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“You should be.” I stopped by my car. “This is mine. I’ll drive.”
He eyed my rust bucket. “How about I drive you?” He urged me on with a hand at the small of my back. His touch almost made me jump.
I gave up and moved along. “What, don’t trust a woman driver?”
His huff told me I’d hit the nail on the head, which wasn’t hard. No guy liked being driven around.
“Call it boss’s prerogative,” he said.
I walked with him in silence, still feeling the lingering heat where he’d touched me.
He took my hand for a second and pulled me to a stop by a white Cadillac Escalade. “This is it.”
His touch left me speechless. The car fit him—big, imposing, and muscular. But I wasn’t focused on that. Instead, it was that electric feeling again.
He unlocked the beast.
After a deep, calming breath, I climbed up into the passenger seat. The vision of him at the table in Barbados, looking my way as I answered the call from Lara, ran through my consciousness. If I hadn’t fallen in the pool that night, would I have felt his touch earlier? Where would I have felt his touch? He’d pulled me through the airport in Sioux City, but today it felt different. Was California the difference?
“Which way?” he asked, pulling me out of my reverie.
He’d started backing out of the parking space, and my mind was fifteen seconds behind, still caught up in my daydream.
I looked toward the street, avoiding his gaze for fear I’d freeze up again. “Right, and left at the light.”
“You okay?”
I got up the courage to look at him and smile. “Yeah.”
“Thinking about Lara?”
Unable to tell him what I’d actually been thinking, I went with the lie. “Uh-huh. She’s had it tough.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I fidgeted for a second. “Maybe later.” Somehow we’d gone from business to personal, and I didn’t know how. “What do you care, anyway?”
His jaw clenched.
I looked away. My big mouth had gotten me into trouble. Where was my brain-to-mouth filter when I needed it most?
He pulled to the curb after the next intersection.
I looked away, half expecting to be told to get out for being so rude.
He cut the engine. “Look at me.”
I turned.
“I thought we got past this, but apparently not,” he growled. “What, exactly, is your problem with me?”
“It’s not you exactly. It’s what you’re doing.”
“Then what,exactly,am I doing?” he demanded.
“The company is my family, and my parents’ legacy. It’s all I have.”
“I get that.”
