Page 29 of Give Me a Reason

She reached out to lower the window at the same time he bent down to peer into her car.Oh God.It wasn’t Joe. Anne choked on the remnants of her doughnut and began coughing violently. She pounded on her chest, tears running down her face. She didn’t have enough air to scream when the door flew wide open, and she was hauled out of the car.

“Can you breathe?” Frederick demanded with one big hand wrapped around her arm and the other rubbing her back, the front of their bodies nearly touching. “Just keep coughing. That’s it.”

His closeness briefly stunned her into a lust-induced silence. But after a heartbeat, she managed to wheeze, “I’m… okay…”

Frederick studied her face with lingering alarm, his hands running up and down her arms. “You don’t look okay.”

“Doughnuts… went down… wrong pipe,” she rasped.

He dropped his head, his forehead nearly touching hers, and blew out a long breath. Then he went back into action.

“Do you have any water?” He firmly set her aside, propping her against the rear door and reaching into her car. He stood with her bottle of strawberry milk in his hand, looking bemused. After a pause, he handed it to her. “Drink.”

“Thanks.” She took slow, careful sips so she wouldn’t choke on the milk, too. And she needed a minute to gather her thoughts.

What is Frederick doing here?

She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, not moving her head. He stood close and watched her vigilantly, as though preparing to Heimlich the heck out of her at any real signs of choking. And he still had that confused look on his face.

“What?” she asked, lowering the empty bottle of milk.

“You have…” He pointed, then kind of waved his hand around the bottom half of her face.

When she squinted in response, he reached out and ran the back of his index finger down her nose. Her eyes widened at the same time his did, and he snatched his hand back as though her nose had turned into a smoldering lump of coal.

As she suffered heart palpitations from the featherlight touch, she realized what he’d been pointing at. What he’d wiped away.

Anne gasped and spun away from him, scrubbing furiously at her face with the sleeve of her dark blue blouse. It came away white with powdered sugar. Her head felt like it would combust from mortification. She’d imagined his touch to be a caress, but he’d merely been brushing sugar off her nose. She felt like an enormous dork and looked the part as well.

“What are you doing here?” She turned around, arrangingher expression into one of polite inquiry. Hopefully, she’d gotten all the powdered sugar off her face and didn’t look like a deranged doughnut fiend anymore.

“I overheard Coraline telling Joe that you had a flat tire—”

“I told her not to bother him about it,” she cried, fraying around the edges. But what else could Coraline have done? Her shoulders drooped. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have texted her.”

Frederick merely arched an eyebrow and continued, “And I told her I’d come help you.”

“Why?” she blurted. She didn’t mean to say that out loud. But whywouldhe want to help her?

“To thank you.” He coughed into a fist. “For the tacos.”

“You came to change my flat tire because of the tacos?” Anne blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the situation. Then she gave up with a sigh. She was too tired to figureanythingout. “Don’t you need to be at the station?”

“Pete came over to check on the team, so he’s covering for me. Besides, I won’t be gone for long.” He abruptly turned away and tapped his shoe against the flat tire as though making sure it was indeed flat. It was her turn to cock an eyebrow. You could tell it was flat from a mile away. He cleared his throat and added, “I also wanted to thank you because I, uh, talked to my team. It was good. For all of us.”

Every muscle in Anne’s body softened. He’d listened to her advice. It couldn’t have been easy for him, but he’d gone to his crew when they’d needed him the most. He’d always been brave and selfless like that. And it might have rankled a lesser man to admit that his ex was right, but he came to find her to do just that—and to thank her by changing her flat tire.

A rush of respect and affection lit a bonfire in her chest. She was afraid smoke would billow out of her mouth if she opened it, but she risked it anyway. “I’m glad.”

“Me, too.” He met her eyes with a ghost of a smile, makingher heart flutter helplessly. Maybe it meant he hated her a little less, but he seemed to catch himself and turned back toward her car. “The spare’s in the trunk, right?”

“Oh, the spare? Yes, well…” She gave up pretending to consider his question. “I have no idea. The trunk seems like a good place to start.”

“Hmm.” Even though he kept his face averted, she caught the upward quirk of his lips.Two smiles in a row?But then she realized he was laughingather this time.

“I’m not an experienced driver,” she said a tad defensively. He’d always thought highly of her, and his opinion mattered to her. Her family could think as lowly of her as they wanted—she was accustomed to it—but she didn’t want Frederick to think she was pathetically incompetent. “I hardly drove in college, and I always had a driver in Korea.”

All signs of mirth deserted his face, and she wished he would go back to laughing at her. She managed to mention their time togetherandthe reason she left him, all in one sentence. He definitely still hated her. Full force. Not even a little bit less.

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