17.Jada
I rushed outof the house the next morning, holding a buttered, reheated pastry from my date with Bryce, ready to hustle to catch the bus. If I didn’t make it in time, it would be another twenty minutes before the next one, and being late wasnota good look when I was lucky to have this job.
But once I locked the front door behind me, I stopped dead in my tracks. “You’vegotto be kidding me.”
Bryce Madigan pushed himself off the door of a shiny black SUV and nodded toward the other three cars lining the sidewalk in front of my grandma’s house. “What do you think?” he asked.
“What do I think of what?” I asked, going down the two front steps. A dollop of butter slid off my pastry and landed on the sidewalk. I looked at the sad little glob and then back to Bryce.
He walked toward the first of the cars. A slick red thing with two doors and tinted windows. He rattled off some stats, including the year it was made. It hadn’t even been released to the market yet.
My eyebrows rose.
Then he moved forward to a metallic-gray SUV that had my ovaries humming. The damn things seemed to be overactivearound him. Was it possible to be attracted to a car? Because if not, I was defying logic.
“Or, we have a truck.” He gestured at the pearlescent white truck shimmering in the morning sun. “Very Texas.”
A buzz on my watch let me know that I’d definitely missed my bus with this nonsense, and I frowned. “What exactly is going on here? You want my opinion on your next car or something?”
He folded strong arms over his chest and leaned back against the truck, crossing his legs at the ankles. “I don’t want you taking the bus anymore, so I got you a vehicle. Well, three, but the idea is that you pick the one you like.”
My mind had completely blown. “You bought me a vehicle?”
“Three,” he clarified.
“Because you don’t want me taking the bus?”
He nodded slowly. “And I should mention that if you don’t like the color of the cars, I can have it changed.”
I blinked. Hard. “What if my driver’s license was revoked?”
He blinked back. “Well, is it?”
I shifted to my other foot. “No. Butwhat ifI didn’t have a driver’s license?”
He smirked, “Then I would have fun giving you driving lessons.”
My mind instantly went to all the things we could do in a car—both in the front and back seats—and I considered pretending that I didn’t know Drive from Reverse. But I quickly shook the thought. “Bryce, this is nice and all, but I don’t even like accepting a drink from a guy in a bar. They always expect something in return.”
Understanding filled his expressive blue eyes. “You don’t need to feel like you owe me anything. I did this because I hate the thought of you alone on a bus with some lunatic.”
I arched an eyebrow. “A bigger lunatic than a man showing up to my house with three brand new cars telling me to pick one?”
Humor laced his features as he approached me. Then he leaned in, his lips inches from my skin as he whispered, “Maybe you make me crazy, Jada Baker. Have you ever considered that?”
My cheeks warmed, and I was glad my umber skin tone hid how he was affecting me. “I?—”
The door creaked open, and we both looked over my shoulder to see Glamma coming outside in her cheetah-print muumuu, a matching silk bonnet on her head. She held her favorite coffee cup, the one shaped and painted like a rooster, with steam lifting from the colorful ceramic. “What’s going on out here?” she asked. Then she stared at Bryce, her eyes widening. “Bryce Madigan? Is that you?”
His easy smile fell into place again. “Have we met?”
She came down the steps, the hard soles of her slippers thudding against the cement. “No, I googled you though.”
I stared at her. “Yougoogledhim?”
“You were going out with him. I had to make sure he wasn’t a murderer,” Glamma said, like it should have been obvious.
“Smart,” Bryce said.
