Experimenting With Ed (8 page)

“You
bastard
!” Claire hissed, tempted to throw the remote at the TV screen. She made herself put it down gently. Nadine was interviewed next and her wide-eyed parroting of what Gordon had just said—mainly that Claire
loved
Gordon—drove Claire to turn off the television.

“That fucking asshole!” Claire felt tears of rage and embarrassment burn behind her eyes. She was dying to go straight to the nearest police station, in just Ed’s t-shirt if she had to, and inform everyone Gordon was a liar and a would-be murderer. The worst part was not the world thinking she was an arsonist—it was everyone thinking she had an unrequited crush on gross, disgusting, pube-faced Gordon!

What kept her sitting on Ed’s couch was a niggling uncertainty—what if they didn’t believe her? She could go to prison. And Ed… Although she’d not intentionally give the police any information about him, it was possible Claire would accidentally let something slip. When she was nervous, she tended to babble. A police interview would definitely make her nervous. Since she’d met Ed, he’d only been nice to her and helped her. She couldn’t throw him under the bus to salve her pride.

Besides, despite her brain’s rational objections, all her instincts were telling her to listen to Ed. Claire sat back on the couch and blew out a shaky breath. Following her gut was a new experience for her.

“You’d better be right,” she muttered at her stomach, giving it a poke. “Or it’s jail baloney sandwiches for you.”

* * * * *

She was still on the couch, trying very hard not to think about what her prison roommate would be like, when Ed returned with several bags.

He’d bought her jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, socks and athletic shoes. There was an oversized zip-up sweatshirt too. They’d obviously been purchased at a discount store but Claire was just so happy to have clothes, she would’ve worn a nun’s habit if he’d brought her one.

At the bottom of the bag was a pink, lacy bra and matching pink panties. When she pulled them out, she sent a teasing glance at Ed, who was concentrating very hard on the wall over her shoulder. The tops of his ears reddened, which sent a shot of affection through Claire. This big guy acting shy over a pair of panties was kind of adorable.

“Thank you,” she told him sincerely as she attempted to pull the tags off the bra.

He shrugged off the thanks. “Here,” he said, pulling out a pocketknife and making short work of the plastic cord holding the tags. He removed all the tags as Claire watched, wondering if she should go into the bedroom to dress or if that was just silly. After all, he’d seen her naked—and touched her naked and kissed her naked and licked her… With a sharp shake of her head, she cut off that string of thoughts. That would just get her hot and excited and now was definitely not the time.

“I’m on the news too,” she told him.

His hands stilled on her new sweatshirt and he raised an eyebrow.

“Gordon was on.” She made a face. “He was telling everyone I’d sabotaged his research because I was in love with him. Asshole.” Telling the story brought back a surge of anger. “I didn’t even
like
the guy. He said he fired me and I set fire to my building to get his attention. Do you think the cops believe that?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said.

“What?” She glared at him. “The world thinks I was lame enough to love
Gordon
and it doesn’t matter? He’s saying I committed arson and tried to destroy his research out of spite, and that doesn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeated in an annoyingly rational tone as he watched her carefully, “because the police are not the problem.”

Claire shook her head. “So if I shouldn’t be worrying about my potential cellmate, then what
is
the problem?”

“I’m the problem.” The hand still holding her sweatshirt tightened until the knuckles glowed white. “I have to run because my cover’s blown. You have to come with me because I won’t leave you.”

The words registered in Claire’s brain a second later, stalling her heart. That sounded a little obsessive for a guy who’d known her less than two full days. “Um…what?”

“Gordon Black’s trying to kill you. You can’t stay here alone, unprotected,” he explained, and Claire relaxed a fraction.

“Won’t the police protect me?” she asked.

He was shaking his head before she finished her sentence. “They might not even believe you. Besides,” his jaw tightened, “the people looking for me might…use you.”

“To get to you?”

“Yes.” Ed met her eyes. “I’d have to come back if they had you.” The matter-of-fact way he stated it, as if there was no possible alternative to rescuing her, even if it meant endangering his own freedom, made her skin prickle. Claire was torn between being impressed and completely freaked out. She couldn’t say anything, just stared at him.

“You didn’t eat,” he finally said, slicing off the last tag.

“Stomach,” she told him vaguely, gesturing toward it.

“Sick?” He was giving her the intense laser eyes again, as if he could see through her skin to the inner workings of her digestive system.

“No. Just a little…distracted.” She almost laughed at that understatement.

He nodded. “We’ll stop later.” Thrusting the sweatshirt at her, he ordered, “Change. We need to leave.”

“Right.” Reminded of the urgency of the situation, Claire dropped the bra she still held and yanked the t-shirt off over her head. Ed’s sharp inhale made her pause and glance at him. He was staring at her naked body, his face tight and his eyes hot enough to sear her skin with just a look.

