“Are you sure you don’t want to sky dive?”
Her stomach clenched. “That’s a little drastic, but parasailing looks interesting.”
“Put it on your list. What else?”
“I’ve always wanted to sit in the front row at a concert,” she admitted.
“Any group in particular?” he asked.
“I’m flexible.”
“Write it down. Want to climb a mountain?”
“No, that’s a guy thing. But I always wondered what it would be like to be someone totally different than me.”
“So you’d like to switch identities,” he said.
“Not forever.”
“For a day.” He grinned. “Write it down.”
“But how could I do that?”
“Make up a person you’d like to be. Dress like her, talk like her, eat like her. Do whatever she would do that day. It’s just an expanded version of Halloween.”
“You probably think I’m nuts,” she said.
“Nah. It’s fun being part of your evolution.”
“What about your own evolution?”
“I’m way past you. I know what I want.”
“And that is?”
“To limit my commitments, always be ready to take the next step and not waste time looking back.”
“That sounds a little cold. You never look back?”
“Only when it’s profitable,” he said with that razor grin. “I heard a football analogy that you can only make one play at a time. If you’re thinking about an earlier play or a future play, then you’re not focusing on what you need to do now.”
“Hmm. Did you play football?”
He shook his head. “Not enough money as a kid for me to do anything but work after school. My mother wasn’t exactly a wise financial planner.”
“And your dad?”
“Wasn’t around,” he said. “Let me guess your family situation. Mom and Dad sat down with the kids for dinner every night. You took a family vacation in the summer, visited grandparents at Christmas and you lived in the same house growing up.”
His accuracy irritated her. Was she that transparent? That predictable? “My father wasn’t at dinner every night because he worked out of town sometimes. Sometimes my grandparents would visit us. We moved once,” she said.
“Bet you had some kind of music lessons, too,” he said.
“Piano,” she admitted. “What about you?”
“Air guitar,” he said with a chuckle. “No money for that, either. Trust me, Magnolia, I didn’t have the Norman Rockwell family experience. Let me guess again. You’re not an only child.”
“Right, I have—”
“No. Don’t tell me. Sisters,” he said.
A little spooked, she did a double-take. “Yes, three. I’m second out of four. How did you know I had sisters?”
“You’re a girly girl and you don’t seem comfortable with men.”
She dropped her jaw at his assessment. “You don’t know that I’m not comfortable with men.”
“You’re not that comfortable with me,” he pointed out.
“Well, that’s because you’re—” She broke off because saying the next thought that came to mind would have made her sound ridiculous.
“I’m what?”
“Nothing,” she said. “You’re right. I’m a girly girl with sisters. My mother taught us to bake and sew and sent us to charm school so we could walk and talk like ladies.”
“Did it work?”
“Mostly,” she said. “My older sister is married with children. My younger sister is married. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my youngest sister gets engaged soon.”
“So you’re the maverick,” he said.
“I hadn’t thought of being dumped as being a maverick.”
“I’ve seen people do some crazy things after a breakup,” he said. “Hell, even the courts tend to go lenient on a broken-hearted woman when she goes berserk.”
“I have no intention of going berserk,” she said.
“I’m sure you don’t, but if you did,” he said, “you’ve got a socially acceptable excuse.”
“I’m not going berserk,” she said again, as much for herself as for him. “And for the record, Norman Rockwell was married three times. He was divorced from his first wife, so everything wasn’t warm and fuzzy for him, either.”
“Should have known. If it looks too good on the outside, there’s probably something fishy on the inside.”
“That sounds pretty cynical.”
“Hard lesson that has served me well,” he countered and pulled over to the side of the road. “I think driving a convertible is on your list.”
“It is?” she said as he cut the engine.
“Yep,” he said and got out of the car.
Amelia stared at the gear shift. He opened her car door expectantly. “I haven’t driven anything but an automatic.”
“Another thing to put on your list and mark off. Think of it as a test drive. You said you wanted a different car.”
“But this isn’t even your car. What if I leave the transmission in the middle of the road? This is a Porsche.”
“Ian won’t mind. He owes me a few favors. Scoot out, Magnolia. The secret to driving a straight is the clutch. No big deal.”
Amelia got out and with no small amount of trepidation, she climbed into the driver’s seat and adjusted it to accommodate her shorter legs. He put his hand over hers to familiarize her with the position for changing gears.
She had to force herself to concentrate on his tutorial instead of on the way his hand swallowed hers in a gentle but firm way. The gear shift, stiff with a bulblike head, reminded her of—well, something besides a gear shift.
Jack spoke to her in a low, coaching voice, and her mind took a side-trip. She wondered what his voice sounded like when he got hot and bothered. She wondered what it would take to get him hot and bothered. Her peripheral gaze snagging on the sight of his hard thighs, she was pretty sure she would faint before she could find out if she had what it took to get him hot and bothered.
Feeling hot from more than the sun, she pulled her hand away from the gear shift for a second to push back a strand of her hair. She took a breath, then grasped the shift again. “Okay, this is Neutral, this is Reverse, Neutral, First, Second, Third and Fourth. I press the clutch and ease out when I change gears or stop.”
“When you stop, you hold in the clutch until you’re ready to accelerate again. Otherwise, the engine will die.”
“Okay, but if you need a whiplash collar after this, don’t come crying to me.”
“Go for it,” he said, smiling a little.
She started the engine and after nine attempts, she succeeded in getting the car from Neutral into First gear with only a few