“I’ll go for that,” Mason said. “Whew!” He fanned himself with his hat.
She looked at him askance. “What?”
Mason frowned. “Your fellow was a bit of a whiner, wasn’t he?”
A blush ran all over her as she remembered that everyone in the truck knew she hadn’t slept with her ex-fiancé—he’d certainly shouted his complaint loud enough. She handed Mason a beer, and then Mike, who snapped the top off and took a long swig.
“I was thinking about getting married once,” Mason said conversationally.
Holly thought she heard Bandera gasp. Her eyes met his in the mirror, but he quickly broke contact and stared straight ahead at the road. “Why didn’t you?” she asked Mason.
He scratched his head. “I never did figure that out exactly.”
“Oh?” Holly held the beer bottle between her hands, happy for the coldness to reduce the heat of her own mortification. She focused on Mason’s story. “Wasn’t the right time?”
“I suppose not.”
She looked at Bandera. “What about you? You have a sad story, too?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “My stories are all happy and they’re going to stay that way.”
“Really?” She leaned forward, her arms over the back of the seat, and looked at him thoughtfully. “Did you learn that from Confucius, too? The secret to eternal happiness?”
“No. I learned it from my family. Happiness was a survival skill.”
She glanced at Mason, who sat unmoving, the beer bottle hovering near his lips as he took in Bandera’s words. “That stinks,” he said suddenly. “I never thought about it before, but you’re right. Happiness was a survival skill, and I believe we all stunk at it.”
“Oh, come on, we were happy,” Bandera protested.
“We were something, but it wasn’t happy.”
“We were happy! Last was always telling us how good it used to be.”
Mason merely shook his head and glanced out the other window. Holly caught Bandera’s gaze on her and sent him a sympathetic look. Maybe their youth hadn’t been as happy as they were pretending? “Thank you for picking us up,” she told him.
“It was nothing. We had nowhere pressing to be.”
“Although we’d like to get there eventually,” Mason said with a growl. “You just reminded me why I travel light, without family.”
Holly’s brow puckered. “So we are getting you off track?”
“No,” Mason said with a sigh. “Our tracks are never quite straight.”
“That’s right. Everybody out. Holly’s going to sit up here by me, so that she can read the map for me.”
“I’m not a very good map reader,” she said quickly, “I’m afraid I’d get you even more behind than you are.”
“Yes, but that’s Mason time you’re worried about,” Bandera said. “My time is slow and easy.”
She blinked, caught by his words and the drawl. Without consciously wanting to, she thought about sex. Slow and easy sex. Lots of it. With Bandera.
Whew. Not ten minutes after her ex had bawled her out for making him wait until the wedding.
Something was wrong with her. She definitely had rebound fever.
“I cannot read your map,” she said decisively. You represent the lure of the unattainable, and I am in a weakened state.
Mike hopped out, taking his beer with him. “Out,” he said to Holly. “Go read the man’s map.”
“Now, look,” she protested. “I don’t know that I like traveling with three men who are developing caveman instincts!” Sitting next to Bandera was going to get her nothing but trouble. She had a funny feeling he had cracked her code: sensitive, brokenhearted female needs a little male attention, some savvy sweet talk, a little cowboy chivalry and, shazam! She’s saved from a tragically unhappy ending!
“We’re not cavemen,” Mason said. “We’re trying to treat you like the lady you are.”
She hesitated. Mike shrugged. “I like them,” he said to her. “Better than Chuck.”
“We don’t know them,” she said. “And they’re men.”
“Ahh,” the three men chorused.
“What?” Holly demanded.
“Man issues,” Bandera said. “Even before the big breakup, you had man issues.”
“You’re a freak,” she said, “and I’m going to read your map for you, just so you can have plenty of time to think over your own issues once I get us all good and lost.”
“Drop me off at the bike shop before you lead us the wrong way,” Cousin Mike said. “I fancy a card game with some fellow bikers.”
She sighed and crawled into the front seat. “I have now entered the danger zone,” she said, her tone a trifle mocking.
“You have no idea,” Bandera declared with a grin.
Chapter Three
Holly stared at Bandera, her eyes huge in her face. He liked that—he could tell she was torn between laughing at his comment and thinking he was teasing.
Or wondering if maybe he wasn’t teasing.
He could let her off the hook and tell her he was just trying to make her smile—better yet, laugh—but it was too satisfying to have her watching him.
There was something about her that he found highly intriguing. Was it her dumping her ex instead of causing a scene? Or maybe the fact that she’d made him wait, and when the fool hadn’t she’d refused to compromise her standards?
Bandera had to admit he liked a strong woman. He liked a lady with sass.
More than anything, he liked thinking she hadn’t loved her ex enough to fall for his game. Oh, he knew how men like that thought. A man’s game went something like this: “if you won’t, she will.”
Only Holly hadn’t.
To Bandera’s thinking, for any man who couldn’t conquer his woman, there was a better man who could—and that made her ripe for possession.
“Feeling better?” he asked Holly. He could see her fingers trembling as she stared at the map, and he knew she was nervous. Why?
Maybe he’d been teasing her too much. The Jefferson men were used to gnawing on each other’s flanks, with jests, with bad moods, with whatever. Even Helga, their housekeeper, had learned to fight fire with fire when the Jeffersons got on her nerves. In the beginning, when she’d first come to work for them, the eleven younger brothers hadn’t wanted her. Mason had. The other brothers had made her life pretty difficult, but she’d won them over in her wise way.
And sometimes she played a bit of dirty pool to make a point, which the Jeffersons had respected.
Mimi was a regular fire extinguisher of her own. The Jeffersons rarely messed with her; one, because she was generally leading the parade of mischief, pulling Mason in her wake; and two, Mimi knew very well the high-stakes art of revenge. Nobody got the best of her.
Bandera frowned.
“What?” Holly demanded, glancing up at him. Her eyes widened. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m not,” he said gruffly, and refocused his gaze on the road. Why had Mason confessed he’d once wanted to get married? Confessed to Holly, a stranger?