“You tried the cell phones?”
“Not yours, but mine doesn’t work and the navigational system in the Beemer is out, so I’d say there’s no coverage here.”
Shannon patted her pocket for her phone and couldn’t find it. “Mine must have fallen out of my jacket when we flipped.” She started to stand. “I’ll go check—”
“No.” He gripped her arm tightly, holding her next to him. “The car smelled like something was burning. You’d better give it time until we’re sure nothing could ignite.”
Sinking back to the sand beside him, she tried to ignore the feel of his hand on her, the warmth of his palm penetrating her jacket to the skin beneath. The firm hold did something dizzying to her senses. She wasn’t some hard-core S and M chick, but she loved to be dominated. It was a fantasy she’d felt safe enough with Romero to share. A fantasy he’d been incredibly skilled at indulging to just the right degree.
Apparently, he’d been sharing some of her thoughts, because his gaze heated for one sizzling second before he released her, turning his attention back to the smoking car.
A wise woman would do the same.
She shoved aside images of Romero pressing her up against their bedroom wall and wrenching her clothes off in a fevered frenzy. Instead, she focused on the BMW perched on its roof, the front end smashed beyond recognition while the radiator hissed steam. A bold blackbird landed on one tire, undeterred by the potential for an explosive situation.
“Thank you for getting me out of there.” She couldn’t show her gratitude by covering his gorgeous mug with kisses, so she settled for the old-fashioned method. “I don’t remember us landing or you pulling me out, but you must have.”
Her heart squeezed at the thought of how close they’d come to death. If the car hadn’t been so well engineered they might not be sitting here right now.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” He shot her a sideways look. “Even if I am a self-absorbed bastard with no appreciation for anyone else’s feelings.”
She recalled the accusation, one of many she’d launched at him during their fight. One of many he’d simply accepted and hadn’t argued about. The fact that he didn’t care enough to argue, to fight for their relationship and her, that had hurt her far more than the lack of hiking boots, or his inconsistent schedule that dragged him away for months on end, then planted him back home for weeks straight, only to hide out in his basement recording studio.
“Yeah, well, clearly you’re having a good day.” She rose to her feet, unwilling to face more reminders of their breakup. The loss of him was still an open wound for her even though he’d been able to roll right on with life without missing a beat. “If that car hasn’t exploded by now, I’m not going to worry about it. I’ll see if I have cell coverage so we can get out of here.”
Shannon wobbled on her heels in the sandy terrain, her unsteadiness as much from her head injury as her impractical shoes.
“Are you in that much of a hurry to leave me?” he called after her.
“I’m not the one who likes to run away when the going gets tough.” She shot the accusation over her shoulder. “But I think you’d agree we’ll both be better off when this trip is over and we can go our separate ways.”
SHE HADN’T TOLD HIM anything he didn’t already know.
Romero was well aware that she’d had enough of him. That had been abundantly clear during the daylong rampage when she called his bluff on the trial separation idea and moved straight ahead to removing him from her life completely. She’d still been spoiling for a fight when he’d pulled out of the driveway with a bag in hand. But he couldn’t help a twinge of regret that she still harbored some resentment toward him even now, when they’d nearly died. Would she have shown up in front of St. Peter’s gate with her score sheet in hand of all the times Romero had ticked her off?
“You’re a hard woman to please,” he muttered, and got up, unwilling to let her be blown up in the hunt for a cell phone that wasn’t going to work anyhow.
“I disagree,” she replied as she hunkered down near the open window of the Beemer and peered inside. “I’m an easy woman to please for people who are willing to engage in the occasional disagreement to work through problems in a relationship.”
Romero’s head pounded with frustration about the car, the accident and the long walk he feared was ahead of them, so Shannon’s latest slam seemed poorly timed.
He bracketed her hips with his hands and hauled her out of the way so he could find her phone for her. She huffed and puffed about it, but he knew damn well she wouldn’t want to crawl around in an upside-down car to retrieve her things.
“Do you have some kind of bionic hearing or what?” He couldn’t imagine how she’d heard him talking to himself twenty yards away from her.
“Hardly. My hearing just seems good to you by comparison because you don’t like to listen and, as a result, hear very little.”
He picked her cell off the visor and removed her purse strap from a bar it was caught on under the passenger seat. Handing both items out to her, he then grabbed his wallet out of the glove box along with some tissues and a first-aid kit.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he removed the keys from the ignition and brought them around to the back of the car.
Finally, words from her mouth that were not arrows aimed at him.
“I’m going to get our suitcases out so we can streamline what we need.” He pried open the trunk with considerable effort, since that had bent, too, but the moment he released the latch, all the suitcases dropped out to the ground with a thud.
“What?” Shannon paced in a nervous circle, her shoes kicking up dirt as she walked, so a dust cloud formed around her ankles. “I haven’t even tried my phone yet. And we don’t know that the car won’t work at all, do we?”
He sent a meaningful look toward the upside-down, torn-up automobile.
“But if we could flip it—”
“It would still have a blown tire, a bent front axle and a slew of engine parts that broke during the fall. Trust me, the vehicle serves no purpose.” He took his keys out of the trunk and didn’t bother to shut it.
“Do we even know where we are?” She bit her lip as she stared down at her phone, and Romero knew she couldn’t get a signal.
“Shannon, there’s no phone service.” He tugged the cell away from her and dropped it in her jacket pocket. “Something like twenty percent of Mexico doesn’t even have electricity, so there are definitely large pockets without cell coverage. We need to figure out which way to walk that will yield some sign of life first. Any guesses?”
“Walk?” Her fingers crept back up to the chain she liked to wear, the one with the Celtic knot, and began to slide the pendant along the links.
It occurred to him that he knew she loved that necklace, but he didn’t have a clue why. For all he knew it could be a bauble from another boyfriend—he’d never thought to ask. The realization tweaked his conscience until he reminded himself he’d been on tour for something like a hundred and fifty days in the past year. Was it any wonder they hadn’t ever really known each other?
The sun cooked the countryside despite the fact that it was February, the heat reflected back by the pale sand beneath their feet. A lizard darted over his boot and he noticed the profound silence that came with being lost in the middle of nowhere.
“C’mon, Shan.” He burrowed in his overnight bag and found a bottle of water to hand to her. “I’ve seen you rock the treadmill for ninety minutes and knock off almost ten miles. I’m sure