“So, what do you do when you aren’t picking up random guys from rest stops?”
Do not tell the guy with a Grammy and a high school diploma that you are a barista with sixty thousand dollars in student loans.
She rolled her eyes. “You are hardly random, Avigdor.”
“You know I’m in a band now?” He was back to billboard size, fifteen feet of ego in the hundred cubic feet that made up the interior of her dad’s Subaru. “Maybe you’ve heard of us. Painted Doors?”
Do not engage.But the words slipped out anyway.
“Not ringing a bell.”
He laughed, loud and easy, stretching his legs out. “That’s petty, Letty.”
So hedidremember her after all. Down to her childhood nickname.Still.She shot him a glare. “Don’t call me that. You barely know me.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Oh? So we’re strangers now?”
“Practically.” She took the on-ramp a little too fast, the tires squealing slightly. “Technically.”
“Are you always this hostile to strangers?” he shot back, but there was a teasing edge to his voice that only irritated her more.
Leah clenched her teeth, replaying their humiliating encounter at the truck stop—a meet-ugly she’d rather forget.
“Maybe we need a road trip soundtrack.” His gaze fell on her phone. “May I?”
Three and a half hours of Avi Wolfson, all up in my playlists?It felt as intimate as letting him rummage through her underwear drawer. Would he make fun of her girl power songs or all her breakup ballads? Find the regrettable mixes she made as an angry teen that she never deleted?
He would for sure find her total impulse download last night: Painted Door’s latest album.
“Absolutely not.”
She slapped the hand that was hovering a bit too close to her phone for comfort.
“I was going to turn up the heat. If it even works in here.” He leaned in, eyes gleaming with curiosity. “Unless you’re hiding something, Leah?”
Talk about turning up the heat.
“Of course not.”
Just say it, Leah. Tell him he ruined everything.
Chapter Six
Are we there yet?
Cantor Joel’s sense of humor was not only great but perverse. Why else would the man who had taught Avi to sing with his whole heart and soul send this…this guarded, sharp-edged enigma to help him pass the time?
ThisLeah was not the youngest Gellman girl he remembered. Gone was the riot of unpredictable curls. She smelled like something sweet from the recesses of his childhood, a scent that tugged at the edges of his memory – cinnamon, maybe? With something tangy and rich. And yet, any illusion of sweetness vanished the second she opened her mouth.
The second shelookedat him.
This Leah had been nothing but salty since the moment they locked eyes at the rest stop.
What was her damage, anyway? It wasn’t the way women usually reacted to him.
Hell, there were probably hundreds of women in the state of Ohio who wouldkillfor ten minutes alone in a car with the big bad Wolf, as Vic liked to call him – let alone two and a half hours. Women who’d hang on his every word, bat their eyelashes, and ask him if they could suck his dick – and if he would sing anacappellaversion of “True Love For Now” while they were doing it.
Your dick has nothing to do with this.
