“Your boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“He did it on purpose?”
“You already know that.”
“Sounds like quite a guy.”
She said nothing.
“You two split up?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
“Not here, which is all that matters. And I can pay for gas. Surely that’s an incentive to let me ride with you for a few hours. You look like you could use the money.”
“I look like a lot of things,” he said. “A lot of things I’m not.” Remembering the sleeping boy she’d held in her arms last night, the same boy who’d just dashed off to get a soda, he let his breath out in a long sigh. “If it was only you, it’d be different, but you have a kid and—”
“You’re worried about Max?”
It’d been two years, but the sight of a young boy still made Preston feel as though someone had driven a stake through his heart. “Kids don’t do well on long drives. They get bored, they whine, they beg, they have to go to the bathroom every five minutes—”
“Not my kid,” she interrupted quickly.
“Every kid.”
“Max is a good boy. He…he’s very low maintenance. You won’t even know he’s in the car, I promise.”
As if on cue, her son came running back, carrying a diet cola, which he’d already opened. “She had one, Mom,” he said. “She gave it to me. She wouldn’t even take the quarters.”
Preston kept his eyes averted from the boy’s young face. The voice affected him badly enough.
“How nice of her,” Emma said. “I hope you remembered to thank her.”
“I did. She gave me a cookie, too. Can I eat it?”
A frown creased the woman’s forehead as she regarded her son. “You already had a sucker.”
“But we walked a long way.”
She glanced fleetingly at Preston. “Not now. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Pul-leeze, Mom?”
The conversation sounded all too familiar. “See?” Preston said. “It won’t work.”
“He’s only asking me for a cookie!” she said.
“You’d better find someone else to give you a ride.” He backed up and started to shut the door, but she put a hand on the panel before he could.
“Wait! You can’t turn me away. I…I need your help.”
Preston still wanted to refuse. He would have—if not for that damn burn and the desperation in her eyes.
“Please!” she said again and, suddenly, he let go of the door. The opposing pressure sent it crashing into the wall. She flinched; he didn’t.
“Fine,” he snapped, “but you’d better keep that boy quiet.”
The woman grabbed her son’s arm and pulled him slightly behind her. “He won’t make a peep, right, Max?”
Max looked confused, which made Preston feel even worse. He knew he was being harsh and unreasonable. But he couldn’t help it. “If either of you gives me any trouble, I won’t feel the least bit guilty kicking you out at the first town,” he said.
She stiffened but nodded obediently. “I understand.”
CHAPTER FOUR
EMMA KNEW SHE SHOULD test Max’s blood. Soon. Because she was trying so hard to keep him quiet, she’d been giving in too easily whenever he asked for something to eat. With no exercise to compensate, he had to need extra insulin. But after claiming that her son was “low maintenance,” she didn’t dare whip out his testing kit and reveal what a monstrous exaggeration that had been. Preston Holman, who’d introduced himself once they hit the road, seemed to have no tolerance for children. She feared he’d use Max’s special needs as a reason to dump them long before they reached Utah.
If Max could hold out until they had to stop, she could walk him into the ladies’ room and take care of him without a lot of fuss. Only they were in the middle of nowhere, and Preston didn’t seem inclined to pull over just for the fun of it. Neither did he talk much. They’d been driving for nearly three hours, and he’d scarcely said a word. She got the impression that he saw her and Max’s company as an endurance test, that he was busy counting the minutes until he’d be rid of them.
The slightest irritation could make that happen sooner than she wanted.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Max complained.
Emma knew he couldn’t be hungry. He’d been snacking like crazy, which was what had her so worried. “You’re fine.”
“I want a cookie.”
She glanced quickly at Preston, whose eyes seemed fastened on the road ahead of them. He hadn’t looked at her, or her son, more than a couple of times since they’d left. She hoped he was in his own little world, deep in thought, and wasn’t paying attention. But the way he gripped the steering wheel with both hands when Max added a whiny “pul-leeze” indicated otherwise.
“You’ve had enough sweets,” she said softly, praying Max would accept her response and go back to playing with the magnetized checkers she’d bought him at Wal-Mart.
But he’d grown bored with that game, along with his action figures and his coloring books. “When will we be there?” he asked.
“Not until dark.”
“Will it be bedtime?”
“Yes.”
“What’s taking so long? I want to eat.”
A muscle flexed in Preston’s cheek. Loosening her seat belt, Emma turned to face her son and lowered her voice. “I gave you lunch already, honey, you know that.”
“Can I have my afternoon snack?”
Emma bit back an irritated exclamation. No matter how tense she was, she had to remain calm. “You’ve already eaten plenty of sweets.”
“But I’m hungry!”
“Then you can have some—” She was about to say protein, but she knew that would sound like an odd response to Preston. Parents of normal children didn’t typically talk to them in terms of carbohydrates and proteins. “Some string cheese or lunch meat.”
“I don’t want any cheese or lunch meat!”
Max was tired of the foods she typically used as substitutions. Just as he was tired of riding in the car. “If you’ll take a nap, it’ll make the time go faster, honey. Then, when we stop, I’ll let you choose something you’d like to eat, okay?”
“I want to go home,” he replied, and started crying.
Torn between his distress and her fear that Preston would drop them off at the first opportunity if she couldn’t get her son to quiet down, Emma gritted her teeth. “Max, please stop—”
Suddenly Preston reached down and tossed a whole box of cookies into the back seat. “Let him eat,” he growled.
With a final sniff, Max stopped crying and recovered the cookies. But Emma couldn’t let her son continue to binge. Without enough insulin, his body would be forced to use fat for energy, which would create ketones. Ketones could kill body cells. If they built up, they could lead to coma.
“I