The Spark Between Us by Stacy Travis

Chapter One

Sarah

The sparkling redlights all around me would have looked so pretty flickering on a Christmas tree or beaming through a stained-glass window.

But since I was staring at a sea of brake lights on the interstate, I didn’t feel much like caroling. More like yelling obscene things to the drivers next to me and delighting in the fact that they couldn’t hear me.

“Call Tater Tot,” I told my hands-free phone on the dash. My sisters had nicknamed her after the fried potato nuggets our mom served us way too often as kids because that’s how five older siblings tortured the youngest.

I knew Tatum would be at her desk. My other sisters had unpredictable work hours, hobbies, and social lives. For Tatum and I, our jobs filled the roles of work, hobbies, and social lives.

“I detect a pissy tone. Are we having a bad day?” my phone asked in its British baritone. Cheeky little thing. Tatum was developing emotion-recognition software at her tech company and had programmed my phone as a test subject.

“We are having the kind of day when we endeavor to ring our sister, you English twat,” I fired back. But really, I loved the English twat, whom I fondly referred to as Nigel.

“Calling Tater Tot,” he confirmed in a clipped accent. So obedient.

I imagined Nigel sitting beside me when I drove, looking a little like Henry Cavill and beckoning me to take long, sexy walks in the English countryside. “Off we go,” he’d say in his clipped, jolly voice. “Another brilliant day for a sexy shag.”

Nigel’s voice, along with the fantasy of a hot Brit riding me sidesaddle, claimed bragging rights for the longest and most successful of all my relationships. Such was the life of a science professor.

“You’re driving, aren’t you?” Tatum’s quiet laugh and reassuring voice immediately relaxed me.

“Yes, how’d you know?” I fiddled with the air conditioning to notch it down a few degrees.

“Because that’s when you call me. When you’re bored in the car and you know I’m working.” Her sigh didn’t make me feel apologetic. On the contrary, I knew talking to me was sometimes the only break she took in a twelve-hour workday, so I considered it a win-win.

“I’m driving to Carolwood and confirming why I can’t do this commute every day. I just can’t. I shouldn’t. I’m making the right call here, yes?”

I could hear typing in the background. The steady tap-tap indicated either answering emails or writing lines of code. “Yes. It’s the right call, Ms. Magoo.”

My eyesight wasn’t the problem. However, my mind had a tendency to wander, which had resulted in me hitting a few stationary objects—among them a neighbor’s retaining wall, an idling garbage truck, and a mailbox.

It was a quirk. Everyone had quirks. My quirk just happened to result in high insurance rates. Unfortunately, one more slip-up would probably leave me fighting for a window seat on the bus.

The lane to my right started moving, but mine lagged like a bedraggled snail.

So. Annoying.

I hit my steering wheel in frustration, which had the effect of unintentionally honking my horn. The guy in the car in front of me threw up a hand as if to ask what I expected him to do. I waved and gave him a thumbs up.

“You just pissed someone off, didn’t you?” Tatum’s chuckle echoed through my speakerphone.

“Maybe. Is road rage still a thing?” I asked, recalling stories about angry drivers gunning each other down on freeways.

“It is, and you definitely have it, but you’re sort of polite and passive aggressive about it, riding people’s back bumpers then flashing a peace sign like you didn’t mean it.”

“I just don’t want to make anyone mad enough to shoot me.”

Over the past few years, I’d made traffic a non-issue by living a few miles from my job. Some days, I rode my bike. Unfortunately, that was all about to change.

Thanks to a career opportunity I couldn’t pass up, I had two choices: commute an hour to work and risk bodily injury if another mailbox appeared in my path, or relocate to a small town where I knew nobody. I chose door number two.

“Well, this is it, then. My traffic swan song,” I said.

“You already did it? You packed up and everything? Who’s renting your house?” The typing stopped.

“Um, no one.” I’d intended to find a tenant but . . . “None of the prospects worked out.”

“Translation—you didn’t like any of them enough to let them pay you thousands of dollars to live in your house.” She was correct. I didn’t have a rational reason.

