“Yes, and I’m going to hammer home that this will be a lot of work and require a lot of sweat equity, but I want them to be able to see the potential and not focus on how terrible the bus looks right now. These kids are used to getting hand-me-downs and shopping at secondhand stores. We can’t hide the fact that this bus isn’t new, but I want them to see some of Adele’s shine.”
Rebecca’s expression softened. “I love that you have this mission, but I’m in a business suit.” She held her arms out to her sides. “I’m not quite prepared for car wash day.”
“Fear not.” He held up a finger. “I have clothes you can borrow. You’ll be fine.”
He’d considered taking her home to give her the chance to change her clothes, but he had a feeling that if he’d brought her there, he wouldn’t have been able to coax her outside again. She’d had that look—as though she was ready to hide from the world—when they’d left the hotel.
“Wes…”
“Come on, Bec. I know you don’t want to talk about what happened this morning, but I can tell it took something out of you. You’ve been really quiet and have this haunted look in your eyes. Going home and being alone all day is just going to make whatever’s going on in your head worse.”
She glanced down.
He held out his hand. “I’m giving you a good reason to be outside on a beautiful sunny day after working nonstop all week, and I’ll even throw in full permission to spray me with the hose if I step out of line. How can you resist that?”
She stared at his hand, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. He braced himself for the no, but finally she looked up. “I want that permission even if you don’t step out of line.”
“Granted.”
A hint of a smile touched her lips, and she slipped her hand into his open palm. “Deal.”
“Good.” He gave her arm a playful tug. “Come on, business suit. I’ll show you my humble abode, and we can get naked.”
“Hey—”
He chuckled. “In separate rooms. To put on different clothes. What could you have possibly thought I meant?”
She rolled her eyes. “Lead the way, smart-ass.”
A little while later, Wes stepped out of his bedroom after changing his clothes and found Rebecca examining the bookshelf in his living room. He didn’t keep much in his place. After living with Brittany—who had been obsessed with shabby-chic decorating and had never met a throw pillow, flowered fabric, or ceramic knickknack she didn’t love—Wes had gone minimalist with his condo. Easy to keep clean and calm. His jam-packed bookshelf was the one exception.
Rebecca pulled a book from the shelf and turned when his foot hit the squeaky floorboard by his couch. She smiled his way. “You’ve got quite an eclectic collection, chef. My Life in France by Julia Child?”
“Yes. Don’t judge. Julia Child was a badass. Plus, I’ve always wanted to visit France. That’s the cheap way to do it until I can go for real.”
“France is amazing,” she said wistfully. “I’ve been once, but it was William Lindt style so I feel like I missed a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dad took me along with him for a business trip when I was in college, so it was very fast and education-focused. There was no lingering. I’d like to go again and be able to wander, get a little lost, experience more than the tourist highlights.” She flipped through a few pages and then slipped the book back onto the shelf. “You didn’t tell me you liked to read.”
He shrugged, trying to pull himself out of fantasies of getting lost in Paris with Rebecca. Long walks on narrow streets, eating their way through every delicious meal, drinking local wine late into the evening—no, not drinking wine. He could never have that part of the Paris experience. A pang of loss shot through him. He shifted his stance and smirked, trying to shake the sour thought. “What, I don’t seem like the bookish type to you? I feel like I should be insulted.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” she teased. “I didn’t say that. I just didn’t know that about you. The guys at work make a point to let everyone know what they’re reading like it’s a badge of honor…and of course it’s always something political or pretentious. And the dates I’ve been on, men tend to bring it up because they assume I’m going to be hot for a guy who reads.”
Wes laughed. “What are these weird circles you run in? In my neighborhood, if you admitted you loved books, you were looked at like you were an alien. And are you not hot for guys who read? Because if so, those books are just for decoration.”
She gave him a droll look. “They are not. They are too worn and unpretentious to be decorative. You like to read, Wes Garrett. I have found you out. And for the record, you don’t need help being hot. It’s slightly annoying how”—she flicked her hand in his general direction—“this you are.”
A smile jumped to his lips as a sharp kick of pleasure moved through him at the playfully perturbed look on her face. “How this I am? Someone needs a thesaurus. Check the third shelf.”
She gave him a wry look. “So how’d you end up a reader if everyone was looking at you sideways?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t start out that way. I was a shitty student, and books weren’t exactly a high priority in my family. But when my dad went to prison and my mom was too messed up on drugs to take care of me, my uncle—Marco’s dad—adopted me. He was the one who sold me on the idea of books.” Wes set the clothes he’d picked out for her on the back of the couch and walked over to stand next to her, examining the shelves. “Ed wa
s a teacher and told me that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t done well in school yet, that anything I wanted to know was available in books. I could learn from the best teachers in the world that way. Travel anywhere I wanted via the page. Experience things through the eyes of people who’d done anything and everything. Or escape to some fictional world altogether.”
Rebecca let out a little sigh. “Ah, books.”