“TURN HERE.” Tracy pointed to Lavaham’s Lane, nearly bursting with excitement when the headlights of Paul’s Lexus picked up the anticipated rectangular green glow of the street sign. The farm and Paul. She couldn’t think of anything better in the entire universe except maybe if her mom were still alive. But since even the power of love couldn’t bring Mom back, Tracy would settle for using that power on the man driving beside her.
It had seemed almost obscene to bring a Lexus out to Oak Ridge. Paul insisted he drive, though, and she had to admit that in the horrendous August heat and humidity, the car had been air-conditioned, leather-upholstered, smooth-riding heaven. Happily, now that night had fallen, the air would cool and a breeze would start whispering through the fields.
“There!” She gestured ahead. “Turn here, the house is at the end of the drive.”
The Lexus bumped and jarred over the rutted lane. The ghostly neat rows of tassled corn showed gray in the moonlight, green in the headlights. Ever since her family had gone into business, her dad only maintained a few acres for experimental plants and his greenhouses. But he couldn’t bear to part with the land that had supported and nurtured them for so many years, land he and her mother had put so much into. So he rented out the fields, to keep the rich soil producing life-sustaining crops.
She glanced over at Paul. Not that she expected him to match her level of excitement at seeing an old farmhouse, but he’d been awfully quiet in the last half hour of the trip, since they’d left the highway. Maybe he was tired from his week and the long drive. Maybe he was preoccupied with the 21st Century campaign. Or maybe he was drawn, as she always was, to the restful rolling landscape, the sense of space and freedom. Maybe it resonated through him the same way it did through her, only now she could add in pride and deep happiness at being able to share it with him.
“There it is!” The familiar welcoming structure rose black against the moonlit sky and she laughed from the sheer joy of that first sighting. Paul slowed the car to a stop in front of the old garage and she tumbled out into the clean, warm night air, the chirp of crickets and rustle of corn, and raced over to the front porch. “Hello, House!”
She turned back to the car and laughed again at her own over-the-top enthusiasm, at the smell of earth, mature plants and summer-evening sweetness.
Paul got out of the car slowly, keeping his headlights on, and grinned at her, hands on his hips, looking sexy, slightly rumpled and slightly awkward and out of place even in jeans and a casual shirt. “You talk to your house?”
She danced toward him, feet crunching the gravel path and threw her arms around his neck. He’d blend into his surroundings in no time. He needed a chance to adjust. “Yes, I talk to my house. I’m a total case. Come on, let’s unload and I’ll show you around.”
She planted a kiss on his mouth and raced to her side of the car, grabbed her tiny battered suitcase and one of the bags of groceries they’d stopped for on the way, then watched impatiently as Paul pulled out his overnight case and laptop, hefted the other bag from the supermarket, turned off the headlights and locked the car.
Tracy gestured him up the path to the front steps of the house, frowning. Mr. Laptop might have to be kidnapped and buried in the garden in the dead of night. She wanted Paul all to herself this weekend. Greedy, maybe, but that’s the selfish kind of chick she was right now. Besides, the farm wasn’t the place to think about any form of capitalism. Advertising, marketing, profits, sales—they didn’t belong here.
But she sure as hell did. And she’d bet her bottom dollar by the end of the weekend Paul would, too.
They climbed the front steps and walked through the screen door of the porch up to the front entrance. Tracy fumbled for her keys and fit the proper one into the lock, hands trembling with anticipation.
The lock stuck as it always did; Tracy shoved with her shoulder and turned the bolt the rest of the way. The door gave way suddenly and swung into the house, revealing the worn plank flooring of the entranceway and the rag rug her mom had made.
“Here we are.” She walked into the still-sweltering stuffy stillness. Breathing the familiar scent rapturously, she led the way to the kitchen, down the short hallway hung with family photos in homemade frames. “We’ll have to open windows to let in the fresh air.”
“There’s no air-conditioning?”
Tracy laughed, hoping she’d imagined the note of dismay in his voice. He’d see. Once the windows were open the house would cool quickly. “Nope. We absolutely live out on the porch in the summer. We even sleep out there. We’ll do that tonight.”
“Oh.” He put his groceries on the counter.
Tracy took the laptop and bag out of his other arm, put them down and wrapped herself around him. “You’ll love it, City Boy, I promise. There are even beds out there. We can push two together and have ourselves a king.”
