Misadventures of a Curvy Girl (Misadventures #18)(5)

I’d flushed bright red. I didn’t expect him to twirl me off the horse like a cartoon prince or anything, but surely it wasn’t too much to ask for help? Surely even big girls deserve a steadying arm?

But Caleb—Caleb easily caught all two-hundred-odd pounds of me without so much as a grunt of complaint and then placed me as carefully in the seat as he would a stack of china teacups.

I turn to him to give him my thanks—thanks laden with possibly too much emotion from this dumb Brian baggage I have—but the words die in my throat when I see Caleb’s face. His sensuous mouth looks tense and grim, and there are new lines around his eyes, as if he’s experiencing some kind of strain. His hands are restless at his sides again, and he won’t meet my gaze.

Immediately I panic that it was the effort of getting me in the truck, and I have to swallow back a dumb apology. But for what? For having a body? For being silly enough to try to climb into a truck in a pencil skirt?

No. New Ireland.

Instead, I just give him a “Thank you!” and he nods curtly, shutting the door after making sure my feet are safely inside, and then he walks around to the driver’s door.

Greta hops in first, settling herself in a heap between us, and Caleb grates out a “Buckle in, please,” not looking at me the entire time.

Clumsy awkward sausage. I knew it.

But I don’t need his approval, even if he is only the second man in my life to touch my ass. Even if he is some kind of wholesome, all-American sex god. I lift my chin and stare out the windshield, which is smeared slightly with mud, and try to adjust my feet around all the stuff he has in the passenger-side floorboard.

Caleb starts the truck and then sees me trying to move my feet. A faint blush appears above the line of his beard, on his model-like cheekbones. “Uh, sorry about all this stuff,” he mumbles, reaching over to move a brown paper bag that’s full of…mason jars?

I peer inside. “Starting a pickle collection?”

The flush grows deeper. “It’s a gift. From a friend.”

A friend…like a lady friend? Maybe out in these parts, jars of pickles are some kind of flirtatious overture? Or maybe they’re way past flirtation, and this lady friend likes to send him home after a long, sweaty night with plenty of sustenance. Because nights with him would be long and sweaty, I can tell just from looking at him.

“Is this an old laptop?” I ask, trying to shift a second brown paper bag with an old Dell inside, along with more mason jars of pickles and jams. The bag’s got a logo printed on the side from a chain grocery store that’s been closed for at least a decade—at least in the city. Maybe out here there’s still a franchise open.

“The laptop is something my roommate repaired, and I’m returning it to a friend,” Caleb says. “She’s terrible with tech stuff.”

Aha, so there is a she.

I don’t know why this rankles so much, but it does. I frown as I finish moving the bag, which reveals a scuffed center console, and I give out an involuntary yelp.

Caleb startles at my noise and flings his arm across me, as if to stop me from going through the windshield—even though we aren’t moving yet. “What is it?” he asks, alarmed.

“Th-There’s bullets!” I manage to point to the center console, which has bullets just rolling around in there with a pack of gum and a small flashlight. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen bullets in real life, not even once. Who even needs bullets in their truck? Serial rapists? Serial killers? What if my first instinct was right, and Caleb is actually going to kill me here in the middle of nowhere?

My squeamishness seems to confuse him. “Yes,” he says slowly, “those are bullets.” He says it in a voice like what else would they be?

“But why are they in your car?” I ask a little wildly.

Caleb tilts his head, his confusion growing into distinct amusement. “For the rifle mounted under your seat.”

I nearly jump out of the seat. “There’s a gun underneath me right now?”

“Relax,” he says, barely keeping the laughter out of his voice. “It’s not loaded.”

“But…why? Do you use it”—I drop my voice into what I hope is my best serial-killer-soothing voice—“on people?”

He laughs, the rich sound filling the cab as he puts the truck into drive. “It’s my varmint rifle, peach.”

Peach?

Is he calling me peach?

“Varmint rifle?” I probe, deciding to leave peach where it is until I decide how I feel about it.

“For coyotes and foxes,” he says a bit more seriously, his eyes casting around the surrounding fields as the truck works its way over the bridge and up to the distant county road. “They come after the chickens. Sometimes the coyotes will even give the cows trouble. Or they hassle Greta.” He scowls as he says it, and I get the feeling he’d never forgive an animal for coming after his Greta-dog.

“Oh,” I say. “But can’t you just chase them off?”

Another laugh, and he’s so handsome when he laughs that I have to look away. “No. They’ll just keep coming back. And I’m not going to lose any of my animals because those pests are hungry.”

The proprietary bent in his tone is so natural, so easy, and I can’t decide why that turns me on. Is it the certainty? The strength?