Page 25 of Brewbies
Well. Shit. She kind of had a point. He was being Captain Obvious, but he couldn’t tell her it was because he needed anything else to focus on but how much he wanted to kiss her.
Running a tired palm over his face, he lifted the bike. “At least let me throw this in the back now and take you the rest of the way home.”
He was still too shaken by her near-mishap to enjoy the fact that her coat reminded him of something his dog shat out when he’d eaten the tinfoil with the dinner inside it.
“You don’t want me in your car,” she said. “I’m filthy.”
Yeah, she was.
“It’s okay. Motor pool will clean it. The inmates at the jail like to get outside and wash cars. Sometimes we get them fast food and let them play in the sprinklers like kids.”
“Well, in that case.” She marched to his vehicle and opened the passenger door—before he could get there to hold it for her, goddammit—and slid into the seat.
After retrieving the two pieces of her bike, he put the back seats down flat and tucked it into the SUV’s trunk.
He mouthed a little prayer for both of their survival as he made the tiny journey to the driver’s seat and folded himself into it.
She clicked the lights off a beat before he could, and the red and blue flashes went dark.
“That’s a crime, you know,” he grumbled.
“Arrest me.” She pulled some moss out of her hair and chucked it out the window.
“Most women thank me when I rescue them from such a predicament,” he pointed out, apropos of nothing.
“Most women have been conditioned to respond deferentially to men in positions of power for survival reasons. Not sure I’d brag about that.”
“I’m not,” he muttered. “Put your seatbelt on.”
She didn’t move.
Had she heard him?
“Buckle up,” he said again.
She snorted. “It’s only a half-mile, and the road is empty.”
He gaped at her. “Did you learn nothing from what just happened here? You should have been wearing a helmet, by the way. And probably some sort of rash guard.”
“Yeah. Okay, Daddy,” she said in a voice usually employed by angsty teens.
You’ll call me Daddy.
Ethan coughed as if the thought might have burst out of his mouth instead of his lizard brain.
“Excuse me if I don’t fall all over myself worshiping my enemy,” she continued. “So typical. You want some sort of reward for helping when it’s your fault I biffed it in the first place.”
That snapped him out of it. “I’m sorry, you think I summoned that deer out of the forest to knock you over? You could have been killed!”
“I’m amply aware of that fact,” she snapped. “Thank you for condescending to me about it. But I wouldn’t have been there in the first place had you not been following me like some fucking police escort I didn’t need or ask for.”
“You don’t know that. You’d have ridden home either way.”
“But I wouldn’t have been rushing to get away from you. I wouldn’t have been in that spot at thatexactmoment…ergo, that’s your fault.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“It isn’t—!” Ethan stopped himself. Counted to ten. And then did it again in French. “Put. Your. Seat. Belt. On.”
She sat there looking straight ahead.
