Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Donovan and I don’t speak on the way back to his Prius. I’m sure I look ridiculous, barefoot and wearing a cat hoodie that reaches my knees. He, on the other hand, looks like the poster child for tall, dark, and brooding. And after that Facebook post, I don’t blame him.
We reach the car, and he walks around it, re-inspecting the damage. A furrow appears between his brows. If anything, he looks broodi-er.
I can’t take the silence anymore. “Maybe you should call AAA.”
“Nah. It’s cosmetic. Totally driveable. Just need a body shop.” The words emerge in a low, disgusted rumble. “Fucking Cooper.” He slides his blue gaze my way. “I mean, freaking. Freaking Cooper. Sorry.”
This makes me snicker. “You can curse around me, Donovan. I won’t melt.”
Donovan makes an indecipherable noise and stalks to the driver’s side. “I’ll look at your laptop if you want,” he offers, unlocking the doors and sliding behind the wheel. “Just to make sure nothing happened to it in the crash. I can’t today, but bring it to the office and I will.”
“Um, thanks. That would be great.” My surprise must show in my voice, because he cuts his eyes at me.
“It’s not, like, a personal favor. We have to work together. How are we going to do that if your Mac’s bricked?”
Right. Of course he’s only doing it out of his own self-interest, not to help a fellow human being. I give him a curt nod, and we ride the rest of the way to my car in silence, broken only when I give him directions.
After an eternity, we pull up next to my battered Subaru. Eager to put this catastrophe of a day behind me, I busy myself with gathering my belongings—laptop bag, purse, shoes. I’m about to get out of the car when I realize I’m still wearing Donovan’s sweatshirt.
“Let me give you back your hoodie.” I set my stuff on the floorboards and start to wrestle it over my head.
“No need. It’s got your cat on the front, right? So you’ve got borrowing rights. Just bring it with you the next time you come in to Smashbox.”
Did Donovan Frost just make a joke? “Oh…okay. If you’re sure.”
“It’s no problem.”
Awkward silence falls between us again.
“So…bye, I guess,” I tell him. “Thanks for the ride. Sorry about the crash. And the social media debacle. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow. With, um, your sweatshirt.”
I’m about to open the door and flee when he clears his throat. “Are you going to be okay? Do you have anyone you can call? Because I can wait for AAA with you, if you’re not comfortable here on the side of the road.”
It’s a thoughtful offer, with no obvious upside for him, and so unexpected, it catches me off-guard. “Don’t you need to get back to work?”
“I make my own hours,” he says, shrugging. “As long as the job gets done, Ethan doesn’t give a shit. So, if you need someone…”
“What about your deadline?”
He cocks his head. “My what?”
“Your deadline. You know, the one you told me you had, earlier. The reason you said you didn’t want to drive me to my car.”
Donovan doesn’t say anything for one beat, two. His hands clench on the wheel, like the question pisses him off—because honestly, what doesn’t? But just when I think he’s ignoring me completely, he turns, looks straight at me, and says, “Some things are more important than deadlines, Rune.”
This is only the second time he’s used my name. The first time, it purely pissed me off. But this time, delivered in that sincere baritone, with his drowning-deep blue eyes fixed on mine?—
Yeah, it’s enough to make a lesser woman drop her panties, but that’s not what gets me.
Donovan’s looking at me…as if he actually cares.
For a moment, I let myself believe it’s true. That the Ice Man facade is just an act, that he stood up for me with Cooper because he gave a crap that I was knocked unconscious, not just to get in a dig at the brother he hates.
It would be nice not to have to do everything on my own for once. To have someone to talk to, someone to drive me home if my car needs to be towed. And I could do worse than having that someone be a guy who’s seriously not hard on the eyes. Yeah, his anal-retentive nature’s annoying, but maybe there’s a flip side. What would it be like to have all of that attention to detail focused on my body? On making me feel good?
“Rune?” Donovan prompts me. “Are you spacing out again?”
I open my mouth to break my golden rule: Thou shalt not depend on anyone other than yourself, unless you abso-freaking-lutely cannot help it. And that’s when Jenny drives by, in the beat-up Jeep she uses to transport animals in need.
