1
COMPANION WANTED. TransAmerica Trail. Will start in Astoria, OR, on June 1 and wrap up in Yorktown, VA, by the end of August. Camping as much as possible, with the occasional hotel. I’m easy to get along with and am looking forward to a grand adventure! E-mail TransAmAlex@gmail.com.
Tom wiped the chain grease off his hand and answered the shop phone. “Salem Cycles.”
“I found you somebody,” his sister said.
“What are you talking about?”
“For tomorrow. I found you somebody to ride across the country with.”
They’d had this argument months ago, when he’d first told her about his plan to bike the TransAm this summer, and he’d thought they were done with it. He should’ve known she was merely engaged in a strategic retreat.
“Taryn—”
“Just hear me out. I found a guy, Alex, through an Adventure Cycling ad. He’s taking the same route you want to take, and he needs somebody to ride with him. You don’t even have to talk to him if you don’t want to. He cooks, and he’ll pay half on the camping fees. How bad could it be?”
It could be a nightmare. What Tom wanted was to spend a few months on the road alone, listening to the pavement under his tires and taking in forty-two hundred miles of sights. He didn’t want a buddy. He didn’t do buddies.
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Please, Tom. You can’t ride your bicycle across the country alone. It’s insane. You’ll end up being slaughtered by a serial killer.”
“Taryn, I’m thirty-five, single, tattooed, and antisocial. I’m the serial killer.”
“Okay, point taken. But you could get hit by a car and bleed to death by the side of the road.”
“How would riding with another person prevent that?”
“It wouldn’t, but he could call me on his cell phone so you could tell me you love me with your dying breath.”
Tom started pacing the small workspace, weaving around the bike stands and massaging his temple with the fingers of his free hand. He recognized Taryn’s tone of voice. There was something she wasn’t telling him, and whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it. “I’ve toured alone before. There was the South America trip. Australia. Death Valley last winter. Why worry about me now?”
“I always worry about you. Worrying about you is my job. But for those trips, you didn’t give me enough notice to do anything about it. You just called me from the road to say, ‘Ta-ta, Taryn! I’m off to pedal across the Outback like a crazy person! Try not to lie awake at night imagining dingoes eating my corpse!’”
Tom winced. It was true, he’d deliberately left the country before telling Taryn about his plan to ride the Canning Stock Route in Western Australia, but it had been for her own good. He’d spared her months of fretting—and saved himself a lot of nagging. He’d have done the same thing this time, too, if she hadn’t caught him studying the TransAm maps at his kitchen table one afternoon and managed to worm the information out of him.
Tom wasn’t about to let his sister’s irrational fears stop him from doing what he wanted to do, but given that she was his only nonestranged family member and pretty much his sole friend, he hated to make her unhappy. Taryn had stuck by him through the trial, and he owed her for that. She was probably the only reason he wasn’t living in an unheated cabin in the woods by now, composing paranoid manifestos about secret government conspiracies and mailing them off to The New York Times.
Not that she’d managed to turn him into a ray of sunshine. There was a good reason why the guy who owned the bike shop didn’t ask Tom to work the counter unless he absolutely had to. Tom would be the first to admit his social skills were rusty, and he tended to intimidate the customers. He spent his days alone, getting paid to fix bikes and riding them for free, and that was the way he liked it. But Taryn at least made sure he went out to eat now and then, even threw the occasional date his way, and he appreciated her efforts to keep him connected to the land of the living. However tenuously.
“Ground Control, Major Tom,” she said. “We’re having a conversation here, remember?”
“Right.” Another hazard of being a loner—one tended to lose the knack for polite discourse. “There aren’t any dingoes to worry about on the TransAm. It’s thoroughly civilized. Paved, even.” He considered his options, then offered a concession. “I’ll call you from the road every few days if you want. But I’m not going to ride with a partner. It’s not a vacation for me if I have to talk to someone.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the thing. I knew you were going to say that, so I didn’t exactly wait for your permission.”
