Millie focused on the map. “Turn right.”
“Why? What do you see?”
“Right,” she insisted. “Here!”
At the last second, he turned the wheel.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Left at the next light.”
She rattled off directions. A right. Another left. Straight. Jace’s jaw got increasingly tight, but he followed each direction until the car nosed onto Octavia Street.
“I know where we are,” he said suddenly. “This turns into US-101.”
Millie held up the map. “I know.”
“Great job.”
She refused to show the satisfaction his words gave her. “Only doing my part for the team.”
“Yeah, about that…” His words trailed off. “Look, Millie…”
A part of her wanted to avoid confrontation, the way she had during The Groom, but look where that had gotten her.
“Because that’s what we are. A team,” she emphasized the last word. “We’re supposed to work together. That’s the key to success according to the clue.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. Checking for traffic? Or looking at the camera? “It’s just—”
“You want to win.”
“I need to win.”
“So do I, Jace.” She stared out the car window wondering how this was going to work or if it even could. “So do I.”
Sitting in the departure area at SFO, Jace counted the money leftover after buying sandwiches for lunch and an L.A. guidebook at one of the airport shops. Good thing the camera crew paid for their own food. The money provided with each clue didn’t last long. Too bad they hadn’t been allowed to bring their own credit cards with them.
Announcements followed one after another, barely audible over the din of the other passengers. A stream of business people, families and flight crews rode a moving walkway to one of the many gates in the busy Terminal 3.
“I don’t see any of the other teams,” Millie said, sitting next to him.
Jace heard the worry in her voice and put the money into the clue pouch. He felt the need to reassure Millie. So far she’d done everything right. Keeping up with him, finding the car and navigating their trip to the airport. Her abilities surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to be so decisive. So far she’d been the better teammate.
The realization made him angry. With himself.
“They’re here somewhere,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
He could do that himself.
This race meant everything, yet he wasn’t thinking fast enough. He’d made mistakes. Hell, that cab had nearly taken him out when he stepped off the curb. He wouldn’t be doing his part for the team if he wound up in some hospital emergency room. Time to get his act together before they got eliminated.
“But where?” she asked.
As Millie stood, Jace watched her. After they’d purchased tickets for the flight to LAX, she’d disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes and reappeared with her ponytail redone, her lips glossed and no windbreaker. Her T-shirt stretched across her chest. He couldn’t help but appreciate the view.
Lines creased her forehead. “The black team should be at this gate.”
“They might be getting lunch.”
Even with her weight loss, she didn’t look weak or soft. Not with her defined arm muscles and flat abs. He looked away, not wanting the camera to catch him ogling her. She was his teammate, not his plaything.
“Something’s wrong.” She sat, curling the edge of the clue card. “The flight boards in less than ten minutes. The black team should be here as well as whatever team was ahead of them. The next bank of LAX flights don’t leave until one o’clock.”
This was the woman he remembered, the quiet and cautious Millie who had won the hearts of the American television audience with her sweetness and innocence, but if she wasn’t careful she would psyche herself out of the race. He couldn’t afford to let that happen. At least not until he was on top of his game.
“Don’t worry about the other teams,” he said. “We’ve got our boarding passes. That’s all that matters. If they don’t make it to the gate on time, we’ll have almost an hour and a half lead on them.”
“Unless they are in the air.” She tapped her foot against the carpet. “A Frontier flight departed at 10:20 and a United flight took off at 10:56.”
He ran the times in his head. “No one could have gotten here that fast. The black team was only a few minutes ahead of us. Maybe they got stuck in the traffic jam or had car trouble.”
“Maybe.”
He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Probably.”
She looked down at their hands. Jace expected her to pull away from him, but she didn’t so he kept his hand on hers. The bustle, the noise, everything around them seemed to fade. Touching Millie felt so…good. He didn’t want to let go of her.
And then the camera guy moved.
She slipped her hand away.
Regret seeped through him. Not wanting to think about the strange emotions messing with his insides, he opened the guidebook.
“Any ideas where we should go?” Millie asked.
“Not yet.”
“Well, I don’t care if we have to ask every single passenger, we have to know where we are going before we land.”
He stared at her in amazement.
“What?” she asked.
“You look the same. Freckles, green eyes, hair pulled back in a ponytail—”
“Same boring Millie?”
“Not boring. But not the same, either,” he said. “You’ve changed.”
“I’m the same as I’ve always been.”
He shook his head. “There’s a different intensity. A competitiveness I’ve never seen before.”
“You just didn’t look hard enough.”
“Hey, I looked plenty.”
But maybe not hard enough.
Not that it mattered. Choosing Desiree had been the safest choice at the time. For all of them.
Jace reached for the clue card, and Millie let him have it. “Let’s figure this out so we can nap on the flight. Cherry blossoms, irises and apples.”
Millie pursed her full lips. The perfect pucker for kissing. Not that he cared. Or wanted to kiss her. Much.
“What do those three things have in common?” she asked.
“They’re plants.” Good. He needed a task to keep from thinking about Millie. He flipped to the guidebook’s index in the back. “Maybe they want us to go to a farm or nursery.”
“In Los Angeles?”
“Probably not. Flowers and fruit. What about the farmer’s market? That’s a big tourist attraction in L.A.”
Her eyes darkened. “Didn’t you go there on one of your dates with Desiree?”
“Not Desiree, Charlotte.”
He didn’t want to talk about it. Don’t look back. Hadn’t that meant Millie wanted to leave the past behind? Still a secret part of him was flattered