Page 42 of Standing Still

“It’s my Mustang,” I tell her. “And Denny.”

“He’s a bad driver?” she asks.

“I don’t give a shit how he drives. That car is my baby.”

She laughs, but I don’t join in. Jedi starts barking preceding the thumping up the stairs and a knock on the front door. Fuck, he was already almost here when he called. The little shit. Elle straightens up, looking down at herself. She doesn’t want Denny to see her here. That makes me frown, but I understand. He won’t be able to resist telling everyone if he sees her here.

I have no leverage either. He’s already managed to get my damn car. I tell her to stay in the kitchen and follow the dog to the door. There is a t-shirt I tossed on the sofa a couple of days ago, so I grab it and pull it on, then I slam my feet into my sneakers andgrab my keys.

“Morning, sunshine!”

I bar him entry and he frowns. I step out and shut the door, then jog down the steps.

“Desperate to give me the car, are we?” he grins. I just scowl and he follows me. “I wanted to say hi to Jedi.”

“He doesn’t want to say hi to you. Come on, idiot.”

“Well, that is rude. But do you know what? I don’t care. I’m too fucking excited. This is gonna be awesome.”

“You don’t go faster than thirty miles an hour,” I say as I round the path towards my garage. “If you go in a parking lot, you park away from any other vehicles. You do not leave town. You do not eat food inside and you definitely do not drink, and not just alcohol. I mean anything.”

“Lighten up,” Denny strolls along beside me and stops as I unlock the garage and go inside. He steps around me and goes straight to the Mustang, pulling the tarp off the top of the car.

“I mean it Dennis.”

“Don’t Dennis me, you’re not mom,” he grumbles. He holds his hand out. “Gimme.”

“Not until you promise to follow the rules.”

“You are so anal about this car,” he laughs.

“It cost me a lot of money to rebuild this, you ingrate. You have no idea what this car means to me. If you go over twenty-five, I’ll break your neck.”

“You just said thirty,” Denny laughs at me and steps closer. “Keys. A deal’s a deal.”

“Sonofabitch,” I groan, passing over the keys. “If this car comes back with even a hint of a scratch on it, I’m going to bury you in the backyard.”

“Okay.” He snatches the keys, undeterred or even concerned by my threat.

I watch in dismay as he gets into the driver’s seat of the car and runs his hands over the steering wheel. I want to drag him out. Hestarts the engine, and she purrs like a fucking kitten, until he revs the engine, making my blood pressure spike.

“Get the garage door, would you?” he says and shuts the door.

“I hate you.”

“I’m sure it was worth it.”

Is it? It’s been days since Larry read out Acer’s will and completely threw my life off course. I don’t know what else I’m going to do to convince Elle Mystic is somewhere she could spend half of her time. I am hoping to use Dawn but haven’t had a chance to speak to her yet. I

hadn’t planned for what happened last night. Would that be enough? I shake that thought out of my head. No matter what Jared says, I didn’t take her to bed thinking about how to get her to agree to Acer’s deal. Acer was the last thing on my mind. And one night of sex isn’t going to change her mind, anyway.

She’s researching everything herself, or her researcher is. I wonder who that guy is. She was laughing and joking with him on the phone yesterday.

And nope. I’m not going there. I lift the garage door up so my beloved Mustang can be driven away from me by my idiot little brother, and a part of my soul goes with it as I follow it out. I don’t even feel a little ashamed to think about that.

I glance across to see Elle standing on the steps to my house. She’s fully dressed and has one hand over her mouth to cover a laugh when we hear my car revving down the street. Fucking hell.

“Are you alright, Ben? Or do you want to go after him?” Elle waggles my car keys.

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