Bracing a hip against the cluttered workbench, Tom resisted the urge to stick the phone in the stand clamp and press down on the handle until the plastic handset shattered. No one was a more creative meddler than his sister, and her self-satisfied tone told him she’d concocted something extra special this time.
“What did you do?”
“Like I said, I found you a guy. Alex Marshall. You’ve been e-mailing him on and off since April to hash out your plan for the tour, and he’s really excited to start the ride tomorrow. In fact, he sent you a message this morning to confirm he’ll meet you on the beach in Seaside at six a.m.”
“You set me up on a blind date with a riding buddy?”
“Oh, I’d say you’re a little more committed than that. Alex is counting on you to go all the way with him. To Virginia, that is.” He could practically hear her winking over the phone. Taryn was pleased with herself.
“So call it off.”
This was absolutely not his problem. But he had the sinking feeling he was going to have to be the one to solve it.
“No way. Alex is at a motel in Astoria as we speak, packing up his gear and getting totally stoked to meet you in the morning. I’m not going to be the one to disappoint him.”
Ah, hell. She was going to play it like this. Now he had a picture in his head of friendly old Alex Marshall waiting on the beach in his best jersey, map at the ready, panniers all packed, hopes high, looking around for a riding partner who wasn’t going to show—unless Tom drove a hundred miles out of his way to meet him. Taryn certainly wouldn’t be coming to the rescue. Once his sister made her mind up, she was stubborn as a pit bull. She would be perfectly happy to leave Alex dangling on the beach as bait for Tom’s heroic impulses.
He kicked the corner of the workbench with one boot-clad toe, causing a few boxed tubes to tumble to the floor.
Taryn knew his weakness for hopeless cases. Achilles had that bum heel, and Tom had an unshakeable compulsion to champion the underdog. It never worked out for him any better than the heel had worked out for the Greek. If Tom hadn’t insisted on playing the hero, he wouldn’t have ended up testifying against his own father, destroying his family and his marriage in one disastrous blow. He’d still be a suit, rather than a guy with grease ground so deep into his fingertips it didn’t wash out.
It’s not like he wished he could be that other person again. But it would be nice to feel as though he had choices.
He sighed into the mouthpiece. “Why are you always backing me into corners?”
“It’s the only way I can make you do things my way,” she countered, sounding amused.
“You’re such a pain in my ass.”
“Ha! I knew it would work. You’re going to Seaside, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “And you’re going to drop me off. But I swear to you, I’m not riding with this guy all the way across the country. I’ll meet him and keep him company until we can find somebody else to be his riding partner, and then I’m taking off.”
“You could change your mind,” she said brightly. “Maybe you’ll like him.”
Tom already hated Alex Marshall. Six a.m., and he was standing around on a beach in Seaside waiting for the guy instead of sleeping in his own bed.
According to Taryn, Marshall had insisted they needed to begin the ride by dipping the wheels of their bikes in the Pacific Ocean. The moron was actually going to be riding in from Astoria to ensure he didn’t miss any of the officially mapped miles. Which was particularly stupid because it was only just now getting to be light out. Alex must have left Astoria in something close to darkness. Tom hoped the guy had flashers and a headlight, at least.
He’d just as soon have met up with Marshall at his own place in Salem. It was only a few miles off the route. What difference did skipping the first hundred miles make when the trail was more than four thousand miles long? No difference at all, except to people who were totally inflexible or inexcusably sentimental. He didn’t know which Alex was, but neither possibility inclined him to like the guy.
It didn’t help that he was late. There was nobody on the beach this early but Tom and some woman who’d rolled up at the other end of the parking lot a few minutes ago. She was obviously about to start the TransAm herself—she had a sweet steel-frame touring bike and a trailer for her gear. Looked like she was waiting for someone, which made sense, since women tended not to ride alone.
He was tempted to say to hell with Marshall and take off. Taryn had already fled the scene. A quick hug, a peck on the cheek, and she’d driven away mere minutes after he’d unpacked his stuff from her SUV. Having set this plan in motion, the last thing she’d wanted was to stay here and watch it unfold—not when the odds were good that Tom would tell Alex all about her meddling and make her look as manipulative as she was.
