Devil May Care: Boxed Set (37 page)

I grinned at her.

At this, she actually did slam the door and I couldn’t help but laugh at her.

When I finished filling up the tank, I put the cap back on and headed around to the driver’s side. I slid into the seat and glanced over at Olivia. She didn’t necessarily look friendly, but she looked like she was starting to get into a better mood. I looked at the cola on my side. Raising my eyebrows at her, I asked, “Thought you said you didn’t get me anything?”

She shrugged her shoulders, her breasts rising slightly with the movement. Her cheeks were slightly tinged in red and I couldn’t say if it was from the heat or other things. “I didn’t want you to pass out behind the wheel. No sense in killing us both, is there?”

I laughed at her a little, softly, and said, “Thank you.”

She didn’t answer me, but I thought I saw her muscles relax slightly and her expression soften. I turned on the car and we pulled out of the gas station, heading back onto the highway.

For a while longer, we drove in silence. There wasn’t much in the way of radio stations out here, unfortunately, so we couldn’t put on much music to help with the quiet. And since it seemed like Olivia, though not really mad at me anymore I didn’t think, didn’t want to have another conversation like earlier, we were mostly left with the quiet and the stillness as we traveled.

I was pretty okay with that, since I had deemed it better than fighting—at least for now—but I wouldn’t have minded talking with her either. She had a pretty voice and I wouldn’t have minded getting to know more about her. Other than her shitty taste in men—before me, of course—and her dislike of public bathrooms, I didn’t know a lot about her. I knew that she was a hairdresser and that she was determined to stay away from the “bad boy” type of guy, though she was apparently drawn to them, but otherwise she was a bit of a mystery. She seemed too strong, too independent for a guy like Tom, and it was a wonder to me that she’d gotten saddled with him for so long.

Why stay with him? Surely she must have known that he was an asshole long before she broke up with him. I knew he was the moment I laid eyes on the jerk.

I wondered if there was more to the story, though there was no way in hell I was going to ask that particular question. After all, the last fight had started over Tom and the damn text messages. Who knew what sort of argument would happen if I brought him up again and demanded a more concrete answer this time?

As soon as I thought of her ex-boyfriend, I thought of her phone, sitting in that grimy trash can at that little hole in the wall gas station while people tossed their half-eaten crap in after it. By now it was probably covered in Twinky cream, diet soda, and stale Cheetos. It brought a sincere sense of pleasure in me and I couldn’t help but smirk a little bit.

“Have you seen my phone?” Olivia asked suddenly, and my smile dropped slightly.

“What?”

“My phone,” Olivia repeated. She was searching the seat around her and her bag. When she didn’t find it there, she tried her pockets, though they were the girl pockets that were more for looks than anything else. They were so small they only fit half her hand, and her hands were tiny. “I can’t find it. Have you seen it?”

I shook my head, my eyes trained on the road. “No, it’s
your
phone remember? I know where mine is.”

She sent me a dirty look, but she didn’t seem to suspect me of taking her phone, so I figured that my answer was the right one. I may not have really felt bad for disposing of her phone, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to know about it. She was finally starting to thaw again after our earlier argument and I didn’t want to fuck with that. The trip was remarkably less fun with her pissed at me.

“Did you check between the seats?” I asked casually, trying to sound both disinterested and mildly helpful.

“Yeah,” she said, but she checked again anyway. Her hand and half her arm disappeared down between the seats, but she didn’t find anything. Her brow was furrowed, a tiny delicate line pulled together between her dark eyebrows. “Damnit.”

I risked a full glance at her. She looked frustrated and annoyed, but not necessarily pissed. I was beginning to think more and more that taking the phone from her had been the best idea I’d had all day. I worked hard not to grin and said, “What’s the big deal? Find it when we stop for the night.”

She continued to look, ignoring my suggestion. “It was right
here,
wasn’t it?”

“Seriously,” I said, lowering my voice so that I sounded half offended. “What do you need it for? You weren’t serious about calling the cops, were you?”

Olivia stopped looking and turned her big green eyes up to look at me. She pursed her lips together, staring at me thoughtfully, but she didn’t immediately say, “Yes,” or “Obviously,” and I took that as a small victory. Finally, she said, “No. I…I’m sorry about earlier. I was being a real bitch.”

I didn’t confirm it, though I thought she was being a bit high strung. Still, she’d been shot at and whether I did it deliberately or directly, it
was
my fault. I couldn’t honestly fault her for freaking out a little about that.

“I shouldn’t have said those things,” she continued, sitting back more comfortably in her seat. It looked like she’d given up her search altogether. “You’re trying to do right by me and I appreciate it—I just wish things weren’t so messed up right now. But no, I wasn’t serious about calling the police. Really.”

“Then don’t worry about the phone,” I told her softly, gently, not wanting to mess up this tentative truce between us. “It’ll turn up when we stop and have a chance to really look through things. And if it’s not, we’ll get you a new one.”

Olivia thought about it for a long moment, then she finally nodded. “You’re right. Who was I gonna call anyway?”

My thoughts exactly.

