Page 13 of Reckless

“Oh, we leave about ten minutes before that. But I’ll see you there.”

“Ride with us. Makes no sense to waste gas and time, and your per diem on a ride when you can just come along when we do. We leave at four and get there in plenty of time. And we can ride back together.”

“Sometimes we will. Other times we will come back on our own for one reason or another. Same with getting to the arena. There are days when we have media and will make our own way there,” she found herself saying, realizing that she had to set boundaries with this one.

He frowned and she was reminded of Ryder, her baby sister, when she got told no. Like she was astonished anyone would ever actually refuse something she’d asked for.

At her back, Harlow could hear Nora’s barely smothered snicker and it lightened her heart.

“Have you had lunch yet?” he asked.

“Um, we just got here half an hour ago. No chance yet.”

“Want to come get something to eat with me?” he asked.

A thousand reasons to say no. A hundred more to say yes but to have Nora along. Or anyone else so it wouldn’t just be the two of them.

“Sure,” she said. “But you’re going to get recognized. Maybe we can do take out? I’ll go in to grab it and we can bring it back here to eat?”

“There’s a food truck place. Go there,” Nora called out. “Bring me and Brian back something good. You know what we like.”

“You both can come with,” Harlow said, turning to Nora.

“You can be gone for a while. You know, enough of a while so Brian and I cancatch up.”

“Okay. Put the do not disturb thing out until you’re um, done catching up so I don’t walk in on my parents doing it.”

Nora giggled. “Deal.”

Brian came out of the bathroom and looked back and forth between Harlow and Nora. “I don’t want to know, do I?” he asked.

Miles grabbed her hand and tugged. “Nope you don’t. Enjoy your catching up,” he called out. “Get your things,” he said to Harlow, who paused to give him a look. “Please,” he added.

“See you two later. Open the window or something when you’re done,” Harlow called out after gathering her purse and allowing Miles to tug her from the room where she hung the do not disturb sign herself.

She came to a halt as she saw the car with a driver already waiting.

“This way we can eat and someone else drives,” Miles said. “And I get recognized when I drive. It causes more attention than having a driver. I know it’s weird. Do you think it’s weird?”

It must be hard to be so recognizable, Harlow thought. That loss of the ability to do even the most basic stuff without causing a scene would hurt. And maybe it made other people think about him differently. She sure as hell got that second guessing everything she did and wondering if that made her look a certain way even though her intention wasn’t that perception.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” she told him as he held her door so she could slide into the back seat first. “You have a strikingly handsome face. Even if you weren’t a celebrity people would look twice. It’s harder to be Miles the average guy when you look like you do.”

He settled beside her, closer than he needed to be, but she had no real complaints.

“I’m going to look up what trucks are there so we can know in advance what we want. That will keep the process shorter,” she mumbled as she began to search on her phone.

Forty-five minutes later they were seated at a picnic table at a nearly abandoned park that stretched out next to the river.

“You’re an internet research master,” he told her as he dipped his burger into a container of blue cheese dressing.

“Ha. What I am, is someone who just spent nearly three months in a van driving across the country for our tour. These food truck lots are the best, and we ate at them as often as we could. Great variety, usually local vendors, cheaper than restaurants and way more mobile. And to keep the van from smelling like onion rings, we tried to find little parks here and there, so we got our vitamin D and some fresh air and a break from driving.”

“I think this is a great idea. Fresno is next. Be my lunch date again?” he asked.

“Let’s see how this one goes first. What if I’m terrible and you find out and then you’re stuck eating a burrito with me?”

He laughed. “Goddamn, I really fucking like you, Harlow Martin.”

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