“You’d play hell trying to keep up in the rugged stuff with the other guys.”
He started rambling about the pros and cons of different machines, so Liz turned her attention back to her tent. It was tempting to toss the entire thing in the back of his SUV and worry about repacking it later, but she didn’t want it to get torn. Plus, it had become personal. The tent would fit in the bag, period.
Chapter Sixteen
Drew hadn’t thought they’d ever get on the road. The gauntlet of hugs, kisses and goodbyes alone had taken almost an hour, but he’d finally herded Liz in the SUV and driven away to waves and blown kisses.
Once they were on the road, she sighed and rested her head against the seat. “That was intense.”
“I thought I was going to have to throw you over my shoulder and toss you in the truck.”
“How very caveman of you. So it seemed like you and Mitch are doing okay.”
Drew put his left hand on the wheel so he could hold her hand with his right. “I don’t know about okay. There’s still some strain, but we’ll get there eventually.”
“I still feel bad he hit you.”
“That’s between him and me. I don’t want you feeling like you were in the middle of that.”
She gave a humorless laugh. “How can I not feel like I was the cause?”
“Because shock was one thing, but that anger came from me lying to him.”
She sighed, turning her head to look out the window. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s behind us now.”
And he was happy to leave it there. “It’s going to feel unreal to go back to work tomorrow. I’ll be adding of doom to everything.”
“You can give speeding tickets of doom. Those are way more fun than regular speeding tickets.”
He squeezed her hand. “As long as none of them have your name on them.”
They opted for an early, drive-through dinner since they’d both need groceries after being gone a week. He laughed when she ordered one of the bottles of milk that came with a kids’ meal.
“For my coffee tomorrow morning,” she said, ignoring his mocking.
When he reached her house, he backed the SUV into her driveway to make it easier to unload her stuff and then killed the engine. “Wonder how long it’ll be before this picture’s on Facebook.”
“Well, now it doesn’t matter, does it? No more secrets.”
He grinned and leaned across the center console to kiss her. “I like that.”
After pulling a small stack of mail out of her mailbox, she grabbed a bag and went to unlock the door. He took her laundry bag and a bag of badly depleted snacks and followed her, going straight into the kitchen. She set the bag down, then dumped the mail on the counter.
“It’s safer if you have your mail held at the post office when you’re going to be away. When it piles up, it’s obvious you’re not home.”
“Thank you, Officer Miller.”
He pinched her ass. “Chief.”
“Since I haven’t been here very long, I’m not exactly rolling in mail.”
“Don’t call me if you go away somewhere and your house gets robbed while you’re gone.” She raised her eyebrow, and he chuckled. “Okay, I guess you do call me. But don’t whine about it, or I will tell you I told you so.”
He went to grab another load, but got sidetracked by his first view of her living room. It was filled with inflatable lounge chairs. The kind you blew up and used in the pool if it wasn’t full of Kowalski kids.
“What the hell is this?”
A few seconds later, Liz appeared, her eyes wide. “What? What happened?”
He waved his hand at the inflatable chairs, surprised he had to specify those were what he was referring to. “Pool party?”
“Oh, those.” Liz gave a breathless laugh, her hand to her chest. “I thought something horrible had happened. Busted pipes so the ceiling collapsed kind of horrible. Those are my chairs.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I got suckered into hosting movie night, but I only have the futon. Paige and Hailey brought those and we had umbrella drinks and watched How Stella Got Her Groove Back. It was very tropical.”
“And now?”
“Now I have to give them more air every once in a while, but I like them. They’re fun.”
He wasn’t sure about fun, but he was pretty sure if he sat in one, it would be a long time before he could get up again. “You don’t have a pool float for a bed, do you?”
“Keep making fun of my furniture and you won’t ever find out.” She slapped him on the ass as she walked back to the door.
Furniture. Shaking his head, he followed her out for another trip. It only took a few more to get her stuff out of his truck and he closed the hatch. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and wondered what he was supposed to do next.