The rest of the drive went pleasantly. I was right in my assumption that the conversation went a lot better now that we weren’t both on edge—once again, I felt pleased that I’d gotten rid of her damn phone. She talked on and on about her job and I asked her whether or not she wanted to do it for the rest of her life. She told me no, that she wasn’t passionate about being a hairdresser, necessarily. I had figured as much, just off the cuff. She seemed too smart and too wily to be tied down to something so fashion oriented. It just wasn’t really her thing, it seemed like.

She spent the next hour or so telling me about why the job was important to her. Why it meant so much.

“Tom insisted I quit my last job,” she explained, and I felt a twinge of anger towards him yet again. Everything I learned about this guy told me again and again that he was a piece of shit. I still couldn’t figure out how she’d landed herself with someone like that. “I was only a receptionist, so it wasn’t a huge loss or anything. I answered phones and took notes and memos. I had to wear a pantsuit.” She grinned at me, like this had been a big pain in the butt, but I imagined that she looked like one hell of a sexy,
naughty
secretary in that pantsuit.

I was sorry I’d missed it and wondered if maybe I couldn’t get her into one—and then out of one—sometime soon. She seemed open to maybe some playfulness in the bedroom.

“It wasn’t my life’s work or anything, but it was
mine
, you know?” she told me, looking wistful and a little bitter. “I worked hard at it, and I’ll bet I’d have gotten somewhere. Maybe not at that company, but the next one or the one after. I just needed some time and experience…but Tom wouldn’t let me have that.” She scowled as she said his name, confirming my thought that she wouldn’t go back to him regardless of whether or not I was in the picture.

“That’s because he was scared you’d realize you were wasting your time with an asshat like him,” I told her seriously, doing my best to keep the growl from my voice. I don’t know how successful I really was, but I tried for her. “You’ve always been made for better. I’ve only known you about a week or so and
I
know that. Chances are, he’s known that for a long time, too.”

Olivia blushed then and looked away shyly, like she wasn’t used to compliments or something.
She’s probably not,
I thought grimly.

I really wanted to kick Tom’s ass.

“Thank you,” she told me quietly.

I shrugged. “Don’t need to thank me for telling the truth.”

We were silently for a while, a silence that was thick with some kind of tension, but not the angry tension of earlier. Olivia seemed more at ease with my presence, less resentful of it, and if I had to guess, I would say that the tension was a pleasant variety of desire. Her body was responding to the closeness of mine and I had the feeling that we’d have been having silences like this more often if it hadn’t been for our run-in with the Renegades.

After several minutes, Olivia continued with her story. “I got the job at the salon after breaking up with Tom. I needed the money, so I would take anything that would hire me right away, but I’m glad that I got that job.”

“You enjoy it?” I asked, my voice a little thick now that I’d identified the desire weighing on the air.

She nodded her head. “I’m pretty good at it and it’s fun without being the whole ‘starving artist’ thing. Still, it’s not a long term thing for me. I’d like to work up to manager—since there’s an opening—but I don’t want to be there forever. A management position just looks really good on a resume, and if I can hack it there for a few years, then I’ll bet I’ve got a good shot at other jobs, you know?”

“Makes sense to me,” I told her.

She bit her lip, looking like she wanted to ask me something but torn as to whether or not she should. Finally, she did. “What do
you
do?”

I tensed. What did I do? Well, technically, I was part of a motorcycle club called the Renegades whose leader was on the wrong side of the law and currently behind bars. I didn’t
always
run the guns for them, but I’d done it before. Usually, I worked with the cars. And not in a dealership kind of way. We worked a chop shop late into the night and there wasn’t any confusion on our part as to whether or not it was strictly legal.

We all knew it wasn’t.

Normally, I wasn’t ashamed of my job. I was good with cars, more or less, and I was
excellent
at boosting them. Sure, it wasn’t legal, but sometimes life wasn’t fair and you had to make do with the hand you’d been dealt. That being said, I decided whether or not it was smart to tell Olivia any of that. She was on the straight and narrow with so much of this and right now she seemed to think I was the good guy. Did I want to give her reason to suddenly think otherwise?

No,
I thought quickly, but I also thought it was probably better to be honest.

Torn between the truth and what would keep me on her good side, I offered a half-truth instead. “I work for an auto shop,” I told her smoothly, keeping my voice calm even as I felt my heartbeat increase quickly.

“An auto shop? Like a garage or something. I didn’t realize you were a mechanic.” She seemed impressed by this particular revelation and it made me feel a little guilty.

I shoved that guilt aside, however, and said, “Yeah, sort of. I don’t work a lot on the guts, though I can. Mostly I do body work.” There, mostly the truth. I
did
do a lot of body work. Mostly striping it down and then putting it on a new car, but she didn’t need to know all of that.

She smiled at me and it was a beautiful, sexy smile. “Do you like it?”

“I have to admit that I love my job most days.” I frowned a little. It was true, I did like my job most days, though there were more and more like these where I felt a little guilty about it. “Some days I feel like we’re just cheating people, though, you know?”

She nodded, though she couldn’t possibly know what I really meant. “Yeah, I do. Taking your car to get worked on is so expensive, but I get it. Between parts and labor, you’ve got to charge a lot. After all, you can’t work for free, and cars are complicated things.”