The Promise (Neighbor from Hell #10)(44)

“Really?” Reed drawled as he shifted his attention back to his emails.

“Really,” Jen said with a firm nod. “I’ve changed.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in detention?” he asked when he came across an email that needed a reply today.

“Yes, yes, I am, but I thought that perhaps the two of us could discuss the situation and come to an amicable solution that would benefit everyone involved?” she asked with a hopeful smile.

“Or I could just call your uncle and let him know you’re-”

“So, I’ll just be heading back to detention now,” she said, quickly getting to her feet and heading for the door, leaving him free to head home and focus on something else for a change.

When he looked up again, he found that something else that he was planning on focusing on walking back inside and heading for the front desk. Biting back a smile, he wrote a quick reply, put his laptop in his bag and went to find out what the woman that he’d been thinking about all day needed.

“Do you have AAA?” Mrs. MacArthur, one of the secretaries that ran the front office, was asking Joey when he opened his office door.

“Not anymore,” she said with a hesitant pause that had his eyes narrowing and making him wonder what she did.

“Is everything okay, Dr. Lawson?” he asked as he closed his office door behind him and locked it.

“Her car won’t start,” Mrs. MacArthur said, already reaching for the phone.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Joey said, giving Mrs. MacArthur a reassuring smile.

“Does it happen a lot?” he asked, moving to join them by the front desk.

“No, it’s usually pretty dependable,” Joey said with a soft sigh that had him nodding.

“I’ll call Joe’s. They’re usually pretty quick and if the driver can’t figure out what’s wrong then they’ll tow it to the shop,” Mrs. MacArthur said as she searched her rolodex for the number.

“Don’t bother Joe, Mrs. MacArthur. I’ll have a look, and if I can’t fix it then Matt should be able to,” he said, gesturing for Joey to lead the way.

“Are you sure?” Joey asked, worrying her bottom lip the same way that she had this morning in the kitchen when he’d slid his hand beneath her skirt so that he could slide his finger inside-

“You’re such a good man, Mr. Bradford,” Mrs. MacArthur said with a warm smile as she put the phone down.

“He really is,” Joey said, nodding solemnly with a watery smile that had him narrowing his eyes on her.

“Have a good weekend, Mrs. MacArthur,” Reed said, following Joey to the front doors.

“What happened when you tried to start it?” he asked, placing his hand against the small of her back as he led her over to his truck, somehow resisting the urge to slide his hand down and cup her ass, something that he’d been thinking about doing all day.

“Nothing. It didn’t start. Nothing came on,” Joey said with a small sigh.

Nodding, he opened the passenger side door and gestured for her to get in. “Sounds like it’s the battery. I’ll take you home and grab some jumper cables.”

“It was working fine this morning,” Joey said with an adorable frown as she reluctantly climbed inside his truck.

“It’s probably nothing,” Reed said, wanting to reassure her so that she didn’t spend the rest of the night worrying, especially since he already knew what was wrong with her car.

“Are you sure? Maybe I should call a tow truck,” she said, worrying her bottom lip.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, giving him a grateful smile.

“You’re welcome,” Reed said as he closed her door and headed around the truck. By the time he’d climbed in, she was already lost in a book on Pompeii and completely fucking oblivious to the world around her.

She didn’t look up from her book when he pulled out of the parking lot, when he took the back roads, or when he pulled onto the old dirt road that cut through his woods that he hadn’t used in years. As he drove down the old road that he’d put to good use back when he was in high school, he glanced over to find Joey still lost in her own little world, completely oblivious to the fact that he was about to-

“So, you stole the spark plugs out of my car and disconnected the battery,” she said, making him chuckle as he carefully pulled the truck out of the woods and onto the grassy banks of the lake his family had lived on for more than a hundred and fifty years.

“Yes, I did,” he said, barely finished putting the truck into park when she climbed onto his lap.

“And why would you do that?” she asked as she settled on his lap, making sure that her skirt was out of the way.

“It was the only way that I could get you alone,” he said, cupping her hips so that he could run his hands over that generous ass that he’d been thinking about all day.

“And why would you want to get me alone at Base Camp?” she asked, making him wince at the moronic name that they used to call this place when they’d planned on bringing a girl here to-

“Tell me that Jackson didn’t tell you why we called it that,” he said with a wince, deeply disturbed by the idea of Joey, twelve and too fucking curious for her own good, finding out why they used to beg to borrow a pickup truck every weekend.