“Now you’re talking.” He chuckled and she lifted her face and kissed his firm sexy mouth until his body tensed and he pulled her close against him. “Why don’t you show me those beds now?”
She batted her eyelashes with exaggerated innocence. “Don’t you want to see the rest of the house?”
“Of course I want to see the house, but won’t it be that much more spectacular in the morning light?” His hands slid down her hips to rock her against him.
“Mmm. You do have a point.” Tracy closed her eyes. Heat was already spreading through her body and they hadn’t even gotten naked yet. The man had turned her into a ravenous harlot. “Let’s put the groceries away, fast.”
They rummaged hurriedly through the bags for perishable items and put them away in the old, loudly humming refrigerator.
Tracy held up a box that must have slid by her at the supermarket. “Microwave popcorn?”
He blinked. “No microwave?”
She shook her head. “We make popcorn on the stove.”
“I can live with that.”
“Good.” She tossed the box back into the bag and gave him a come-hither look. “I think that’s everything.”
He grinned and took her hand. She led him outside into the welcoming coolness of the porch and around to the north side of the house where the beds stayed out all year, always left with clean linens by the last user. “Here.”
They took off the protective plastic covers, pulled back the nearly threadbare spreads and slid impatiently onto the worn-soft sheets.
“Now this,” Paul stretched out next to her on his side and stroked up under her shirt across her rib cage, “is farm living at its finest.”
Tracy laughed and reached her arms up over her head, let him pull off her shirt and unhook her bra, her body thrumming in anticipation, her heart singing a similar tune. Paul here at the farm. She couldn’t get over how perfect it was. How complete.
He kissed her mouth, her neck, down her shoulder and pulled back. Tracy held her breath, then arched up with a soft cry when his mouth found her breast in the moonlit darkness, when his warm tongue circled her nipple, circled then pulled in quick bursts of suckling.
He was making her hot, crazy, making her body feel sexy and worshipped. She’d climax easily again with him, and end up feeling sated, loved, spent.
She wanted to do that for him.
“Paul.” She gently moved his head from her breast.
“You don’t like that?”
She laughed. “Um. No, that’s not exactly it.”
“What, then.” He moved up next to her, kissed her temple, her cheek, slid his hand down and unbuttoned her shorts, his breathing slow and heavy.
She aroused him. He would get pleasure from their lovemaking, no question. But she wanted more; she wanted to show him the kind of woman she could be. The kind of woman she was here at her family’s house. Confident, in control. So happy.
And frankly, she wouldn’t mind seeing him go completely out of his mind with pleasure, either. He’d already gotten that opportunity twice with her.
She stopped his hand burrowing under the waistband of her shorts. “Let me.”
“Let you what?”
“Do what you were going to do.”
“You’re going to touch yourself?” His voice came out in an awed and slightly hopeful whisper.
She hadn’t been planning to. She was just going to undress herself in front of him. But…”Would you like me to?”
“Oh, Tracy.”
His voice said it all, deep and husky and practically grateful, producing an immediate rush of excitement, a thrilling vision of her female potential.
She got up onto her knees; he lay back, his features silver in the moonlight spilling onto the bed.
She’d never taken the lead like this. But for some reason she had every confidence she could; every confidence that she could bring him to the brink of yelling out his frustration and eagerness for her and for his release. She’d never felt anything like this potency, this sense of herself as a sexual being. As if something inside her that had only been peeking at freedom before suddenly found the strength to bend back the bars of whatever cage it had been hiding in and bust loose.
This house, this farm was so good for her. Why had she ever left?
“Watch me,” she whispered, and spread her knees so her shorts stayed trapped halfway down her thighs, so the zipper parted and strained, so her panties were visible in the vee opening.
She stroked her stomach, drew her hands up to cup her own breasts, then slid them down again just to the top of her panties. “Are you watching?”
“Yes.” His voice came out hoarse and breathless in the semidarkness. “I’m watching.”
Her fingers slid across the top of the elastic, then dipped under until she felt her own curls, her own moisture.
His breath shot in and rushed out on a brief moan. “I can’t see. Show me.”
She pushed her knees together until her shorts fell to the bed, then slid her panties down so her sex was exposed to the cool night air coming in through the screen, so the glint of moonlight shone on the curling hair between her legs.
