Page 5 of Her Loving Hero

“Yep, I know.” He gave her a slow grin.

“Darn, I fell for your bull too. I should know better by now.” She punched him in the shoulder.

“You should,” he agreed.

Wyatt guided Emily out of the center, and they walked companionably into the balmy San Diego summer night.

“Thanks for picking me up today,” Emily said as he helped her step up into the truck. “However, I do have a car that doesn’t require a ladder to get into it.”

“It’s a tin can Emily. If we get hit while you’re in my truck, we’re both going to come out of it alive. When are you going to let me take you car shopping?”

“Never.”

It was the same reply every time. He knew her parents wanted to pay for a new car. They wanted to buy her a house, but she wasn’t having anything to do with it. Why was she being so damn adamant about paying her own way?

“Emily-”

“Don’t start Wyatt, we’re having a nice night, and I don’t want to ruin it.”

Eventually he was going to figure out what was up. Maybe not tonight, but pretty damn soon.

He hopped into the driver’s seat.

“So, are you going to be good?” Emily asked.

“I promise, no probing questions. Except one. How committed to coffee are you?”

“I don’t know?” she asked. “What do you have in mind?”

“How about ice cream down at the pier?”

“Sold,” she grinned.

“Do you mind if we stop by my townhome and I go change and take a quick rinse?”

“Let me guess, you need to freshen up after donning latex,” she said knowingly.

Surely, she didn’t mean that the way it came out. He looked at her and saw no suggestive smile on her face. Nope, she wasn’t making a double entendre. After five months of friendship, Wyatt knew that Emily was as innocent as a spring morning. Which is why he’d kept her in the friend’s category. You could never have enough friends, right?

Who the hell was he kidding?

“Wyatt?”

“Huh? Oh, right. I figured that after I scrub down, I’d take you for ice cream.”

“I want strawberry, or if they have it boysenberry. I love the fresh berries when they’re in season.”

“We should go to Knott’s Berry Farm, it’s the Boysenberry Festival there.”

He loved seeing her eyes light up.

“Really, you’d do that? I didn’t think somebody like you would be into going to an amusement park.”

“I would definitely be up for that. They have rollercoasters, right?” he said as he put his truck in reverse and headed out of the parking lot.

“That would be awesome.”

She was practically bouncing in her seat.