“Don’t you worry, girl, because only a total loser dates someone that young. You can have this baby and kick ass as a single mom.”
A smile stretched across Ashley’s face for the first time. “Damn straight I will.”
The two women continued to hate on the male species for at least another five minutes, and at one point Ashley even invited Katy into her home for a drink. But having drinks with a suspected murderer was the last thing she needed to explain to the police. The only reason Katy got away with so much now was because her cousin Anderson constituted the entire detective branch of Pelican Bay, and her best friend was the fiancée of Ridge Jefferson. I’d also helped her out more than once behind the scenes.
By the time their conversation ended we still didn’t know where Jason was at the moment, how he felt about Chip being the father to his sister’s baby, or anything else. Yet, from Katy’s smile she considered the trip a success.
I walked behind Katy off the porch, and as my feet hit the ground, I tossed my keys to her as she looked back.
She stared at them with an awkward expression. “What are these for? So I can unlock your door for you?”
I rolled my eyes. She wasn’t the only one capable of making obscene gestures. If my father saw me, he’d throw a fit, but he didn’t spend significant time around Katy. Sometimes the only way to convey how you felt was through a good old-fashioned eye roll.
“I thought you earned a drive. You didn’t threaten anyone or break into her house when she wasn’t looking.”
Katy smiled, but it was more of a smirk than a gesture of happiness. “You forgot to add the word yet at the end of your sentence.”
“Katy.”
Just being around the woman made people do reckless things. And considering I drove her out here to the home of a suspected killer and now planned to let her drive my car back to Pelican Bay showed I was not immune to whatever Katy pumped out in endorphins.
She passed over to the driver’s side of the car and leaned across the hood messing up the wax job, but her smile was so huge I refused to comment and take it away. “I want to yell at you, but I’m too excited.” She clapped her hands together twice and then slipped into my car like she’d been driving it when I wasn’t riding with her. Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past her.
I stopped at the passenger side door—a spot in the car I’d never ridden before—and made a slight cross over my forehead and chest. I wasn’t Catholic, but I figured God would take pity on me.
If I’d been in a sane state of mind, I’d never have given her the keys to begin with, but every time Katy radiated happiness, I wanted to make her happier. What she hadn’t figured out yet was that when she scowled at me, it only made me argue with her, but if she smiled, I’d hand her the world on a silver platter.
Katy started the car and then before I clicked my seatbelt she slammed on the gas and we fishtailed out of Jason’s driveway. I leaned forward and held onto the dash, my fingers unable to grip anything of substance to give me purchase.
“What the fuck are you thinking?” I yelled over the sound of gravel spraying across my paint job.
Katy laughed and thankfully slowed the fuck down when the car hit the paved road and she turned toward town.
She left me alone for a moment, letting my heart regain its normal rhythm as I considered every single thing I could threaten her with to make sure she’d never do that again. Knowing Katy, though, anything I threatened would only make her do it more often.
“Thankfully this is an automatic. I can’t drive a stick shift.”
A stop sign came up too quickly, and she slammed on the brakes. But somehow we still stopped halfway in the middle of the intersection.
I hadn’t released my hold on the dashboard and my fingers squeezed into the hard leather. “I hate to break it to you, but you can’t drive this either.”
We passed the pelican who greeted everyone into the city limits of Pelican Bay. As his body whizzed by too quickly for me to read the updated population number, I did a quick check of the speedometer.
“Slow down. You know the next mile is a speed trap.”
Katy took her eyes off the road long enough to give me an annoyed expression.
“Eyes on the road!” What the hell was I thinking letting Katy drive my car? Obviously, I had a lapse of judgment. A huge lapse. I’d been around her too much. She made people do stupid things they otherwise wouldn’t.
Finally, just as I was about to threaten something severe, Katy lifted her foot from the gas and allowed the car to slow.
She sighed, as if going the speed limit caused her pain.
Did she realize if she went slower, we could spend longer together in the car? A few men—okay fine, most men—would call me a fool for believing Katy felt the same about me as I did her, but I’d been with Katy alone. I’d touched her body in every way possible, made her scream out my name in more ways than one. Even when we weren’t in bed together during one of those few precious times, I’d talk to the woman more than most people in Pelican Bay. My arms were where she ran when life became too rough.
Not her friends at the bakery. Not her family. She came to me.
Unfortunately, no one but the two of us knew it and neither planned to admit it.
