Page 47 of Stirring Up Love
“Shoot.” Stupid hormones and Finn. “Missed the exit.” She checked her blind spot and switched lanes. “Can you find a hotel and route us there before we end up in the middle of the desert?”
“Too late,” he said, but he pulled out his phone, and she exhaled. Smooth talker, that’s all he was. Not like she hadn’t met plenty. Made out with plenty. The difference was the only agenda the other guys had was to get her in bed, not weasel their way into part ownership of her business.
Finn pointed up ahead. “Take the next exit—there’s a hotel a few miles off the highway.”
“Does it have a good rating?”
“Yes.” He squinted at his phone. “Hang on. There’s a note about bedbugs. But we’re in the clear: says here they fumigated the place last week.”
“Hilarious.”
He grinned, hitching up his hips to put his phone in his pocket, and she tried not to squirm in her seat. Stupid close quarters doing a number on her hormones. “Can we play a game?”
“We are literally minutes from being out of this car.” Dangerously close to getting sucked into Finn’s vortex, she needed distance.
“Yeah, but it’s been quiet for, like, hours.”
“I could put on country.”
He slapped a hand over the radio dial, honey-brown eyes pleading. “Please, no. I’ll be quiet.”
One excruciating minute of silence later, she said, “What game? And don’t you dare say two truths and a lie.”
“That hurts, Simone.” She didn’t need to look at him to know he was making a pitiful face. “What kind of a person do you think I am?”
“The judgy kind?”
“I deserved that,” he said. “However, this game is not two truths and a lie.”
“Thank God.”
He laughed. “Okay, so it’s like the alphabet game. But instead of looking for letters, you say three things about yourself, and one of them is a lie.”
“Finn.” She was fighting a smile.
“I’ll go first,” he went on, like she hadn’t spoken. “But don’t think for a second you’re getting out of it. I don’t want any more misunderstandings—”
“Not a misunderstanding. You judged me like a Judgy McJudgerson.”
“I don’t want tomisjudgeyou, and so that means that I need to know you better. But in the spirit of fairness, I’ll go first.”
“And I’ll go never,” she said.
“Second.”
“Literally never.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of teeth. “This is fun already.”
Why was he so adorable when he was being annoying? He rubbed his hands together—again, equal parts annoying and adorable—and bounced his eyebrows up. “Ready?”
“I was really hoping we could hold off on the cheesy road trip games until at least day two.” A last-ditch effort to forestall the inevitable.
“You’re out of luck.”
“Don’t I know it.” She sighed, heeding the GPS’s instructions to take the next exit, her grip on the steering wheel loosening once she pulled off onto the city street. “Fine. But if we miss our turn because of your lame game, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“As opposed to your attitude now, which is ...”
