“You’ll have to tell me who you took it to because it’s obvious that whomever did it was an imbecile,” he growled, pulling into traffic and merging onto the freeway. Under his breath, I could’ve sworn I heard him murmur ‘dumbass.’
I licked my lips and tried not to stare at the way the corded muscles of his wrist bunched and shifted with each move of his arm.
Instead, I chose to fill the silence by telling him about me, out of pure nervousness rather than my wanting him to know anything more about me.
Because had I been thinking straight, likely this would’ve been one of those times where I realized that me telling him about myself probably was more of a turn off than a turn on.
“I’m thirty-one!” I blurted.
His eyes moved from the road to me, then back to the road.
“I’m thirty-six,” he said softly.
My eyes widened.
“You don’t look a day over thirty,” I informed him. “But my best friend doesn’t either. He could totally pass for twenty-five in a pinch. He still gets carded when we go out gambling.”
“You have a brother?” he asked.
I nodded, picking invisible lint off my pants.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “He’s in the Navy. I haven’t seen him in almost ten years now, though.”
I could feel his eyes on me, and I turned my head slightly to the left and smiled sadly at him.
“I have a sister,” he said. “But she was adopted when we were younger, and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Have you tried to find her?” I asked.
He nodded.
“When I was younger, around eighteen or so. Stopped when I turned twenty-one,” he said, turning his blinker on and leaning back in his seat.
His hand rested on the gear shift, and I let my eyes trail along the strong limb all the way up to his face.
Which was on me.
“What?” I asked.
“You aren’t scared of me,” he stated.
That was true.
I wasn’t.
Why, I couldn’t tell you.
There was something about him that made my heart feel almost light.
“There’s something familiar about you,” I answered him. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel like I know you.”
He smiled.
“You do know me,” he said. “Just not officially yet.”
My eyebrows quirked in confusion.
“What?” I asked. “How?”
“You work for me…kind of,” he said, putting the truck into second gear as the light turned green.
I watched his feet move as I tried to make sense of his words. Then understanding dawned.
“You’re…oh my God! You’re the slob!” I crowed somewhat loudly.
He looked over at me with a glare as he shifted into third, then looked back to the road.
He didn’t answer until he turned into the parking lot of my studio and shut the truck off.
Which was about the time I realized I’d never told him exactly where I was going. Nor did I tell him how to get there. I wasn’t sure how he knew where to look on the GPS to even lead him here.
That was about the time that my psycho radar started to go off, and I remembered all those scary movies my friend Mattie made me watch when we were younger.
I’d literally just put myself into the stupid girl’s shoes from my favorite scary movie. You know the one where the girl gets into the car with the sexy man, and then he drives her to a shack in the woods and shows her his doll collection made out of human skin.
I’d literally put myself into her shoes.
Of course, Ian had taken me to where I worked, not his house.
Not that he had a doll collection made out of human skin. I’d cleaned his house enough to know that he did not have one.
That wasn’t to say that I was currently freaking out over nothing, though.
I moved my hand along the side of the door, feeling for the for the latch, and crowed triumphantly inside when I found it.
“Don’t run,” he sighed. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
My eyes went wide when he yanked the collar at his throat and started to itch furiously.
He had a tattoo. A huge one, on his neck.
And when he saw where I was looking, he yanked the stupid scarf back into place and stared at me expectantly.
Oh yeah, I was supposed to be running.
I remembered.
Sadly, he reached out and grabbed my wrist before I could reach for the handle once again, holding me in an iron tight grip that would be next to impossible to break.
And that panic fueled my desire to get away, which set something off in me that I hadn’t realized was there.
Warmth shot out of my wrist where his hand connected directly to my skin, and I pushed that energy outwards, almost as if I was forcing whatever had built up under my skin at him.
One second Ian had a hold of my hand and was tugging me toward him, and the next he was lying with his big body slumped over the front seat of my truck, dead to the world.