I shouldn’t have cared how much charisma the tenant had as long as the person could pay on time and didn’t plan to tear the place up, but I’d somehow gone mother hen about my home—no suitor seemed good enough to date my baby, so I sent them all away, corsages and all.

Ah, finally my lane started moving. I unkinked the knot in my neck as my speedometer edged up to ten miles an hour. Then I came to a grinding halt again.

“Shit!” I gasped as my car’s front bumper came within inches of the fender in front of me. The Toyota Camry I’d almost humped seemed to be lacking brake lights. “There’s nothing in front of you. You don’t need to stop!” I narrowly managed to keep from pounding the horn again.

“Still your fault if you hit him,” Tatum sang. Her tapping on the keyboard resumed. “Wait, so no one’s living in your house for six months?”

I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me. “I mean, maybe I’ll come back on the weekends some time, but pretty much, no—”

“Can I live there?” Her voice squeaked with glee.

“You live in Palo Alto. Near work. Which makes sense,” I reminded her. She had a five minute commute, door to door. Blissful. What kind of person gives that up?

“I live in a cracker box. I’d commute an hour if it meant I could spread out in your house.”

I slammed on my brakes again. “Just drive!” Almost as though he heard me, the man in the Toyota started inching forward. “Sorry again. So let me make sure I’m understanding. You want to put yourself through what I’m experiencing right now, just to live in a house you’ll barely get to see anyway? You work a million hours a week.”

“Not all of us are as squeamish about traffic as you are. I like driving. Give me a steamy romance audiobook or some true crime podcast, and I’ll drive all day,” she said.

“Are we even related?”

Then Nigel piped up, giving me instructions, telling me to take the next freeway exit. “North Carolwood Avenue” sounded like a storybook destination in his British accent. This was it, the beginning of . . . something.

“Hang on . . .” Tatum instructed. I heard muffled voices, and after a moment, she yelped.

While I waited to find out what had her so excited, I focused on the road and a future I couldn’t quite fathom.

For the next six months, I’d be another local in Carolwood, California. Sure, the town likely had some kindly folks and operated at a slower pace, but I wasn’t moving for the scenery. Carolwood had the distinction of being a short drive from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—basically NASA meets Hogwarts for physicists. Mind-blowing science fair nirvana. Researchers there dallied with things like national security and the nation’s nuclear weapons. And they wanted me.

If all went according to plan, I’d break new ground in metals welding using friction and lasers.

Yup, my nerd flag flies high.

I hadn't done much planning in my abrupt decision to move my life away from Berkeley, where I taught college physics. My train of thought had involved picturing my commute, feeling nauseous at the amount of time I’d spend on the road each day, experiencing dizziness at the idea of running into more stationary objects, and making a frantic call to my brother, Finn.

Besides being an economist with a savant-like understanding of the stock market, Finn was my oldest sibling, only brother, and go-to savior when I got stuck.

He also taught at Berkeley, so it only took him a few minutes to get from his office to mine, where I was lying on the floor with my knees up near my ears to keep the blood flowing to my head.

Finn knew a guy. Calls were made. A roommate situation was procured.

I went home, drank wine from a can, and started packing.

That was a week ago.

Now I was obeying Nigel’s directions and pretending he was guiding me to a charming bed and breakfast where we’d have a very proper British tryst. I diligently signaled and exited the freeway and turned on First Street, which took me toward the center of town. The main road featured a parkway down the center, and after a block, I reached an open green space with a burbling fountain and several benches. A few streets with shops fanned out in various directions, and . . . that was it. That was the town.

I hadn’t expected a sprawling place like San Francisco or Oakland, but Carolwood was even slightly smaller than I’d anticipated when I pictured a place with a population of twelve thousand. No more views of the Bay Bridge or the bustle of students, bye-bye thirty coffee houses in a one mile radius.

This would be quieter. Much quieter.

I had mixed feelings about the move. Working at the lab checked every box on my career thrill spreadsheet, and avoiding the commute felt like multitasking gold. But since my family lived an hour away and I didn’t have any friends in town, the next six months promised a lot of solo time. A lot of hours reading science journals and finding new, interesting ways to make salad dressing. For myself, party of one.

