Page 20 of Parker

I wonder if Quinn rented a car I can borrow.

The thought flits through my head, but I squelch it, reminding myself that we’re strangers for the rest of our time here. I’m not talking to him again, helping him anymore, giving him advice about bad seeds or asking him for anything.

I could arrange an Uber,I think. It could drop me off at the park, and I could wander around a mile or two on foot before getting another Uber to bring me back to the hotel. Grabbing my phone, I book a car, then I change into leggings, a tank top, sneakers and a fleece. By the time I get down to the lobby, my car is waiting.

I catch up on text messages on my way to the park, writing back to my father about the volume of travel agents who visited my table on the first day, and warning Sawyer that he shouldbe on the lookout for several upcoming bookings for early cruise excursions in April.

When I get to the Red Rock Canyon Visitor’s Center, I find it’s been closed since four thirty p.m., but with sunset still an hour away, I stand in front of the giant map, deciding to walk a ways down the Moenkopi Trail, then turn back for my six p.m. Uber. Just as I’m making my way toward the trailhead, I hear someone call my name.

“Parker! Hey! Parker!”

Looking over my shoulder, I find Quinn Morgan leaning out the driver’s window of a small white rental car, waving at me. I brace myself for the way my adrenaline always spikes, priming me for verbal warfare, when I run into him out of the blue. Surprised when it doesn’t, I step over to his car.

“Hi,” I say. “Did you follow me here?”

His face screws up. “Followyou?”

When he says it like that, I realize how nuts it sounds.

“Sorry,” I say. “Why are you here?”

“Probably the same reason you are—fresh air and a little peek at the local nature. I don’t know about the recycled air in that hotel. Not sure it’s good for you.”

“Felt.”

“You hiking?”

“I was going to, yeah,” I tell him. “My Uber driver’s coming back in an hour.”

“Heard you see more if you drive the loop.”

I shrug. “True, but I don’t have a car.”

He tilts his head to the side. “I do.”

And maybe it’s the sun, setting gently over my shoulder, that makes his eyes more like emeralds than swamp water, but for the first time in ten years or more, I realize how pretty they are, how clear and green. How, sort of, almost, beautiful.

“You offering me a ride?”

“I am,” he says, grinning at me.

And you know? With his facial hair neatly groomed, I can see the deep dents of his dimples under that jet black beard. I haven’t seen them in years, but they used to light up his whole face when he was a little kid. Adorable. Even…enchanting.

He catches me staring. “Park?”

I jerk my gaze away from him, disconcerted by an unexpected warming in my belly and one hundred percent determined to ignore it. I lift my eyes to the horizon where the sun’s setting quicker than I’d hoped, and I’m smart enough to know that getting lost in a dark park is a recipe for danger and disaster.

“Back to strangers when we finish the loop?” I ask him.

He shrugs, looking out the windshield. “Sure.”

I round the back of the little car and open the passenger door. Sitting down in the warm rental, I scrunch up my nose at the strong smell of air freshener and lower my window all the way.

“They went hard on the cleanser,” he says with a chuckle. “I’m thinking the last renter was a smoker.”

“I think you’re right.”

I pull down my seat belt and buckle it. I have no idea what kind of driver Quinn Morgan is. I’ve never ridden in a car with him driving. It occurs to me that if someone had told me a week ago that I’d be sitting next to him in a car today, I’d have called them all sorts of crazy.

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