Except ...I did have one tiny confession to make.As Rhett led me around to the passenger side of his Jeep, I had totellhim.
“Remember that hit-and-run, the one that smashed the taillight of your Jeep when you were asenior?”
He paused, his fingers gripping the doorhandle.“Yeah?”
“It wasn’t exactly a hit-and-run.It was more of a hit-and-walk.”
“You and a Louisville Slugger the day that the rumor went around at school that I knocked up KimLeander.”
My mouth dropped open.“Youknew?”
“That you were pissed I could throw away my life like that?Yeah, I knew.I watched you do it.It put a hell of a lot of things in perspectiveforme.”
I jerked my head back.“Likewhat?”
“Like that I wasn’t going to back myself into a corner by making stupid mistakes when I waseighteen.”
“Well, I guess that’s a goodthing.”
He met my eyes, and his green gaze shone.“I never touched KimLeander,Red.”
“Youdidn’t?”
“No.”
“Oops.”
He smiled.“I’ll let you make that taillight up to me sometime.Don’tworry.”
And so started my first real date with RhettHennessy.
21
Ariel
Icouldn’t helpbut keep trying to guess where Rhett was taking me.Maybe a regular place he took his dates?A New Orleans classic?I flipped through the possibilities but came upempty.
“Wherearewegoing?”
He glanced over at me with a smile.“Sometimes I forget you’ve been gone alongtime.”
That didn’t answer myquestion.“And?”
He raised an eyebrow at me.“Patience, Red.Patience.”
I folded my hands together in my lap, resisting the urge to tug my dress down when it rode up my thighs further as I fidgeted in my seat.When we pulled up to a stoplight in an area of old warehouses, I wasofficiallylost.
“Wherearewe?”
The car in front of us laid on the horn because the truck first in line at the light wasn’tmoving.
Rhett twisted to look at me.“You don’t know New Orleans that well at all anymore,doyou?”
I glanced out the window, trying to place the street.I had nothing.“If you recall, I left when I was seventeen, and before that, I never had my own car.I went from home to school and church and not reallyanywhereelse.”
Rhett drove through the green light and took one more turn before pulling into a parking lot across from a warehouse that looked like it had been rehabbed and then upper stories added with new, modern construction.The red brick that colored the surrounding buildings was missing on this one, as it was black with a giant gold logo painted between the old storeroom-type windows.The newer-looking upper stories had solid glass walls supported by thick woodentimbers.
The building was breathtaking.I’d never seen anything like it in NewOrleans.