Page 30 of Lucky Mother Pucker

She pats my arm, then pulls a receipt out of her apron pocket. “You forgot to pick up the receipt from his table earlier. He left you quite a generous tip. I think he likes you.”

She walks off, and I look down at the tip amount on the receipt. My eyes bug out of my head. He left me two hundred dollars? And he’s offering to pay to get my car back too? Exactly how much money does this guy have?

I head back out to the diner. I see Leo standing at the table with the group of friends he came in with. When I stopped by their table, I heard snippets of their conversation. I think the guys are his hockey teammates and the ladies are their girlfriends.

He’s talking to the pretty blonde, who I’m guessing is the girlfriend of the guy who joked about me spitting in Leo’s food, since they sat next to each other and he had his arm around her. I think his name is Nick.

Leo spots me and walks over to me. “You ready?”

I nod. We head out of the restaurant and back over to his car. I go to open the passenger door, but he rushes over to open it for me.

“Um, thanks,” I say.

He closes it, then jogs over to the driver’s side. When he hops in and starts the engine, I buckle my seatbelt. We’re both quiet as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the street.

“You didn’t have to leave me such a big tip,” I say after a minute.

“Yeah, I did.” He looks ahead at the darkened road. Streetlights line either side, glittering against the night sky. “It was rude of me to make that comment about you looking tired.”

I play with the strap of my bag. “You weren’t wrong. I am tired. I’m exhausted.”

When I glance up, I catch him looking at me for a second before he focuses back on the road. He merges onto the freeway and heads toward the industrial part of the city.

“You really don’t have to do this,” I say.

He doesn’t say anything at first. He just quietly gazes at the road, smoothly cutting through traffic and taking the exit to the tow yard.

“You don’t get a lot of help from people, do you?” he says.

I suddenly feel self-conscious, even though I shouldn’t. Just a few minutes ago, I had a tear-filled breakdown in front of him. He knows how poor I am. Why do I feel embarrassed for him to know how alone I am too?

Maybe because, up to this point, I’ve put up such a tough front for him…and now he’s seeing just how weak and pitiful I really am.

Heat climbs up my cheeks. No use hiding that part of me. He already knows.

“You’re right. I don’t get a lot of help. I’m used to just figuring it out on my own,” I say in a quiet voice.

“I’m really sorry about that.”

The sincerity in his voice hits me square in the chest. I can’t figure this guy out. This handsome college hockey player who I thought was a jerk at first…who tips insanely generously and ditches his friends to help a girl he barely knows.

I gaze out the window, glancing at the warehouses and industrial buildings we pass on the street. “You don’t need to be sorry. Especially when you’re one of the few people who’ve been nice to me in a really, really long time.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him looking over at me. He doesn’t say anything though.

A minute later, he pulls into the parking lot of the tow yard. There’s a small, run-down office building near the entrance. He parks in front, and together we hop out of his car.

I notice how he walks ahead of me so he can open the door for me. He’s really polite.

When we walk inside, I’m hit with the scent of stale fast food and smoke. It’s a tiny space, with just a couple of rickety plastic chairs in the front, a small wooden table with a stack of old magazines, and a tiny TV on the wall playing an infomercial.

I turn to Leo, who’s standing next to me. His tall, muscled frame looks comically big in such a small space. Like a giant in an elf’s house.

I walk up to the counter, where there’s an older bald guy hunched over, scratching off a lottery ticket.

“I need to pick up my car,” I say. I tell him the make and model, and he punches it into the computer on his desk.

“That’ll be two hundred and seventeen dollars,” he says in a gruff voice.