Page 66 of Date with a Devil
“It has to. The trade deadline is Monday.”
“Are you upset?”
“I dunno. Not upset. Not happy either. Kinda numb, I guess. End of an era. Blah blah.”
“You seem sad.”
“Maybe,” he said with a slight frown. “Got a few different things on my mind.”
“Like what?” she asked.
He drummed on the windowsill of her door. He had a thousand things running through his mind at that moment. A sudden impulse grabbed him. “Hey, you wanna go for a drive with me? I could use a change of scenery. And there’s something I wanna show you.”
She gestured towards his house. “But what about your party?”
“They won’t even notice I’m gone. Besides, they’ll probably be here all night.”
“I don’t know, Dane. I’m meeting someone for dinner at 8:00.”
He looked at his watch. “We’ve got time. And I can drop you off at your dinner.”
She mulled it over. “You’re not going to try anything creepy on me, are you?”
“No way. You think I wanna catch your cold?” he asked, cracking a smile. “There’s just one thing I wanna show you before I get traded. I swear I’ll leave you alone forever after you see it.”
“Youpromiseyou’ll leave me alone forever?” she asked, a mischievous sparkle in her eye.
“Oh, that really makes you happy, huh? I see how it is,” he said with a smile. “But yeah, I promise.”
Chapter 27
Austen
Austen took another sip of Dane’s weird health swill as she followed him up his driveway and into his garage.
The drink was odd. It wasverygarlicky. She held her palm to her mouth and tested her breath.
Ugh.
Simply dreadful. She figured no one could kiss her and survive to the tell the tale. But the more she thought about it like that, the more appealing the drink became.
She took another swig and recoiled. “How much garlic did you put in this, anyway?”
“Enough to make you feel better, so drink up,” Dane said as he dug into the pocket of his snug-fitting chinos for his car keys.
He had several cars parked in his garage: a Mercedes sedan, some big SUV, and the sporty looking one he drove last night. Dane pressed a button on the key fob, and the midnight-blue sports coupe blinked its lights and chirped in response. Austen recognized the trident logo on the car’s aggressive-looking grill.
“That’s a Maserati, right?” she asked. She didn’t know much about cars, but she knew Maseratis were nice.
“Sure is,” he said.
“Guess you can call me a car guy, too.”
He swung his door open. “Okay, Car Guy, get in.”
She didn’t have to be told twice. She opened the passenger door and settled into the finest of Italian sport luxury. The mocha-colored leather seat was heaven-on-earth soft, and for a second, the pounding in her head actually subsided.
“How do you like it?” he asked.