And she touched herself. Lightly at first, hesitantly, then bolder and more directly as she relaxed, and allowed herself the pleasure it brought, rolling her head, undulating her body, watching Paul’s increasing torture with a strange combination of tenderness and fierce satisfaction.
“I can’t take this.” He sat up and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Let me.” She shed her shorts and panties, as impatient for him as he was for her, pushed him back on the bed, undid his shirt and helped him pull it off. She felt alight, alive, beyond aroused. Powerful and free. She unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, put her face to the vee and pressed her cheek against the hot bulging cotton of his briefs.
“Tracy, you’re going to kill me.”
She smiled and kissed up the length of his erection, reaching around his hips to lower his jeans. He was ready, waiting, straining with anticipation. She made him wait, kissing lightly, teasing with flicks of her tongue before she brought him into her mouth firmly, enhancing the rhythm with her fingers, letting her body join in the motion.
One minute, maybe two and he reached down, hauled her up beside him and fumbled in his jeans for a condom. Thirty seconds and he was ready, pulling her down. She resisted.
“This is my show.” She pushed him back on the bed and straddled him, lifted and took him inside her, gasping at the contact, at the sheer potency of their joining. The night air caressed them as she rocked over him, slowly, letting them both savor the rhythm and the pressure.
She wanted their lovemaking to show how right they were together here, how deeply she wanted to share this bond and this place with him forever. Out here on the porch she’d slept in every summer of her life, where she’d been read to by her parents, lost her first tooth, had her first kiss. Now she could add more memories, sexy grown-up woman memories, to this place that had so cherished her.
He lifted his hips into her, slid his hands up her thighs and increased her pleasure with his fingers until she felt the inevitable pull begin. She rocked faster and gave herself over, to him, to her climax, dimly aware in the burst of sensations that he’d grabbed her hips and thrust hard up into her until he echoed her sounds of pleasure.
She slumped down onto Paul’s warm, welcoming chest; he clasped her against him, their bodies still pulsing occasionally as they came down into peace. And love. Lord, she loved him.
Here at the farm with Paul in her arms and in her body, she had everything she’d ever wanted.
TRACY GRADUALLY came to consciousness, warm and deliciously relaxed, aware of the sun already up and heating the morning air. She burrowed closer to the male body next to her, frowned, and lifted her head.
Paul was staring up at the ceiling. When she moved, he turned stiffly and smiled. “Sleep well?”
“Like a log. You?”
He grimaced. “Not quite a log. Maybe a twig.”
She struggled up onto her elbows. “Weren’t you comfortable?”
“Yes, I was comfortable. And so were approximately twenty mosquitoes, two flies and that.” He pointed to the corner of the porch.
Tracy sat up and caught sight of a rabbit just disappearing through a sizeable hole in the screen.
“I think he was doing the bunny hop all night with his pals.” He sounded distinctly grumpy.
She leaned over and kissed his chest and cheek, wincing at the red marks of mosquito bites on his neck and shoulders. “I’ll get us some breakfast. About a gallon of coffee okay?”
“That’ll do for a start.” He yawned and tousled her curls, pulled her down on top of him and ran his hands over her body. “You’ll do for a start.”
Forty-five minutes later, Tracy stumbled into the kitchen, flushed and smiling. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out breakfast items, wondering if life could possibly get any better.
“Mmm. Bacon and eggs.” Paul came into the kitchen and put his arms around her, cradling her against his body, rocking her back and forth. “Mind if I shower first?”
“Bathe.”
“Bathe? Is that farm talk for shower?”
“We don’t have a shower. You have to take a bath.”
She twisted in his arms and smiled up at his incredulous face. “You know, stop the drain, run the water, get in and wash…”
He squeezed her and let go. “I just haven’t taken one since I was a kid.”
“Very relaxing. And don’t be surprised at the noise the hot water pipes make. Sort of a screech and then some banging. And the water will probably be brown at first, so let it run for a while.”
“Okay. Screech. Bang. Brown water. Sounds terrific.”
Tracy laughed. “You’ll love it.”
She arranged plates and utensils on a tray and set the old wooden picnic table out on the porch, giggling when horrendous noises announced that Paul had started his bath. He was probably freaking even though she’d warned him.
