Decision made, she smiled and reached for the aspirin and juice. She took two and emptied the glass before deciding a visit to the powder room was in order. Too much bubbly. She tossed aside the blanket, blinking at the object on the floor next to the chair across from her. A men’s wallet. Definitely not hers. Her purse was…somewhere. Michael must’ve lost his wallet while mucho distracted.
She shuddered. Not that she could blame him.
After she’d placed his wallet on the side table, she frowned. It likely contained his driver’s license. She could allay her concerns about his age at the very least. What would it harm?
Before she could talk herself out of it, she popped open the billfold, quickly locating Michael’s identification. Michael Matthew Montgomery. Three M’s. That made her smile until her gaze lasered in on the birthdate and she did some quick math.
The fucker was twenty-five. Not thirty as he’d claimed, but twenty-five. Making him fourteen years younger than she was, AKA almost in oh-fucking-shit territory.
The almost was mostly for show.
She blew out a breath and tossed the wallet back onto the table. Yeah, she needed to get gone. She wasn’t friends with liars. Liars she’d enjoyed thoroughly even without having sex.
Should she feel skeezy? He could practically be her son. A little bit of a stretch though not that much. She’d dated plenty of younger men, all within ten years of her own age. More than that was definitely iffy to her way of thinking.
Brad and Sara were almost fifteen years apart but he was thirty. Thirty seemed so much older than twenty-five. Besides, they’d known each other for years. This felt like she’d perved on Michael’s peen before she’d gotten a chance to perv on the total package.
Or it would feel like that if she didn’t stop making rationalizations and thinking about how mature Michael seemed for his age, even more mature than she was in some ways. A number didn’t mean more than they let it.
Bah. Who was she kidding? This particular number meant plenty, since he’d lied to her. That was an even more salient point. He’d already knocked her way off balance with his bearing and his wealth and his desire to watch her pleasure herself brainless rather than fuck her that way. The lie tipped the scales firmly in the negative.
Time to go.
She jerked to her feet and folded up the blanket she’d cuddled with all night. She looked around, making sure the place wasn’t a mess. Nice and tidy as far as the eye could see.
Should she leave a note? A simple thank you would suffice. He didn’t have her phone number but he probably had Randall’s since he worked with him at the rec center. If he wanted to connect with her, he could.
No, no note. She’d lose some politeness points but she needed to send a message. Sneaking out before dawn should do the trick.
She found her purse in the foyer and took a quick detour to the bathroom on her way out. All she wanted was to go home and sleep in her own bed. If she encountered Brad and Sara and their late-night party on the way to her own room, she’d apologize profusely.
When she opened the door to a fucking blizzard, she decided Mother Nature clearly wanted to screw with her. Too bad she refused to be deterred. She marched out into the snow, cursing her thin-soled ballet flats and the slush slipping inside her shoes. This night was getting better and better.
She dug the snowbrush out of her trunk—first use this season, yay—and went to work on her windows, glad she’d decided to head home now rather than later. Thank God she’d awakened when she did. If the snow kept up, the road would soon be impassable.
Tossing her brush back inside the car, she blew a mouthful of snowy hair out of her face and viewed her surroundings. The spot that had contained Michael’s truck was empty, the tracks almost filled in with snow. So not only was he barely legal and a liar and a little weird to boot, he’d also taken off early without saying goodbye.
Like you did?
Not going there. She had reasons. As he might too, like the early day he’d mentioned the night before. Still, she was pretty sure his fancy plantation contained paper and a pen. She had reason to be mad at him. He had none.
She got in the car and backed carefully down the drive, relieved she’d already put on her winter tires. For once she was ahead of the game. With Pennsylvania winters tending to start early, she’d learned better safe than sorry.
Except when it came to men.
To distract herself, she turned up the radio and sang along with some seventies disco classic, making up the words when she didn’t know them. Her mood improved significantly as she navigated through the wooded winter wonderland that made up Michael’s neighborhood, one eye on the road ahead and the other on the few houses scattered about. She wondered which one was Randall’s. If he lived in such a fancy place, why did he teach at the rec center?
Obviously she had different ideas of what to do with oodles of wealth than these guys did. If she ever made it rich, she’d work part-time and spend the rest of the year lazing by her indoor pool.
The car shuddered over a rut in the road, shimmied and sputtered forward. “Uh-oh.” She clutched the wheel. Why did her engine sound so clunky? Maybe she was dragging something and it wasn’t the engine at all. The wind and the music obliterated some of the sound. She turned down the radio in time for the car to shudder to a halt after doing a rather impressive fishtail that threatened to heave Kim’s heart out of her chest.
This damn car had given her nothing but trouble for months. First Brad had fixed a problem with her exhaust, then she’d gotten a flat tire. Now this.
“Dammit to fuck tarts.” She waited a minute, praying loudly, before trying the ignition again. It clicked but didn’t turn over. The same thing happened the next three times.
She dug out her cell phone and rubbed her freezing hand over the condensation forming over the windshield. All she could see was snow, piling up way too fast. And now she was shaking, thanks to the fact she was only wearing a sweater and now had no heat. She didn’t even know where she was.
Luckily her brother was a master mechanic and owned the best shop in town. She had no doubt he’d get her back on the road in a hurry. Assuming she could give him adequate directions to locate her, something that seemed extremely unlikely since the only landmarks appeared to be trees.