“You did good,” he said. “After that first light, you were golden.”
I looked at the road, stunned to see how far out of town I was. And how I hadn’t even noticed each successive light we’d stopped at in Chesney. Each light that I’d apparently expertly stopped and driven through. Were we really this far out of town?
“What? Was that some kind of Jedi mind trick? Get me talking about your hard-luck story and I wouldn’t freeze up at lights?”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
Damn. It had.
We weren’t far from the turnoff to the road that Caroline Stratton’s house was on.
“So, want to make a return visit?” Stick asked. “You don’t have to just stare at the gates this time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Caroline said to bring you up to the house if we were out this way again together.”
“She did? She hates me.”
“Didn’t seem like it to me. And yeah, she said to come up and say hi.”
“And you said we—I—would?”
“I didn’t say. I honestly didn’t know if we’d do this again. This was when I was in her house on Tuesday. When you were outside.”
“Before we kissed” was what went unsaid. By both of us.
“Do you have to drop something off again? Return keys? Account for anything missing?”
“Ha. Ha.”
I smiled, liking that the barbs had returned. It felt…safer, somehow.
“No, I don’t have to drop anything off. But I should probably check in…on the garage.”
“In case one of your competitors got word that you have a garage full of priceless cars?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
I laughed. “That would be rich, though.”
“Don’t even joke about it.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Shit. Now I really do want to check on the garage. Let’s just stop in for a minute. You can say hi to Caro and I’ll check on the cars. Everybody’s happy.”
I didn’t counter with the fact that I didn’t need to say hi to Caro Stratton to be happy, and I was willing to bet seeing my face was not going to make her day. Still, I took the turn and headed down the road that would bring us to her gates.
“Should we call first or something? It’s pretty rude to just show up on her doorstep.”
Stick fished his phone out of his pocket and texted…I assumed to Caroline.
And by the way, since when was Stick calling her “Caro” on a regular basis? That was something her family did. And I wasn’t including me in that.
His phone pinged as I neared the Stratton estate. “All set. She says come on up.” When we got to the gate, Stick told me the code and I punched it in.
I thought about all the times I’d been here with Pandora. I shuddered to think what might have happened if we’d had the code back then.
The gates opened slowly—tastefully slowly. I stalled out trying to ease Yvette up the drive.
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I said. “Seems like Yvette knows I don’t belong here.”
