Page 21 of The Love Bus

A little behind Noah and his mom, Tay was corralling what looked like the rest of the group and urging them to move along.

Patty suddenly went up and nudged Mrs. Grady, grinning, looking like she was trying to invite her to join in on some joke with her, Josie and Marla, but Mrs. Grady just blinked back at them with a lukewarm smile.

Noah shoved his hands in his pockets, silently watching the interaction but not interfering.

Babs hummed again. “I wonder what their story is.”

“Just a mother/son vacation?” I ventured.

Honestly though, I’d wondered about that myself.

Because neither of them acted like the typical WonderWorld Tours vacationer.

Mrs. Grady seemed tense, almost nervous, holding herself back from the cliques that had formed—yes, actual cliques, just like high school!

—and her son, well, it was pretty obvious he hadn’t chosen to come on this trip.

He definitely wasn’t here for the joy of completing the Southwest Bucket List Adventure.

“I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” Babs murmured.

I didn’t have time to respond to that, because the two people in question were now within earshot, making their way down the aisle and taking their seats.

I dropped my eyes to look at my feet, still pink from the cold.

Had Noah Grady really thrown me over his shoulder?

Carried me across the snow-covered ground just to be…

helpful? Leo would never have done something like that.

It just wasn’t his style. Though he definitely would have chastised me for my lack of foresight and then insisted on checking my suitcase from then on out.

He’d done that on more than one occasion.

The thought had something trying to rise in me. A prickling, unpleasant sort of feeling, raising my hackles in the here and now. Which was ridiculous.

I wiggled in my seat, suddenly restless, trying to dispel this influx of nervous energy. It didn’t help that I could feel Noah’s eyes on me.

I think.

But I wasn’t ready to find out. So, to look busy, I opened the reading app on my phone and scrolled through a few of the books I’d downloaded and forgotten about.

Fake Dating the Billionaire, My Boss’s Secret Baby, The Hot Grump Next Door…

I opened The Hot Grump , but before I could get past the first page, my thoughts jumped back to my own tragic love life instead.

When I’d first started dating Leo, I’d been in awe of him.

He’d seemed to encapsulate the best of both worlds—confident and sure of himself, but also passionate and artistic.

He’d swept me off my feet, and when he began talking about the two of us in terms of the future, I’d decided he’s the one—he’s my person .

From there, Leo had forged ahead, making most of the big decisions in our relationship. Where to live, what vacations to take, how we should broadcast the show—all of it had seemed so natural, so easy to fall in step with. Honestly, I hadn’t minded at the time. Maybe I should have, though?

Staring blindly at the words on my phone, I blinked.

I couldn’t let that happen again. I needed to find my own footing.

Attaching myself to another big personality, no matter how calm or chivalrous or ruggedly good-looking he might be, was not a good idea.

Babs was wrong. A fling was the last thing I needed right now. Tossing my heart into the wind wasn’t going to fix me. In fact, it just might…

Break me.

Attention shifting between my thoughts and my book, I was barely aware that the bus had made its way through the rest of the storm until Tay’s voice crackled over the PA system again.

The snow had let up, and although the sky was still patchy with clouds, the sun peeked through just enough to cast a silvery sheen over the wet pavement.

“We’re about twenty minutes out of Granby, where we’ll be stopping for lunch. But first, I’ve got a question for all of you: Have you been drinking your water this morning? No? Well, let me remind you—altitude sickness doesn’t care about the weather. Hydration is key, folks!”

Her reminder was greeted with a few grudging murmurs, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when a deep voice rumbled next to me.

“Are you warm enough, Luna?”

I’d been trying really hard to focus on the hot guy in my book instead of the one seated across the aisle, and for the last hour and a half, I’d almost forgotten he was even there. For at least half of that time.

Well, maybe a quarter of it.

I’d definitely gone fifteen minutes without wondering about him.

But wait, what had he asked? Was I warm?

I nodded. “Yup, I’m good.”

I turned my head just in time to find him staring at me again. Instead of trying to decipher whatever mystery was going on behind those stormy, unreadable eyes, I turned my attention to Tay, who had grabbed the mic and was clearly entering one of her “fun-fact rabbit holes.”

“And speaking of water,” she began, arms spread like a game show host, “Granby Lake, folks. Big, beautiful, and the reason there is green grass in Denver.”

There were polite murmurs and some clicks of phone cameras. I followed her gesture to the lake outside, glimmering like a jewel against the pine-studded landscape.

“Eighty percent of Colorado’s water ends up flowing west of the Continental Divide,” Tay went on, “but eighty percent of the people live on the other side of it. Math like that doesn’t add up unless you dig tunnels. Big ones.” Was she speaking metaphorically?

I’d thought the math added up with Leo, but we’d run dry anyway.

Tay was well into her speech, something about a railroad tycoon named Moffat, a historic pass that sounded like a horror story in winter, and a six-mile tunnel.

And when Noah stretched his arms over his head, I tried not to overanalyze whether his hand had brushed my hair accidentally or not…

“And get this,” Tay added, with well-practiced flair, “that tunnel wasn’t just for trains. Nope, they found a way to send water through it, too. So, the water for that shower you took back in Denver likely came via a train tunnel.”

That earned a few surprised laughs from the group.

Tay raised her reusable water bottle like it was a champagne flute. “On that note, I’ll say it again! Hydrate, people! Because on this bus, hydration is happiness.”

“Cheers!” Babs raised her water bottle, and I just rolled my eyes.

A few groans followed, and as the quaint town of Granby came into sight, everyone around me began shifting and gathering their belongings, preparing to make the most of the sixty minutes allotted for lunch.

Tay turned serious again. “Don’t forget, people! Everyone needs to be back on the bus and ready to go by thirteen hundred hours!”

I frowned.

“One o’clock,” Noah provided from beside me, correctly interpreting my expression.

“Or else she’ll leave us,” Babs called out.

“Now you’re getting it.” Tay didn’t even pretend to be apologetic about it.