Page 46 of In Plain Sight

Zander’s plan worked wonders in that it kept me busy so I didn’t have time to think or make a mess, and we raced through the closing routine and were done in record time.

“Is your dad picking you up?” I asked Cass as Zander and I waited with her in the parking lot of the garage. She was Nate’soldest daughter and worked the front end of the shop most evenings.

Cass was a nice kid, and she knew how to keep the guys in line when they got a little rambunctious, especially Isaac and Jesse. I’d only known her for a little over a month, but I already thought of her as a little sister.

She shook her head. “My uncle Ethan is.”

I glanced at Zander. Nate only had one brother, and that was Devon. Nate’s wife had died two years ago, but I’d heard Nate talk about how hard it was to be a single dad with no other family around. As far as I knew, his late wife had been an only child, but Cass had an uncle other than Dev?

“Ethan is Nate’s best friend,” Zander explained, noticing my confusion.

“Not just his best friend, his BFF.” Cass grinned. “They’ve been like brothers since they were eleven.”

“Eleven?” Nate was forty, and it was kind of crazy to think he’d been best friends with Ethan longer than any of us had been alive.

“Yup.” She tipped her wrist to check the time on her fitness watch just as a dark sedan pulled into the lot. “That’s him.”

The car slowed, and Cass gave us both a quick wave. “See ya tomorrow.”

“Have a good night,” Zander said, bending to wave at whoever was in the car as Cass pulled the passenger’s door open.

I caught a glance of dark hair and a dark jacket or sweater before she closed the door behind her.

“Still want to go somewhere?” Zander asked as the car drove away.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. It’s just hanging with a coworker. He’s being nice because you’re a mess. Stop making things weird. “Um, where do you want to go?”

He paused, then the corner of his mouth curled up in a smirk-smile that was way too hot. “I have no idea. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

I chuckled and shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t start fidgeting. “Me either.”

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Zander said as we headed to the staff parking area in the back of the lot. “Not on a Tuesday night. We could grab a coffee, but that’s probably not a good idea at this hour.”

I laughed, the sound a little too loud in the quiet night. My nerves were making me jumpy, and I was having trouble calming the fuck down. Thankfully Zander ignored my weirdness. “I wish caffeine woke me up.”

“It doesn’t?” He shot me a quick look.

“Nope. It actually has the opposite effect. It makes me sleepy.”

“Really?” Zander paused beside his car. My truck was parked next to him, and I stopped too.

I nodded. “Took me years to figure that out. I couldn’t understand why I’d be exhausted an hour after having coffee, and drinking more would just perk me up for a few minutes but then make the sleepies a thousand times worse. I stopped drinking coffee and voilà, no more crashes.”

“Isaac is like that.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Asa too, now that I think of it.”

I tore my eyes from his thumb and the gentle way he was running it over the leather tag on his keychain. “It’s annoying.”

“The only other options I can think of are a bar or a restaurant.” Zander stopped fingering the tag and flipped the keys in his hand a few times.

“Or you could come to my place.”

Zander missed his toss and dropped his keys on the ground.

A surge of panic tightened my chest. What the fuck? Had I really just invited him to my apartment?

I tried to tell him to forget it, but I couldn’t seem to form the words. Instead of wanting to run away, my panic had frozen me in place, and it was like my brain and body were no longer connected.

“Yeah, we can do that.” Zander picked up his keys. Some of his hair fell into his face when he stood, and he pushed it back with a sweep of his hand, leaving the thick strands a little disheveled and looking way too hot.

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