“You…” he rasped, reaching toward her. “You are so…” To the disappointment of Claire’s most shallow part, Ed bit off the rest of his words and turned away without touching her. “Dress,” he told her harshly, his back to her.

She fumbled to obey, her hands clumsy and shaking. This was the first time a man had ever affected her like this—so strongly she forgot everything but her need for him. Claire was pretty sure she didn’t like it. It took away her reason and made her stupid with lust. She had to be stronger than that. If she wasn’t, she knew she’d get them both in trouble.

“I’m dressed,” she told him as she zipped the sweatshirt. When he turned around to face her, she added, “And I’m sorry. I’ll try not to distract you like that again.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I won’t mind if you do.” Leaning toward her, Ed gave her a fast, hard kiss.

She gave a startled laugh. “Was that another joke, Eddie?”

Without answering, he caught her hand and towed her into the kitchen. Her feet felt much better, especially in the shoes, and she followed him with just a slight limp.

“Here.” He tossed her a coat draped over a chair.

Claire caught it. The leather was soft beneath her fingers. “You’d didn’t have to buy me such a nice coat.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t. It’s mine.”

“You’re giving me your coat?” she asked as he helped her pull it on. It hung on her, the sleeves covering her hands. “I can’t take your coat. It’s freezing!” He ignored that and zipped her up, making Claire smile a little. He seemed to be making a habit of taking over her zippers.

“I’ve got another one.” Ed held it up to show her before he pulled it on. “Let’s go.”

Claire yanked the sleeves up so she could grab her clutch purse off the counter where she’d dropped it the night before. It was small enough to jam into one of the coat’s oversized pockets. “Where are we going?”

“Away,” he non-answered as he ushered her out the back door. Keeping a hand against her back, he scanned the neighboring yards before hurrying her toward the garage. She rushed to keep up, her heartbeat accelerating in response to his urgency as well as the fast pace.

He slid his hand up over her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Shh,” he soothed and she shot him a look, using his own raised-eyebrow expression against him.

“I’m not a nervous horse,” she muttered, reluctantly amused.

Ed gave her a sideways glance. “Okay.”

Choking back a laugh, she gave him the best glare she could manage, which was probably pretty pathetic. “No treating me like spooked livestock
and
no humoring me, okay?”

“Sorry.” Punching the security code into the keypad, he frowned. “Don’t really remember how to do this.”

Blinking at him, she asked incredulously, “You don’t remember your garage code?”

“No.” As if to prove his point, the overhead garage door began to rise. “Don’t remember how to…” Ed pointed at her and then him and made a squiggly circle with his hand.

“Sorry.” Claire’s forehead bunched and she gave a helpless shrug. “Still not getting it.”

“Forget it.” Ducking under the still-moving garage door, he headed for the motorcycle.

With a sigh, Claire mumbled to herself, “Can’t really forget it
now
, can I?” and followed him into the garage.

“Here.” She reached to take the helmet he was offering but he ignored her outstretched hands and put it on her himself. “Okay?”

“Except for feeling like Darth Vader in here, sure.”

Ed’s lips quirked up at that before he pulled on his own helmet.

“So,” she said as casually as she could manage, knowing her flare of jealousy was completely inappropriate to their life-and-death situation but not able to resist asking the question. “Whose helmet am I wearing?”

“Yours.”

She gave an impatient huff. “No, whose was it before me? Girlfriend? Wife? Dog?”

With a shake of his helmeted head, he wheeled the bike out of the garage. “Just got it for you.”

“Oh.” Now she felt an extra dose of embarrassment for her petty thoughts. “Thank you.”

“Welcome. Get the door?” He jerked his head toward the keypad.

“Of course.” Claire hurried out and punched in the code she’d watched him enter. Swinging a leg over the motorcycle to straddle it behind Ed, she couldn’t hold back a shiver. Was she, lab-rat Claire, actually going on the run with a fugitive? The bike rolled forward and she wrapped her arms around him.

Guess that’s a yes.

Chapter Seven

Riding a motorcycle looked a lot more glamorous than it felt. After hours on the bike, Claire’s entire body was numb from the vibrations. Somehow, though, she retained enough feeling to be aching from cold. She was thankful Ed wasn’t taking the freeway—just the thought of speeding along at seventy-five miles per hour made her cringe. Instead, they were winding through the countryside on county roads and highways, cutting through the small towns and passing a tedious amount of stubbly, harvested fields.

On the outskirts of one of the many homogenous towns, Ed pulled into a gas station, stopping next to a pump as far from the building as he could get. Pulling a card from his wallet, Ed reached to swipe it through the pump’s credit-card reader. Claire caught his arm.

“Can’t they trace you with that?” Claire asked under her breath.

He shook his head, tilting the card so she could read it. “Different name.”

