Not My Match (The Game Changers, #2)(37)

She purses her lips. “We’ll need the Hummer for sure. Glad I took an Uber here.”

I check my watch. It’s nine. “Where are we going? I have to be at the gym—”

“Old man.”

“Four years between us,” I remind her as we walk to the exit.

She grins. “Let’s grab beer on the way—can we? Just a couple. You drive; I drink.”

“Anything else, Princess?” I murmur as we walk out to the Hummer.

“Yes, do you have any old golf clubs you don’t use? One will do. If so, we can run and grab it—if not, I’ll make do with what I have.”

“I’m intrigued.” I open the door for her and help her inside the vehicle. Before I realize it, I’m reaching over and strapping her in while she watches me. Can’t help it. My stupid . . . body . . . wants to be near hers.

She smiles so big I lose my breath. “This is going to be the best night of your life,” she murmurs.

“Really?” I stare into her eyes. I’ve never noticed the glints of white, a burst of lightning inside the blue.

A moment goes by. Maybe longer.

“Ten seconds,” she breathes.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I should just get in the car, but here I am, standing like an idiot. “Am I going to regret this adventure?”

‘“Little filly,’ as Rodeo might say, ‘When I’m done with you, you’ll be begging for more.’”

I laugh.

An hour later, after grabbing beer from my fridge and an old club, we’re bumping over a gravel road in Daisy with Sam Hunt blaring. Our windows are down, and warm air rushes through the interior, each of us lost in our thoughts. She’s braided her hair on each side and changed into a tight green T-shirt that she got on clearance, a Saint Patrick’s Day leftover. READY TO GET LUCKED, it says, which made me laugh when she pranced out in it.

I park next to an old two-story red barn. It’s pitch black, my headlights illuminating the rolling hills and meadows in the distance.

Leaving my lights on, I grab a couple of flashlights, toss her one, and follow her in the barn. Cicadas trill, frogs sing, and leaves rustle in the quiet. A man could get used to the peacefulness of it.

“You gonna murder me out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“And bury you in the cow pasture. They’ll never find you.” She laughs and turns around, watching me as she walks backward inside the depths of the barn. She flicks on a switch, and the buzz of fluorescent lighting reverberates, the glow dim but adequate. The place is big, airy, and mostly clean, hay stacked in the corner, a tractor parked to the side. Various tools hang on the walls.

“This place belong to your family?”

“Mine.” She smiles. “Elena got the big fancy house in town, and I got the farm.”

“How much is the land worth?” Real estate is pricey in Nashville, and Daisy is close.

“I’ll never sell. I grew up here, rode horses, and followed my dad around. He used to farm, mostly as a hobby. We kept these two emus until they died of old age. The true farmer was his dad. Someday, I’ll build a house out here and have ten kids.”

“Hemsworth. I’m starting to hate him and his damn villa.”

“You keep bringing him up.”

I do? Whatever.

My gaze snags on a faded circle of flowers hanging on a hay bale. “Is that a black wreath? What did you do there? Satanic rituals?”

When I look back at her, she’s on her knees beside some boxes, her flashlight at her neck, eyes crossed, teeth bared. “Death is here,” she growls in a deep voice. “Prepare to be sacrificed!”

I flinch. “Jesus!”

She bursts out laughing, dabbing at her eyes as she gets up and walks over to the wreath, patting me on the shoulder as she sashays past. “If I’d known you were that easy to scare, I would have been jumping out at you when you walk out of your bedroom.”

“I might jump back.”

She bites her lip, amusement in her eyes as she fingers the obviously spray-painted dried flowers. “No satanic demons. This sad wreath is in memory of my twentieth-birthday debacle.” She crosses herself. “May the curse be broken soon.”

I laugh, spellbound by her theatrics. I’m discovering her, layer by layer, every little piece, and I crave more, every tiny detail of who she is. “I sense a good Giselle story. Ugly black wreath, a barn . . .”

She leans against the wall nonchalantly. “It’s a horror story. You might get scared.”

“Giselle Riley, please, what happened here?”

She flashes a cheeky grin, clearly wanting to tell me. “Rascal. You really want to know?”

I want to know every fucking thing. “Yes.”

“Bobby Ray Williams met me here three days before my birthday for a tryst. He drove his four-wheeler.”

“There’s a country song there.”

“I’d made up my mind. He was the one. I liked him; he was sweet, a good guy who wouldn’t gossip about me to his buddies. His daddy owns some of the land adjacent to ours, and we spent summers together.”

Real jealousy rides me, and I kick it down. “Uh-huh.”

“So that night, he comes in the barn, and things get hot and heavy. Lights are off, Coldplay is singing ‘Magic,’ and I can feel it in the air—this is it; it’s gonna happen. He’d brought a blanket, and we put it over some hay bales. We’re mostly naked, and things are going good; I’m all in, and he’s fumbling around—he was a virgin too. And he thinks he sticks it in, but he didn’t; he’s screwing the blanket and the curve of my ass—”