Free Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance by Lucy Lambert Page B

from the Jeep just in time to see him disappear behind some bushes.
    "Wait, wait," I said, moving as fast as I could through the scrub and underbrush, holding my arms up to keep the lower branches from whipping me in the face.
    I caught up to him, my shoulders heaving. It took more effort than I thought to get through all this. I managed to wipe the perspiration from my upper lip before he glanced back at me.
    "Walk where I do and you won't get into any trouble."
    "I know how to walk," I said. I did watch where his feet went, though, and tried to put mine near the same spots. He seemed to know where all the hidden roots waited to snag at your ankle, where the ground looked solid because of the decades’ worth of fallen leaves but which actually were mushy pits.
    He even held some branches out of the way for me.
    "Is it because you don't know how to do it?" he said.
    Driving stick , I realized. "Who said I couldn't?"
    "No one. But you can't, can you?"
    I stepped under the branches he lifted and then waited for him to resume leading the way. "No," I replied, seeing no point in lying about it.
    He started off again, stepping over some thick brown roots that seemed to writhe from the ground, twisted and gnarled like arthritis-ravaged fingers. He offered his hand to help me over, but I waved him off and negotiated it myself, feeling a touch proud that I didn't fall on my butt.
    "I could show you how. It takes some practice, but once you've got the basics, you're golden."
    "I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
    "Yes, I would. And I think you would, too. You know what? Maybe it wasn't that I know how and you don't. Or not only that, anyway. Maybe it's that I did it well. I did something that seems so complex and difficult so effortlessly. Maybe it makes you wonder what else I can do. If maybe I can control other things and situations, too."
    The forest heated up around me, then. Or maybe it was me doing the heating. Either way, my skin flushed. I moved into a pool of shade to try and hide it. "Uh, definitely not that one."
    Our solitude struck me again. Just the two of us in the middle of nowhere. Him talking about how good a driver he was, how well he could handle himself. Me wondering if certain articles of clothes might burst into flame.
    This was dangerous. Explosive, even. I needed to get a handle on things.
    I tried bringing the fire hose to bear on the situation. "Since you seem so willing to share things about yourself, why don't you tell me something I don't know about you?"
    We walked through a small meadow, the sunlight a welcome change from the shade of the canopy. On the other side of it, a startled squirrel scampered up an elm in a scrabble of claws.
    "I'm not exactly an open book, but what do you want to know?" he said.
    "Let's start with the basics. Where did you grow up?" Owen didn't have any hint of an accent that I could detect. He would have a great career as a news anchor if the billionaire CEO thing fell through.
    "Here and there," he said, pausing while he considered the best way over the fallen hulk of a log lying across our path.
    "Oh, you mean Here, Missouri, and There, Michigan, right? I've been to those places. Great libraries. Drop the mystery stuff for once."
    It was my turn to get over the log. This one was much wider than the last one. I doubted even Owen could get his arms all the way around it. So I accepted his hand, but hopped down without his help, jerking my hand out of his before I thought too much about how it felt against my palm.
    "My dad was in the army. We moved around quite a bit. The places we stayed in the longest were Fort Hamilton here in New York and Fort Benning in Georgia."
    I considered all that for a while. Wondered what it might have been like, moving around all the time. Spending maybe a year or two in one place. Three or four in another if you were lucky.
    Depending on your personality as a child, I suppose it would either have been an adventure or a great misfortune. And so