“Donovan? Rune?” She slows and pulls up right next to us, rolling down her window. “Are you all right? I heard you were in quite the fender-bender. And God, look at your Prius.”
There’s a reason Jenny’s won every beauty pageant in a five-county radius. She’s beautiful—all glowy dark skin and willowy limbs and perfectly styled locs. She’s nice, too. She’s always been that way, ever since kindergarten, when she told Connor Lawson to please quit bullying Rune , and then invited me to sit at her lunch table with the popular girls. Used to defending myself, I didn’t wait to see if her admonition would be effective. Instead, I stood up and cracked Connor over the head with my tray so hard he got a concussion. Forget sitting at Jenny’s table; I spent every lunch hour after that one in the principal’s office.
The point is, I like Jenny. And it’s clear to me that, for reasons unknown, she likes Donovan too. She waved at him from inside the yoga studio. She’s pulled over to check on him now. And Donovan himself is smiling at her—a genuine, open grin that I’ve never seen on his face in our short acquaintance. Not even when he was laughing about me tackling Cooper.
“We’re fine, Jen,” he says, his voice surprisingly warm. “I’ll still be there tonight. Just have some things to finish up at the office first.”
I look down at myself, wearing the sweatshirt with Valentine’s face on the front. The one he said came from an animal shelter fundraiser. And suddenly everything makes sense.
He’s dating Jenny. Of course he is; she’s a smart beauty queen with a huge heart. What she sees in him, beyond his holy-hotness-Batman exterior, is a mystery. Maybe his color-coded sex spreadsheets are just that damn good.
I was an idiot to think he’d ever be into me.
“Rune, you’re okay, too?” Jenny shades her eyes, peering further into the car. “Poor you. First that incident this morning. Then the puddle. And then the wreck. Maybe you need to go get a hex removed, or something.”
If she only knew. “Maybe,” I say, giving her a tight-lipped smile. Why is it that everyone I encounter feels the need to recite a list of my humiliations?
It’s not Jenny’s fault, I remind myself sternly. She means well. And she’s not responsible for the fact that I’m sitting here, wearing her boyfriend’s sweatshirt, fantasizing about what his lips taste like and the way his hands would feel on my body.
I am such a mess.
Jenny glances between us. “I didn’t know you two knew each other.” Is it my imagination, or is there a slight edge to her tone?
“We don’t. Not really.” Donovan waves in my general direction, like I just happened to fall from the sky and land in his passenger seat. “We got assigned to work on a project together at Smashbox. Her car broke down”—he gestures at it, sitting forlornly at the curb—“so Ethan volunteered me to drive her back from the office. But Cooper crashed into us, and, well, you must know the rest. Seems like all of Sapphire Springs knows by now.”
I can’t blame Donovan for making it abundantly clear that he and I don’t have any kind of personal relationship. That he in no way chose to spend time with me. I’d do the same thing, if my girlfriend found me on the side of the road with another woman, after the Sinsters captured us on video sharing milkshakes and labeled us with cute hashtags. But it still stings.
“I was just leaving,” I say, yanking the car door open. “Again, thanks for the ride.”
Donovan’s eyes follow me as I cross to my Subaru. Probably to make sure I don’t step on broken glass and need a trip to the ER, thereby further compromising his afternoon. I can still feel his gaze as I unlock my door and settle into the driver’s seat. If he doesn’t trust me to walk three feet, how are we possibly supposed to spearhead a project together?
I’m still fuming when Jenny calls, “Bye, Rune! See you tonight, Donovan!” She waves and pulls away, heading in the direction of the shelter. A second later, he gives me one last unreadable glance and pulls away too, leaving me on my own.
Drawing a steadying breath, I pull out my AAA card, put in an online request for assistance, and lean my head back against the seat. “Your battery will start,” I say aloud, leaning into the positive affirmations that Charlotte always tells me to do. “You’ll drive home, have the world’s biggest glass of wine, and forget today ever happened.” Great plan. Except I’ll have to work with the Ice Man every damn day for the next six months, and I’m pretty sure the Sapphire Springs gossip network will never let me live today’s events down.
I tell myself I’m going to have an ordinary night. That the worst has already happened.
But for someone with a gift for predicting the future, I’m sure as heck wrong.