Finding Cinderella (Hopeless #2.5)(10)

“I love that you don’t carry a purse,” I say.

“I love that you don’t carry one, either,” she says with a laugh.

“I do. It’s in my car,” I say, nudging my head toward my car.

She laughs again and begins walking toward the porch steps. I do the same until I see Sky standing just inside her room with her window wide open. I immediately grab Six by her shoulders and pull her until both of our backs are flat against the front door. “You can see Sky’s window from the front yard. She’ll see us.”

Six glances up at me. “You’re really taking this off-limits order seriously,” she says in a hushed voice.

“I have to,” I whisper. “Holder doesn’t kid around when he forbids me to date people.”

She arches a curious eyebrow. “Does Holder usually dictate who you can and can’t date?”

“No. You’re actually the first.”

She laughs. “Then how do you know he’ll actually get mad over it?”

I shrug. “I don’t, really. But the thought of hiding it from him just seems sort of fun. Is it not a little bit exciting for you, hiding this date from Sky?”

“Yeah,” she says with a shrug. “I guess it is.”

Our backs are still pressed against the door and for some reason, we’re still whispering. It’s not like Sky could hear us from here, but again, the whispering makes it more fun. And I really like the sound of Six’s voice when she whispers.

“How do you propose we get out of this situation, Six?”

“Well,” she says, pondering my question for a moment. “Normally when I’m attempting a risky, clandestine, secret date and I need to escape my house undetected, I ask myself, ‘What would MacGyver do?’”

Oh, my god, this chick just mentioned MacGyver?

Hell.

Yes.

I break my eyes away from hers long enough to hide the fact that I think I just fell for her and also to assess our escape route. I glance at the swing on the porch, then look back at Six when I’m sure the cheesy grin is gone from my face.

“I think MacGyver would take your porch swing and build an invisible force field out of grass and matches. Then he would attach a jet engine to it and fly it out of here undetected. Unfortunately I’m all out of matches.”

She laughs. “Hmmm,” she says, squinting her eyes like she’s coming up with some brilliant plan. “That’s an unfortunate inconvenience.” She glances to my car parked in her driveway, then back up to me. “We could just crawl to your car so she doesn’t see us.”

And a brilliant plan it would be if it didn’t involve a girl getting dirty. I’ve learned in my six months of on-again off-again with Val that girls don’t like to get dirty.

“You’ll get dirt on your hands,” I warn her. “I don’t think you can walk into a fancy sushi restaurant with dirty hands and jeans.”

She looks down at her jeans, then back up to me. “I know this great Bar-B-Q restaurant we could go to, instead. The floor is covered in discarded peanut shells. One time I saw this really fat guy eating at a booth and he wasn’t even wearing a shirt.”

I smile at the same time I fall a little harder for her. “Sounds perfect.”

We both drop to our hands and knees and crawl our way off her porch. She’s giggling and her laugh is just making me laugh. “Shh,” I whisper when we reach the bottom of the steps. We crawl across the yard in a hurry, both of us glancing toward Sky’s house every few feet. Once we reach the car, I reach up to my door handle. “Crawl through the driver’s side,” I say to her. “She’ll be less likely to see you.”

I open the door for her and she crawls into the front seat. Once she’s inside the car, I climb in after her and slide into my seat. We’re both crouched down, which is pointless if you think about it. If Sky were to look out her bedroom window, she’d see my car parked in Six’s driveway. It wouldn’t matter if she saw our heads or not.

Six wipes the dirt from her hands onto the legs of her jeans and it completely turns me on. She turns her head to face me and I’m still staring at the dirt smeared across the thighs of her jeans. I somehow tear my gaze away and look her in the eyes.

“You’ll have to disguise your car next time you come over,” she says. “This is way too risky.”

I like her comment a little too much.

“Confident there’ll be a next time already?” I ask, smirking at her. “The date just started.”

“Good point,” she says with a shrug. “I might hate you by the end of the date.”

“Or I might hate you,” I say.

“Impossible.” She props her foot up on the dash. “I’m unhateable.”

“Unhateable isn’t even a real word.”

She peers over her shoulder into the backseat, then faces forward again with a scowl. “Why does it smell like you had a harem of whores in here?” She pulls her shirt up over her nose to cover up the smell.

“Does it still smell like perfume?” I don’t even smell it anymore. It’s probably seeped into my pores and I’m now immune to it.

She nods. “It’s awful,” she says, her voice muffled by her shirt. “Roll down a window.” She makes a fake spitting sound like she’s trying to get the taste of it out of her mouth and it makes me laugh.