With Taryn gone, the only thing keeping him here was the knowledge of how guilty he’d feel if he knowingly stranded a complete stranger on his first day of the TransAm. But wouldn’t that wear off? How many miles could guilt chase him across the country?
He knew the answer, though. Thousands of miles. Dozens of months. Guilt never gave it a rest.
The woman started pushing her bike slowly toward him. Fantastic. Now he’d have to make small talk with a stranger about how excited he was to be starting, what he thought about prevailing headwinds, blah blah blah.
He made up his mind. Marshall had five minutes, and then Tom was out of here.
“Sorry to bother you, but are you Tom Geiger?” She smiled uncertainly.
It had been a while since he’d been recognized, but the automatic reply came out as quick as ever. “No comment.”
She blinked and shook her head, confused. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“That’s an ‘It’s none of your business.’”
This time, she narrowed her amber eyes at him in a glare that would have been menacing on a two-hundred-pound man. Coming from her, it was actually kind of . . . cute. Probably not the effect she was going for. “What, your identity is some kind of state secret?” she asked. “All I want to know is if you’re Tom Geiger or not. It’s a pretty simple question.”
And then he heard it—what he should have heard as soon as she’d opened her mouth. She wanted to know if he was Tom Geiger. Not Tom Vargas. Tom Geiger. Which meant she hadn’t recognized him. The woman was looking for the man he was now, not the guy he used to be.
While that was still sinking in, she added, “I’m Alex Marshall.”
Shit.
“You’re supposed to be a man.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I never said I was a man. Sometimes Alex is a woman’s name.”
When Tom didn’t reply, she shrugged as if to say What can you do? Life throws curve balls at us all. “It’s short for Alexandra. You can call me Lexie if you like that better. A lot of my friends do.”
“Well, I’m not your friend.”
“Not yet, but you’re getting off to a smashing start.” She planted her hands on her hips, staring at him. If she’d been able to breathe fire, he’d be toast by now, but considering her size and general adorableness, it was like being stared down by Tinker Bell.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said finally.
“Because I have breasts?”
Not precisely because she had breasts, no, though at the moment they weren’t a point in her favor. Those breasts were going to make it a lot trickier for him to find the right person to ride with her—he’d have to make sure whoever it was wouldn’t take advantage of her. Which, in turn, meant he was likely to be stuck with her company for a lot longer than he wanted to be.
That was the problem. Because attractive as she was, the woman screamed Type A. One look at her bike told him everything he needed to know. It was expensive, immaculate, and tricked out with high-end components. The narrow handlebars were choked with accessories, including an air horn to scare off dogs, a flashing LED safety light, a bike computer, and a handlebar bag topped with a plastic map sleeve. Inside the sleeve, she had a TransAm trail map—annotated, if his eyes didn’t deceive him, with tiny tape flags.
His general aversion to humankind aside, Tom liked women as much as the next guy. But hyperorganized, controlling women like this one reminded him of his ex-wife, and that was a reminder he could live without.
And if she needed another strike against her, there was the eight-inch reflective orange triangle hanging from the back of her saddle, on which she’d written, in large black letters, “Lexie—TransAm—OR to VA.” It may as well have read: Hi! I enjoy talking to strangers about riding my bike! Please drop whatever you’re doing to engage me in inane conversation.
Not his cup of tea.
Tom knew better than to say any of that aloud. He stuck with “This is a bad idea.”
“Which part?” she asked, with a perplexed shake of her head. She had wavy reddish brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Very pretty.
Very definitely not a man.
“Riding together,” he clarified.
“But wasn’t it your idea? You answered my ad.” She looked irritated with him, a little confused. Vulnerable. He wanted to help her out, except he was the problem.
This was exactly why he avoided getting tangled up with people. You reached out a helping hand, and the next thing you knew you were up to your neck in quicksand, trying and failing to figure out a way to get everybody back out again.
“My sister,” he said.
“What about your sister?”
“She answered it.”
