I wouldn’t disappoint Trudy. Of course, I liked the fact that she had the gumption to outsmart him and get her way in the first place, so I canceled my other plans so her scheme would come to fruition.”

  “You’d do that for your stepsister?”

  “Why not. Trudy and I fight like a cat and dog, but we face off against Dad together. Besides, I knew there’d be great pictures out here, too. Beautiful ones.”

  His green gaze swept over her, and she blushed, recalling the photos he’d taken of her yesterday.

  Their kiss, her breasts in his hands and mouth…

  Butterflies awakened in Carmen’s belly, and she put her hand there, as if to contain them. “So you paid for the houseboat because…”

  “Because Trudy’s a disaster with money and she asked me to take care of everything and she would settle with me in the end. And she will. She just tends to do things like promise her pals that she’ll spring for a houseboat if they come on the trip, so I’d rather curb that than have to deal with the consequences. She makes things harder than they need to be in general.”

  He paused, and Carmen could sense a “for instance” coming up.

  She was right.

  “Yesterday morning,” he continued, “she made a call home and mentioned to her mom that I’d taken up with a nice girl named Carmen. Trudy didn’t mean anything by it, but Dad got wind of the information, and you can guess how that went over in the Kilpatrick household.”

  Her pride took a hit. She wasn’t all Mexican but enough to get angry about the implied reaction of his father.

  Eddie had to have known how she was feeling, because he rushed on, as if to distance her from the reality of what he’d been keeping from her. It occurred to Carmen that he’d been doing more than protecting himself from a rejection.

  Had he been protecting her, too?

  When he continued, the answer became more obvious.

  “I had a knock-down, drag-out fight with the old man over the phone and came back to tell Trudy to think about what she says to the parents from now on. I told her to be more aware of what comes out of her mouth, because she pretty much isn’t. She was going to apologize to you, Carmen, but I told her to wait. It was only going to open a big can of worms, so I’m apologizing for all of this now.”

  “Eddie…”

  “What? That’s what you saw on the houseboat, the whole batch of dirty family laundry. I’m sure you were won over by it, too.”

  You had already won me, she wanted to say. But, no way. She couldn’t go any further with this. It would be guaranteed trouble if Mama or anyone in her family ever found out—

  She stopped herself. Was she living her life for them?

  Eddie tore a bit of his map, his voice going lower, dredged with something that could’ve gone beyond pure lust and into…where? What?

  “Women like you don’t come around often,” he said, “and I was going to keep seeing you as long as circumstances allowed it. But every day, we got further away from casual contact that didn’t require me to tell you a thing. And now…Well, here we are.”

  He got out of his chair, sticking his hands into his pockets as his flop of sandy hair covered his brow again. This time, he kept hiding behind the long bangs, as if expecting that she would go back to her room now.

  But her heart felt swollen, punched around. This had turned into more than a fling composed of physical desire.

  “Eddie?” she asked.

  He glanced at her, and there was something in his gaze so heart-wrenchingly obvious that she could barely look him in the eye.

  “Can you also tell me that you aren’t attracted to me because you know it’ll piss your dad off?” she finished.

  Because
some ugly part of her got a twisted thrill from how Mama would react if she brought Eddie home. Did it do the same to him, too?

  Not that it would ever happen. There was no future here. There was barely even a present.

  He had paused in answering her question, and that told her everything.

  Carmen sighed, and that seemed to say even more, because Eddie slowly sat back down in his chair.

  “At first,” he finally said, “it did appeal to me. I admit it, but now—”

  “Now we should be happy that we didn’t start anything up.”

  Once again, Eddie grabbed the road map, immersing himself in it as if it was another hiding place.

  “Happy,” he said, quietly mocking the word.

  But, in spite of everything, she didn’t leave. No, she merely turned the TV back up, refusing to go to her room, just wanting to stay with Eddie for as long as she could.

  Because, with him around, she wouldn’t be left alone with the knowledge that she might never have the courage to live her own life.

  LONG BEFORE the official start of morning, Lucy had showered while the cowboy continued sleeping. Then she’d gone to the coffee shop for tea, which she took outside to a picnic bench near the rose garden.

  There, she watched the sunrise, wondering if he was doing the same thing from their room’s window.

  An early mist burned away from the landscape, revealing more red and yellow petals on the rosebushes, plus the parking lot’s damp blacktop. It must’ve rained at some point last night, but she’d never realized it.

  Instead, she’d sheltered herself in a black sleep, not even knowing when the cowboy had come back into the room. But he obviously had, because she’d woken up to find him slumbering with his back to her.

  Where had he gone? she wondered. And why had she ended up missing him so badly?

  She knew the answer: because she had broken her own heart by pushing him away. But she’d done it for good reason. Survival. Safety.

  Even so, those didn’t seem like good enough reasons anymore…

  Setting down her tea, she looked at the motel stationery she’d brought outside with her, then put pen to paper, thinking about what she would do from hereon out. The return to order calmed her, but only for a short time.