“Michael Patchin,” she read out loud, her stomach tightening into a hard ball. “How’d you get someone else’s credit card?”

“It’s mine,” he corrected her. “I pay the bill.”

“But…” Claire trailed off as a disturbing thought occurred to her. “Is your name not really Ed?”

Concentrating on pushing the buttons on the pump keypad, Ed—or whoever he was—told her, “Yeah, it is. As far as I know.”

Claire frowned. As answers went, that one really sucked. “What does that mean?”

“Tell you later,” he said gruffly but then his tone softened. “Okay?”

She sighed. “Fine.” It wasn’t as if they could have a heart-to-heart right there at the gas station. “I have so many questions, I should probably start writing them down.”

As he pumped the gas she was quiet, walking in small circles next to the bike in order to get blood circulating through her legs again. Her feet felt better, just aching a little, although she wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or just because her feet were numb. Claire’s brain felt fuzzy, as if all her channels were coming in through a bent antenna. She also really had to pee.

“Okay?” Although they both had kept their helmets on to minimize the chance of someone recognizing them, she could tell Ed was watching her closely.

“I’m fine,” she said, even as she realized she was shaking her head, contradicting her own words. “Just a little lightheaded. Guess I should’ve eaten breakfast like you told me to.” Her laugh was halfhearted. “Plus I have to go to the bathroom.”

Clicking off the nozzle, Ed returned it to its resting place on the pump and closed the tank. “Five minutes,” he said, swinging his leg over the motorcycle.

With a sigh, Claire mounted behind him, muttering, “Five minutes what? I don’t know why you bother saying anything when what you
do
say is pretty much impossible to understand.” The engine roared to life, drowning out her mumbles, but she kept talking anyway. After hours of worried silence, it made her feel better. “It’s like you were raised in a family of cave-people who only communicated through grunts and eyebrow wiggles, or you’re following some strange religion that only allows you seventeen words a day. Don’t ask me why I picked seventeen. It just seemed like a number a weird, word-limiting cult would like. Good thing I don’t follow this religion. I’d use my words in the first five minutes after I woke up. Actually, I’d probably talk in my sleep and use them without knowing it, and then wouldn’t be able to say ‘good morning’.”

Her babbling continued as they passed through town, the words falling from her mouth in an inaudible, nonsensical, unstoppable torrent, until Ed slowed the bike and turned onto a gravel road. Cutting herself off midword, Claire looked around, trying to figure out where Ed was headed.

He turned again, this time onto a barely visible path leading into a wooded area. They drove slowly through the trees until they reached a small clearing—just big enough to allow Claire to hop off the bike without impaling herself on a branch.

“Here.” Ed pulled something from his jacket pocket and held it out. It was a protein bar, Claire saw as she accepted it. Her stomach clenched at the thought of eating but she knew she’d be useless pretty soon if she didn’t. After all, she was already performing monologues for herself on the back of a moving motorcycle. Obviously low blood sugar was setting in.

“Thank you.” She tucked the bar in her coat pocket before removing her helmet. “I’d better take care of something first, though.” She handed the helmet to Ed and headed deeper into the trees.

“Where are you going?”

She paused, looking back at him over her shoulder. “The ladies’ room.”

“That’s far enough,” he told her.

Claire frowned again. “Fine, but you have to look the other way.” Even though the tinted visor on his helmet made it impossible to see, she could tell by the tilt of his head he was giving her the eyebrow-raised, don’t-be-a-dummy look. “I don’t care if you
have
seen me naked,” she said stubbornly. “I haven’t known you long enough to pee in front of you—especially out here.” Making her way toward a good-sized tree trunk, she muttered, “Even if I’d known you for ninety years, I
still
wouldn’t want to pee on the ground in front of you. It’s just not attractive. Plus it’s awkward.”

Crouching behind the tree, she peeked around the trunk to make sure Ed wasn’t watching and she was relieved to see his head was turned away. He’d taken his helmet off and she was distracted for a second by his oblique profile. No wonder she was running off to who-knows-where with an alias-using fugitive when he looked like
that
.

The nip of chilly air on her bare skin motivated her to get things done quickly. To her delight, she discovered she’d tucked a tissue in her purse at some point in the past. With a slight pang of guilt, she left it behind the tree after using it, her distaste for littering overcome by the thought of cramming the used tissue back in her pocket.

“Don’t suppose you have any hand sanitizer?” she said as she emerged. “A wet wipe maybe?”

Ed shook his head. “Sorry.”

With a rueful grimace, she pulled out the protein bar and tore it open, careful to keep the wrapper between the food and her fingers. “This is a good reminder for me of exactly why I hate camping. You did promise me a picnic, though. Since we’re outside and there’s food, I guess this qualifies. Bite?” She held the bar toward Ed.