“You’re kind of losing me here.”
“Yeah.” He crossed his arms and stared at her. Maybe if he was rude enough, she’d give up and go home. There was a risk she would cry first, and that would be unpleasant, but he could weather it if he had to.
She crossed her own arms, mimicking his posture, and stared right back. “Yeah.”
2
How on earth had she gotten Tom Geiger so completely wrong?
Lexie had prepared for this meeting as studiously as she had laid out all of her plans for the trip. The entire way from Astoria this morning, she’d thought about how she would respond when he finally figured out she was a woman. For every potential reaction—surprise, confusion, indignation—she’d considered the best way to overcome it, to smooth over his ruffled feathers and create a strong basis for camaraderie.
But obviously she hadn’t prepared as thoroughly as she should have, because she didn’t know what to do with the guy standing in front of her. She hadn’t expected him to be this hostile. Or this weird. Or this . . . young.
The Tom Geiger of her imagination had been fifty-five, jovial, and balding. This Tom wasn’t any of those things. Not at all.
She didn’t have the first clue how to cope with him.
He broke the standoff first. Running a hand over his close-cropped black hair, he took a few steps away from her and turned his attention past the parking lot to the beach. Not leaving—regrouping. Yet even this hint of his possible departure made her nervous.
Whatever happened, she couldn’t let him get away.
“Your sister?” she asked, hoping to elicit a fuller explanation.
“Yeah.”
That was it, just the one syllable. For crying out loud. She’d arranged to bike across the country with the most taciturn man in Oregon.
It’s either this guy, or you ride alone.
An option, but not a good one. Lexie had done the woman-camping-alone thing enough times to know her limits. It was one thing to be a strong, independent woman on the streets of Portland and quite another to fall asleep alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere without worrying about ax murderers. She could do it—she had done it—but she’d strongly prefer not to.
Of course, Tom was a stranger, too, with as much ax-murderer potential as the next guy. Still, you had to choose your risks, didn’t you? Even in his obviously aggravated state, he didn’t feel dangerous, and at least he was a biker. She knew his name and where he lived. He worried her considerably less than the alternative.
Lexie didn’t have the luxury of blowing Tom off. She needed to figure out what his problem was so she could fix it.
“She . . . tricked you into this?” He hadn’t said exactly that, but he was standing there with his arms crossed, frowning at the Pacific, and he had the look of a man who’d been outmaneuvered.
“Mmm-hmm.”
Two syllables. Score!
It wasn’t funny—though she had to admit this thing with Tom had all the makings of a farce. For months, she’d exchanged guilty, careful e-mails with him, avoiding any hint of personal detail lest he ask her some question that forced her to come right out and admit she was a woman. Now it seemed she needn’t have bothered with all that self-recrimination, because the “Tom” she’d been planning the trip with wasn’t Tom any more than the “Alex” his sister must have pictured was Lexie.
Which meant that this Tom—the real one—had been played by two women. No wonder he was grumpy.
Probably she ought to apologize for her part in the charade, but she doubted it would help. And anyway, it wasn’t as though she’d lied to the man. I’m easy to get along with and am looking forward to a grand adventure! E-mail TransAmAlex@gmail.com. No outright deception there. Only a single—albeit critical—omission.
And she hadn’t even done it on purpose. Not at first. Until the e-mail responses started to arrive, she hadn’t realized she’d left her name off the Adventure Cycling ad. Unfortunately, when her correspondents found out “TransAmAlex” was a twenty-nine-year-old woman, they’d backed out. Four of them, one right after the other. Apparently, the wives and girlfriends of the nation’s intrepid adventurers didn’t want their menfolk crossing the country with a strange woman. In the end, she’d quit mentioning her complicating gender altogether, assuming she could talk her way into her companion’s good graces once they’d met face-to-face.
It had all sounded better in theory. The reality of Tom was rather discouraging.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“You know, it would help a lot if you would speak.” And say more than three words at a time when you do.
With a sigh, he said, “I want to do the TransAm by myself, but my sister thought I needed a partner, so she set me up with Alex Marshall, who is apparently you.”
