Page 38 of Stirring Up Love
“Huh?” Her giant sunglasses swallowed up her face like she was some kind of Hollywood starlet.
It shouldn’t have worked on him. But dang, just like the ridiculous trench coat that still hadn’t revealed so much as a sliver of hem underneath—seriously, was she even wearing a dress?—the movie-star sunglasses were totally adding to Simone’s allure.
“We’re in Southern California—for now,” he repeated. “What happens when we get closer to home? You planning on driving with the top down in a blizzard?”
“Good point.” She pressed a button, and the roof made a buzzing sound.
The canopy opened a crack, and Finn slammed on the brakes, squealing the tires. “Hey! You can’t do that when we’re driving!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, but it does not seem safe.” Already this woman was a liability. He’d be lucky to arrive back in Illinois with his half of the deposit. He pressed the button again, and the canopy slid back into place with a clunk.
“Whatever.” Simone turned on the radio. She scanned through a rock ballad, oldies, and a pop song but stopped the tuner on a country station.
Finn kept his mouth shut for all of thirty seconds. He considered it a win. “Maybe you had a point. Two hundred thousand dollars isn’t worth this torture.”
“Not a fan of country?”
“Um, no.” He shot a look her way. She was mouthing the words, her shoulders bouncing along to the nonexistent rhythm. “You’re serious with this. Wow. How did I get trapped in a car with the one human in existence who likes country music?”
“Hush your mouth.” Simone turned up the dial and spoke over the excruciating twang of steel guitar. “You do know there’s about a hundred million people in this country who disagree with you, right?”
“One hundred million country music fans? No freaking way.” Finn turned the music back down to stem the bleeding in his eardrums. “Google it.”
“Okay, I will. But if I’m right, I get to pick where we eat tonight. And I get dibs on volume control.”
“You’re on, Blake.”
She shook her head, a hint of a smile playing on her lips, and his stupid stomach did a flip-flop. He’d complained about the music, but his real complaint was that the universe kept throwing him together with this sexy thunderstorm of a woman.
Simone thumbed through her phone, dark curls falling down along her cheek, and he clenched the steering wheel against an urge to brush her hair back, tuck it behind her ear. Touch her again, like he’d been dying to ever since he swept her into his arms in the airport.
Given their history, if she so much as guessed his thoughts, she’d probably drop-kick him out of this car, eighty miles an hour or not. He rubbed a clammy hand down his jeans, easing off the gas for good measure.
“What?” Simone hadn’t looked up from her phone, but his cheeks still heated with a blush.
“Nothing.”
“Hmm.” The soft hum of her response had him biting the inside of his cheek. Dang. He needed to get a grip, and fast. He hated to admit it, but she’d been 110 percent right. This trip was a terrible idea.
Facing off against Simone in the gravel lot of the farmers’ market, or going toe to toe on the set of a reality show, was one thing. But spending forty-eight hours with all of her sexiness and sharp wit an arm’s length away, with no small-town busybodies or studio audience as a buffer?
“Ha!”
Finn gulped, hard. Was she a mind reader? But she lifted up her phone in triumph. He frowned. “You can’t expect me to read that.”
“I don’t. You’re driving, numb nuts, and I want to live. But it’s my validation.”
He smirked. “One hundred entire people in the US enjoy country music?”
She poked his ribs, and he flinched at the unexpected contact, liking it way too much.
“One hundredmillionpeople.”
“No way.”
“Hang on, I’ll send you the link so you can fact-check. What’s your number?” He rattled it off, and a second later his phone chimed.
