Parker (The Stewarts of Skagway #5)

Chapter 3

Parker

I don’t care that Quinn had lunch with Skylar Jones.

I don’t care. I don’t care. I really don’t care.

Staring at my face in the mirror and grateful for fancy hotel bathroom amenities like every stall having its own sink and mirror, I whisper the words aloud.

“I don’t care.”

Except I do.

And I can’t figure out why.

I don’t like Quinn, and he doesn’t like me, but the Joneses are not very nice people. When the ref’s back was turned, Skylar used to trip the girls on opposing soccer teams, and Hunter said that Rick Jones was an asshole of the highest order when they worked on that reality show last summer.

Leave it to Quinn to find a Jones and get cozy with her on his first day in Vegas. Part of me wants to tell him to steer clear of her, and the other part hopes he gets burned good.

I look into my own eyes and ask myself, Why do you care, Parker? Why?

Turning around, I cross my arms over my chest and lean my butt against the sink.

The only thing I can come up with is the same reason I lifted my glass to Quinn in the lounge yesterday and why I quickly set up his table when I saw him struggling this morning. We are two small fish from the same glassy pond, and Vegas is a giant rolling sea full of sharks. It doesn’t matter if I hate him. Quinn Morgan is still from Skagway, he’s still my little brother’s best friend, and I’ve known him for almost as long as he’s been alive. I feel a thin, but certain, loyalty to him even if I don’t like it.

I freshen up my makeup, determined to give Quinn a head’s up about Sociopath Skylar if the chance arises, but not to go out of my way if it doesn’t. After all, I was the one who insisted we be strangers on this trip. I shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. I should be doing my own thing, making my own connections, and enjoying my all-expenses-paid week away from home.

Walking back to my table at the end of the break, I note that Quinn hasn’t returned yet, but Skylar has. She catches my eye as I make my way down the aisle.

“Hey!” she calls to me as I pass her table.

I stop and turn to face her.

“It’s Parker, right? Parker Stewart?”

“Yep. And you’re Skylar Jones.”

“Ding, ding, ding! Give the lady a prize!”

She doesn’t extend her hand or anything, just smiles at me from behind her table, which makes me feel both cautious and uneasy. Instinct, I guess. She narrows her eyes a touch and tilts her head to the side.

“You rustling up business for Skagway?”

“Same as you’re doing for Ketchikan.”

“Not exactly the same,” she says with a condescending smirk. “We’re the Joneses . We have the biggest travel outfit in the state.”

“Not in Skagway,” I say, feeling defensive.

“Skagway’s small potatoes.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to—”

“Saw you staring at Quinn during lunch,” says Skylar, the words firing from her lips quick and clean like bullets.

“Staring?” My eyes dart up to her face. “Hardly.”

“Seemed like it to me.”

I scoff. “Well, I wasn’t. I’ve known him forever. He’s like a brother to me.”

“I have a brother,” says Skylar. “I don’t stare at him like that.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Just admit you have a thing for him.”

“Ha!” I chortle. “A thing for Quinn? You are so far off the mark, it’s scary.”

“Maybe tell your face that.”

Her stupid—and completely wrong—assumption triggers me. “Shut up, Skylar. You were always a bully.”

“Another self-righteous Stewart,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Not self- righteous . Just right . There’s nothing between me and Quinn but air.”

She smirks. “Whatever you say, Parker.”

“This is ridiculous,” I say, backing away from her table and offering her the fakest smile I can muster. “Have a great conference, Skylar. Be well.”

“Oh, you too. Say hey to my old friend Harper for me, huh?”

Harper hates your guts , I want to snarl. You’re just as toxic as I remember.

I trudge back to my table feeling extremely annoyed.

“ We’re the Joneses.” I mimic Skylar under my breath, mumbling in her high-pitched, whiny voice. “ Skagway’s small potatoes .”

Point of fact, Skagway is not “small potatoes” in the Alaskan travel business. The visitor season generates over $160 million in taxable income for our tiny town of twelve hundred year-round residents. With $5.6 billion total annual tourism dollars generated by the state of Alaska, Skagway—all by itself—holds a healthy chunk at almost three percent.

