Chapter 1 #2
It took me all of two seconds to decide that two could play this game and I stared right back, matching intensity for intensity and refusing to be the first to look away.
If this man thought he could hijack my cab, invade my only peaceful sliver of time in the week, and then stare at me like I was an unexpected math problem, he’d underestimated me.
Our eyes locked in a silent, electric standoff, and for one impossible moment, I forgot about everything else, but thankfully, the moment didn’t stretch much longer than that. I crashed back to my senses and sighed.
“Can I help you?” I snapped. “Staring contests only entertain me for so long and I have precisely zero patience for men who think prolonged eye contact is a personality trait.”
The bastard smirked, a slow, knowing curve of his mouth that made something deep in my stomach tighten. That incredibly green gaze searched my face with a sharp sort of curiosity, as if he found me familiar too, but he didn’t bother to offer a name.
Instead, he just motioned vaguely toward the window. “The weather’s getting worse.”
Brilliant observation, Captain Obvious. “Yeah. Thanks for that.”
“They’re saying it’s going to get even windier by nightfall,” he added, watching a gust of snow slam against the window.
Despite myself, I found my eyes skimming the elegant, strong column of his throat.
Out of sheer desperation not to keep looking at him, I suddenly had the kind of brainwave I’d last had at sixteen, and pulled my phone out of my pocket, pretending to take a call.
“Hi, yes. Hello,” I announced loudly to my lock screen, turning my back to him and staring out at the whiteout. “No, I’m in a cab. Yeah, I know. It’s unbelievable.”
Beside me, the man shifted, and then, in the most mortifying moment of my life, he took a call too. He slid his phone out of the inside pocket of his coat and brought it to his ear without even trying to make it look real.
“Oh, hello. Yes, I’m in a cab as well,” he said blandly. “You wouldn’t believe this, but the woman I’m with thinks she’s subtle.”
“Excuse me?” I whipped around, once again finding myself staring to the point of feeling lost in those exceptionally piercing eyes.
God, that really can’t be safe for the people who actually have to do things like work, and think, and live around him.
“Uh-huh.” He pretended to cover his mouthpiece, then said, “Your turn.”
My jaw slackened, but I managed to catch it before it flat out dropped. “You’re really rude.”
“Mm. Frequently.” Those green eyes glinted with something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Smugness, probably. “I’m Alex.”
He extended a gloved hand to me after lowering his phone, but for a moment, I just stared at it like it might bite me.
Then I shook with him anyway because manners were tattooed on my bloodstream.
We weren’t really touching since we were both wearing gloves, but his grip was firm and strong, the heat of him radiating through the fabric between us.
“Are you in the habit of stealing cabs?” I asked, snatching my hand back before I begged him to let me feel if he was that strong everywhere.
“Hardly,” he said. “I usually drive myself or I use a hired driver, but cabbies are the only ones brave enough to be out on roads right now and I totally get why.”
Before I could respond, our driver erupted in a string of frustrated yelling, shouting at someone beside us. Another cabbie gestured wildly back at him, and judging by the hand motions, they weren’t discussing the weather. It looked more like a mutual desire to shove each other into a snowbank.
I closed my eyes, counted to three, and then snapped. Enough really was enough, and I’d had enough today.
“Hold this,” I said, thrusting my purse into Alex’s chest.
“What? Where are you going? No, wait—”
I slammed the door on his protests, my boots hitting the slush with a cold splash. Marching straight to the competing cab’s window, I tapped on it until the driver reluctantly cracked it open.
“You do not cut off my cab,” I said in the same tone I used when my brothers tried to kill each other with lacrosse sticks.
“We’ve been stuck here twenty minutes and you’re not getting ahead by risking a three-car pileup.
I suggest you stay in your lane, literally, and stop driving like you bribed the DMV for your license. ”
The man blinked at me but nodded slowly and rolled up his window.
Storming back to our cab, I felt my coat flaring out behind me like a cape, but I didn’t care that I probably looked unhinged.
I slid into my seat to find both Alex and the driver staring at me as if I’d just bench-pressed a Volkswagen.
I smoothed my coat and shrugged. “What?”
“Who are you?” Alex asked, his voice quieter now with something almost wistful in it.
I frowned. “I’m the oldest of six,” I said, pulling my purse out of his stunned grip.
“I’ve been breaking up fights worse than that before breakfast since I was five, and right now, all I want is to get home, pour myself a glass of wine, and watch the episode of Real Housewives I’ve been waiting for all week. ”
He was suddenly looking at me like I was a puzzle he was dying to figure out. “There’s a wine bar down the street. How about I buy you a glass instead? I have no idea what or who the Real Housewives are, but I’m sure you can catch me up.”
My first instinct was to tell him to pound sand. My second was the same, but somewhere deep inside my mind, my therapist’s annoyingly calm voice was urging me to fight those instincts.
Let someone in, Jane. Let someone give you a fraction of what you give everyone else. Ugh.
I was still deciding how to formulate a diplomatic refusal when the cab finally jerked forward and the moment passed. Alex turned toward the window and I resigned myself to my phone as we inched through the traffic.
Scrolling through the inbox that should have belonged to the CEO but somehow belonged to me instead, I shook my head and gritted my teeth to bite back a growl. Just in the time since I’d walked into Dr. Annie’s office, I’d received forty-seven messages marked urgent.
Twenty-three were marked please advise, Jane, which was hilarious because the board never took my advice unless Andrew repeated it and pretended it was his idea. But this was my life, being everything to everyone and getting credit for not a single drop of it.
Finally, what felt like hours later, the cab stopped under the shadow of a large mansion buried in snow. It wasn’t mine. Alex’s architecture was more tasteful, but it was close to my family’s place.
“Well, it was nice meeting you, whoever you are,” Alex said, handing the driver several hundred-dollar bills—plural—and nodded toward me. “Take the boss home, Rudy. Keep the change. Thanks for getting us here safely.”
Rudy? When did he get the driver’s name?
Without any ceremony about it, he opened the door and vanished into the storm, instantly swallowed up by wind, snow, and the mysterious castle he lived in, and I stared at the space where he’d been.
I felt a strange longing for him to return, or at least to have gotten his number, but the cab rolled forward and I sighed. It was probably better this way. I didn’t even have time for a battery-operated boyfriend these days.
Getting a real one would be an absolute disaster.