Back in the kitchen, she laid the strips of bacon in an iron pan and turned on the stove to get it started heating. The house definitely had its own eccentric personality, like a cherished, slightly senile great-grandmother who’d been alive forever and everyone adored. Paul would get used to it.
The bacon started spitting; she turned the heat down, put in the toast, set the oven timer, since the toaster had long since stopped popping the toast at the appropriate time, and on impulse ran outside to cut some daisies for the table from the garden her mom had planted so many years ago now. She lingered for a short while among the flowers, absorbing the fresh early morning scent, lifting her face to the pure country sunshine.
Nowhere did she feel so content, so whole, so at peace with who she was. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the world. And it was hers.
The toast. Clutching the daisies, she raced back into the house and saw Paul, naked and wet, barreling into the kitchen at the same time she registered the hoarse croaking scream of the kitchen timer and the smell of burning.
Damn.
She rushed in after him, threw the daisies on a counter.
“Ow!” Paul jerked his hand back from the smoking toaster. “How do you get the toast to pop up?” He had to shout over the screech of the timer.
“Unplug it,” she shouted back, and headed for the timer, wrestling with it for several seconds before she managed to turn it off.
“The bacon.” She sprang to the stove, grabbed the handle and yelled.
Paul lunged toward her, shoved her hand under the faucet, turned on cold water and grabbed a kitchen towel to protect his own hands. He took the pan off the stove, turned the strips of bacon, which only had a few blackened spots, put the pan back on the stove and took a deep, deep breath.
“Tracy.”
“Yes?” Tracy examined the red stripe on her hand and put it back under the water.
“Why don’t you have a pan with a safety handle?”
“Well, I don’t know. We’ve had this one forever. Iron is an excellent—”
“How long have you had that toaster?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. Forever, too, I suppose.”
“It doesn’t pop the toast up on its own?”
“No. That’s why I set the timer. But I should tell you, in case you ever need to do the same, that you have to set this timer two minutes longer than you want, because—”
“Tracy.” He came forward and gripped her shoulders. “May I ask the obvious question?”
She frowned. “What’s the obvious question?”
“If your toaster and your timer don’t work, why don’t you buy new ones?”
“They work fine.” She shrugged. What was he getting so upset about? “If I hadn’t left to cut flowers we would have had perfect toast.”
“Okay.” He nodded, though she had a feeling he was far from accepting her answer. “Okay. I’m going to get dressed.”
“Great. Though I like you fine in the raw.” She smiled and got on her tiptoes for a kiss, pressing her body against his. Maybe he woke up cranky every morning. A lot of people did. She could live with that.
She scrambled the eggs and scraped the burned parts off the toast, managed to get the second side of the bacon perfect, put the daisies in a vase and carried everything out onto the porch.
Paul found her a minute later and they sat and ate, crunching loudly on the salvaged toast. A breeze brought them summer morning scents through the screen; butterflies darted among the flowers in the garden; birds chatted and argued overhead in the oak tree nearest the house.
Tracy finished and pushed back her plate, stretched her legs carefully along the bench so as not to get splinters, and leaned her chin on her hands, staring dreamily out at the fields of corn in the distance.
“Isn’t this fabulous?”
“It’s really great, Tracy.” He shifted a few times as if he couldn’t quite get comfortable, and winced.
“Splinter?”
He sighed, reached down and came up with a tiny sliver of wood. “Yup.”
“Sorry. We’ve had this bench—”
“Forever, I know.” He smiled and touched her cheek, but something stayed serious in his eyes. “So what were you planning to do this morning?”
“I’m planning to sit out on this porch all morning and do nothing.”
“Sounds perfect.” He stood and moved carefully away from the bench. “I’ll get my laptop.”
“Your laptop.” Her stomach sank. High-tech was obscenely out of place in this idyllic, natural, old-as-the-hills setting, especially on their first weekend away together. Couldn’t he see that?
“What.” He stopped on his way into the house, hands on his hips. “You don’t want me to work?”
“I thought…we could just sit together and watch the morning.”
“Oh.” He nodded as if he was trying to show that watching the morning had been a close second on his list of things to do. “Well, that sounds terrific. So I’ll just sit here—” He plunked his large body into the porch swing before she could warn him about the fraying rope. “—and watch.”
