“Yep. They’re diagnosing it right now.”
“You’re pretty attached to that truck, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t you have one of those... what do you call it... fleets? A whole barn full of Bentleys and Porsches and BMWs? Don’t they issue you a fleet when you become a movie star?”
She was teasing him now. A little more comfortable, apparently, now that she had him strapped in and she was in control of the car. Perhaps throwing him a bone in the wake of the rejection.
“Oh, sure,anyguy can have a fleet. But a genuine 1995 Dodge Ram with an odometer that’s turned over twice? Just try and find one ofthoseon Craigslist.”
He couldn’t quite see her whole face from his vantage point in the backseat, just a really lovely three-quarter view, but in the rearview mirror he could see that her eyes were scrunched in a smile. “I’ll just bet they’re rare.”
“That truck was one of the first things I bought when it started to look like I could buy pretty much anything I wanted, which was kind of a strange adjustment. Like going from zero to a hundred, just like that. My life was kind of a kaleidoscope for a while—seems like it changed every day. And I just got kind of attached to having a constant. Something that neededmeto take care ofit. If that makes sense. Kept me sane.”
“Sure,” she said softly, almost reluctantly. “I get it. Like... finding a fixed point in a sandstorm. It’s how you navigate through.”
So she did get it. That was a damned poetic way to put it, too.
And she didn’twantto like him, but she did.
She didn’twantto want him, but she did. Heknewshe did.
Puzzling. But he could work with this.
“Great way to put it,” he said shortly. “Know anything about sandstorms, Britt?”
She didn’t answer for so long, he thought maybe she wasn’t going to.
“Maybe,” she said. A careful, neutral word. Issued after a hesitation.
In a way that didn’t encourage further questioning.
He was determined, but he wasn’t a brute. He was happy to let her be quiet if that was what she needed right now.
She handled the old car ably on the windy roads, because she’d likely driven them dozens of times.
He couldn’t put his finger on it. It wasn’t one thing about her. It was probably more a combination of externals and intangibles, like the beautiful eyes and a lacerating wit; a small curvy body and the way she moved; the sound of her voice; her soft, full mouth. All he knew was that she made him restless and almost ornery in a very fundamental way for a very fundamental reason from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. There was really only one way to scratch that itch.
She wasn’t wearing a ring. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a guy in the picture.
The notion bothered him a lot.
The notion that the notion bothered him a lot also bothered him.
And really, what was so hard about saying,You know, there’s a guy in the picture?
He’d been pretty forthright with her because that was who he was. Rebecca had pretty much exhausted whatever lingering tolerance he’d had for games and strategy.
“So, Britt, what’s your excuse for driving a beater like...”
“Margaret?” she completed.
It had definitely been a trap, if a whimsical one. “Now, how did I know you’d named your car, Britt Langley?”
Pink flooded into her cheeks, and he was completely charmed. “I usually do a sort of financial triage on my, um, priorities. So as long as the car door shuts at all, I wait until I can afford to fix her. But I make sure she gets her fluids and so forth.”
“You ever think about what might happen if Margaret here quits on you in the deep dark woods?”