Page 190 of Nobody's Girl

I laugh. “Leave the top down. It’ll be fine. This place isn’t as bad as it seems. Come on now. I’m famished.”

Before he gets out, he hits the button on my seatbelt, releasing it. “Let me get your door for you.”

“I can get out on my own,” I protest and reach for the handle.

He grabs my hand and pulls it back up to his lips, touching it gently with them. “Princess, let me open your door, please. It’s not right for a lady to get out of the car unattended by her male driver.”

“Fine,” I say.

He slips out of his side and comes around. His gait as he moves in front of the car is smooth and refined. One of his hands moves through his hair, making it lay in the most perfect of ways.

As he opens my door and takes my hand to help me out, a sudden flash fills my head. It’s the large birds which flew over Kyle and me in the forest.

Yet, I can see them clearly above me, so close I could touch them if this was real. I feel Eden’s arm around my waist and I lean into his side for support, feeling weak-kneed.

“You okay?” he asks.

Shaking my head to clear the vision, I nod. “A weird, light-headed thing just happened. Maybe the doctor was right not to send me back to school. I would’ve fallen if I was on my own. Thanks for being here, Eden.”

Pulling my sunglasses off and placing them on the top of my head, his eyes search mine as if confirming I’m okay. “You sure you’re fine?”

I nod and he begins walking into the café, holding me tightly against his side. He’s so sweet and kind and compassionate.

Too bad I belong to another.

CHAPTER 16

EDEN

Placing my sunglasses on top of my head, I open the door for Alyssa to enter the dark bar. She calls it a café, but it’s a bar, and a dingy, smelly one at that.

I sweep the interior to find some bikers at a pool table and an elderly couple in one of the booths, drinking beer. They hold hands across the table and I find it cute, yet misplaced in this rat hole.

The large redhead behind the bar looks us over as she moves to follow us. I find us a booth and slide my mate in, sitting next to her.

The waitresses’ gravelly voice, from what has to be years of smoking, grates on my ears. She tosses a menu to Alyssa and hands one to me, then says, “Well, hello there. I’ve never seen you around here before. Are you new to Cloudcroft?”

“Just visiting. Can you give us a minute?” I ask as I see her look over at my mate and narrow her eyes.

“Ain’t you that Kyle boy’s girlfriend?”

Alyssa’s cheeks glow pink. “I am. This is my parents’ old friends’ son, Eden. I’m showing him around town.”

“Cozy. So you want the usual chocolate milkshake?” she asks, letting me know my mate and that boy attend this nasty establishment quite often.

How he could take her to this type of place is unsettling. Behind her parents’ backs, she’s come here with him.

What else has she done with that boy?

“You should try the double meat, double cheese burger. It’s delicious. Kyle always gets that,” she says as she innocently looks up at me after stabbing my heart by saying that boy’s name and suggesting I would like anything he does.

The exception being her, of course.

“What are you having?”

“The regular burger and fries. Dairy doesn’t agree with me. The milkshakes I get are made with almond milk instead of regular cow’s milk. They don’t carry any cheeses I can eat,” she says as she places the menu that had been tossed at her at the edge of the table.

If we were anywhere else except her hometown, I would have barked at the waitress for her inexcusable behavior. “I’ll get whatever you get,” I say.