“You have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen,” he murmured.
More breath sliding out of me. My heart thundering in my chest, my lips parting, and . . . then he was gone.
Or not so much gone as out of the car, crossing around in front of it before lowering himself into the passenger’s seat.
I cleared my throat, turned on the ignition, then handed him my phone.
“Plug in your address?”
He took it. “What’s the code to unlock it?”
I tilted the screen so it captured my face and made it so he could access the apps.
“Privacy is important to you, then?” he asked, his fingers tapping.
“Considering I don’t know you?” I returned with a raised brow. “Yes, privacy is important to me, especially with men who try to see unsuspecting women in their underwear.”
A chuckle. “I thought we’d covered this already. You were the one bringing the unwanted stripping.”
Unwanted.
Ouch.
“But certainly not unappreciated,” he said, lifting the phone and setting it in the cradle that was clipped to the air vent. “Just not my preferred way to meet a beautiful woman.”
I snorted. Oh, that was rich.
“Yeah?” I said, memorizing the first couple of steps of the navigation before checking for traffic and pulling out onto the road. “What’s your preferred way?”
“A quiet dinner at my house, followed by a walk through the garden.”
My eyes darted to his, and I bit back another snort. “What, are you a hundred?”
His lips tipped up, one dimple appearing in the cheek I could see. “No,” he said. “I’m thirty-six. What about you?”
“I’m . . . not interested in getting to know you any further.”
“Ah, I see.”
“What do you see?” I asked, navigating the car around a winding turn.
“That it’s rude to ask a lady her age.” He shifted in his seat, and I could feel him looking at me, even though I couldn’t take my eyes off the road to look at him. I did, however, roll them, because . . . seriously? It’s rude to ask a lady her age? “Also,” he murmured before I could go too far down that particular tangent, folding his hands on his lap, “I happen to think that dinner and a walk are a perfectly normal way to get to know someone.”
“What about the movies? Or going out to eat? Or—” I stopped, grasping that this man probably couldn’t easily do either of those things. “Never mind.”
“What?” he asked.
“I just realized that you probably can’t really go out much and meet people, huh?”
He was quiet as I drove for a few minutes.
Then he said, “No, I can’t head to the movies all that often. Every once in a while, depending on where I’m at, I can sneak into a theater, but definitely not here in L.A. In fact,” he added. “It’s part of why I’m moving soon. The paparazzi are just all over my house.”
A pang of sympathy slid through me.
“That has to be hard,” I said, “not being able to go where you want, when you want.”
He shrugged, much more cavalier than I would have been if my life had been limited in such a manner. “That’s the price you pay to be in movies,” he said. “I’m lucky that I’ve found the success that I have, considering the way the industry has changed in the last few years with streaming. A lot of that is due to Mags, though.” I caught another flash of his dimple. “She took me on when she didn’t have to, and I’ll be grateful to her forever.”
“Mags is a great person,” I agreed. “I’m glad she’s found a job that makes her happy.”
“And a man,” he pointed out.
I sniffed.
“You don’t agree?”
“Oh no,” I said. “Aaron is a good guy, and I’m thrilled they found their way back to each other.”
“Then what?”
“I learned a long time ago that you can never look at another person as your source for happiness,” I said, turning onto the on-ramp and navigating my way onto the freeway.
Quiet from his side of the car.
But then he nodded. “That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”
“Well, I’m so glad you think so.”
“Do you survive only on sarcasm and barbed retorts?”
“You forgot to include coffee and chocolate glazed donuts.”
He stared at me, and this time I couldn’t stop myself from glancing away from the road to meet his golden eyes. “Isn’t that a little cliché for a cop?”
Laughter bubbled out of me. “Probably.” A shrug. “But I like them anyway.”
That dimple flashed again. “I’ll remember that.”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously.
“Because I’ll need to pay you back for the ride.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening.”
He shifted in his seat, turning so the front of his body faced me. Not that I was looking. Nope. No way. I didn’t need to look to remember the man’s delicious chest, and I certainly didn’t need to look in order to see his sexy smile. “Why not?” he asked.
It took me a moment to deviate from my thoughts of smiles and yummy chests in order to process his question. “I didn’t give you a ride because I expected something in return.”
Silence.
For a long time.
“Why did you do it then?”
Good question.
Because part of me had wanted to spend more time with this man, part of me had craved to be in his presence, and because . . . well, a small part (and also the only part I could say out loud because the other two were just . . . okay, they were definitely pathetic considering who I was and who he was) of the reason I had helped him was because I was a decent person, he needed a ride, and he was Maggie’s friend.
Which I told him.
Which then resulted in more silence.
Silence that was so long and clawing so deeply at my insides that I found myself having to turn on the radio in order to relieve it.
I found a
