“Comment maintenant vache brune?” Henry asked. His voice was quiet, he eyes red and sleepy.
“Did you just say, ‘How now brown cow?’” I asked as I ambled toward the fire.
He smiled, keeping his eyes down.
I stood across from him, warming the front of my body. “Where are the others?”
“Night hike.” He pointed the end of the hanger toward the dark woods. “I wouldn’t expect them for a while.”
I rotated, warming my back now, remembering Mel’s warning about not trying to find them if they split away from the group. Mel and I were best friends, but there were some sides of her I didn’t need to see.
“Probably not,” I agreed.
“Can’t sleep?”
I turned my head in time to see the crispy marshmallow slide off the hanger and disappear into the licking flames. “I guess I’m restless,” I said as I walked past him to the stump I’d been sitting on earlier. “Ever had one of those nights when your mind is racing but you can’t figure out what you’re trying to think?”
“More often than I’d like,” he replied. “Especially lately.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Probably too much caffeine.”
After staring into the fire for a moment longer, Henry tossed the hanger to the side and shifted his weight toward me. “Spring—” He cut short, his head snapping to the side.
A shiver ran up my spine when I realized he’d heard a sound coming from the woods. My eyes shot in the direction of where he was looking, but I saw nothing and heard nothing…until Mel and Tyler stumbled out of the darkness. I glanced at Henry, who had already relaxed his stance.
Mel was hanging onto Tyler’s hand and swinging it between them. “Still holding out?” she said to Henry, then she noticed me sitting on the other side of the fire. “Oh, hey Springer. Thought you were asleep.”
“She tried,” Henry said. “Now that you two are back”—he rolled to his knees and stood up—“Spring and I are going for a drive.” He walked over and stopped in front of me. “Ready?” He extended his hand to help me up.
When I didn’t react, his eyes went tight and his jaw clenched. The expression screamed impatience, like I wasn’t going along with some secret plan we’d earlier devised. After a moment, he sighed and grabbed the end of my coat sleeve, pulling me to my feet.
“Toss me your keys, man,” he said to Tyler. The silver ring flew through the air.
Without a second thought, I followed. “It would appear,” I announced to Mel over my shoulder, “that we will be going for a drive.” I didn’t look back to take note of her expression.
The engine hummed softly as we wound along the dark road away from the campground. I didn’t take the time to dissect what Henry’s motivation might have been. A drive sounded nice and the car was warmer than the tent, with less bugs.
I slouched down in my seat, kicked off my shoes and propped my feet on the dashboard. When we first got in the car the radio was on, but Henry turned it off at once, so it was quiet for the first few minutes. After fishing around the inside pocket of his leather jacket, he pulled out his phone and plugged it into the jack. He held the silver device in one hand, working his thumb along the face. I could tell he was scanning through music tracks.
A song came on. I recognized it immediately, but he skipped past it as well as the next few, which I also recognized as part of a familiar, and now deleted, playlist.
“Track six, please.”
Henry turned to me, lifting an eyebrow. A few seconds later, my request came spilling through the speakers. “You like this one?”
“Very much,” I admitted. “Dave Matthews Band. Classic nineties.”
“I always suspected there was more to you than Alanis Morissette.”
I exhaled tranquilly and closed my eyes, taking in the much needed serenity. The darkness, the bluesy ballad, the rhythm of the moving car, that aftershave…
“Are you hungry?” he asked in a low voice. I liked the way it sounded coupled against the music. “We’re close to a town.”
“No, thanks,” I said. Just as it had been back in the tent during my tumultuous hour of tossing and turning, my mind was racing again. Murky thoughts jumped, abstract and disconnected images flashed behind my closed eyes. Motorcycles, a black Viper, an argyle sweater hanging over the bend of a palm tree.
Suddenly, the car was stifling, and it felt like a pile of hot bricks was stacked on my chest. I snuck a quick glance at my driver. He seemed pensive, too. His lips were pressed together in a line and I could see his strong jaw muscles working. Although I’m sure his Rhodes Scholar brain was focused on something more substantial than mine was.
Don’t be an idiot, Spring.
“Feeling any better?” Henry asked after the song ended.
“Yes, thanks,” I replied, allowing my eyes to linger on his face, but that only made my hands break out in a cold sweat. Sudden hot flashes coupled with chills? I was probably coming down with the flu. “Where are we going?”
“Don’t know.” His brooding eyes smoothed out. “I haven’t been this way in years.”
A new song came on, prompting a question that I’d tucked away months ago. “This playlist.” I pointed at his cell balanced in the cup holder between us. “What was your motive?”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, I do,” I blurted. “I was just”—I rubbed my nose—“a little surprised by some of your choices.” Of course I was remembering the theory Mel had insinuated, how those ten songs were all tied together with a similar “theme.”
“As far as there being a common thread, there isn’t.”
I exhaled, choosing to believe him over my sex-on-the-brain best friend.
“You got me thinking,” he continued, “that night at the party when you said you don’t dance to male singers. I was creating a sample. Show you what you’ve been missing.” He smiled at me briefly then moved his focus back to the road. “I guess I jumped at the chance when you allowed me to load a playlist.”
