Chapter Twelve

Chloe dipped her chicken satay into a small cup of peanut sauce. It was still warm, and right now, this was just what she needed. Nothing else existed. Not the back-to-back meetings she’d just had, procuring investments from local businesses so her organization could continue to function. Not Travis and his continual attempts to get her to see that they were meant to be together. Which they weren’t. Not the guilt when she’d messed up, and Preaw and Sunan’s hut had flooded as a result.

And not Davis, who seemed indifferent to her presence.

On a couple of rare occasions, Chloe had thought she’d felt a connection with him. Something other than just attraction, which was the only reason Travis was interested in her. And the fact that she was the only woman Travis ever consistently spent time with. She knew he had had a lot of flings with women, either volunteers or on his breaks in Bangkok, but he claimed he was ready to commit to one person. Settle down. That was difficult to do when you spent all your time out in the Thai jungles, and the choice of who to settle down with wasn’t hard when there was only one woman in the running.

And Chloe wasn’t about to commit to something like that.

Davis… He was the opposite of Travis. He was attractive, but he didn’t seem to care. He didn’t seem the least interested in anything other than his tools and his family. And don’t get her started on his personality. It ranged from easygoing and adorable to stiff and distant. Oh, and in between was the panicking, puking version. Chloe never knew which Davis she was going to get. Actually, she did. With her, it was usually the panicking and distant side of him. His family got the easygoing version.

Which was what made him so intriguing. If Chloe spent enough time with Davis, could she also unlock that side of him?

Chloe snorted, the thought striking her as funny. Honestly, just getting Davis home in one piece without him having a massive breakdown was going to be a victory in itself. The man was a ticking time bomb.

She smiled as she finished off her satay. Gosh, this stuff was good. When she turned back to the Joneses, Chloe found that they had already finished theirs and were looking in the windows of a dressmaker. There were some beautiful traditional dresses hanging in the window, and the twins were trying to convince Kara to buy one.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Kara was saying, though Chloe could tell she really wanted to. “Where would I wear it? It would just hang in the closet.”

“Wear it whenever you want,” Will said. “You could be the one that everyone calls ‘that crazy lady who wears the beautiful Thai dress wherever she goes.’”

Kara crinkled her nose and stepped back from the window. “Thank you for that, Will. I’ll have to think on it.”

Chloe sure loved this family and was grateful they had invited her to tag along for the week. Volunteers didn’t tend to want to hang out with their boss, and over the past six years, Chloe had spent a lot of time alone.

She glanced at her phone. Time to go. Chloe clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention, then realized that was probably why no one wanted to hang out with her in their downtime. Right now, she wasn’t their boss. She was their friend. And she couldn’t go around clapping her hands and taking roll call.

But now that she had everyone’s attention…

“Since it’s been decided that Kara doesn’t want to become the crazy dress lady, it’s probably time to head to the bus station.” Her gaze scanned across the family, who looked eager to be rid of their bags. “Where’s Davis?”

The rest of his family had apparently not noticed either that he wasn’t with them, and they scanned the street. He wasn’t there, and tension immediately loomed over them. Rick and the twins looked anxious, but Kara almost seemed scared. “Where could he be? That man knows he wouldn’t survive in the city on his own.”

That seemed a bit harsh to describe her grown son like that, especially because Chiang Mai wasn’t nearly as big and busy as a place like Bangkok. “Do you have a cell number for him?” Chloe asked. “Now that we’re in the city, your phones will work.”

Guess Chloe did need to do a roll call.

“Oh, that’s right,” Kara said, immediately searching her purse. “I always forget when we come on break. Takes me two whole days to realize that technology is a thing here.”

And as Kara frantically searched her purse, trying to figure out which pocket her phone was in and swearing she always slipped it into the front left one, Davis strode up. He held three sticks of satay in each hand while precariously balancing the peanut sauce on the side of one of his thumbs.

“You were right,” he said, his mouth already full of chicken. ‘This stuff is amazing. They really should charge more for it. Can you believe I got all this for thirty baht? That’s like a dollar back home.” His gaze settled on Chloe, and the anxiety she’d seen in his expression just moments before had been replaced. Davis was genuinely happy. Because of a satay. “I really should have trusted you.”

She returned his smile. “Yes, you should have.” Chloe tore her gaze from him and yelled, “All right, troops, move out.” She’d be the boss for now and save being a friend for when they had all made it to Chiang Rai.

It was only a block or so to the bus station, and she pulled her ticket from her purse. Chloe saw Kara do the same, but then Kara paused, and her eyebrows dipped low. Chloe had known Kara for a little over a year, and it was enough time to know Kara’s moods. She generally only had one. Happy. Even when she was frustrated with the twins, she would still be smiling as she scolded them. But there was no smile lingering this time.

“What’s up?” Chloe asked, stepping closer.

“I’m not sure. I had Travis purchase our tickets a few days ago, and they were supposed to be for today. All five of them.”

Chloe was afraid she knew where Kara was going with this, and she hoped she was wrong. “Yes, I know. I did the same thing when he came down with the early load of gear for the storage unit. He purchased mine too.” A quick glance at her ticket told Chloe that hers was correct. She was supposed to leave in twenty minutes.

