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the only way to find out all she could about him and his support system. Because if she, indeed, did have to find a way to compromise as Will advised, she wanted to know just how much.
    Looking every bit as uncomfortable as Jessie felt, Dr. Sheridan shifted to peer at Jake in his car seat in the back.
    “Car,” Jake squealed.
    Dr. Sheridan laughed awkwardly. “I hear it, loud and clear.”
    Jessie glanced in the rearview mirror at Jake holding his musical car out to be admired, then turned her attention to her passenger. “I suppose your parents will be glad to hear they have a grandson.” Her voice sounded shrill when she’d only meant to raise it to allow him to hear her over the tinny tune of Jake’s car.
    “I think they’ll be happy the Sheridan genes will survive another generation,” he said dryly.
    She gave him a serious frown. “You don’t sound as if you know them very well.”
    The drugstore bag crackled in his long fingers, his silence answering her.
    She pulled to a stop at the intersection and returned waves from people walking home from graduation, umbrellas raised against the rain. She turned to Dr. Sheridan. “Why don’t you know your parents?”
    He gave her a sideways glance. “They’re archeologists. They spend most of their time on digs in remote parts of the world.”
    “Interesting.” And a relief. It didn’t sound like he’d get much help or support from them, did it? She accelerated.
    He stretched his long legs out in front of him until he ran out of room.
    She jerked her gaze back to the road in front of them.
    “Any chance Jake’s car has a volume control?” he asked. “Those nonsensical rhymes just began a painful third rotation.”
    Were the good doctor’s nerves a tad on the frazzled side, too? And unused to children’s toys? “I don’t want him to hear the tension in our voices.”
    “I didn’t think of that.”
    “You would have if you knew anything about kids.”
    His lips quirked. “No doubt.”
    She drew in a momentary breath of victory. But it was too soon to gloat. She still didn’t know much about his situation or who he depended on for support. “Did you travel with your parents when you were young?”
    “No.”
    Her little fishing expedition would take forever if all she got from him were one-syllable answers. Drawing herself a little taller, she took a left and fired off another question. “Who did you stay with?”
    “I lived in boarding schools,” he said matter-of-factly.
    She looked at him sharply. Boarding schools? The poor man. “You grew up in boarding schools?” She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.
    He stared out the windshield. “The best boarding schools in the country.”
    As if that made it easier for him to be away from his family? “Did your parents sometimes take you with them?”
    He glanced her way. “Why the third degree?”
    She recognized avoidance when she heard it. “Did they?”
    He dragged in a breath and let it out. “There’s not much for a kid to do in the middle of the Sahara desert for months on end. And they wanted me educated by the best schools available to better prepare me to contribute to mankind.”
    His parents sacrificed him to science? How could they do that? “You must have been lonely growing up with strangers.”
    He shrugged as if loneliness was no big deal. “My studies were challenging. There was plenty to do. Swimming, tennis, golf, horses, you name it. I didn’t have time to be lonely.”
    He expected her to believe that? “Did you go home often?”
    He frowned at her.
    “Did you?” She sat straighter. “Go home often?”
    “When holidays didn’t conflict with digs.” His tone was flat, uninterested.
    Jessie swallowed, unable to comprehend the lonely, disconnected childhood he must have lived. “What about when you were very little? Before boarding school?”
    “I had nannies.”
    Jessie shook her head. How did a child function and grow without his parents and relatives to