“Why’d she think you need a partner?”
“She doesn’t want me to die in a ditch and rot unmourned.”
Had that been humor? She couldn’t tell. Tom’s expression didn’t really suggest he had it in him.
“Sounds like a good sister.” Her parents and her brother, James, had made pretty much the same argument in favor of her finding someone to ride with.
“Yeah. But she’s a pushy pain in the ass.”
She’d have to be, to boss you around. Lexie practiced diplomacy and kept the thought to herself. “Okay, so I’m not sure I’m getting the full picture. You didn’t choose to be here, but you are here. And you don’t want to ride with me because . . . ”
“Because I don’t want to spend the summer dissecting your relationship problems and fixing your flat tires and cheering you up the passes.”
His casual misogyny rendered her temporarily speechless. “Wow,” she said after she’d recovered. “Don’t pull your punches on my account, Tom.”
“I don’t pull punches on anybody’s account.”
Lexie took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gazing past him to the ocean. This wasn’t working. It really wasn’t even coming close.
But the thing was, it had to work, because she didn’t have a backup plan. It wasn’t as though Tom had been her first choice. Until last summer, she’d planned to do the trip with her brother. Then he’d gone and married a woman who didn’t ride, and Lexie had decided to take on the TransAm solo.
Only, her family had hated that idea, and she’d had second thoughts of her own. She’d hoped to find a woman to ride with, but the pool of ads was small, and no other woman had advertised for a west-to-east TransAm companion this summer—nor had anyone female responded to Lexie’s ad.
Really, Tom was her fourth choice. How pathetic to think she’d been reduced, on Day One of the TransAm, to clinging to her fourth-best hope for companionship.
“Well, here’s the deal,” she said. “You don’t have to talk to me, and you don’t have to ride with me. Just because I advertised for a companion doesn’t mean I need help fixing flats. I can handle any pass that comes along without you holding my hand, and I can save my womanly yammering for someone who’ll appreciate it. All I want from you is a warm body to pitch my tent next to at night.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you, either,” Tom replied, flat and condemning.
Damn, what was it about being twenty-nine and in possession of ovaries that made everyone assume you were desperate for a man? Her friends fixed her up with earnest pharmacist types who wanted to discuss the compatibility of their Life Goals, which interested her not at all, and now she was stuck with Tom, who apparently translated “ride with me” as “fix my flat tires and service my delicate lady parts.”
She couldn’t win.
The worst thing was, he was such an obnoxiously attractive man. The Tom Geiger in her mind’s eye had looked exactly like her father. And okay, maybe that hadn’t been very realistic, but who’d have predicted this guy with the south-of-the-border complexion, the black hair, and the chocolate eyes? Who’d have expected him to have a jaw you could crack walnuts on, or those long, thick eyelashes that would’ve looked girly on a less masculine face?
And then there was his body. The man had a serious Lance Armstrong thing going on under his T-shirt. His muscled forearms alone were drool-worthy, and the wide black bands tattooed around both of his biceps made him look dangerous and interesting, as if he had hidden depths.
Too bad his hidden depths concealed piranhas.
No doubt Tom Geiger was some women’s dream guy, but he wasn’t hers. With two broken engagements behind her, Lexie had given up on dream guys a few years back. These days, all her fantasies had wheels.
“Are you going to be like this all the time?” she asked.
“I just meant—”
“Yeah, I heard you. And my husband will be so relieved when I pass that information along.”
She gave herself a pat on the back for the brilliant improvisation. Sex problem: solved.
The furrow between Tom’s eyebrows deepened, and his eyes skipped to her right hand. “You don’t have a ring,” he observed.
“And you don’t have an ounce of tact.”
His lips twitched. “True.”
At least he knew. It made him marginally less awful. “What do you say we lay our cards on the table?”
A curt nod.
“You seem about as eager to ride with me as I am to ride with you.”
“Sounds about right.”
“But I don’t think it’s a great idea for me to do this trip by myself.”
