As soon as he was behind the wheel, he turned on the heated seats. She stared out the window.
“Next time, I’ll get a rideshare to meet you. You can’t leave this”—she twirled her finger at the dash of his newest toy—“parked in my neighborhood. It’ll be stolen or stripped and left on blocks by the time you get back. At the very least, they’ll slash your tires.”
“Duly noted.” At the parking lot exit, he caught Murdick’s headlights in his rearview. “Ex-boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
Avery turned onto the street and watched the truck head off in the opposite direction. “You want to talk about it?”
Okay, that’s a first. Since when do I want to listen to a girl’s problems?
He didn’t. Not really. But they were about to head into the shark tank, and he couldn’t have her bleeding emotion all over the place.
“No,” she snapped. “It’s just all the fucking baggage that comes with exes and family. Nothing that concerns you.”
Guess she told me.
But he was good with that. Boundaries were firmly resurrected, and he could slam the door on those annoying voices—audio produced by Sigma Brothers, Inc.—warning him she’d fall for him before this night was over.
“Okay.” He slowed for the stoplight ahead. “But can you pack it away before we get there? My family’s gonna think I did something to piss you off.”
“You mean pretend to be happy? Sure, I’ve been doing that since I was fifteen.”
Nope, we won’t be unpacking all that.
She swung to face him. “Do you piss off all your dates?”
“You haven’t been listening. I told you I don’t date.”Several times. “But they’ll think I regret asking you out, that I only did it to appease them—that part is true—and that I’m trying to get out of it.”
“Won’t they think the same thing when you’re screwing some girl in the janitor’s closet?”
Ouch.
But touché.
But now that Legs was back with her razor-sharp barbs, which he was beginning to enjoy, he could slip back into the comfort of his own skin where he lived for pleasure. He waggled his brows even though she couldn’t see him. “Not if I don’t get caught.”
Obviously, she didn’t appreciate his attempt at levity because she had nothing to say to that. Deciding to let her work through whatever was on her mind, he lost himself in the performance of the car, and the road beneath him.
When he took the exit heading into downtown, her voice came out of the blue, soft and rasping. “I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat and swiveled to face him. “I’m sorry about all that. I shouldn’t have made you a part of it.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know.” She turned back to the window. “He just pissed me off. Thinking he could just show up, like I don’t have a life or I’m some booty call. He accused me of screwing you, so I thought, ‘Why not make him think it was true?’”
“So you two didn’t do the nasty before I got there?”
“What?” She swung back around. “Did he insinuate that we had?”
Avery shrugged. “I think he did it to piss me off.”
“That lying—argh.”
“Want me to take care of him? ’Cause he needs to keep his hands out of my cookie jar.”
Uh, what the fuck, dude? Her cookie jar is not your cookie jar. Her cookie jar is off limits.
Her mouth was still hanging open when Avery finished arguing with himself, and he was sure that when she recovered from her shock, she’d tell him to fuck off and take her home.
