Page 4 of You, Me, and Lucky Number 13

Fucker.

I reach out and grab Luke’s hand. It’s rough but firm. It’s the kind of hand that can extinguish a fire and save a life. And in this moment, it’s the kind of hand that’s helping me out of this car.

“Just don’t judge me, okay?”

“No judging,” he says with a smirk, crossing his heart.

He’s so judging, but that’s fine.

No, no, it isn’t fine. I changed my mind. I’m better off just dying of embarrassment in my car.

“You know what?” I wave my hand between us like I’m shooing him away. “Just let me die. I’m ready to go.”

He hitches a grin that is so handsome I almost reconsider.

Almost.

“Tell your boss you couldn’t get me out or that I crawled out on my own and grabbed a coffee. We don’t have to do this rescue—extraction thing.”

I beg him with my eyes, pleading silently for him to abandon his duty and leave me here to rot in this parking lot.

“Ma’am. Like I said earlier, I’ve seen it all. There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

He’s all of twenty-one years old. He most definitely hasn’t seen it all.

“You haven’t seen this,” I assure him.

If possible, his grin widens. “How bad can it be?”

Try a week without shaving my legs and the rattiest pair of period panties that I spent an obscene amount of time locating, all for the sake of comfort.

“Look,” I hold up a hand in reason. “I’ve recently endured a breakup, one that left me a little…” How do I explain this? “Messy. I needed this last month to go on one of thoseEat, Pray, Loveadventures.”

Heavier on the eating—and the praying if we’re getting technical. I pray every day Chad gets a finger up the ass for being such a prick. But I digress.

“You caught me at a bad time.”

A really bad time.

Firefighter Luke smothers his grin behind his fist. “I understand, ma’am, and I promise on my mother’s chickencasserole that I will remain professional while extricating you from the vehicle.”

“You say all the right things, Luke, but I just can’t be responsible for scarring your future image of women.”

Seriously, Luke hasn’t faced three-day-old pajamas and no bra after a weekend of binge drinking. He has many years before he learns that women are not always stunning creatures straight out of bed. We have bad weeks—okay, months—and while Luke will ultimately need to know this secret, I do not need to be the one sharing this valuable knowledge and bursting his bubble on a Tuesday afternoon.

The door behind me is pried off, and I squeak. “I appreciate you guys responding, I do. The county needs more men like you, but I’m fine. I’ll crawl out of here and Uber my way home. Don’t you worry.”

Please, Luke. Please, just look away.

But he doesn’t. Instead, my big brother appears out of nowhere and snatches me from the car, nearly banging my kneecap on the center console.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Lola?”

Safely standing in my brother’s arms with a parking-lot-sized audience looking on, I straighten my back, dust off my pajamas like the prestigious woman I am, and lie. “I was trying and failing to escape the bee in my car. You know I’m allergic. Excuse me a minute while I go exchange insurance information with the idiot who hit me while I was trying to get away from the killer bee. I’ll be right back.”

CHAPTER TWO

LOLA

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