Chapter 9 The Ride Home
The Ride Home
“I don’t think Estelle’s very happy about you leaving, especially with me in your truck,” Amy remarked as she buckled herself in.
Shane strapped on his own seat belt. “Why do you say that?”
“Because she’s glaring at us from the front window. Or she’s glaring at me anyway.” Amy ducked her head and peered past him as if to verify that Estelle was, in fact, glaring at them.
“She’s probably trying to gauge what the weather’s doing. That usually makes people glare when they look out the window,” he deadpanned.
Shane wouldn’t have been surprised if Estelle was annoyed with him, but he bristled at the notion she’d direct her anger Amy’s way.
Amy had no part in what had gone down tonight, and he wasn’t about to clue her in either.
Doing so would mean confessing to some less-than-stellar behavior on his part.
After he had spent time with Estelle during her last visit, he’d made up his mind to nip her expectations in the bud the next time around.
Now was that next time. Maybe he hadn’t handled the nipping as tactfully as he could have, but sometimes folks interpreted “no” as an invitation to push harder. And Estelle had pushed.
Amy straightened but kept her gaze trained on his window. “It’s obvious she likes you. Why don’t you let me walk home so you can—”
“Hold it right there. I told you I was driving you home, and that’s what I’m going to do.” He threw the vehicle into reverse and backed the hell up.
Amy turned her head and looked out the passenger window, her perfect profile illuminated by the glow reflected in the snowflakes sifting from the sky. “Men are so dumb sometimes.”
“What does that mean?” he snorted.
“It means you’re missing her signals.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “You should stick around and see where things might lead with her. She’s very pretty. ’Course I guess you can always come back after you drop me.”
He corralled his blooming frustration. “Has it occurred to you I’ve picked up on those signals and don’t want anything to do with them?
And why is it people assume that when a good-looking woman comes on to a single guy he automatically hops on board with the idea?
Like he’s so desperate he couldn’t possibly turn her down? ”
In his peripheral vision, Amy’s mouth curved into a smile. “So you do think she’s attractive.”
He groaned, and Amy busted into laughter. “I’m sorry, Shane. I couldn’t resist teasing you, although I am curious why you’re not interested in hanging out with her—not that it’s any of my business—but you’re handsome and single, and we’ve already established she’s also attractive and single.”
The question gave Shane pause, and it had nothing to do with why he wasn’t attracted to Estelle. Instead, he was floored by what Amy had said. She thought he was … handsome? Really? In a heartbeat, his exasperation dissolved, replaced by a cozy warmth oozing behind his chest wall.
“So?” she teased. “Are you going to tell me?”
He puffed his cheeks. “Joy set us up on a blind date last year, and that was enough to discover Estelle’s not my type. I’m pretty sure I’m not hers either.” Their pheromones, if there was such a thing, had clashed. More like rammed each other and detonated, and not in a good way.
Estelle was easy on the eyes, but she just didn’t do it for him … like so many of the women he met lately. Nothing clicked; there was no connection. One- or two-nighters with strangers held zero appeal these days. They had a way of leaving him hollowed out.
Besides, Estelle was a uniform chaser. Put an ordinary guy into a firefighter’s bunker gear, and her interest—which might have been on life support—suddenly spiked. Same with EMTs or anyone in a pilot’s flight suit. She wasn’t looking to connect—just collect.
He’d been a little brutal tonight, and he hated doing that, but the woman was insistent.
More so than last time. He’d been mildly interested the first time he’d been out with her, but as their date had dragged on, it had become painfully clear they had nothing in common but hormones.
Any physical urges had faded right along with the evening.
Amy shrugged and leaned against the door with a tired sigh.
Damn, he wished Micky had been there to take her home.
Not because Shane didn’t want to take her home—he liked having her nearby.
She was like a warm ray of sun, even in the pitch dark, and her pleasant floral fragrance filled the cab of his truck.
He had no idea what perfume she wore, or if it was her shampoo or lotion, but she smelled really, really good.
Considering she belonged to someone else, he probably liked it a little too much.
Amy’s forehead crinkled. “So generally speaking, she’s attractive, but not in a Shane O’Brien kind of way.”
