‘Of course.’
I let go of his hand and walked towards her. God, she was gorgeous. She might be the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. Was this what it felt like to have a religious experience?
‘I don’t get it,’ Heather said. The other women had followed us outside, I registered dimly. ‘It’s just a car.’
‘Shut your mouth,’ I said. ‘This isn’t just a car. This is a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roadster.’
I ran my hands reverently over the hood. ‘Oh my God, I’m shaking,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to get smudges on her.’
‘I’m sure we can get it washed,’ Romeo-Dylan said, chuckling.
We would do no such thing. If she got smudged, I would look after her myself, showing her the care and reverence she deserved.
‘Can you start the engine?’ I asked.
‘I thought you might like to drive.’
‘Oh, buddy, I am one hundred per cent driving,’ I said. ‘But will you start her up for me? I want to listen to her.’
‘She isso weird,’ I heard one of the other women – Belinda, maybe? – say as Romeo-Dylan obediently hopped into the driver’s seat.
I couldn’t even begin to care. ‘Ready?’ Romeo-Dylan asked.
I walked around the car and knelt down next to one of the back wheels. ‘Absolutely.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Lambos are mid-engine cars,’ I said. ‘She’s built to go fast. If you want a car to go fast, you don’t put the engine in the front. You put it in the middle behind the driver. Balance her out. Otherwise you get all these issues with braking and torque and understeering, and—’
Romeo-Dylan looked like he might be about to fall asleep.
‘– and you can’t possibly want to know any of this,’ I said. ‘Just start her up.’
‘Here we go,’ he said, turning back to the steering wheel.
‘Sing for me, baby,’ I said, stroking the car. ‘Go on, girl.’
He turned her on. She purred for me, and for a moment, just a moment, I understood why the guys at work gravitated so hard towards those calendars of beautiful girls draped over the hoods of beautiful cars. She was a beautiful girl, and if I’d been alone with her, I – well, I don’t want to say I would have come on the spot, but I would have been significantly turned on.Significantly.
But I wasn’t alone. So, reluctantly, I peeled my ear away from her beautiful body. ‘You have made my day,’ I told Romeo-Dylan. ‘My month. My year, even. Possibly my life.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said, the corners of his eyes creasing again as he smiled at me. ‘I’m a bit worried about the rest of the date, though. Surely it can only be a disappointment from here.’
It wasn’t a disappointment. It was perfectly nice.
Strike that. It was better than perfectly nice. I got to drive afucking Lambo. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ I crooned to her, stroking her dash. ‘You’re such a beautiful girl.’
Romeo-Dylan made a noise in the back of his throat that I thought was a laugh.
‘You’re very beautiful too,’ I said, patting him on the knee and then putting both hands back on the steering wheel.
His response wasdefinitelya laugh.
We were under strict orders from Murray that we were not, under any circumstances, allowed to get out of the car until we reached our final destination. ‘The second you put a toe on the ground outside the property, the bubble is broken and the whole show is fucked,’ he growled at us. ‘You seea crash on the side of the road? Someone else’s problem. You see a granny who needs help crossing the street? Fuck Granny. You see a leprechaun promising to show you the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? You run him over.’
‘Murray, we’ve got it,’ Romeo-Dylan said. ‘We won’t get out of the car.’
‘I’m trusting you two,’ he warned. ‘The whole fate of this season is in your hands. So if you fuck it up—’