“Sorry, sorry,” Tatum piped in. “We just got a new contract. Everyone’s pumped.” I could hear the excitement in her voice. She had startup culture in her genes. She never ran out of energy, and she loved technology.

“Don’t worry about it. But I should call you later. I need to get my bearings before I get lost in suburbia.” I was already passing the same wine shop for the third time.

“I can’t believe you’re gonna live in a cow town for six months. Do you even need a car there, or will you ride a pony to work?”

“It’s not a cow town. If you ever bothered to detour from your tiny world on your state-of-the-art tech campus, you’d see it’s a nice place. I heard they make wine here. Tourists come.”

“Awesome. You’ll be cow tipping in the grapevines like a local in no time.”

“Small minded.”

“Giddyup. Maybe you’ll meet a cowboy.”

“Not why I’m here,” I sang, reminding her of what she already knew.

“Well, hopefully some burly cattle rustler out there will change your mind.” Laughing at her hilarity, she said goodbye and hang up.

Turning on a side street took me past a bookstore, a bakery, and another wine shop. Okay! Pretty much all I needed was right here in the few blocks that made up the business district.

The roommate situation remained the only unknown, but I wasn’t too worried.

Finn had lined up a spare room at the home of a guy he knew, Braden Michaels. They’d been best friends in high school and had stayed pretty close. Since he and Finn were four years older, my memories of Braden were spotty, other than him being a dark-haired menace who slammed a lot of doors and drove too fast. He may have had acne. And an attitude. No doubt he’d matured like we all did and was a fine upstanding citizen.

Finn said he worked for the city—probably meant he had a nine-to-five job. Nice and stable. Maybe even boring.

Boring didn’t bother me. I was comfortable with boring. A person didn’t need flashy clothes or a big personality to get by. The world needed some people to act normal, put our heads down and get the work done while the hell-raisers and fun people created havoc. I’d always been the responsible, reliable type.

All Finn said was, “the kid turned out all right” and advised that I form my own opinions about Braden Michaels. “Approach your new roommate situation without assumptions or predisposition to bias.” Irritating economist, that Finn.

“This is my life for the next six months. It’s not an economic model.” It annoyed me that he wouldn’t give me a tiny nugget of information, but Finn clammed up and acted like I was the weird one for asking.

I rolled my eyes at the recollection before glancing outside at a peach colored brick library building with white columns. Under the pastel blue sky, everything looked much cleaner and more orderly than some of the grimier neighborhoods I was used to in the East Bay. I passed a health food market and an alehouse, picturing a friendly bartender who knew everyone in town by name.

I should have had my eyes on the road. If I had, I might have noticed the ever-diminishing gap between my front bumper and the back of a giant red and silver wall of metal looming in front of me.

Should have, could have . . .

Story of my life on the road. Too little, way too late.

I barely had time to attempt to slow down. The, the screech of brakes . . . the scream that shocked me even though it was mine . . . the jerking of the steering wheel to no avail, then . . .

Bam!!

My car slammed hard into the stationary object with an impossible smack that provided no cushioning or the slightest bit of give.

It was Physics 101: the greater the force of a moving object, the greater the change in motion, i.e., I hit the gas hard and took all that speed with me. And also Physics 101: the larger the stationary object, the more negligible effect the force on it will have, i.e., I hit something massive, and it bore the impact like a flea flick.

Yup, my brain went there, down the science rabbit hole, thinking about energy transfer and kinetic energy, even as the entire front end of my car went concave. Crumpled metal, sounds of glass shattering, and a scream—mine. Then my head was thrust forward and back again by the impact and a zealous airbag.

What the hell just happened?

If I hadn’t been able to identify the looming object in front of me before, the powdery marshmallow of airbag made it impossible now. I was aware of a burning sensation on my hands and an ache in my jaw. But I was alive.

Thank you, tiny Prius.

Peeking around the overinflated mess of airbag, I identified the looming red wall of metal that had turned my hood into an accordion—the back of a fire truck.

It had a hand-drawn placard above its bumper with three tiny, ironic words: Welcome to Carolwood.