“If it isn’t one of the Stewarts of Skagway!”

I look up to find one of Paw-Paw’s old acquaintances from Haines, Buck Westin of Westin’s Wild West Adventures, standing at my table.

“Hey, Mr. Westin,” I say politely, groaning inside.

“M’name’s Buck! Please! How many times I got to tell you gals? Mr. Westin was my pappy. Makes me feel old even to hear it!”

I grin at him, but honestly, Mr. Westin’s always been a little handsy and a lot pushy, and calling him by a more formal name is partially by design, in the hopes that he’ll observe our vast age difference and leave me alone.

“Now,” he says, licking his lips, “which one are you?”

“Which one—”

“—of Gary’s daughters?”

“Parker, sir.”

“No!” he bites back. “I toldja already. No ‘Mr.’ and no ‘sir!’ Just Buck, got it?”

“Got it.”

He adjusts his belt buckle, flattens his palm on my table and leans closer, the smell of chewing tobacco and whiskey making my stomach flip over.

“You’re a real pretty gal, Parker. Whatcha doin’ for dinner tonight?”

“Oh. Um…I’m…”

“You’re joining me at the steakhouse! That’s what! How’s that sound? A nice juicy steak with yours truly?”

Not good , I think. I don’t want to go out to dinner with someone my grandfather’s age!

“Oh, that’s real kind, sir, but—”

“But nothin’,” he says, his voice taking on an edge. “Now, I told ya—”

“Hey, there, Mr. Westin! Good to see you!”

Without either of us noticing, Quinn has snuck up behind Mr. Westin and towers over his left shoulder. Winking at me real quick, Quinn sidesteps to his left so he can face us both.

“Who’zat?” asks Mr. Westin, squinting up at Quinn. “Is that Skip Morgan’s kid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How you doing, boy? How’s your pop?”

“Real good, sir.”

“Well, nice to see you. Thanks for sayin’ hey. Have a good convention,” says Mr. Westin, turning back to me. “Now, about dinner—”

“Hey, Mr. Westin, I overheard you asking Parker out for dinner,” Quinn says, “but I can’t let you do that, sir.”

“How’s that?”

“Can’t let you ask her out,” he says, leaning closer to Mr. Westin’s good ear, “seeing as Parker Stewart’s my girl.”

“Wha’s that, now?”

“Parker and me. We’re together. You probably didn’t know that, but now you do, sir.”

Mr. Westin turns to me, one bushy white eyebrow touching his hairline. “You datin’ this young one?”

I take a deep breath. The frying pan or the fire? I glance at Quinn, then back at Mr. Westin.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, my ’pologies, Morgan. Didn’t know she was spoken for. Hope I didn’t cause offense.”

“No offense taken, sir. Just an honest mistake.”

It’s nothing short of misogynistic, the way these old guys talk to and about women, but the fact is, I’ve encountered these types of men all my life, and to my relief, Quinn has too. He knows as well as I do that the fastest way to get Mr. Westin off my tail for the next few days is for another man to lay claim to my attention. I hate it on one hand, but on the other, I have to admit that I’m grateful for Quinn’s intervention.

“Sorry, miss. You have a good convention, now. Say hey to your Paw-Paw from me,” says Mr. Westin, nodding at me politely before sidling away.

I watch him go, then look up at Quinn. “Ugh. Thanks.”

He shrugs, a little grin playing on his lips. “I owed you one. Thanks for setting up my table this morning.”

“You looked a little frazzled.”

“First convention. I left the setup for this morning when I should’ve done it last night. Rookie move, I guess.”

“Live and learn.”

“Guess so.” He leans a touch closer, and unlike Buck Westin, there’s no stink of tobacco or whiskey to singe my nose hairs. “So…where are we meeting for dinner?”

“Yeah, right.”

Something flits across his face, but I don’t have time to identify it since he turns to walk back to his table.

“Hey, Quinn!” I call to his back. He looks at me over his shoulder. “Be careful of Skylar Jones.”