“I’m not even sure what a ‘Shane O’Brien kind of way’ is, but I guess that sums it up.” He guided the truck slowly around a corner, heading away from Bowen Street. If he rolled along at a two-mile-an-hour clip, he could stretch a very short drive into a slightly less short one.
“The other thing to consider is she’s big-city-sophisticated, and I’m small-town-provincial. It worked out for Charlie and Joy, but they’re the exception.”
Bottom line, he wasn’t interested in starting anything with Estelle. But saying that outright might make him look bad in Amy’s eyes—and he did not want Amy having negative thoughts about him. Why that mattered, he couldn’t say. Only that it did.
“If you don’t know, then why not go out with her while she’s here? You might be surprised by what you discover.”
He chuckled. “You sound exactly like my mom.”
“I do?”
“She’s always trying to set my brothers and me up.
‘Shane, did you see where Debbie so-and-so is visiting for the weekend?’” he said in a falsetto that drew a giggle from his passenger.
“Then she hints around about me stopping over and paying my respects to Debbie so-and-so’s family.
When I ask her why, she changes the subject. ”
Amy turned so she partially faced him in her seat. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say much about your family. You’re a local boy, right?”
He nodded. “Born and raised in Fall River.”
“Do your parents live close by? And your brothers?”
“Dad … left when I was in my early twenties. Mom’s in Pagosa Springs.”
Pagosa was a little over two hours away, which was perfect. Close enough if she needed him in an emergency, but far enough that her meddling was limited to phone calls.
“One of my brothers lives on the East Coast, and my other brother treks all over the world, so he doesn’t really live anywhere.”
“Wow. That sounds so different. Do you see him much?”
“Nope. He’s too busy doing his nomad thing.”
The emotional distance between Shane and his family probably explained why the Hunnicutt brothers felt more like family to him than his own brothers did.
People often referred to him as the fourth Hunnicutt, which made sense.
They’d had each other’s backs since preschool.
And while he figured he and his siblings would rally in a crisis, their lives were so separate that one call every six or eight months was enough to catch up.
She cocked her head to the side. “Your dad left? Where did he go?”
The question was innocent enough, but there it was, that familiar stab behind his breastbone. He glanced over at her. “Maybe some other time. Let’s talk about you.”
He’d obviously flustered her by skating past the subject of his father. Guilt gave him a poke, but to her credit, Amy recovered quickly. “I’m a boring only child. My parents are a run-of-the-mill couple who live in the Bay Area and play bridge with the same group of friends every Wednesday night.”
Amy might’ve been the only kid in her family, but boring she was not.
“So what does our county’s fearless deputy look for in a love interest?”
No idea was his knee-jerk response—and maybe that was the problem. The women he’d liked in the past weren’t alike, not physically or in personality. The only common denominator was that they had X chromosomes.
“Not exactly fearless,” he snorted. “And as for what I look for, I’m not looking in the first place, so I can’t say I have an answer for that one.”
He had toyed with asking Neve out—right before Reece got his head out of his ass and married her. Same with Hailey, Noah’s wife. Shane had a bad habit of showing up late to the game, realizing he liked someone right before another guy swooped in and made a move.
So what had drawn him to those particular women?
Their warmth. Their strength. Their softness. They’d been through hell and still chose kindness. They rolled with the punches and gave more than they took.
Amy was cut from the same cloth, which probably explained why she was close friends with them—and why Shane’s thoughts kept drifting to her. And why it burned him up to see Micky treat her like an afterthought.
They’d barely been underway when he made a slow turn to square off the block, nosing his truck into the alley behind her darkened café.
A pair of brake lights left the opposite side of the alley, took a sharp turn, and headed away from Bowen Street.
The brake lights winked off, but no taillights replaced them.
Did the vehicle have burned-out lights, or was the driver unaware he or she hadn’t turned them on?
Shane debated following in order to find out, but when Amy gestured toward her back door, his attention zipped back to her.
He parked, and she flung open the passenger door and hopped down before he could cut the engine. “Hang on,” he ordered. “I’m coming with you.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, her dark eyes wide. “You don’t have to.”