Page 21 of The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth

Rolling her eyes, she put the phone in her bag. Nope. Maybe she wouldn’t answer him at all for the entire trip. How freeing would that be?

Very. But she knew she wouldn’t stick to it. He deserved her attention when it came to the kids.

“Bad news?”

“Did I sigh? Just an annoying ex.”

He smoothly joined traffic on a busy throughway. “Block him. Or her.”

“My ex-husband. He’s in charge of my kids while I’m gone, so that’s not all that workable.”

“There’s always email,” he said mildly.

Veronica nodded, but she knew she wouldn’t tell him to email her. What if there was an emergency?

Watching traffic whiz by, she realized she felt ever so slightly nauseated at the way the cars moved on the opposite side of the road than she was used to, and took a breath, and looked away, focusing on his hands on the steering wheel. A thick scar ribboned from his little finger around his wrist.

“I almost lost my hand,” he said, noticing. He lifted his pinky.

“Let me guess. You were lost in the jungle and ran into a bandit with a machete?”

He let go of a small, low chuckle. “No.”

“Axe?”

“Fell out of the back of a truck.”

Veronica tsked. “That isnota very good story.”

He glanced at her. “Maybe you could help me make one up.”

She looked back. Was he flirting a little bit? She’d been so lost in her head that she’d kind of forgotten what that might be like.

Maybe she’d been flirting first. “I bet I could come up with something good.”

“Writer?”

“No. A reader.”

“Yeah? Me, too. What do you like?”

“Everything, honestly,” she said. “Nothing too gruesome in mysteries or horror, but most of the rest. Fiction, though, almost completely. Do you read novels?”

“Sure. I also read a lot of history.” He pointed to a thick paperback in the well between the seats. “That’s my current.”

She pulled it out curiously. The pages were worn, and a rubber band held it together.A History of the Mughal Empire.“Not sure I know who the Mughals are,” she said. “I’m thinking ... Genghis Khan?”

He glanced at her. “Not bad. He was one of the originals, though they don’t really like to claim him. He was a bit of a monster.”

“I’ll have to check this out,” she said.

“Especially for the India leg of the trip.”

“Thanks.”

They left the highway and wound through busy streets, past a long park and rows of tall apartments, and slowed on a street full of shops that served quick food and offered phones, other minor tech products, and cheap clothes. It reminded her of the area near the main campus in Boulder. “Is there a university nearby?”

“Not sure. The British Museum is around the corner, but I don’t really know the neighborhood otherwise.”