He casts a glance over at her table, then turns around to face me. “Why?”

“She’s got a mean streak. Used to make trouble for Harper when they played high school soccer. And Hunter said her brother’s a real piece of work.”

“Do you know her personally?” he asks, putting his hands on his hips.

“I don’t,” I say. “Not really.”

“Then you probably shouldn’t be talking shit about her, Parker.”

He gives me a reproving look before walking away, and it makes me feel petty and shallow. He’s right. I shouldn’t be talking shit about Skylar Jones. It’s none of my business that Quinn’s interested in her, and it’s none of my business if that interest gets him in trouble.

I take a deep breath, plaster a smile onto my face, and greet a group of cheerful travel agents approaching my table.

***

After being on my feet all day in a packed, stuffy convention hall, all I want is some fresh air, but in Vegas, “fresh” is not much on offer. Eau d’Strip is a combination of rotten eggs, exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke, and too-strong cologne. It’s the epitome of “stale,” which is the opposite of what I crave.

From the windows of my room, I’m treated to a visual cacophony of glass, metal, and concrete flatlands that ends, blessedly, at the low, reddish mountains in the distance. Not the jagged, fir-covered mountains of my beloved Skagway, but the closest bit of “nature” to where I’m standing right now. I know from previous visits to Las Vegas that Red Rock Canyon is only twenty minutes from the hotel, and I consider ways to get there and enjoy it for an hour before the sun sets. But I didn’t rent a car, and without a vehicle to drive out there, I’m at a loss.

I wonder if Quinn rented a car I can borrow.

The thought flits through my head, but I squelch it, reminding myself that we’re strangers for the rest of our time here. I’m not talking to him again, helping him anymore, giving him advice about bad seeds or asking him for anything.

I could arrange an Uber, I think. It could drop me off at the park, and I could wander around a mile or two on foot before getting another Uber to bring me back to the hotel. Grabbing my phone, I book a car, then I change into leggings, a tank top, sneakers and a fleece. By the time I get down to the lobby, my car is waiting.

I catch up on text messages on my way to the park, writing back to my father about the volume of travel agents who visited my table on the first day, and warning Sawyer that he should be on the lookout for several upcoming bookings for early cruise excursions in April.

When I get to the Red Rock Canyon Visitor’s Center, I find it’s been closed since four thirty p.m., but with sunset still an hour away, I stand in front of the giant map, deciding to walk a ways down the Moenkopi Trail, then turn back for my six p.m. Uber. Just as I’m making my way toward the trailhead, I hear someone call my name.

“Parker! Hey! Parker!”

Looking over my shoulder, I find Quinn Morgan leaning out the driver’s window of a small white rental car, waving at me. I brace myself for the way my adrenaline always spikes, priming me for verbal warfare, when I run into him out of the blue. Surprised when it doesn’t, I step over to his car.

“Hi,” I say. “Did you follow me here?”

His face screws up. “ Follow you?”

When he says it like that, I realize how nuts it sounds.

“Sorry,” I say. “Why are you here?”

“Probably the same reason you are—fresh air and a little peek at the local nature. I don’t know about the recycled air in that hotel. Not sure it’s good for you.”

“Felt.”

“You hiking?”

“I was going to, yeah,” I tell him. “My Uber driver’s coming back in an hour.”

“Heard you see more if you drive the loop.”

I shrug. “True, but I don’t have a car.”

He tilts his head to the side. “I do.”

And maybe it’s the sun, setting gently over my shoulder, that makes his eyes more like emeralds than swamp water, but for the first time in ten years or more, I realize how pretty they are, how clear and green. How, sort of, almost, beautiful.

“You offering me a ride?”

“I am,” he says, grinning at me.

And you know? With his facial hair neatly groomed, I can see the deep dents of his dimples under that jet black beard. I haven’t seen them in years, but they used to light up his whole face when he was a little kid. Adorable. Even…enchanting.

He catches me staring. “Park?”

