“By which part?” Cort asked with an audible swallow. “The part where he hoped we’d find a reputable mechanic we could trust in LA, or the part where he’d rather we not mention how we got this particularvehicul.”
Orly had to chuckle. “Yeah, he did sound pretty sexy when he said that.”
“It wasn’t just me?”
“No. That guy could walk down the road and anybody watching him would have to put out their underwear. But I meant the part where he took your card and asked if he could refer your services to a friend.”
Cort frowned. He remembered that. “Yeah, I… he promised nothing illegal, and I believed him. Which was weird because—” He gave a one-handed gesture to thebrand-new ve-hi-culhe now owned.
“I mean,” Orly said, “it’s not like we have proof he did anything wrong to get this.”
Cort rolled his eyes. “Orlando….”
“No, no—”
“Everybody there had bruises on their knuckles.”
“Except the kid who had you sign the papers,” Orlando corrected. “And the little mechanic that everybody was a little afraid of.”
Cort shook his head. “The paper-signing kid told me your sister was pregnant.”
“Hewhat?”
Cort shrugged, still unnerved. “It was when you were in the bathroom—”
“Because every minute at that garage made me need to wet my pants,” Orly said with stunning sincerity.
“You think I didn’t have to go too? Anyway, he told me your sister was pregnant, it was a girl, and she and her boyfriend were going to be thrilled. And he told me….” Cort trailed off and felt his face heat.
“What?”
Cort wanted to look at him, but he was going way too fast to take his eyes off the road. But heremembered, his marks on Orly’s skin, the way his friend—hislover—had tasted, and the perfect way they’d fit together, not just in body (althoughwow) but in soul.
“He told me you and me were going to be really happy, for a really long time,” Cort finished, his eyes burning just remembering the words. “He said congratulations. He said my little house was going to be a home, and you were the best thing that had ever happened to me.”
He heard Orly make a soft little sound next to him, and he wanted to get home, to where they both lived now, so he could swallow that sound and hear more.
“Well, maybe that place wasn’t so scary after all,” Orly told him, putting his hand on Cort’s knee.
“But we’ll still keep that whole thing a secret,” Cort said. “Just you and me, okay?”
“That’s all I ever needed,” Orly agreed.
Underneath the wheels of the brand-new Explorer, the desert road unwound.
Keep Reading for an Excerpt from
Running Scared
Book #2 in the Princeton Royals Series
By Amy Lane!
What is That and What is it Doing
“EIGHT YEARSto get through med school,” Bailey Dodge muttered through a bite of donut, “three years of residency, two as an attending, and this is my life.”
The potential human traffic jam that was Outskirts General Hospital seethed around him as he struggled into his lab coat and tried to remember if he’d brushed his teeth that morning. The myth of the well-off doctor growing fat and avuncular in family practice was drifting further and further away with every minute spent in this hellhole.
