I shift my daughter back onto my right hip.
“Don’t you have a stroller?” he asks.
“It’s easier in public transport if I carry her.”
“Then eat more and build muscles so you can carry her for longer, because she’s not getting any lighter.”
“Thanks for the unsympathetic advice.”Asshole.I don’t say that because he might take offense.
“Welcome. I’m wiser than I look.” He pulls the bottom of his lip through his teeth. “Is there a specific kind of car seat she needs, or are they all the same?”
“I’m… I’m not sure. We don’t ride anywhere.” The city is walkable. Most people don’t need cars, and parking is a disaster, as I learned when I first got into town and drove a rental car. In fact, I was parked in front of Dina’s salon fifteen minutes before it exploded.
Connor jogs across the street and a little way down.
Where is he going? I frown.
When he kicks the window of a parked car and yanks out a car seat, I gasp. “Oh my God, this guy is crazy.”
The man jogs back but doesn’t pay attention to the traffic, and a car barely misses him. The driver brakes to a screeching halt and gets out, but Connor pulls out one of his pistols. Shocked, the driver quickly gets back into the car. People clear the streets, and the cars stop honking.
Connor is muttering to himself as he crosses the street, through now-stopped traffic, then he unceremoniously fits the car seat into the back and returns to his place behind the wheel.
I remain standing there.
Connor slides his sunglasses down his nose and looks at me with those piercing blue eyes. He doesn’t have to tell me twice. The gun is resting beside him and not holstered.
I fix the car seat as best I know how and put my daughter in it, then slide in next to her. The car smells of leather and man.
Connor adjusts the rearview mirror. “Come sit with me in the front.”
I pretend I didn’t hear him and fuss over my baby. I’m not sitting in the front with him.
Again, he mutters something, then he pulls away. I can feel his eyes on me in the rearview mirror.
“You should be watching the road,” I say.
“I don’t like having people at my back.”
“I’m afraid we’ll crash if you don’t watch the road.” He’s making me nervous.
Connor pulls over. “Then come sit with me.”
Torn between my daughter’s safety and my own comfort with this man, I double-check that the car seat is properly secured. It is, and Hanna is looking out the window. She’s a wonderfulbaby. Not fussy at all. Plays by herself in the crib for hours. I’m blessed.
I move to the front.
Being this close to Connor Crossbow makes me intimately aware of his cologne, the thick titanium ring on his thumb, other thick silver rings stacked on his fingers, his thick leather bracelets, and the skull tattoos on top of his hands. Connor is a whole personality of I Do Not Give a Fuck.
Renne would go out with him.
He seems to know where he’s going, but I haven’t told him where I live or what I’m doing, since even I don’t know what to do. “Do you know where I live?” I ask.
He slides me a glance. “No.”
Duhis at the end of that sentence, I can tell. I wring my hands in my lap and try to make a joke. “Don’t say you’re taking us to a cornfield to dump my body.”
When he doesn’t answer, I look at him.