He said the last word from the floor. He did not sound happy. Tracy rushed over and helped him up. “I’m sorry. The second I saw you headed there I started to warn you, but it was too late.”
“It’s okay.” Paul dusted himself off with sharp, jerky movements. “You know, I’m not really a sit-and-watch-the-morning kind of guy, Tracy. But I would really love to get to a fax machine. So if you could give me directions, I will go there and fax what I need to fax and you can sit and watch the morning. Okay?”
She nodded and gave him directions. She didn’t blame him for being annoyed. Mosquitoes, burned toast, splinters and crashing to the floor didn’t really put you in the mindset to sit and watch the morning. But she could do that while he was gone.
Except the minute Paul left, she had about zero interest in the morning. A strange restlessness invaded her. Almost as if she’d rather have gone with him, on dusty bumpy roads, to some crowded cement and steel building.
As if.
She went into the kitchen, wrinkled her nose at the burned smell and struggled for five minutes trying to open the window. Damn thing always stuck in the summer. She gave up, turned on the kitchen fan instead and started washing up, scrubbing the stuck bacon off the iron pan. Great. Now it would probably have to be reseasoned—oiled then heated in the oven, which needed careful watching since it didn’t maintain a constant temperature.
In very little time, her do-nothing morning had changed into a work-hard morning. Seemed everywhere she looked something needed mending or cleaning. She really needed to spend more time here, to keep the place in shape. Strangely, her mood had also changed from cheerful and relaxed, to crabby and tense.
At the sound of Paul’s car, her heart leaped back up into “happy” territory. She threw down her scrubbing brush and ran outside to greet him. He was just pulling a huge bag out of his back seat.
“What’s this?” She lifted her face for a kiss and stared at the bag.
“I’ll show you.” He swung the bag over his shoulder like Santa Claus, brought it into the house and crouched next to it.
“This…” He grinned mysteriously and pulled out a box. “…is a toaster. It runs on a computer chip that senses the moisture level in the bread and when it’s done exactly right, guess what? It pops it up.”
“Paul…” Her stomach sank. He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the magic of the farm.
“This…” he pulled out a colorful plastic item. “…is a kitchen timer. The amazing thing about this kitchen timer is that whatever number of minutes you set it to, that’s how many it counts off!”
“Paul, I don’t think—”
“The non-hand-searing cookware.” He brought out a stack of different-sized, nonstick pans. “For my popcorn, a microwave. And coming this afternoon, a window unit air conditioner, because if it’s all the same to you, I would rather not sleep out in the jungle again.”
She shook her head, an eerie buzzing in her ears, her breath high and shallow. “I can’t believe you got all this stuff.”
“Why?” He gave her a strange look. As if he already knew, but wanted to hear it from her.
“Because this house is—”
“A museum.”
“What?”
“It’s a museum, Tracy. A shrine to deprivation. I have news for you—deprivation is not worthy of worship.”
She stared at him incredulously. This was ten times worse than she thought. To him everything was about ease and luxury and comfort. About throwing money at whatever bothered you to make it go away. “How can you say that, knowing how special this place is to me?”
“Because it’s true. You glorify things that are uncomfortable and inconvenient for absolutely no reason except that it comfortably and conveniently means you don’t have to accept your new life or actually live it.”
She cringed away from him. How could he have pretended all this time that things were wonderful between them when he was thinking all those horrible hurtful things about her? “You think I’m scared of living?”
“Yes.” He got up from his crouch and took her shoulders. “I do. Because I see it in your eyes all the time, the sadness and the fear.”
“No, you don’t understand. That sadness is because I was taken out of the life I loved and pushed against my will into this new one. I don’t fit the new one, Paul. I was happy when I lived here. I’m not happy now.”
“You aren’t letting yourself be happy.”
Tracy squelched a shout of aggravation. This again? Didn’t anyone understand? What was it about her devotion to the farm that threatened people? “Spare me the melodrama! You sound just like my friends.”
“Didn’t you say friends can have a better perspective on yourself than you do? Well, they’re right.” He made a huge gesture of frustration. “It’s like you’re determined not to be happy. You close yourself off to new experiences, don’t even realize how lucky you are to have them available to you. You spend all your time pining for something that’s gone.”
She bristled, tried to swallow. Her face felt pinched, as if her skin had shrunk. “The house isn’t gone.”
