Bree smiled woodenly. She was digging holes for herself to trip into.
“Miss Phelts?”
“Yes, Brax?” she asked, her eyes still on the door and her stomach in a worry vice.
“I guess I’ll take this one.” He setMillion-Dollar Throwon the checkout counter. “It doesn’t suck.”
She gurgled. “I’m certain Mr. Lupica would be thrilled with your assessment.”
Brax lifted one shoulder. She checked him out and slipped a reading calendar inside the front cover. Maybe Brax would actually keep track of his minutes and fall in love with reading. And maybe she’d forgotten a stupendous prize box in the back room.
Oh good, her sarcasm was back.
But Brax? Brax was that one perfect book away from catching fire and devouring the library. Stranger things had happened. After all, Owen—the football player—had asked her on a friend date.
Despite her best intentions and her belief that this was a monumental mistake, she was going. Heaven help her.
Chapter Nine
Owen adjusted his grip on the handlebars of his electric-blue Road King. His hands kept slipping because his palms were damp. He swiped one hand down his pant leg and then switched his grip so he could do the other.
With a roar of the engine, he turned onto Bree’s street. The houses were small—maybe one- or two-bedroom homes—with German influence in the design, with steep-pitched roofs, shutters, and flower boxes and windows with lots of small panes.
Bree’s house was the fourth one on the right, blue with white trim and overflowing flower boxes under the front two windows. He cruised into her driveway and cut the engine in front of the one-car garage. The small lawn was mowed and the flower beds free of weeds and full of mulch. The concrete walkway was cracked in several places.
Bree sat on her front steps, shaking her head as her eyes roved over the bike and him on it. Maybe the fact that she was out here waiting for him meant that she was excited too. Sweet. He shouldn’t be excited, but he had this feeling that if they could get past the awkward introductory things, they would gel.
“I figured I’d get a bike you didn’t have to pedal.”
“Ha. Ha.” She stood up and dusted off her backside. She wore a pair of coral skinny jeans that gave her more curves than the good Lord had provided and a gray tee with a Native American design screen-printed in white on the front. Her delicate collarbone was graced by a silver chain, and on her feet were a pair of off-the-sale-rack flats. Her hair was long and loose.
He glanced down at his limited-edition Nikes. There were under three hundred of these pairs made, and only twenty in his size existed in the whole world. Normally he didn’t wear them, but he’d needed a confident boost to get out the door—for whatever reason. He wasn’t looking too closely at all that. This was supposed to be a fun day with a friend exploring the countryside. “And I thought you’d enjoy a ride.” His breath hitched momentarily—if she didn’t like motorcycles …
“You’ve overestimated my experience with motorcycles.”
“How many times have you ridden?”
“Um …” She counted on her fingers and then dropped her hand and grinned. “None.”
He returned her smile. As they grinned at each other, he finally had a title for one of her qualities he enjoyed: innocence. She was the type of person who could have fun doing just about anything, be it a ride in the country or playing a board game at the kitchen table. Scratch that. She was a librarian, and he hated to lose—he would never play Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit or Risk with her. But he was looking forward to taking her on a ride, even more so now that she hadn’t run away from the bike.
He handed her the helmet he’d strapped to the seat behind him. She used a hair elastic that she’d retrieved from her pocket to put her hair in a low ponytail and then slipped the helmet on.
He waited as she fumbled with the clasp, and finally couldn’t take watching her struggle. “Here.” He hooked his finger in her belt loop and pulled her closer.
She came willingly, her hip leaning against his knee. If the team doctor could see his heart rate now, he’d have him benched.
“It’s confusing when you can’t see the buckle!” she yelled.
He cringed against the reverb in his ear. “There’s a communication system inside the helmet so you don’t have to yell.”
Her cheeks dusted pink, and he had to look away lest she think he thought she looked cute. Which she did. “Sorry,” she whispered.
He patted the top of her helmet and jerked his head toward the seat behind him. “Ready?”
She nodded and climbed on, andclimbedwas the appropriate word. She placed a hand on his back for balance, the heat from her touch infusing him with the ability to block out all that was going on around them and just feel her. She smelled lightly of something pretty—jasmine, maybe. Her touch was sure and made him feel taller.
Her short stature had her using the footrest like a stirrup to get on a horse. Her legs settled just behind his with a few inches of space. Her hands rested easily on his sides, where she could grab on if needed. “Is there a trick to riding safely? If I’d had more notice, I could have checked out a book—or Googled it.”