hair shop.”
“Don’t let Kree catch you referring to her salon as a hair shop,” she said with a smile, which froze almost instantly. “Although I wish you had gone in, because now you’ve missed her. She’s gone away for the weekend with Tagg. Her boyfriend. He lives over in Cliffton.”
“Then I’ll see her when she gets back. How is she?”
“She’s Kree.” The smile returned. “Busy, full-on, happy.”
“You mean, manic?”
Her smile grew to a soft appreciative chuckle, and Zane found himself turning to catch the laughter on her face. It transformed her from pretty to stunning, and he found himself staring—again—and wondering how he never noticed that before, back when he lived in Plenty.
Probably because he’d never been close enough to see her laughing. Hell, he remembered times when she had crossed the street to avoid him, and if she ever had looked his way, it was with the kind of curious, wide-eyed fascination usually reserved for viewing aliens. Which pretty much summed up how this town had always made him feel.
Right now he felt her watching him with a different kind of fascination. She had gone very still, the laughter fading from her lips. Her focus seemed to shift to his mouth. His lips tingled with heat. Uh-uh, no way. She was the dinner-and-dating-and-home-to-meet-Daddy type, not the straight-into-bed type. And absolutely not the front-seat-of-the-truck type.
He dragged his eyes back to the road and his mind back from the gutter, pressed a touch harder on the accelerator and searched for a diversionary topic of conversation.
“You’re all dressed up to party.” He waved a hand in the general direction of her itty-bitty dress. “So why did you decide to go home, instead?”
“I didn’t really want to go in the first place.” She shifted her shoulders uneasily. “Do you think running my car off the road is a good enough excuse to cancel? I mean, it’s not as if I crashed, or hurt myself….”
“Why do you need an excuse? If you didn’t want to go, you should’ve said no.”
“Chantal doesn’t recognize the word.”
“Maybe she needs to hear it more often.”
A small frown puckered her brow, and Zane wondered how right he’d got that. Then he told himself it wasn’t his problem. That wasn’t why he had asked her about the party. He was making small talk, that was all. He absolutely did not want to know if, for example, she was letting down some suit-and-tie type by not turning up.
“Back when you were hooking up to the car, I rang Chantal to say I’d decided to go home. She didn’t sound happy. I suspect she might send someone to fetch me.”
“If you weren’t at home, that someone wouldn’t be able to fetch you.”
“Not home?” Her softly incredulous laugh brought his gaze back to her mouth, made him think of intimacies he had no business with. “In case it escaped your attention, there are not a lot of hidey-holes open on a Friday night in Plenty.”
“There’s the Lion. You could come down for a drink, shoot some pool,” Zane suggested casually, not because he expected her to accept. Not because he wanted her to accept. For a long moment she stared at him, surprised, but obviously considering his invitation. He felt his body quicken. Then she shook her head and looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll have to pass this time.”
This time. As if he was in the habit of asking her every other day. But as he downshifted to cross the railway line, he shrugged and cut her a look. “Your loss.”
Julia looked out the window. They had reached the edge of town. In a couple of minutes she would step down from the truck, toss him a careless “See you later” and know that later might be another twelve years. She felt a deep, totally inappropriate sense of disappointment. Her loss indeed.
Of course, she could always change into some jeans and walk down to the Lion. She could saunter up alongside him and say, “Hey, Zane. You want to shoot some pool?”
Then she could watch the whole bar population either A: burst into spontaneous laughter, B: keel over with shock, or C: call for the men in white coats.
Julia Goodwin sauntering up to a public bar? That isn’t going to happen, she concluded fatalistically as he turned the corner into Bower Street and pulled up alongside number fourteen. When he reached for his door, she leaned across to stop him. “There’s no need to get out.”
She felt him still, and when his gaze dropped to where her hand rested on his forearm, she was suddenly aware of more than his stillness. His skin felt warm—no, hot—and slightly rough, with its smattering of hair. It also felt incredibly hard, and she realized with a start how long it had been since she had touched a man’s bare skin. And how much she missed that sensation of heat and strength, of leashed masculine power.
The moment stretched out, silent and thick with awareness, until she reclaimed her hand, dragging her fingers a little because she couldn’t stop herself. Telltale heat rose from her neck to her ears, and she silently thanked Kree for making her leave her hair down. At least she had got that part right!
She cleared her throat, unable to look at him in case he had misinterpreted that touch as some sort of come-on. “I just wanted to say thank you, and sorry for interrupting your night, and I hope you catch up with Kree soon.”
“I’ll call her at work on Monday.”
“Mornings are usually quietest, especially Monday. She might even be able to take a half day.” She reached for the door. “See you later, then.”
“What about your car?”
Julia blinked, and he hooked a thumb back over his shoulder.
Ah, that car! How could she have forgotten? “It’s my mother’s, actually. I don’t have a car at the moment, so she loaned me hers while she’s overseas. My parents are in Tuscany.” And why am I telling him all this? She clutched her evening bag with unsteady fingers. “What did you need to know about the car?”
“D’you want Bill to fix whatever needs fixing, or just do up a quote?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“Yes…what?” he asked slowly, and she felt that same intense scrutiny she had felt out by the roadside. Her ears burned with heat as she scrambled for an answer to the simple question.
“Yes, please.” Good grief, could she have said anything more stupid? She bit her lip, then tried again. “Yes. Please have him fix whatever needs fixing. Bill does all our work—there’s no need for a quote.”
Quitting on that positively eloquent note seemed like a good plan, so she opened her door and slid down to the curb, but before she closed the door she forced herself to smile up at him. “I really can’t thank you enough for bringing me home.”
“You’ll get the bill.”
Julia shook her head. “I wanted to thank you, personally.”
“Buy me a drink sometime.”
