“You want to stop anywhere before headin’ to your place?” Wolf asked Chrissy.
What little energy she’d summoned up to greet Billy had seeped out of her at mention of Winston. She was back to looking wan and exhausted.
“No.” She shook her head. “As Dorothy said, there’s no place like home.”
“Hey!” He faked affront. “I’m not allowed quotes, butyouare?”
“Movie quotes don’t count. Besides, all’s fair in love and war.” She grinned impishly, and then froze, her smile sliding off her face when realized what she’d said.
You can bet your bottom dollar Wolf realized it too. In fact, the moment the wordloveleft her lips, his heart tried to leap from his chest like his mother’s old mule used to leap out of its pen to eat the neighbor’s green grass.
“Since we’ve already established we’re not enemies, what do you reckon that leaves?” He kept his voice low.
She blushed. “It’s a figure of speech, Wolf.” Before he could answer, she turned back to Billy. “I’m headed home,” she told him, then blushed harder when Billy answered, “I gathered that. But unless you still live in the same place you grew up, I don’t know where that is.”
Wolf rattled off Chrissy’s address, and lifted an eyebrow when she turned to blink at him in surprise.
“What?” he asked, all innocent-like. “Just ’cause you’ve never invited me over doesn’t mean I don’t know where you live.”
He’d memorized her address months ago. You know, just in case.
“Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic,”Wolf’s favorite travel writer, Rick Steves had written. Words of wisdom he tried to live by.
Billy drove the cab from the parking lot, and they’d made it about a mile down the road before he caught Chrissy’s gaze in the rearview mirror again. “Last time I was back here you were dating that guy who’d moved down from Fort Lauderdale to run a bar on the north end of Duval. You two seemed so smitten.” Billy’s eyes pinged to Wolf before returning to Chrissy. Was Billy boy trying to rub Wolf’s nose in Chrissy’s past romances? Was Wolf’s jealous streak that obvious? Probably.Double grrr.“What happened?” Billy asked.
“We wanted different things.” Chrissy lifted her uninjured shoulder. “I wanted to settle down and start building a life, and he wanted to text pictures of his dick to the woman who supplied his beer kegs.”
“Yeesh.” Billy grimaced. “Sounds like an ugly scene.”
“It’s branded into my brain like a bad tattoo,” Chrissy nodded grimly. Then a smirk hitched up one corner of her mouth. “Joke’s on him, though. She ended up ditching his ass for a professional sport fisherman, but not before she totaled his Jeep on the overseas highway.”
Billy laughed. “I guess it’s true what they say. Karma’s a bitch.”
“That’s why I like her so much.” Chrissy bobbed her eyebrows.
For a while after that, everyone in the cab was quiet. Billy because he’d run out of things to chat about or annoy Wolf with. Chrissy because her usual exuberance was tempered by worry for Winston, the pull of the pain medication, and, you know, the small inconvenience of sporting a fresh bullet wound. And Wolf because he kept turning Chrissy’s words over in his mind.
I wanted to settle down and start building a life.
He’d always assumed she was happy being foot loose and fancy free. So damned independent the thought of a white dress and a gold ring might make her break out in hives.
He’d been fully prepared to not only have to coax her into falling in love with him, but also cajole her into marrying him. Because he wanted it all. The wedding, the honeymoon, the house, the kids. But now…
Well, now maybe the only thing I’ll have to work on is the “fallin’ in love with me” part.Which might be easier said than done since they were still haunted by the specter of That Night.
He needed to fix that. Problem being, he wasn’t sure where to start since she shut him down every time he tried to talk about it.
“I, uh, didn’t get a chance to thank you, Wolf.” Chrissy’s words broke into his thoughts.
“For what?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, you know. For getting the paramedics to Winston in time. For staying with me last night. For taking care of things this morning. For keeping me from getting my ass ran over, as you so eloquently put it. I saw you barreling toward me and thought, ‘Look at him go. He’s on X Games mode.’ Too much TikTok in my spare time, obviously.”
“Huh?” He tilted his head, genuinely perplexed.
“It’s a social media app with funny videos and—” She cut herself off. “Never mind. My point is, I was this close”—she dropped his hand so she could hold her finger and thumb a half inch apart—“to becoming road k—”
He stopped her before she could voice aloud the end of that sentence and make him sick to his stomach. “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, darlin’.”