Another nod, which she hadn’t expected. She’d thought he might make her explain. But then again, Tom had a sister. Maybe he understood.
“All I want is for you to camp where I camp and call my family if I have some kind of horrible accident.”
The pause before he answered couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but it was long enough for Lexie to give up. She’d be okay until she found a substitute for Tom. She was a people person by nature, and she definitely preferred company, but she could satisfy her need for conversation by talking to folks she met along the way. As for the nights in the tent, she had a book, and she could always read until she got so tired that—
“Fine,” he said, interrupting her internal pep talk. “But the second I find you somebody else to ride with, I’m taking off.”
A weight lifted from her shoulders. Strange that she should be so pleased to be granted his company, considering how little she liked him. But then, she’d planned to ride with Tom Geiger, and she always hated to change her plans. “Works for me. So can we dip the wheels and get started already? I want to get to Garibaldi today.”
With that deep frown between his eyebrows, Tom shook his head and said, “Knock yourself out.”
Lexie pushed her bike across the sand, wishing she’d thought to unhook the trailer first. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to shove a fully loaded touring bike across loose sand. It was surprisingly difficult, actually. But she was going to dip her wheel in the Pacific, and three months from now she’d dip it in the Atlantic. That was that.
Tom had taken a pass. What was up with that? Everyone dipped their tire in the water. If the way this trip was starting out was any indication, he was going to be one hell of a wet blanket.
Not that it mattered. This was her adventure, and she was going to do it her way. She’d been looking forward to this day since before the training wheels came off her first bike. She and James had grown up on the stories of their parents’ TransAm adventures. In the summer of ’76, Mom and Dad and thousands of other Americans had dusted off their ten-speeds, thrown on some knee socks, and joined the cross-country party on wheels known as Bikecentennial. Having met in the saddle somewhere in Kansas, the Marshalls had been inseparable ever since.
For as long as she could remember, Lexie had wanted to retrace that journey—to see the country, meet new people, and prove she had what it took to grind through the miles. If one of the forms of fortitude the TransAm required of her was putting up with Tom Geiger, so be it. There were worse things.
She reached the surf. She dipped. She turned around. The moment lacked some of the symbolic freight she’d hoped for—her tire-dipping daydreams hadn’t included the dead-seaweed smell of the surf or the raucous shrieks of gulls circling overhead—and she had to work hard not to blame Tom for that. He wasn’t actively sucking all the fun out of the first moments of her trip. He was just standing there, silhouetted against a dramatic backdrop of oranges and reds and purples. Standing still with his arms crossed and his head down, ignoring the sunrise and the beauty of the ocean. Scowling at the parking lot. Waiting for her.
Lexie gave up on savoring the moment. She walked her recalcitrant bike through a wide, slow turn and pushed it back toward Angry Tom.
“You ready?” She strapped on her helmet.
He put his on, too, and threw a leg over his bike.
“Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, with a flapping sound that only ever meant one thing, the most exciting journey of her life ground to a halt.
She had a flat. Day One of the TransAm, and she had a freaking flat. She pulled over.
“Sorry, I must have picked up some glass on the beach. You can go ahead, I’ll catch up later.”
He didn’t say a word, just got off his bike and put down the kickstand. Any serious cyclist would’ve stripped that—too much extra weight. Who had a kickstand? Come to think of it, who had a bike that looked like Tom’s? It appeared to have been through several wars, in no way resembling the slick, expensive machines people usually rode when they toured. His clothes were all wrong, too. She’d been expecting someone in bike shorts and a jersey, maybe a neon-yellow raincoat to ward off the mist, and here he was wearing a faded black Nirvana T-shirt and cargo shorts.
And then there was the hotness thing, which she needed to find a way to stop noticing. She’d just have to focus on his personality. That ought to do the trick.
While she unhooked the trailer and flipped her bike over to balance on the seat, he stood there staring at her, making her as nervous as a virgin in the backseat of a prom limo. It actually helped a little that he was a complete asshole. She could handle assholes. As a high school English teacher, she dealt with them on a daily basis.
