Page 16 of The Tomorrows After You
“Isn’t that what you’re here for?”she asked, her tone laced with attitude.
I turned and caught her peering into my truck bed. She dropped the tarp she had been poking around.
Nosy, little asshole.
I glared at her. Her arms crossed under her chest, which pushed a bit of cleavage over the top of her neckline. Her skin was flawless. A little paler than the rest of us but smooth and perfect, nonetheless. She probably had a nightmare of a skincare routine. A girl that beautiful had to be high-fuckin’-maintenance.
“Do you see a tow cable?”I chided, pointing to where she’d been snooping.
I shook my head in disbelief and turned back to the engine in front of me, poking around another minute before pulling out my phone.
“Evan,”I barked.“Need a tow on 79 North before the town border.”
He grumbled something while I stole another glance at Nicolette who was now shamelessly rifling through the parts in my truck bed.
“Hey!”I shouted at her, but she wasn’t startled in the slightest. She turned her face to me, looking bored, before rolling her eyes and leaning against my truck. She bent one of her long legs and rested it on the tire behind her. I turned my attention back to the phone where Evan muttered something about forty minutes.
Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I jerked my head to tell her to get into the truck.
“Wait, we’re leaving my car here?”
“Evan has the last tow truck and he’ll be here in about forty minutes. You can eitherrideback with me, wait for him in your hot car, or you can walk six miles back to town.”I gave her a pointed glare before she ran both hands through her hair, bunching it in her fists. I saw her eyes flit to her ankle, which she gave a quick rotate before moving back toward her car.
For a second, I thought she was going to wait inside it for the tow truck and I don’t know why I was let down by that. Instead, she ducked inside, grabbed a stuffed backpack, and slung it over her shoulder before shooting me a glare and moving toward the passenger side of my truck.
I caught her stealing another glance in the truck bed before she got in. An anxious tick moved through me.
Had she figured out who I was since our last encounter? If she had, what was she looking for? Did she think I carried dead bodies around in my truck?
When I got in the car, the walls of the truck cab seemed to close in. I was painfully aware of the warm body next to me, despite howcoldand prickly she was.
I was content to drive in silence but a minute after we got moving, she spoke up.
“What is all that stuff, anyway?”
Something inside me ached to tell her the truth. The way she spoke to me. The attitude. All of it was so refreshing compared to the blatant avoidance I was used to. She was so“un-Godot”, I found myself pulled to her in an inexplicable way. But I had to remember who she was.
A reporter. The media.The enemy.
She was not the person to find a kindred spirit in.
“What stuff?”
She scoffed.“All those half-built pieces in the bed of your truck?”
My heart skipped a beat, but I remained neutral.“They’re spare auto parts. I work for a garage, remember?”It came out more sarcastic than I meant it, but I was hoping if I gave her enough attitude, she’d drop it.
“Do you often fashion auto parts into lawn spinners and wind chimes?”
My head snapped to her. I couldn’t help it. How had she seen those shambled, half-built whirligigs and deduced they were wind spinners? I had to give her credit, she was brighter than I thought.You need to be more careful, Riot.
She looked at me with a smug half-smile on her face. My eyes darted to her lips and the small, arrogant dimple on her cheek. I didn’t know if I wanted to push her out of the car or kiss her and my stomach tightened.
I opened my mouth to reply with something snarky but, thankfully, my phone rang. I recognized it as the garage and hit the answer button. It connected to my Bluetooth automatically.
Before I could answer, Rodger started talking.“Hey, Cherry Mitchell has a dead battery at the elementary ballpark, can you swing by on your way back to the shop?”
I hissed a curse under my breath. First Nicolette Parker, now Cherry Mitchell. Could this day go any better? I tensed at the anticipation of the look on Cherry’s face.