“Davis’s ticket is correct,” Kara said slowly, thumbing through the five that she held. Each had a name printed on it. Reserved seats. Her gaze snapped to Davis. “But the rest of us don’t leave for three days.”

Chloe pulled in a slow breath. It wasn’t the end of the world. They had time to fix this. “No problem. Let’s just ask if we can exchange them.” But even as Chloe said it, she had her doubts. Songkran started the next day, and northern Thailand was a popular place to be for it. It was very possible that they had given Chloe and Davis the last remaining seats on the bus, and the rest of the family was placed on the next available day. Travis’s Thai wasn’t amazing, and there could have been a miscommunication along the way.

Kara looked like she had her doubts as well, but she made a show of walking up to the ticket counter with Chloe and asking. Of course, the woman in the booth kindly told them that they were booked solid for the rest of the week. Which meant that Davis wouldn’t be able to switch his ticket to join his family either.

“So…what do you want to do?” Chloe asked. “I can give you mine if you like, then at least one of you can go up early with Davis, and I could come up in three days with the rest of the family.”

Kara hesitated. “Aren’t the seats reserved? Non-transferable?”

Oh, right.

They’d reserved the nice bus. Any other bus, you hop on and off as you want. No one checked tickets on those. But they’d splurged for the three-hour trip. Padded seats, air conditioning, a movie and a snack. The works. Kara had thought it best with Davis being there.

“I had forgotten,” Chloe said, her words slow as she tried to think of another solution.

Turned out there was no need, though. Kara’s eyes lit up, like she’d just had a brilliant idea. Thank goodness.

“You speak Thai fluently,” Kara said. “You can go up with Davis, show him the sights and help him get around until we arrive.” Kara said it like it was the most obvious thing and she didn’t know why they’d been freaking out in the first place. “Now, if it had been Will who needed to go up and show Davis around for three days, we’d be in trouble.”

Everyone laughed, including Will.

He raised a shoulder, still sporting a grin. “Can’t argue with facts. I still only know two words in Thai. Hello and toilet.”

Everyone burst out laughing again.

Minus two people.

Chloe stared. Her gaze darted to Davis, who looked equally stunned by the proposition. “But…he came all this way to spend time with you, not some random person.”

Kara waved off Chloe’s protests like they were meaningless. “You’re not random. You’re our friend. A mistake was made, and there’s nothing we can do to fix that. Besides, it’s only three days, and there’s no reason he can’t still have a great time.”

Chloe wondered if Davis was going to speak up, make his mother see reason. But he seemed to have been struck silent. His lips moved, but there were no words. And then he turned his attention back to his last chicken satay.

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea for us to leave you behind,” Chloe said, turning back to Kara. The words came out more desperate than she’d intended. “We don’t know how cell service is up there. It’s a pretty small city, and the mountains might cause interference. We wouldn’t be able to reach you.”

Davis moved a few steps to throw his satay sticks in a trashcan and then wiped his hands on a baby wipe he’d pulled from his pocket. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to the conversation, but he was much too focused on his hands to not be.

“What do you think, Davis?” Chloe asked him, hoping that if he voiced his objection, his mother would have no choice but to concede and find a different way—though Chloe had no idea what other option they had. They could get creative, though. When she had first organized Building on Hope, Chloe had learned that there was never just one answer to a problem.

Davis paused, then finished wiping his hands, though the movements had slowed. He threw the baby wipe into the trash before his gaze moved to his mother, then to Chloe, then panned over the rest of his family. It finally returned to Chloe. His gaze met hers. And he smiled. Like an actual one—one that reached his eyes.

“I think it’s a great idea.”

Chloe’s heart stalled, and her ability to speak with it. “W-wha— You do? I mean, I thought…well, you came to be with…but…” Her words trailed off as her thoughts became too jumbled to even attempt to put them into speech. How could Davis think that going off alone together for three days was a good thing?

But hadn’t the idea made her own heart jump in excitement? It had been so brief that she’d barely registered it. But it had been there. Because even though everyone else seemed to treat Davis as if he were a giant man-baby who needed to be coddled, Chloe wasn’t so sure.

And she suddenly felt drawn to him, wanting to know what made him tick. Chloe was surrounded by the same people, day in and day out. Every few months, there were volunteers who would go home, and new ones would arrive to take their places. But it wasn’t the same. She envied Travis, who went to the city to purchase supplies or pick people up from the airport and was able to travel the country when everyone got a break. All Chloe had was business meetings three times a year, rarely being able to use their week off for pleasure.

But this… This was a chance to not be the head of a volunteer organization. She would be able to play the tourist, or the tour guide in this case, and pretend she was normal for a few days. And suddenly the idea that had seemed terrifying just moments before seemed genius.

And the way that Davis actually seemed excited about it—well, Chloe wouldn’t think about what that smile did to her. Because no one’s smile had ever made her stomach flip-flop the way it was now. It meant nothing, of course. She couldn’t allow it to.

“All right,” she said. “I guess we have luggage to load, then.”