I jerk my gaze away from him, disconcerted by an unexpected warming in my belly and one hundred percent determined to ignore it. I lift my eyes to the horizon where the sun’s setting quicker than I’d hoped, and I’m smart enough to know that getting lost in a dark park is a recipe for danger and disaster.

“Back to strangers when we finish the loop?” I ask him.

He shrugs, looking out the windshield. “Sure.”

I round the back of the little car and open the passenger door. Sitting down in the warm rental, I scrunch up my nose at the strong smell of air freshener and lower my window all the way.

“They went hard on the cleanser,” he says with a chuckle. “I’m thinking the last renter was a smoker.”

“I think you’re right.”

I pull down my seat belt and buckle it. I have no idea what kind of driver Quinn Morgan is. I’ve never ridden in a car with him driving. It occurs to me that if someone had told me a week ago that I’d be sitting next to him in a car today, I’d have called them all sorts of crazy.

“You good?”

I look to my left and muster a small smile, surprised to find I’m grateful to be sitting next to Quinn and not hiking alone. “Yep. Ready.”

He pulls out of the Visitor’s Center driveway and past a sign that welcomes us to Red Rock Canyon, a National Conservation Area.

“You’ve done this drive before?” he asks me.

“Yep,” I say. “A couple times.”

“Think we’ll make it to the end before dark?”

“It’s possible,” I tell him. “It’s only thirteen miles, so you can do it in forty-five minutes.”

“You mind music?”

“Not at all. I like it.”

He flicks on the radio, which is tuned to a bluegrass station. Surrounded by peaceful desert, with cool, fresh air halving the smell of Clorox in the car, we’re quiet for the first mile or so…until Quinn nudges my elbow with his.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Is it disgusting?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. “Or inappropriate?”

He side-eyes me. “You always think the worst of me, Parker.”

“And you rarely disappoint me, Quinn.”

Huffing softly, he slides his elbow from the console we were sharing. “I was just gonna ask why you’re spending your first night in Vegas like this?”

“Like what?”

“Wandering around a park all by yourself.”

“I could ask you the same.”

“And I’d tell you that as excited as I was to come to Vegas, it’s a little overwhelming once you get here.”

“Same,” I say, my voice unusually contemplative for a conversation with Quinn Morgan. “You know, I mostly like being the Stewart who goes to the conventions, but I’ll never get used to them. We come from a town that has under two thousand people, you know? There are over 650,000 souls in Las Vegas, and most of them baffle me, quite frankly. On the first night of these things, especially…I don’t know…I guess I feel a little homesick. A fish out of water or something.” I pause for a second, realizing what I’ve shared, and stop myself from saying more. I’m giving him great fodder for future teasing. “Go ahead, Quinn. Make fun of me.”

“Nope. I get it. I agree. I felt the same way. I looked out my window, over the city, with all its concrete and metal, and all I wanted—”

“Was to run away to the red mountains in the distance?”

“Yeah.” He looks over at me and grins. “Exactly.”

Deep dimples and sparkling emeralds.

We go around a sharp, sudden curve, and my stomach flip flops.

I convince myself, in the quiet that follows, that those flutters were just a reaction to the drive, but something deep inside of me, that I really don’t want to acknowledge, whispers that I’m lying.

***

Quinn

I can’t remember a time when Parker Stewart and I sat side by side, in peace, all alone, without exchanging smart-ass comments, and I like it way more than I should. It gives me hope, and as every man who loves a willful woman knows, hope can be a dangerous thing.

So dangerous, in fact, I’m scared to say anything. Scared to do anything. Scared to shatter the moment. I’m scared that one misplaced word or misunderstood inflection could ruin everything, and I don’t want that. I’ve never wanted anything more, in fact, than for this 13-mile loop to go on in companionable silence forever.

The setting sun, in tones of gold and lavender, backlights these strange, red clay mountains, and on the radio, the Petersens sing a cover of the old Irish folk song, “Wild Mountain Thyme.” I tell myself to memorize this moment with Parker because it will never, ever come again, which means I’ll have to live on it for a long, long time.

“See that?” she asks, breaking me out of my reverie and pointing out her window to the right.

“That little mountain?”

