Page 98 of Out on a Limb
It was the war I always fought. Trying to figure out what I should be doing. How I should be acting.
Usually I lost.
Eventually women realized it was all an act. That no matter how hard I tried, I was still missing that chip everyone else came equipped with.
“I can get in the front seat if you want me to.” I moved for the door, but the Jeep started to move.
“You can stay back there.” Her eyes caught mine in the mirror. “I’ll be your Michael.”
“My Michael?”
Her eyes moved to the road. “I’ll be your chauffeur.”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Michael is definitely not her chauffeur.”
The man might be taking Grant’s mom places, but I’d bet my ass it didn’t usually involve a car.
“What would you call him then?”
That was an easy question to answer. “Her lover.”
“No.” Collette shook her head. “No way.”
“I can guarantee that they are sleeping together.” I saw the way Michael looked at her and I saw the way she looked at him. I’d spent most of my adult life learning to recognize what was hiding behind a single look.
And there was a lot hiding behind theirs.
“So when he said he was at her service…”
“He meant it in every sense of the word.” It was one hell of a slick move. One I’d love to be able to pull off myself, but I wasn’t born with that skill set. Slick would never be a word anyone used to describe me.
Along with charming and smooth.
“Wow.” Collette turned into her subdivision. “I wonder if Julia knows.”
She one hundred percent knew, but I wasn’t offering up any more business that wasn’t my own. “You’d have to ask her.”
Collette was quiet for the rest of the drive, staying silent as she pulled into her driveway and parked next to where I’d left my bike. She got out of the Jeep and turned my way, playing with the keys in her hand as she chewed her bottom lip. “Do you want to come in? Have some food?”
I glanced up at the house I would never be able to afford. “I should go home and get cleaned up.”
“Oh.” Her eyes dipped to the ground between us.
I had very little to offer a woman like Collette. There were limits on what I could give her financially and emotionally.
But damned if I could make myself walk away from her.
“I would be interested in taking you to dinner, though.”
* * *
“I WASN’T EXPECTING you to be on that.” Julia frowned down at my bike. “Where’s your truck?”
“In the shop.” The lie was necessary unless I wanted to explain the late-night trip Collette and I made back to the garden, and right now I was short on time.
“You need a new truck.” Julia looked me up and down. “Are these the best clothes you had?”
“That’s why we’re here.” I walked past her into the store she told me to meet her at. The cool air hit me the second I walked in, cooling my skin, but doing nothing to ease the nerves cooking me from the inside out. “I don’t want to look like—”
