Page 154 of One Bad Idea
"Sooooo…" I gave Cassidy a sideways glance. "Did you guys…"
"No." She sighed. "Not even close."
I turned to study her face. "You're kidding."
"I wish."
"Well, that's weird." I wasn't even sure what surprised me more – that he'd bought her a car, or that she'd actually let him. Normally, Cassidy was self-sufficient to a fault.
There had to be more to this story.
Next to me, she was saying, "Get this. He said the car was forhim, not me."
I tried to think. "Oh. So it's like a loaner or something?"
"Not likethat," she said. And then, she went on to tell me in a roundabout way that Jax had bought her the car so he wouldn't be worried for her safety.
Apparently, he'd seriously lost his cool earlier today when he'd discovered that she'd taken a ride share to his house.
On this, I agreed with Jax. In truth, I was more than a little horrified that Cassidy had done such a thing. I said, "You didn't seriously?"
"Do what? Take a ride-share? Yeah. I mean, people do it all the time, right?"
"Sure," I said. "Butyoushouldn't, not here, anyway."
"Why not?"
With a little shudder, I recalled that incident with her mom and the limo. With as crazy as things were, Cassidy shouldn’t be riding anywhere with any stranger, especially given her mom's connections.
I said, "Because your mom's pimp—"
She stiffened. "He's not a pimp."
Yes. He was.But it was useless to argue. Already, Cassidy and I had argued way too much about the monster that was her mom.
I tried again. "Fine. Your mom's 'boyfriend' is big into that sort of thing. He's got that limo company, the taxi service, and he's a partial owner in that local ride-share, too."
Cassidy blinked. "He is?"
"Yeah. You didn't know?"
"No. I didn't."
"He's bad news," I said, "especially for you." As I talked, I realized that I sounded an awful lot like Jaden, who'd given me a similar lecture about the very same topic.
But this was totally different. After all, no one had tried to dragmeinto the world's oldest profession, thank God.
Cassidy asked, "Why me?"
"Hello?" I gave her a look. "He was trying to recruit you."
Cassidy frowned. "Technically, my mom was trying to recruit me."
I almost rolled my eyes.As if that was an improvement.
Still, over the next few minutes, I tried to drive the point home that Cassidy needed to be a lot more careful. She was gorgeous and vulnerable, too, especially since she was new the area and had no way of knowing who was connected to whom.
I was still making the point when Cassidy said, "But forget that. Wait 'til you hear what Jax and Jaden did."