“Yep. That’s Turtlehead Peak.”

“Ah. Okay. Yeah. I see the plateau.”

“I always remember that one.” She turns to me, her sweet lips turned up in a small grin. “I like turtles. Sea turtles, especially.”

I’ve known Parker my whole life, but I never knew she liked turtles. I file that little fact away for later.

“Did you know they’re the only reptiles indigenous to Alaska?”

“That’s right!” she cries. “How’d you know that?”

“I may not be a Stewart,” I say, “but I’m in the tourism biz, too.”

“Did you wish you were?” she asks.

“Were what?”

“A Stewart.”

It’s a strange question, I guess, but considering how long we’ve known one another and how much time I spent with her family growing up, I guess it’s fair. I actually thought about it a lot as an only child: how fun it would be if I was a Stewart sibling, with all those kids around all the time. But then I’d remember the tragedy of their mom’s death, and I’d back up on that fantasy. We’re tight, my mom, my dad and me. I love them way too much to wish them away.

“That was weird.” She says it so quietly, I’m not sure if she’s talking to herself or to me at first. “But you were always over, you know? Always sleeping over, and staying for dinner, and going on camping trips with us…I guess I’ve always wondered if —I mean, sometimes I got the feeling that you wanted to join our family like someone who wants to run off and join the circus.”

“The circus is a fair comparison,” I say, glancing at her with a little grin. “At my house, there were three of us. At yours, there were nine. Plus all the tourists coming and going. There was always something going on over at your place, you know? A hike. A fishing trip. An adventure. Mischief. Someone to play with, something to do. My house was quiet. Real quiet in comparison.”

“Why didn’t your folks have more kids?”

“My parents were on the older side when they had me. They met later in life, you know? Second marriage for both. To be honest, I’m not even sure they planned to get pregnant. I think I might have been a surprise.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“We were baking cookies together once, and my mom told me as much…she thought she was too old to have a baby, and then, one day—BAM!—I came along.”

“BAM! checks out,” she says. “I can’t imagine you arriving anywhere quietly.”

I chuckle because she’s right. I’m loud and gregarious and I’ve never met a stranger. It’s part of who I am—one of the many parts of me that’s always annoyed her. Something else she didn’t like? How much time I spent with her family. The rest of the Stewarts seemed to fold me into the batter like another ingredient, but not Parker. Parker resented me. Her face would pucker, then fall, when I hopped up the steps of the lodge and knocked at the old screen door looking for Sawyer. She didn’t want me there. I could tell, and if I’m honest, it hurt my feelings every time.

“I didn’t answer your question,” I say. “About whether or not I wished I was a Stewart.”

“Did you?”

“Sometimes,” I tell her honestly. “Sawyer’s my best friend. Always has been. Growing up, I loved your family. I still do.”

“Me, too,” she says, her voice tight and dry.

“It annoyed you, didn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

I’m careful with my words, but I’ve been curious about this for most of my life. I’m not passing up my chance to talk to her about it when she was the one who brought it up.

“That I was around so much.”

“I never said so.”

“You didn’t have to. I just knew.”

She sits back in her seat, leaning her elbow on the open window frame, like she might just jump onto the road if this conversation gets more awkward. Heck, I might join her.

“I didn’t…” She starts then stops, takes a deep breath and lets it go. Finally, she looks over at me. “Sawyer changed around you. He was different.”

Huh. Interesting. And unexpected. Of all the things she might have said, I didn’t see this coming.

It’s my turn to ask, “What do you mean?”

She stares out the windshield as we glide along this quiet desert road. When I peek over, her eyebrows are knitted together, and her lips are turned down.

“Tell me,” I coax her gently.

“He wasn’t as nice when you were around. He’d started showing off the second you walked into the room. And I was always the target. Always the victim. If Quinn showed up, I knew that I’d be teased to death. It made me dread…”

“Seeing me.”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “Sorry, but yeah.”

Wow. Okay. So that stings.

But it also explains an awful lot.

