“Late?” she asked sarcastically, remembering how he’d hustled her out the door this morning before dawn and practically shoved her into his truck, where Michael had been waiting impatiently in the back seat. Apparently, the two brothers had gotten up early and were amped up and ready to compete. Figured.

“No,” Adam said, grinning as he handed her an orange bottle of sunscreen lotion with a high SPF rating. “Unprepared.”

She accepted it with a smile. “Good thing I have you then,” she replied, not realizing how it sounded until the words had already popped out of her mouth. Crap. So she quickly followed it up with, “Good friends are hard to come by, you know?” Then she turned away from him, wincing at how stupid she sounded.

She silently berated herself as she flipped open the top on the sunscreen and squirted some onto her palm. Her comment must’ve been as weird for him as it was for her, because he didn’t speak as she smeared the sunscreen over her bare arms, rubbing it in until her skin absorbed all of the lotion. Then she reached down and did the same on her lower legs where the spandex Capri leggings she wore didn’t cover her shins or calves.

“Next,” the woman at the registration desk called out.

Preslee nudged Adam. “You go.”

“That’s okay. You can go before me.”

She shook her head. “I’m still applying sunscreen. Go ahead.”

He nodded and stepped up to the registration desk.

Preslee applied sunscreen to her face and rubbed it in until the lotion had soaked completely into her skin. The last thing she wanted was for Adam to see her with white streaks of sunscreen making her look like a clown. As clumsy as she was, she usually didn’t need help in that area. In fact, she’d be lucky if she didn’t trip over her own feet today while running.

She glanced over at Michael, who was smiling at her as if he were a mind reader. Then Michael pulled out a pair of dark sunglasses and slid them onto his face, covering his eyes. The same warm brown eyes he shared with his little brother.

But that wasn’t what had caught her attention.

Instead, Preslee had noticed an emblem on the side of Michael’s sunglasses that had her doing a double take. After being in the antique business so long, she had developed a great eye for recognizing brands. Not only old ones, but newer ones as well. It came in handy when trying to determine the age and worth of an item found at an estate sale.

She cleared her throat. “Oakleys, huh? Those are some expensive sunglasses you’re wearing. Aren’t you worried that you’ll break them or lose them during the run?”

He shrugged. “If I do, I’ll just buy another pair.”

Oh. Well, all right then.