Page 19 of The Temporary Roomie: Extended Edition

What freaks me out is how much this Jeep smells like him. It’s a 1990s Wrangler with a soft top and years of memories packed inside. His scent is so ingrained in the upholstery I feel like he’s wrapping his arms around me. On the dashboard, someone carvedVal hearts Drew,and I want to run my fingers across it. How long has he had this? How many girlfriends has he driven around in it? So many questions are buzzing around my head, but I can’t ask any of them because we don’t have that type of relationship. If only rideshares weren’t so expensive, I could be sitting happily in the back seat of a stranger’s car, not wondering who Val is or how long ago she loved Drew.

He puts the Jeep in drive and away we go. It’s silent. No music. I can, however, hear my heart beating.

“So . . .” His big hands close around the steering wheel.

“Nope.” I look sharply out the window. “Not talking.”

“Your maturity never ceases to amaze me.”

I roll my eyes at my reflection. Man, it does look immature.

“Are you having a good morning?” The sincerity in his tone shocks me enough to turn and look at him. Drew and I have never, not once, had a normal, non-fighting conversation. And when I look at him, I see a smirk grow and his eyes bounce down to my lower half and back up, telling me that wasn’t a sincere question at all. “Anything of interest happen so far today?”

“Well, some freak stole all my underwear and is hoarding it in private like a dirty little weirdo . . . so yeah, I guess that was interesting.”

He smiles, gaze fixed on the road. “Dirty little weirdo indeed. What a strange thing to do.”

I glare at his mouth. “Where are they?”

He shrugs. “How should I know?”

I poke him in the ribs to teach him a lesson and immediately wish I hadn’t, because 1) I’ve now not only seen evidence that he is warm flesh and blood, I’ve felt it, and 2) we’ve had a strictno intentional touchingrule, and for some reason I just broke it. My action shoots like a flare gun into the air, announcing this new breach of contract.

“Give them back. You don’t want to wage war with me,Dr. Stuck-up.”

He immediately takes advantage of the broken rule and presses his finger under my armpit. It’s so annoying being forced to laugh when you want to scowl. “I thought our war was already being waged?”

“You’ve seen nothing yet,” I say, my voice dripping with warning like a woman who has a dagger strapped to her thigh. I’m dangerous, and he should be terrified to mess with me.

“You have a coffee spill on the front of your shirt.”

I gasp and look down. “Nuh-uh. I don’t see one.”

“It’s on the underside of your belly.”

Oh great! Just great. My cheeks flame red as I try to crane my neck over to see the part of my belly I know I’ll never catch a glimpse of without a mirror. I feel like a clumsy toddler. “Just . . . keep your eyes on the road from now on!”Super comeback.

Drew chuckles, but I sit back angrily and cross my arms. There’s a minute of painful silence before he speaks. “Why do you hate me so much?”

My heart skips, but I try to keep my face impassive so he doesn’t notice. “Umm, I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with you standing me up when my grandaddy came to visit.”

He shakes his head, his brown locks a little more unruly today than normal. “Beforethe day I accidentally overslept.” I don’t answer right away, so he glances at me and then looks back at the road, his hand tightening around the wheel, making his forearm flex. “You hated me before that.”

My mouth starts drying up. This isn’t a conversation I want to have with him. He’s tiptoeing toward the truth that I don’t want to acknowledge—not to myself and definitely not to him. I didhate him before I met him. I hated him before I knew a single thing about him. “Lucy. You were a jerk to her, remember?”

He makes an unimpressed humming sound and cocks his head to the side, eyes squinting in thought. “Even that first time you showed up at my house, you acted like you’d hated me for a hundred years before that, and we’d never met. So what was it?”

That is the million-dollar question.

“What can I say? You’re just hate-able right from the start.” My words were meant to be cutting, but they came out oddly weak. Drew doesn’t look wounded like I hoped. He looks . . . intrigued. Curious. He’s not buying my insta-hate story. He’s a journalist who just got a lead on his next scoop. The look in his eyes when his gaze flashes to me is terrifying, so I hurry to change the subject before he can push any further toward the truth. “Aren’t you supposed to be doctoring people right now?”

“I was at the clinic, but I have to go into the hospital for a little while today. Just stopped for a coffee—and apparently a hostile pregnant woman—on the way.” He shows the first signs of a smile, so I look away. I need to get out of this Drew-infused vehicle. It’s making my brain mushy.

We pull up in front of my salon and park. Drew then swivels his big torso so his back leans in the corner between the door and the seat. He surveys me, eyes scanning like lasers, trying to comb through my thoughts.

Needing something to do other than let Drew see me sweat, I flip down the visor and open the flap, revealing the cosmetic mirror, and look for the stain on my T-shirt. There’s another little love note to Drew scribbled in Sharpie.Beth & Drew forever.I frown. “How long have you had this Jeep?”

“Since I was sixteen.”

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