I mean, obviously I didn’t know what Sawyer was like around his sister when I wasn’t there. I only knew what he was like when I was there. And he was always teasing, always setting up practical jokes, always targeting Parker as the butt of his jokes. And since I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, I just followed his lead.

Though I never really gave it a whole lot of thought, in hindsight, it makes sense that he’d targeted Parker. Hunter and Tanner would’ve pounded him for half the shit we pulled. Harper was older and off-limits, especially since she was like a second mom to Sawyer once he lost his own. And Reeve was the family’s little baby. No one messed with her. But Parker? Parker was fair game. Or so he had led me to believe.

It makes me feel bad when I look at things through her eyes.

I must have ruined every camping trip for her.

Her heart must have fallen during every family event where I suddenly showed up.

How she must have hated it when my family wrangled an invitation for Thanksgiving Day or Easter brunch.

She hated me because every time I was around, her brother was an asshole to her.

And there was me, just going along with it like it was nothing.

A lump rises up in my throat, and the setting sun, bright through the windshield, makes my eyes burn like crazy.

“I didn’t…”

“You didn’t what?” she asks. This is usually when she’d start snapping at me, but her voice is inquisitive, almost gentle.

“I didn’t…” I gulp over the lump. “…know that. I didn’t know that Sawyer changed when I was around. I just…I think I just assumed that’s how siblings behaved with each other.”

“When you weren’t around, Sawyer and I got along great,” she says. “We’re only a year apart, you know? We were close. We had fun together. But then you’d come over and…”

“We’d gang up on you.”

“Yeah.” She nods. “That’s how it felt.”

To our right is a sign that reads, “White Rock Trailhead,” and I turn toward it, off the main loop, and put the car in park. I need to say something, and I should be looking at her when I say it.

“Why are we stopping?”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She stares at me, her blue eyes wide and trusting. They’ve been narrowed at me so many times in my life, I didn’t realize she had a little yellow sunburst around each of her pupils. It’s the same color as her blonde hair and makes her eyes bright like a sunrise.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I bet it was hell having me show up all the time.”

“You weren’t my favorite,” she says softly, looking down at her lap.

“I just thought you didn’t like me…which, I have to admit, made it ten times easier to give you a hard time because I couldn’t really think of anything I’d done wrong. I just…I thought the way we teased you and pranked you was just standard little brother stuff. I didn’t know it hurt you.”

Her lips are pursed when she looks up at me.

“No. You know what, Quinn? I’ll buy the whole ‘I-didn’t-have-siblings-so-I-didn’t-know-better’ excuse for some of it. But not all of it. Come on. Would you like to wake up with cold oatmeal smeared all over your pillowcase? How about having a live snake put down your back? Do you know how humiliating it was to sit on smushed berries in white shorts, and walk around all day with ‘blood’ on your backside? Give me a break. You’re a human being . You should have known better.”

“Sawyer’s your brother.”

“And?”

“And he came up with most of it.”

Fuck. I sound whiny even in my own ears.

“Stop talking,” she says softly, but her tone is bordering on lethal. “Either take responsibility for your actions and offer me the unqualified apology I deserve, or shut up.” She tightens her jaw before adding, “Don’t waste my time, Quinn. The sun’s setting.”

She’s right. She’s absolutely, positively, one hundred percent right.

I put up my hands in surrender and nod at her.

“You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry,” I tell her solemnly. “I’m sorry for all of it, Parker. For everything. For every joke. For every prank. For every time I made you feel bad. I mean it. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Thank you,” she says, staring back at me.

Green eyes to blue. Blue eyes to green.

Finally, she lifts her chin and shifts in her seat, folding her hands in her lap and looking out the window. “Now, let’s go.”

***

We finish our drive mostly in silence, but I feel like a weight’s been lifted between us. It doesn’t feel as tense as it did before, and I wonder if she hates me a little less than she did when the ride started. We arrive back at the Visitor’s Center too soon and find her Uber waiting.

“Thanks for the ride,” she tells me.

“I meant what I said before,” I say. “I’m really sorry for all the pranks and the teasing and—and all of it.”

