*
The molten gold disk had just dipped below the horizon when Keenan merged into traffic on a two-lane highway and started heading west. In the backseat, Grannie and her friends were examining the leaves and petals of several flowers they were unable to identify. Keenan’s profile, illuminated by the Land Rover’s dashboard lights, was knife-edged, his eyes steadily on the road, his mouth set in a firm line. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows in the flat, precise turns Jack adopted after he joined the Navy. Boot camp and BUD/S hadn’t tamed him so much as provided a structure for his wild side; the possibility for mayhem simmered under everything he did. But she’d use a different word to describe Keenan. A warrior. Unlike Jack, Keenan wouldn’t go looking for trouble, but he’d sure as hell manage it if it found him.
The memory of the previous night bloomed in her veins. She’d tried to direct things, manage them, really. She liked orgasms really quite a bit, and desperately wanted another one, perhaps even two or three, with Keenan, who inhabited his body so completely he could take over hers, as well.
It wasn’t so much the physical side as the mental ruthlessness. He didn’t quit. Quitters didn’t get through BUD/S. If he made up his mind to take her into a dark, delicious place that a day ago she had no idea she wanted to explore, he’d take her there. Again, and again, and again …
He flicked her a quick glance. “What?”
Praying that the dark interior would hide the heated rush of color in her cheeks, she reached for her tote bag and pulled out Keenan’s new itinerary. “Nothing. How far are we from Konya?”
“About three hours,” he said. “Traffic should be fairly light this time of day.”
“Good,” she said, riffling through the original, optimistic plan. “The only site on the list is the Rumi museum, which works out well. It’s a seven-hour drive to Ephesus. Could we stop at Isparta on the way?”
“If we leave Konya by about noon, sure.”
“Okay. Good. Thank you.” She made a notation, then pulled out the map to calculate the detour’s mileage.
“Do you always worry this much?”
“I don’t worry,” she said, stung. “I plan. Then I make a contingency plan. Then I execute the first plan, unless I have to switch to the contingency. You can’t make sure things go right unless you anticipate the ways things can go wrong.”
He nodded. “Understood,” he said easily. “But you also have to know when to shut it off.”
“I never shut it off,” she said. “Dad left when I was seven and Jack was four. Mom never stuck to a plan. She’d start a new job in a new place with wild expectations for the future, then abandon the job, and usually the town, at the first sign of trouble. I got in the habit of planning for whatever could happen because anything could, and often did, happen. Now it’s my job. Operations supports the marketers, the people who make money for the company. If we don’t do our jobs well, they don’t do their jobs well. We grew fast, acquiring companies all over the world. There are so many redundancies and inefficiencies that waste time and money. That’s what I do. I find those, and I fix them.”
Eyes fixed on the road, he drove in silence for a while. She’d built her life around a skill she’d developed early in life, and she’d made Senior Director by thirty by virtue of those skills. If all went well, she’d be a VP by thirty-five. Frankly, this worked for her, and she saw no reason to change it.
But Keenan wasn’t her boss, or a peer. “That must have been hard,” he said.
“It’s a useful skill to have,” she said with a shrug.
“Would you feel better if I kept you apprised of our progress?”
He said it so seriously she almost thought he might be teasing her. Then he turned his head to look at her, casting his profile in shadow and light. Either he had the world’s best poker face or he was completely serious. In the end, she didn’t care if Keenan Parker thought she was the world’s most uptight bitch.
“I’d appreciate that, yes,” she said.
Eyes back on the road, his cheek creased ever so slightly. “We’re exactly two hours and nineteen minutes from our hotel.”
Teasing. Definitely teasing her. She found she didn’t mind at all.
Chapter Four
After making sure Marian and Florence were settled in their room, Rose closed the door and walked down the hall to the room she was sharing with Grannie. She found her grandmother in bed, her soft, long silver hair loose around her shoulders, her tablet beside her and her laptop on her lap.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked as she rummaged through her bag for her laptop. Please God let the hotel’s WiFi be faster than the one in Cappadocia.