“Of course not. I was just…getting the door for you.”
“Right.”
She hurried to the other side of the car, face hot, while he sat in the passenger seat. Without so much as a glance at her traveling companion, she slid behind the wheel and slammed the door closed.
Giving the gearshift a wiggle to make sure it was in neutral, she pushed in the clutch and turned the key. The car hummed to life. She eased her foot off the clutch, shifted into first. The car shuddered and stalled.
Shit. Reece snorted beside her and a fresh wave of heat prickled her face. She’d blushed so many times in the past fifteen minutes he probably thought her natural skin tone was blotchy-red. “It’s been a while since I last drove a stick shift.”
Actually, the last time she’d driven a manual transmission she’d been seventeen and her boyfriend, Jamie Carver, had offered to teach her on his mother’s Ford Escort. After twenty minutes of grinding gears and the acrid stink of burning clutch, Jamie had ended the lesson.
She tried again and stalled shifting into first. Reece sighed loudly, tilted his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose.
When she’d been making arrangements for her trip to Wales, it hadn’t occurred to her to specify automatic transmission when she reserved her rental, and naturally only standards were available when she arrived. One more detail she’d missed on an ever-growing list. Once she got the car moving, she was fine, but getting it going took her a couple of tries. And the sneering man next to her wasn’t helping.
“Look,” she ground out. “This car is completely backward to me. So if you could cut me a break, and keep your mouth shut, I’d really appreciate it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to,” she muttered, and turned the key.
She gripped the gearshift, eased up on the clutch.
“Wait.” Reece covered her hand with his, sandwiching her palm between the gearshift and his warm, callused skin. A small charge shot up her arm, and she struggled not to yank her hand back.
“Shift first.” He pushed her hand into gear. “Give it some gas, then let off the clutch slowly, and when you feel the catch…There, feel it? Let out the clutch.”
Nodding, she did as instructed. The car rolled forward, and she turned out of the parking lot onto the road.
“Thanks.” The word stuck on her tongue.
He shrugged, attention fixed on the passing scenery through the glass. “I hoped to make it back to the house before morning.”
Zinged again. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and focused on the road, determined to ignore him.
He shifted in his seat and dug an orange plastic pill vial from his pocket. After popping the lid, he shook two capsules into his hand and tossed them back, dry swallowing them.
“What were those?” The way her day was going, he was probably some pill-popping drug addict.
“Migraine,” he muttered, without looking at her as he slipped the bottle back into his pocket. The prescription label had been peeled off the vial, so what he’d taken was anyone’s guess.
How had she let herself get talked into this? She released a slow breath and focused on the road before her.
Fat snowflakes mingled with sleet pellets swept through the beams of her headlights like a moving wall. The clunk and swoosh of the windshield wipers the only noise in the otherwise silent car.
“Is the house far from here?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
Her stomach knotted. Fifteen minutes and she’d be meeting a family she hadn’t even known existed a week ago. She nipped at her bottom lip. A thousand questions churned inside her head. Why had her sister and father waited so long to contact her? Why had her grandparents lied to her all her life? And what had her mother been so afraid of in her letters?
She glanced at Reece again. His attention remained focused on the fields and trees through the window—little more than dark silhouettes against the rapidly darkening sky. Absently, he pushed his shaggy hair away from his face, exposing his profile. Despite the dangerous edge to his appearance, his features were interesting, attractive. High, broad forehead, straight nose, sharp ridge of cheekbone beneath chilly sea-blue eyes. Though right then his gaze didn’t look nearly as cold as it did in the pub. Instead, he appeared far away, lost in thought.
He didn’t look like any groundskeeper she knew—though, to be fair, she didn’t know any besides him. Still, weren’t groundskeepers old with wild hair, gnarled hands and weather-wrinkled skin?
As if sensing her stare, Reece sighed. “What?”
She turned back to the road. “How old are you?”
He frowned and finally glanced her way. “Why?”
“You don’t look like a groundskeeper.”
“I don’t?” He smirked.
“No. What did you do before you worked here?”
“Lots of things.” He tilted his head to one side and jutted out his chin. “What do you do?”
Evasion, surprise, surprise. “I’m an accountant at a holdings company.”
He snorted. “Figures.”
She probably didn’t want him to explain what he meant by that. “You never answered my questions.”
He pressed his lips together, but the corners of his mouth lifted as though he was struggling not to smile. “Maybe because you ask so bloody many.”
“I asked you two.”
He sighed loudly. “Fine. I’m thirty-one.”
“And what did you do before becoming a groundskeeper?”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. Brynn glanced away from the road to look at him. All traces of humor gone, his expression had turned dark. “You don’t want to know.”
“Oookay.” She turned her attention back to the rain-smeared windshield, silence settling between them once more. As the turn drew near, she let up off the gas and flipped the signal.
“That’s the wrong road.” The low tenor of Reece’s voice cut through the quiet. “You want the next one.”
“But the directions say…” She didn’t bother even attempting to pronounce the name. With twelve letters, six of them vowels, she’d butcher it for sure.
“The directions say Choedwig Basio, that’s Choedwig Ochra.” The Welsh words sounded lyrical and pleasant despite his harsh tone. “Had you taken the time to read the words, you might have found your way on your own.”
And not wound up trapped in a car with him. The man had a point.
“Tell me something,” she said. “Is it me specifically, or are you this pleasant with everyone?”
Ignoring her question, he nodded at the stone wall running alongside the road. “The gate posts are just ahead.”
She slowed the car and steered between two stone pillars on either side of a narrow dirt driveway. A tangle of leafless trees closed in around the car, skeletal branches scraping the sides and roof like bony fingers. The dull screech set her teeth on edge.
The trees to her right fell away abruptly and the ground dropped to a steep slope. Ocean, the same twilight blue as the sky, stretched out deep and infinite.
Her stomach fell like a stone off a cliff. Icy sweat sprang to her skin. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. Her gaze stayed fixed on the terrifying expanse of water, and every muscle in her body seized. She couldn’t breathe.