“The beauty of a genuine apology,” she tells me as she opens the door, “is that you only have to give it once.”

I smile at her. “Thanks for accepting it.”

“Thanks for giving it.”

We stare at each other in the dim light of my rental car, and for a second—a split second—I remember another time in my life when she looked at me like this. I was in fifth grade, and I’d just given a presentation about my Irish ethnicity. Everyone in the room was clapping, so I’d taken a bow, and when I’d straightened back up, my eyes had slammed into Parker’s. To my surprise and delight, she’d smiled at me—a small, warm smile that showed me, for half a moment, what her face would look like if she didn’t hate my guts. I’d stared back at her, blown away by how pretty she was, by how blue her eyes were, by how my stomach flip-flopped all over the place as it never had before.

Later that day, Sawyer had convinced me to put a snake down her back while she was sunbathing by the river. And needless to say, she’d never looked at me with that kind of warmth or promise again.

Until now.

“Hey, Park—”

She breaks off our intense gaze. “Back to strangers tomorrow, okay?”

“Um…I—Sure,” I murmur.

She hops out of my car, slams the door shut and gets into the back seat of the Uber. A moment later, the car’s red taillights disappear, headed back to Vegas. I lean back in my seat, resting my head and sighing loudly.

But in a weird sort of way, I also feel good. I feel like the hope that scared me so much at the beginning of our drive isn’t so deadly now. I might even survive that hope , I think, if Parker keeps smiling more and hating me less.

It makes me want to do something for her. Something nice. Something to keep these warm feelings thawed out before they ice up all over again.

Hmmm. I have an idea!

There’s a posh boutique at our hotel. I glanced through the picture windows of the store when I exited the food hall with Skylar earlier today. Now I beeline back to it. I pull my car up to the front of the Aria, throwing my keys to the parking attendant like I’ve seen high rollers do in the movies, and stride into the lobby. I head downstairs, walking purposefully into the store, where I am suddenly surrounded by women’s clothes, shoes, and jewelry.

Talk about feeling out of place. Dressed in my T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, I am a big ’ol fish, and there is absolutely no water in sight.

“Can I help you?”

The saleswoman who approaches me is young and pretty. I’ve got this. I turn on the charm.

“I just bet you can,” I say, grinning at her. “I’m looking for a turtle.”

“I’m sorry?”

“A turtle.” I look at the sexy white bikini to my left—marked $1300, what the fuck?!—

and feel my plan falling apart. Nothing in this dang place is gonna have a turtle on it. I shrug sheepishly. “You got anything with a turtle on it?”

“A turtle,” she repeats, grinning at me like I’m adorable. After a beat, she turns to her associate. “Valencia, do we have anything with a…a turtle on it?”

“A turtle? Like, the animal?” asks her friend. Is there another kind? I’m about to ask, but she points to a jewelry counter. “I think…yes. In the Pandora collection.”

“Ah! Yes! The pink tortoise charm.” The younger salesclerk turns back to me and smiles. “Come with me.”

I follow her across the boutique where lots of sparkling items sit on white fabric under a glass counter. She reaches into the sparkles and extracts a tiny charm: a silver turtle with a light pink crystal shell. Holding it in the palm of her hand she shows it to me.

“Here you go.”

It’s oddly perfect, this little turtle charm. Feminine and small, it will serve as a reminder of our drive around the loop, and the apology I meant from the tips of my toes and the depths of my soul.

“I’ll take it,” I tell her.

“Shall I wrap it?”

“Yes, please,” I say. “Is it possible to have it sent to someone in the hotel?”

“But of course!” She smiles at me, her bright red lips as shiny as patent leather and about as appealing. “There are note cards over there. Write whatever you like and put her name on the flip side.”

As she wraps the small token, I grab a card and pen and puzzle over what to write.

I think and think, but in the end, the words come easily.

When I said I was sorry…I meant it.

When you asked if we should stay strangers tomorrow and I said, Sure…I didn’t.

--Q

I write her name on the card, pay for the turtle, and head back to my room. There’s a spring in my step and hope in my heart as I wonder what tomorrow will bring.