Page 59 of Furever Loyal
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“Why couldn’t you have just broken in?” she complained, trying for the tenth time to shift into a more comfortable position.
Kincaid, seemingly completely at ease in the cramped conditions of the SUV, just grinned. “I’m playing by your rules. I thought you’d be happy.”
She glared at him. The big vehicle was more than spacious enough for riding around in, but after six hours of sitting in it without getting out to stretch, she was going stir crazy. How the hell did he manage to continue looking so calm and collected?
“Wait, so you’re not happy about this?”
Sighing, she squirmed around some more. “I’m not answering that question.”
Kincaid chuckled.
“It’s not funny.”
He waggled a raised hand. “Weeellll, it kind of is,” he said, a big smile on his face. “I try to do something to make you happy, to impress you, and now I’m in trouble for it. Come on, you have to admit there’s just alittlebit of irony there.”
“Only because you’re not dying of discomfort.”
“Not true,” he countered. “I simply am ignoring it. Shoving it to the side. I have larger priorities right now than a few hours of discomfort, and if they reveal to us what we need, well, then it’s worth it, isn’t it?”
Haley thought about that. “Yes. But I still want to get out and stretch.”
“You could try the trunk?” he suggested, pointing between the front seats, over the back row and into the spacious rear.
“Rude.”
Kincaid threw up his hands in defeat. “Just trying to help. But we can’t get out of the car. We need to keep an eye on the restaurant, just in case we see someone we know. This is how we’re going to get our break. I can feel it. Whoever it is, they know we’ve escaped by now, I’m sure of it. So, they’ve got to be wondering what we’ll do next. Our goal is to outwait them.”
“That could take days,” she moaned, covering her eyes. “How am I supposed to handle that?”
“In silence?” he quipped.
Haley glared at him even harder. “Ha ha. Very funny. Guess who’s sleeping on the couch tonight?”
Kincaid stuck out his tongue. “While we wait, why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”
She froze. What? Why did he want to know more about her? “Umm. Like what?” she squeaked out, stalling for time.
“I don’t know. Hobbies. Pets. What are your parents like? Are you from here originally? Gone on any vacations lately that were awesome?”
“Oh. Like that. Umm. I don’t have any pets,” she admitted. “Though I always wanted a dog. Not like, not one of those little yappy rat-dogs though.”
“So what, like a Rottweiler or something?”
She laughed. “No, I’m not big enough to control one of those. I was thinking something medium-sized. Like a spaniel of some sorts. We had a Brittany spaniel growing up. Beautiful reddish-brown and white coloring. Such a wonderful puppy.” She smiled at the memory. “She passed away in my final year of university while I was at school. I haven’t had the courage to get a pet since, it hurt too much.”
Kincaid reached out and squeezed her hand. “I understand. She sounds like a wonderful dog.”
“She was. Why, one time when I was younger, my parents left me at home under the care of my grandparents, while they went away for a weekend with some friends to a cabin. And they told my grandparents they’d left a ham in the sink, defrosting.” She started to giggle. “Imagine the confusion when they went to prepare dinner, and there was no ham. They started blaming me of course, though I wasn’t exactly the type known to do that, but I was only ten or eleven, so you never know, I guess?”
Kincaid was grinning. His face was fixated on the restaurant, but his eyes, those beautiful blue-gray eyes, kept glancing over at her repeatedly.
“They found it the next day, half-eaten and wedged down the side of the couch!” she explained, laughing loudly. “Somehow, this dog had gotten up onto the counter, stolen the ham, eaten half of it, and then buried it away.”
He joined in her laughter as the image of the wily ham-stealing dog blossomed fully.
“I haven’t thought about that story in years,” she said as she calmed down. “I miss that dog.”