With a curl of his mouth and nod, he gestured her closer to where he sat, still straddling the bike. Claire took the two steps necessary to bring her close to him and offered the bar again. As he bent his head to take a bite, she shivered a little.

“Cold?” he asked around his mouthful.

She shook her head. With all her layers, she was actually a little warm now that she wasn’t on the speeding motorcycle. Ed was eyeing her suspiciously, as if he didn’t believe her, but she just shrugged and took another bite of the bar, not knowing how to explain it was the odd sensuality of feeding him that had caused her tremor, not the cold.

Peeling down the wrapper, she held it out to him again. He held her gaze as he bit off a piece and Claire suddenly found it hard to swallow.

“Water?” she croaked.

As he turned to pull a bottle from the small pack attached to the bike, she jammed the last of the protein bar into her mouth. This whole “feeding the wild animal” thing was going to get her into trouble and it was too freaking cold to be stripping off clothes out here.

Ed handed her the bottle, raising an eyebrow as she struggled to chew the wad of food in her mouth.

Gah !
Claire thought, internally rolling her eyes at her utter dorkiness.
Hot guy, motorcycle, private location—can’t you be a
little
cool for once?
With a sigh, she crammed the protein-bar wrapper in her coat pocket.
Obviously not.

By the time she managed to swallow the last of the bar, the moment had passed. She took a drink of water, only spilling a little down her chin, and handed the bottle back to Ed.

“Don’t you have to use a tree?” she asked as he stowed the water back in the pack.

With a short nod, he swung off the bike. “Stay right here,” he ordered, and Claire rolled her eyes.

“Think I’m going to head back to the highway to hitch a ride?” she teased. When he just frowned at her, she sighed. “I’m staying! I’m staying! Now shoo. Go find a tree.”

Turning away to give him privacy, Claire wrapped her arms around herself and looked through the mostly denuded branches. She couldn’t hear anything—not his footsteps in the fallen leaves or the snap of a branch or even the sound of liquid pattering against a tree.

He even pees stealthily
, she thought and giggled.

“What’s funny?” Ed’s voice was right behind her and she jumped, sucking in a startled breath.

“Nothing,” she told him, turning around to face him. He was standing very close to her. “I’m just punchy.”

“We should go,” he said, his eyebrows meeting in a frown. “You’ll be okay?”

“Sure,” she said with a casual shrug, even though her brain groaned a protest at the thought of getting back on the motorcycle. When his frown intensified, Claire dropped her eyes. “Where are we going?” she asked, more to change the subject away from her discomfort than anything.

“A friend’s house,” he said, to Claire’s surprise. She’d just assumed they were running away, not toward anything or anyone in particular. “North of here.”

“A friend?” she probed, intensely curious. He said so little about his mysterious past, she seized on every nugget of information he revealed, no matter how tiny.

He nodded. “We can stay with him while we figure things out.”

“Was he,” she paused, not sure how to put it when she didn’t really know what had happened, “in the same situation?”

His face smoothed of all expression. “Yes.”

So many questions were bouncing around inside Claire’s head. She was tempted to push for answers, explanations, but she knew they needed to get back on the road. The sooner this uncomfortable road trip was over, the better.

She forced a smile. “Let’s go, then.”

That startled a blink out of Ed. “Okay,” he said a little tentatively, as if he’d expected something else. Ducking his head, he kissed her quickly but thoroughly.

It was Claire’s turn to blink at him. “What was that for?”

He shrugged and grabbed her helmet. “You keep surprising me.”

She snorted. “
I
surprise
you
?”

“Yeah.” Ed put the helmet on her head. “In good ways.”

“Oh.” Claire wasn’t sure how to respond, so she just watched in silence as he put on his helmet. When he straddled the bike and started the engine, she forced herself to climb on behind him. She could do this. It was only temporary—a few hours out of the rest of her life.

As Ed turned the motorcycle around and headed back toward the gravel road, Claire sighed and wrapped her arms around him. At least her front would be warm.

* * * * *

When clouds dimmed the early evening light and it began to rain, Claire wanted to throw herself off the bike and bawl. Instead, she gritted her teeth and held on to Ed, determined not to be the weak link of their twosome. She could hold up while fleeing from authorities as well as anyone.

But why does it have to be raining?
her mind wailed.

The motorcycle slowed as they passed the first few buildings of yet another scrubby-looking town. After a few blocks, he turned into a motel parking lot. Claire wanted to cry again—from relief this time. Ed rolled to a stop in a dark corner of the lot.

“Hold this,” he said, pulling off his helmet and handing it to her. She accepted it awkwardly, keeping her hands tucked up in her coat sleeves. Many miles back, her hands had disappeared into her sleeves and she was reluctant to expose her fingers to the cold.

Pulling a stocking hat out of his pack, Ed yanked it on. “Stay here. Leave the helmet on. Anyone bothers you, yell.”