“I didn’t allow. You confiscated my phone in the middle of the night.” I chewed my thumbnail for a minute. “Tell me about the last song.”
Henry lifted a surprisingly big grin then chuckled under his breath. “To tell the truth, I pulled in a ringer for that one.” He adjusted the seat belt across his chest. “I called my sister Cami that night, told her what I was doing, and for whom.” He gazed out the side window. The headlights of an oncoming car flashed across his glasses. “She’s a few years younger than you, but I credit her with impeccable taste in most everything. I ran off the list of songs I already had in mind, she went on to approve and delete. The last was her suggestion.”
“Your sister?”
He turned to me, our eyes meeting. “Yes.”
My stomach made a little spin, and that pile of hot bricks on my chest felt heavier. And hotter.
“Does she, um…does she live…” I stopped short, realizing that I had no idea where Henry came from. His family had homes all over the world, but other than Elliott Academy in LA, Washington, Duke, and Stanford, I didn’t have a clue about his past life.
“Cami lives in Zürich right now,” he said, answering my unfinished question.
I nodded.
“I’m sure you find the idea of attending a private, all-girls boarding school in Switzerland passé, if not offensive, but with my parents away from home so much…” He trailed off, pressing his lips together. “It’s an exceptional school. She’ll go Ivy League if she chooses.”
I thought of Henry calling his sister in the middle of the night to discuss music. If it had been one a.m. in California, what time was it in western Europe? My attention was pulled by Henry tapping his knuckle on his side window. “I wish it were warmer,” he mused, changing the subject. “I know a great spot by the river. Are you still cold?”
I nodded mechanically, although I wasn’t cold. Quite the opposite.
He cranked the heater. “Would you like to wear this?” he asked, unzipping his leather jacket. I politely declined but was stirred by the chivalrous act. Then I remembered I was supposed to be a self-sufficient woman, an independent feminist. I dug my middle knuckle into my temple, massaging a tiny circle. Nothing in my brain was working correctly tonight.
“I read a case once about a man who killed his wife because she always kept their house set at eighty-five degrees.” Henry turned the car onto what looked like nothing more than a dirt road. “One day he snapped; shot her in the heart.” He turned to me, grinning. “His attorney got him off. Justifiable homicide.”
“Is that the kind of law you want to practice?”
He crinkled his nose with an air of repugnance. “The case was required reading. I enjoy studying about trial lawyers, but I lack the particular…subtleties.”
There was a time when I thought Henry would have fit the role of sleazy ambulance chaser perfectly. I didn’t know what I thought now.
“Once upon a time, I planned on working for the D. A.,” he continued. “But that won’t work, either.”
“Why not?”
“From what I know about myself and the kind of life I want to live, I’m better suited for private practice.”
“More money in that?” I zinged without thinking.
Henry glanced at me, not bothering to hide his frown. He actually looked hurt. “The money will be sufficient,” he replied coolly, setting his gaze back on the road, “but if I work for the D. A., I can’t do pro bono as much as I’d like. That’s why I want my own practice.”
“Pro bono?” My feet slipped off the dashboard, jerking my body forward, straight toward the windshield.
He swore in alarm as his right arm jetted straight out to his side, catching me across the chest. Driving one handed, he swerved back and forth across the center line.
“Pro bono?” I repeated after he’d pulled his arm back.
“What’s the matter with you?” He stared at me, his eyes blazing with shock.
“Doesn’t that mean for free?”
He exhaled gruffly and ran a hand through his hair. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“I just never thought that you…someone like you—”
“Not all lawyers are sharks, Spring,” he cut in. “And not all of them are out to kill trees and pollute the water. I plan on doing a lot of good.”
“No, I…yeah.” I swallowed. “I’m sure you do.” I turned to face him full on, trying to make my face convey what I was feeling, to let him know he’d won this battle. “I’m sorry, Henry. I didn’t know.”
“That’s the trouble with you,” he muttered, tight-lipped. “You thought you had me pegged from the beginning. That first night. Didn’t you?”
I felt my eyes going wide, trying to display my innocence. But he was right. People seldom surprised me, and Henry had managed to do just that. Time after time. Just admitting that to myself made me feel miserable. The pile of bricks on my chest was replaced by a lump in my throat.
His next movement startled me when he reached forward, jerking his cell free from the jack. My music abruptly stopped. Only the sound of tires on the road.
“There’s a store coming up,” he said. “I’m stopping for a drink. Would you like something?”
“J’ai très soif,” I mumbled. “I mean, I’m thirsty, too.”
He laughed softly, sounding more like himself again. “I understood you the first time.”
I echoed his laugh, only mine sounded nervous.
Henry pulled the car to a stop, keeping the heater on. “Diet Coke?” he asked as he opened his door.
“I probably shouldn’t if I plan on getting any kind of sleep tonight. But…”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, zipping up his jacket then raking his fingers though his hair.
I watched as he entered the store, surveyed the fountain drinks and chatted with the clerk, finally placing two bottles of water on the counter and one sixty-ounce Diet Coke.
