It was how my father lived, but with an entirely different agenda. It was how I lived, because of the life I’d been born into, but it didn’t come naturally to me. I wanted to keep something. Watching Sam had made me sad then—for myself. For what I’d never had.
Watching him now made me sad for him. Or humanity in general, I didn’t know.
I suspected it had a little to do with why I hadn’t shoved his head off my collarbone two hours ago. And I would be lying if I denied the heat between us, or the fact that touching him was like a drug I had no desire to quit cold turkey. It had taken every last ounce of self-restraint not to lean up and kiss him in the hotel room.
It had been over thirty hours since we left Australia, and I had never missed my father’s arsenal of private jets more in my life. We’d stopped in China and Holland, which didn’t seem like it could possibly be the fastest route to Austria. If I didn’t get my feet on solid ground for more than a couple of hours I was going to flip out—it would have been easier to take the sleeping pills Sam had offered, but one of us had to be sober to make sure we made our connecting flights. He’d popped them every few hours and slept more than he’d been awake.
Lucky bastard.
Hopefully whatever had freaked him out about being awake on the plane wouldn’t be an issue in a car, because the drive from Vienna to Jesenice would be at least three hours and I had exhausted my supply of caffeine pills. Sleep was becoming an inevitability.
The pilot announced that we would be touching down in about twenty minutes. I elbowed Sam, not gently, disproportionately pleased at his pained grunt.
He sat up slowly, squinting out the window and self-consciously wiping the corners of his mouth. “Where are we?”
My fingers itched to check my chest and shoulder for drool, but I ignored them. “We’re landing in Vienna. Are you going to be okay to drive?”
“To Slovenia?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t your dad’s vast network of spies be able to see us if we rent a car?” He yawned, unaware of how badly he made me want to slap him and kiss him with equal fervor, then peeked at me out of the corner of his eye.
Maybe not so unaware.
He seemed to think me paranoid, to assume my estimation of my dad’s omniscient nature higher than the reality. In truth, I wasn’t positive how closely Neil monitored his marks—or me, for that matter. It didn’t really matter. We weren’t going anywhere near my dad. All of the stops I had planned hadn’t been utilized since before my mother died, as far as I knew. The crazier the trek, the more uncomfortable the travel, the faster Sam would wear down and cough up the signatures I needed.
He would go back to his life a few million lighter and I would go . . . wherever I went.
I hesitated to answer his question about the rental car, unwilling to argue with him or to let him farther into my secret life. He was along for the ride now, though, and there would be consequences to pay at the end of this sham partnership. Those couldn’t be helped.
It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t notice committing a felony.
“We’re not going to rent a car,” I whispered. “We’re going to . . . borrow one.”
“Borrow one?” His golden brown eyebrows shot up. “You have a friend in Vienna?”
“Not exactly. Why, do you?” Borrowing a car from a friend would be preferable to boosting one, even if I did plan to give it back.
“No.” Sam gave me a strange look, his typically soft brown eyes sharp and probing. “What does not exactly mean?”
The woman sitting on the aisle, who hadn’t slept a wink but had recognized Sam the moment we sat down, shifted. Her head tilted toward us, and her constant and obvious eavesdropping made me wonder if I should have said yes to his cheeky suggestion of a disguise.
“Can we talk about this once we have more privacy?”
He shrugged, unbuckling his seat belt and grabbing his bag from under the seat as the wheels touched down in Austria. I followed suit and the two of us disembarked with a couple hundred other passengers who looked as tired as I felt. Sam, for his part, appeared way too perky and refreshed for someone who had slept half bent over on a plane. The woman who had been sitting next to us grabbed him at the top of the Jetway.
“Could I have an autograph? It’s for my daughter. She’s a big fan.”
The spiderweb of lines around her eyes and lips put her in her fifties, probably, and I supposed her dark brown, brittle hair came courtesy of a box and a drugstore. She had been pretty once, though, and the smile she turned on Sam dropped years from her face.
“I don’t believe you could possibly have a daughter old enough to watch tennis.” He rummaged around in his pack and came up with a tennis ball, then signed it with a wink. “There you go.”