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smiled sweetly at me, his eyes crinkling around the edges. “You know how it feels.”
    “Yeah, I do.”
    We were both quiet for a while, finishing our meals and sipping our beers. Finally, I asked, “What happened to your father?”
    “Rollover. Came into a turn too hard and fast and the truck flipped several times. The roll cage collapsed under the pressure and both he and his co-driver were killed.”
    I gasped. “Ky, I’m so sorry. How horrific. My father got cancer and we had months to prepare for the inevitable. You had seconds. I can’t even imagine—”
    “It’s just as bad to have months as it is to have seconds, Giselle. Losing a parent no matter the circumstance is difficult. But it sounds as though you and your mom are still well connected with each other.”
    “We are. What about you and your mother?”
    He shook his head, then took a long pull from his beer, draining it. “She always said racing would be the death of him. Proven right, she packed up and moved to Hawaii. She didn’t want to be anywhere near our home in Texas or the racing world. I don’t blame her. She was devastated. We all were. But instead of running from the tragedy, I stepped up my research on a carbon fiber mix that’s helped me build a more substantial and nearly indestructible roll cage for Trophy Trucks. For any off-road racing vehicle, actually.”
    “That’s incredible,” I told him, in awe of his ingenuity and drive. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five or six, but he had a sophisticated and mature air about him.
    “Problem is,” he said, looking modest despite the safer innovation he brought to a very dangerous sport, “the compound is expensive to manufacture, so I’m having trouble replicating it for a reasonable cost that doesn’t break a race team’s budget. I’m still working on it, though. And advocating the racing organizations deem it a regulation component once I get the cost under control.”
    “That’s very impressive,” I said, adding his inventiveness and conscientiousness to the list of things I liked about him.
    “At the end of the day,” he told me in an earnest voice, “we’re all in this together. I don’t need to jack up the price of the cage for profit. I want it to be a standard feature on any race car for safety purposes, not for personal financial gain. If I’d had the prototype built before my dad’s last race… Who knows,” he said with a sigh. “It could have saved two lives.” He was quiet for a moment and then, in a low voice, he amended his statement, making it a conviction instead. “I know it would have saved their lives.”
    “You can’t blame yourself,” I told him as I placed a hand over his while it rested on the table. “I’m sure your dad and his co-driver knew every hazard related to racing. It was their choice to get in that truck. This doesn’t fall on your shoulders, Ky.”
    He gave a slight nod of his head. In turn, I gave him time to let the tense moment pass.
    Finally, he stood and pulled some bills from his front pocket. He dropped the cash on the table and held his hand out to me. “How about a walk down by the water?”

Chapter Two
     
    “Sounds nice,” I told Ky as I slipped my hand in his, once more reveling in the warmth and strength as well as the slight roughness of it. That physical zap I’d gotten earlier when we shook hands returned, the natural chemistry jolting me again.
    He led me across the deck and we strolled along the walkway to the marina.
    After several minutes, he glanced over at me and said, “You’re the quiet one now.”
    A little embarrassed, I admitted, “I’m surprised I told you so much about myself. I never lay that heavy stuff at people’s feet. Must have been the tequila.”
    He eyed me with a curious look. “How does anyone get to know you then?”
    I shrugged. He had a valid point. But I’d written a series of articles years ago with a renowned dating expert who’d advised against revealing too much