Page 25 of New Girl in the City
Chapter Seven
One day later brought me face to face with a smiling Liam. I’d made a special shopping trip just to get myself ready for today and the proof of it was stowed away in the larger than normal, but still totally work appropriate leather tote I had slung over one shoulder. Liam made no secret of eyeballing my feet as soon as I hit the sidewalk, and when I was close enough, he nodded at me.
“Those are better, but you can’t learn to fight in them,” he said, looking down at the sensible flats I was wearing. I smiled smugly at him.
“I know, and that’s why I have the good stuff in here,” I said, patting my tote bag triumphantly.
“The good stuff?” He took a step closer and tried to peer into my bag, but I stopped him with a handout.
“Excuse you. You never try to look into a woman’s purse.Ever.Not even if you’re—” I broke off then, because I almost said,‘not even if you’re hot as hell.’But that wasn’t professional.
“Not even if I’m what?” he asked.
I turned my head away, reminding myself that I really needed to maintain boundaries with Liam. Instead I shrugged, cleared my throat and said, “It’s impolite.”
He didn’t look convinced by my answer, that was probably because I was shit liar.
“Uh-huh,” he said. He moved and opened the door all the same and I was able to slip inside the car without further incident. The drive to work was quiet and calm, with the work day following suit, other than finding myself generally stressing about communications between the US and France, the time zone differences and at just how difficult it was to get my shit together when it came to a press release that just didn’t feel right.
Before long I was in the zone and only stopped when Claudia poked her head in and demanded I take a quick lunch with her in the cafe a floor below. If she had something to say about us not going out for yet another meal with Liam at the wheel, she kept it to herself, but she did have a smug look on her face that I didn’t quite understand. I was careful not to bring up the topic of my hot driver, because then that would invariably bring up the fact that I was taking fighting lessons from Liam after work, and I didn’t think I was ready for that discussion.
For now I wanted it for myself. I tried not to pay too much attention to how that made me feel. Or how I was certainly starting to feel something that was beyond platonic for Liam. God, he’d said my legs looked good in anything. That had been...nice.
Better than nice.
But as it was, I wanted to keep that nice for myself. So I kept up a stream of chatter with Claudia at lunch before ducking back into my office to finish out the rest of the workday. At the end of the day, I texted Liam, letting him know I was done and did my outfit change in the small enclosed space of a bathroom stall which resulted in not one, but two, elbow smacks against the stall wall trying to get my sports bra on. When I was done with that, I exited the building and was happy to see that Liam was waiting for me at the curb. I stopped in surprise when I saw the car he was in.
This was a normal car, not the shiny black one I was used to seeing. It was a dark hunter green Bronco.
I raised an eyebrow as I approached the vehicle and asked, “Not the town car?”
He shook his head. “Not professional to take it to the gym.”
“What gym?”
“The one I work out at. Get in,” he said, opening the truck door but this wasn’t his normal professional voice either. I hesitated, glancing at him, before looking back at the truck. It seemed he got tired of waiting as he suddenly reached out, catching me around the waist and lifting me into the truck.
“I could have done it!” I protested, even though I liked the feel of his hands on my waist.
“Then you should have gotten a move on.” He slammed the door shut and I made a face at him through the windshield. He shot me a wink when he rounded the front of the truck, and I got my face back in order. He was winking at me now? A wink that didn't feel sarcastic, and then there was the whole hands on my waist and lifting up into his Bronco like it was nothing. What was going on?
“What’s wrong?” he asked, swinging up into the truck. I shook my head at him.
“Not a thing. Not a damn thing.”
He gave me a sidelong look. “You’re lying,” he said. That was all. I shrugged at him because what the hell was I supposed to say to that? He wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t need to know that.
“How far away is this gym of yours?” I asked, opting for a safer question than if he was right or not.
“Not far. It’s near my place, so maybe twenty minutes.”
That caught my interest. Near his place? Did that mean we were going to be in his neighborhood? I felt a little rush of excitement at the thought and turned to him, asking, “Am I going to get to see your neighborhood?”
He was silent for a beat and then said, “Yeah, you’ll see ‘round where I grew up. I didn’t go far from home.”
“So where are we going then?”
“Queens.”