“No.” He sighed. “But the life you lived here is.”
She stared at him, pushing back the panic and the angry tears threatening to spring into her eyes. She wasn’t going to show him how much he hurt her. “You hate it here because there isn’t a designer label on everything.”
“Tracy, I don’t hate it here.” He put his hands to his temples and let them drop so they slapped against his thighs. “I just want to be comfortable.”
“Oh? What’s next on your list of comfortable, a swimming pool and Jacuzzi? Sauna and weight room?” She threw open her arms, anger and hurt making her lash out before she had a chance to process what she was saying. “Better yet, raze the damn albatross and build something with three stories and ten bedrooms, television in every room, wet bars and—”
“Shut up, Tracy. That’s not what I meant.”
“I think it is.” Her voice shook; she folded her arms across her chest to keep them from shaking, too. “You’re the one who’s scared. You’re so scared of your own past you wouldn’t even eat a freaking hamburger.”
“You’re right.” He nodded, his voice gentler now. “I was. You helped me see that, and I am genuinely and humbly grateful to you and I always will be. But what is really crucial for you and I if we’re going to be together, and what I’m not getting from you now, is that you’re trying to come to terms with changes in your life, too.”
She gritted her teeth. He was talking to her as if she were a stupid child who had no grasp of the world outside. “I have come to terms with my new life. Rejecting certain aspects was a conscious decision, not some kind of denial.”
“Don’t shut me out, Tracy.” His voice grew softer, more gentle, as if the angrier and more hysterical she got, the more damn controlled and sweet he became. “Try to hear what I’m saying.”
“I hear you. Loud and clear. My family’s house isn’t good enough for your exalted taste, and no matter how much I love it the way it is, it therefore needs changing. Apparently the same applies to me. Well, you can call off your air-conditioning invasion because I’m sleeping on the porch tonight. If you don’t want to join me you are free to go back to Milwaukee and enjoy the rest of your weekend in air-conditioned, pampered, utterly soulless comfort. I can take a bus back to the city when I’m ready to face it.”
Her body trembled, her voice came out high and thin; she had a surreal feeling that this wasn’t really happening, that she hadn’t really said what she’d said, that the ugly moods and words would vanish into the peace and sunshine reality of the house and garden like the unpleasant mirage they were.
Except they didn’t.
Instead, Paul narrowed his eyes. “That’s what you want?”
She swallowed, anger rushing out of her and leaving dismal weariness in its place. “No. But I don’t see any alternative.”
“That’s what I mean.” He stepped closer and looked at her with such noble sadness in his eyes she wanted to slug him. “Your life is so full of alternatives, waiting to be explored, and you’re not letting yourself see any of them. You want me to go? I’ll go. But it’s a waste. A damn waste.”
He went back into the house, probably to retrieve his things. To leave. Tracy gave in to one sob, one set of tears and clenched the rest back. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone easy and natural and comfortable wherever he went? Someone who’d accept her, not try to change her? Someone who’d recognize the farm’s quirky beauty for what it was, and love it at first sight, with the same passion she did?
Paul came back out onto the porch, holding his laptop and stuffing a few last toiletries into his bag.
“What we have is too good to let go this easily, Tracy.” He leaned forward and kissed her fiercely. “You have my number. Call me when you’re ready.”
“Ready to be what you want me to be?”
“Ready to accept that your life has changed. Ready to change with it.”
He banged through the porch screen and down the steps, strode to his car and hurled his bag into the back seat.
She wrapped her arms around herself, frustration rising and sticking in her throat. This couldn’t be happening. Not when everything was supposed to be so perfect this weekend. Instead of accepting and learning, he’d taken her and her beautiful house on as if they were renovation projects that needed to be upgraded.
Well, maybe it was just as well he was leaving. How far could they go together when their needs were so different? They’d fight and debate from the moment they woke up to the moment they went to bed. Great sex wasn’t enough. Love wasn’t even enough.
The Lexus motor started, revved. Paul turned the car around, stopped, and opened his window. “Tracy.”
She walked to the edge of the porch and peered dully through the screen. “Yes?”
“Don’t take the bus back to Milwaukee. Rent a car. A luxury one.” He waved and started slowly down the driveway, leaning out the window with a sudden mischievous grin. “I dare you.”