She pulled off her front wheel, uncomfortably aware of Tom’s eyes on her. This was a test, then. At least she knew she could pass it. She’d changed a lot of flats over the years. Stripping the damaged tube from the tire, she inspected it but couldn’t find a puncture. A thorough scan of the tire itself finally yielded the culprit—a small protruding shard of glass.
It was when she started rummaging around in her tail bag for a new tube that she started to get a sinking feeling in her stomach. Because this wasn’t the bike she’d been planning to bring on the trip. She’d changed her mind at the eleventh hour and switched to the Salsa, which offered fewer hand positions but was more comfortable than her designated touring bike. She’d packed the tail bag weeks ago, though, which meant she’d brought the wrong size tubes. Which meant she couldn’t change the tire.
Which meant she was going to look like a fool in front of Tom before they’d even managed to ride two miles.
“Bad news. I, uh, I have the wrong tubes. I need two-niner tubes, and I don’t have them, so I can’t change the flat. But listen, you go ahead, and I’ll find a bike shop. And after it opens”—in three or four hours—“I’ll buy another tube and meet up with you this afternoon.”
“Or you could patch it.”
Another catastrophic failure of planning. Lexie hadn’t brought a patch kit. She’d carefully considered whether she needed one and had concluded that since she was going to be carrying plenty of extra tubes, it didn’t make sense to tote a patch kit as well. Also, there was the fact that she’d never patched a tire before. The whole process had always struck her as rather arcane, and she hadn’t seen any reason to bother learning how to do it. Tubes were cheap, after all.
“I don’t know how,” she admitted, knowing he would frown and glare at her, and that he would be justified.
He did frown and glare at her. But then he took the tube from her and started looking for the puncture.
“I already did that.”
Tom ignored her. He used his hand pump to put some air in the tube, then stuck it next to his ear and turned it slowly, listening for the hiss of escaping air. Two full revolutions later, he put a little more air in the tube. And then he stuck out his tongue and licked it.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer her, just kept running the tip of his tongue slowly along the rubber tube and staring at her with those intense dark eyes. And God help her, it turned her on.
She felt her cheeks heat up and looked away, mortified. Almost thirty years old, and she was getting off on the sight of a guy licking a tube. A hot guy licking a tube, but still. She obviously needed to get out more.
When she glanced back at him, he had his patch kit open and was using the sandpaper to rough up the rubber. Apparently he’d found the leak. With his tongue. Jesus.
Thank goodness sex was already off the table. Considering how hot she was for her ride buddy right now, the fictitious Mr. Marshall might turn out to be a blessing. The catastrophe of her last failed relationship had made her more than a little wary of climbing into bed with the wrong guys, and Tom Geiger couldn’t have been more wrong if he’d tried.
Though he was patching her tire for her.
Tom smeared on some glue, applied the patch, and handed her the tube.
“Hold that on there for five minutes. Then you can put it back together and pump it up.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
She couldn’t think of anything else to say, so she just pressed on the patch and waited, deeply uncomfortable. So far, her grand adventure was not turning out remotely like she’d imagined it would. So far, it kind of sucked.
He pulled the water bottle off his bike and took a drink, swished, spat. “Next time, you lick the tube,” he said. “It tastes fucking awful.”
Lexie laughed. Risking a glance at Tom out of the corner of her eye, she caught him smiling at her—and nearly fell over.
A broad grin had transformed those fine lips, erasing every trace of Angry Tom and replacing him with a Tom she hadn’t met yet. But she wanted to. Oh, man, she wanted to. He had an amazing, engaging smile. His eyes seemed to sparkle with his amusement, and deep laugh lines appeared at the corners. There was a dimple in his chin she hadn’t noticed before. His teeth were bright white against his dark skin. This Tom was utterly delicious.
Miracle of miracles, he also looked like a lot of fun.
They stood there like that, smiling at one another for just a few seconds longer than was called for, before Tom frowned slightly and turned away to put his water bottle back in the cage.
Lexie let out a breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding. Maybe he wouldn’t be so bad.