He shook his head, a smile on his face at my lack of car knowledge. “No. This is a 1972 Chevy Camaro. Vastly different.”
It didn’t look that different to me, other than the color. “How does Stick own so many cars? What does he do?”
Lucas took a quick look in the rearview mirror into the back seat at Andy, who was looking out the window, seemingly oblivious to Lucas and me.
“Stick is…self-employed,” Lucas said to me in a tone that said I’d be smarter to just leave it at that. Which I did.
“Does he fix these cars up himself?”
Lucas nodded. “He’s been a car nut for as long as I can remember. We’d be on the street playing ball, and Stick would be there, but instead of playing ball, he’d have his head under the hood of a car.”
“Playing ball. Something you were pretty good at, right?”
He glanced over at me. “Yeah, I was pretty good. For about a minute.”
“Then you got hurt,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I wanted him to know I knew a little bit about him, even though there wasn’t much to know—at least not online.
He looked in the rearview again as we came to a red light. A smile, so sweet and unplanned, crossed his face. I turned to see what had made Lucas smile. Andy’s little strawberry-blond head was lolling against the car window, his seatbelt the only thing holding him upright. His eyes were drooping past half-mast, then flickering, in a valiant effort to try to stay awake. An effort he’d soon lose.
Lucas returned his attention to me—to my statement about him playing ball. He ran a hand across the back of his neck, under his shiny, wet black hair. He eased the car forward when the light turned green, careful not to roar like Stick had, so as not to wake Andy.
“Yeah, I guess it’s time for that talk, isn’t it?” he said, resignation in his voice.
I so didn’t want to be something Lucas resigned himself to. “What talk?” I asked, though I thought I knew what he meant.
“The Life and Times of Lucas Kade,” he said, a trace of bitterness creeping through in his voice. “Or, how an A-1 college recruit and NFL hopeful ended up tiling steam rooms in his shithole hometown.”
Definite bitterness now.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said, though I was dying to hear his story. Dying to know everything I could about the man whose hands made my body sing with tension and arousal.
And yes, made my pulse beat faster and my heart clench when he looked at me with those piercing brown eyes.
“No, I’ll tell you. It’s only fair. Because Lily,” he said, his voice dropping to a low and throaty—and oh-so-sexy—whisper. “I want to know everything about you. I want to hear every story. Touch every part of you.” He looked at me then, and my blood raced through my veins at his promise. “And taste every inch of your body.”
My breathing became heavy, my chest lifted and tightened. Lucas noticed, and when his eyes lifted to my face, I licked my lips and gave him a slight nod.
We both knew what I was agreeing to.
* * *
Because Andy wasdead to the world, we decided to just go back to their place and order a pizza. I watched as Lucas sweetly carried a sleeping Andy from the car into a four-story apartment building. If I had my bearings—and I wasn’t sure I did—we weren’t too far from the graffiti wall part of town.
Their apartment was on the second floor. Lucas easily held Andy while pulling out keys and unlocking the apartment door. It looked like a practiced move, and again I racked my brain for memories of the elusive mother. Was Lucas responsible for Andy all the time?
The apartment was small, the main room not much larger than my dorm room. The furniture was old and shabby, but the place was super clean. A tiny kitchen with a table and three chairs was on one side. I could see three doors down the hallway, figuring two bedrooms and a bath.
Toys were strewn around the small place, mostly trucks. A large flat-screen TV was against one wall on a table that seemed too small for the large screen. Several items sat on the floor around the table, as if they’d been recently displaced by the large TV.
“I’m going to put him down, then order the pizza,” Lucas quietly said as he walked down the hallway. He took Andy into the room farthest down the hall.
I dropped my backpack on the floor by the door and made my way to the couch, curling up in one of the corners. I pulled my North Face off and tossed it on the chair in the corner of the room. I noticed three large boxes tucked neatly behind the chair, out of the way. Yeah, it kind of seemed like maybe somebody with a big-ass TV had just plunked down into this little apartment.
Lucas was back out in a flash, a smile on his gorgeous face. “He isout,” he said, “but I know that doesn’t last long at this time of day. He’s going to wake up starving in about an hour.”
His eyes roamed over me. I’d put my North Face on over my leggings and tiny knit shirt in the locker room, so Lucas hadn’t seen me without the bulky jacket until now. The way I was sitting had made the hem of my shirt ride up a bit, and his eyes zeroed in on the skin showing. I still had a tiny bit of tan left from lifeguarding at the country club last summer, though that was more on my face and arms, since I didn’t wear a bikini often, even though it was technically allowed.
Lucas made his way over to me. He was about to sit next to me, then stopped. With a pained look on his face and a sigh, he pulled out his phone from his jeans pocket. “Let me just call and get the pizza. I’m serious, he’s going to wake up starving. And Andy may seem like a sweet kid, but he turns into a whiny little shit when he’s hungry.”
