Page 72 of Written By a Woman

“Just give me a minute,” I inhaled through my nose, “We can try autopilot again. I just wasn’t prepared before.”

“We don’t have to—”

“I trust you.” I interrupted him, “It’s my first time in a robotic space car—”

“It’s just a Tesla—” Mary added before I ignored her.

“And I want to experience it, now that I know what to expect.” I inhaled through my nose before calmly folding my hands in my lap, and sitting straight in my seat, “Give me a minute, and we can try again.”

“No rush,” Zaid responded as he turned to give me a reassuring smile, “I can wait.”

I glanced over at him, feeling something in his words that I couldn’t quite identify. He quickly faced the road again, though. Nothing but casual confidence in his posture as he drove us out of Orange County towards LAX.

Perhaps it was the romance author in me that wanted to add more weight to his words.

Maybe it was because I was harboring a very inappropriate crush on him.

Possibly even the idea that he might be feeling this tension between us, too.

Whatever it was, I forced myself not to focus too much on it as Mary asked Zaid a question about programming that I tried to keep up with but immediately became lost as the conversation continued. The rest of the drive went smoothly, and when we eventually arrived at LAX, all we focused on was getting through TSA and getting to the gate where Brandon was waiting for us, having already driven to the airport himself instead of carpooling with the rest of us.

* * *

“What do you want?”I asked Zaid as we stood in line for dinner. We had about forty-five minutes before our flight boarded, and we all agreed that we were hungry. Brandon was busy thumbing away on his phone and basically ignoring us, and Mary was FaceTiming Jamie.

When Zaid and I asked them what they wanted, we all looked over at the pizza place just a couple of gates down. It had a long line, but it looked the most delicious. So here we were.

“I like a plain cheese,” Zaid replied. We stood next to each other in line, but the queue for it wasn’t designed for people to comfortably stand side by side. I was a step ahead of Zaid, but I turned my body so we could still converse while we waited. It looked like we would be here a while.

“Isn’t your dad a literal chef?” I asked, stepping forward once when the line moved. Zaid followed me, his arms folded across his chest and standing tall. When I slouched, and he stood straight like that, he felt significantly taller than me. Even though normally I barely had to look up at him to meet his eye. He was only three inches or so taller, so while he was a big guy, I never exactly felt small in comparison. But watching him stand with his feet shoulder-width apart, in the middle of the queue, ignoring the line of people desperate to get one more step closer, I felt small.

I couldn’t remember the last time all five feet and eleven inches of me felt small.

“Yes?” Zaid asked, raising a dark brow at me and shoving his glasses farther up his nose. God, I loved those glasses on him.

“So shouldn’t you like fancier pizza or something?” I countered, trying not to stare at his exposed clavicle under his plain t-shirt for too long. His muscles popped on his arms when he folded them like this, and I was a simple woman.

“I don’t understand your logic,” Zaid’s lips twitched with amusement while his gaze studied the menu above the crowd of people, “Because my dad is a chef, I’m not allowed to like cheese?”

“No,” I shook my head, “It’s just weird that you don’t like other things with it. Like anchovies or spinach or whatever fancy people put on pizza.”

“Pizza isn’t a fancy person dish,” Zaid shook his head and stepped forward, crowding my space for half a second before I realized I needed to step forward too, “It’s made with whatever your heart desires before getting tossed in the oven.”

“And your heart desires cheese?” I pressed.

Zaid lifted a shoulder, “Among other things.”

I raised my eyebrows, “Like?”

He lowered his gaze from the menu for a moment, his dark eyes locking with mine directly and making my breath catch in my throat. I felt my skin heat under his stare, and while his expression didn’t inherently look sexual, my body reacted as if he had just told me to get on my knees.

Zaid held my gaze for one, two, maybe three moments, before shaking his head once and murmuring, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I grinned, “I see how it is.”

And then Zaid smiled while biting his bottom lip with his teeth, and I thought my pants were going to burst into flames from the image.

This was getting dangerous.

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