Once in a Lifetime(37)

“My car won’t start,” she said animatedly, furious and beautiful. “Something happened to it overnight.”

Yeah. He’d happened to it. He’d pulled the coil wire late the night before after a drink with Luke. The coil wire was still in his pocket, as a matter of fact.

Aubrey stalked across the store, straight to Ben’s still-steaming to-go cup of coffee, which Leah had poured for him. She drank from it as though it were her lifeline.

All without making eye contact with him. “Black. Blech.” She sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t afford a mechanic.”

She wasn’t going to need one.

“It’s always something,” she said, sounding tired. Frustrated. At the end of her rope.

Still not looking at him directly.

Another man might have felt guilty as hell, but Ben told himself he wasn’t another man. He wanted to know what she was up to, what was wrong, and he’d meant it when he’d said he wanted to know if she was okay. And yeah, after last night, he was more curious than ever. There was no better way to figure her out than to drive her around. “Where do you need to go?” he asked.

She looked down at her phone, thumbing through screens with dizzying speed.

He put a hand on her. “It can’t be far,” he said. “You need to open the store in an hour and a half, right?”

She finally looked at him and then blushed. He figured that was the “wild monkey sex,” as she’d called it. The best wild monkey bathroom sex he’d ever had. “Do you need a ride?” he asked.

“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

“Look at you, lying so early in the morning.”

She blew out a breath. “Okay, so I have a few…errands to run.”

“I’ll take you.”

She drank some more of his coffee and just stared at him. “Why would you do that?” she finally asked.

Because he was a jerk. “It’s the neighborly thing to do,” he settled on.

“We’re not neighbors.”

“Okay, it’s the thing to do for someone who screamed your name as she came.”

She sputtered. “I so did not scream your name.”

“The mirror practically shattered,” he said.

“I can’t believe—that is just so rude of you to say.”

“I loved it,” he said simply, and watched as a good amount of her defensiveness drained away. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s hit the road. I’ve got an errand, too. The stain came in for your shelves. Oh, and I need to buy more condoms.”

“You do not need more condoms. Remember? We decided we were a one-time thing—” Then she seemed to finally catch his drift and realized, belatedly, that he was just yanking her chain. “Shut up,” she said.



He gave her a slow, long, hot look, and the last of her temper appeared to vanish. She squirmed a little bit, and with that little telltale move, made his entire day—though he couldn’t have said why to save his life.

“What are you going to do while I’m…doing my stuff?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’ve got my own stuff to do in the truck while I wait.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “Like what?”

He pulled out his phone. “Like kicking Jack’s ass on a game we’re playing.”

“Call of Duty, or something equally alpha and macho?”

“Something like that,” he said.

She finished his coffee and handed him the empty cup. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s go. I need to hit the grocery store first.”

Two minutes later they were on the road, huddled up to the heater vents in his truck.

“You need a newer vehicle,” she said, squinting through the foggy windshield.

“Shh!” He lovingly stroked the dash of the truck. “Don’t listen to her, baby. You’re perfect just as you are.”

Aubrey rolled her eyes. “A little attached, are we?”

“Very,” he said. “This was my uncle Jack’s truck, you know.”

She glanced at him. “No, I didn’t know.”

“I helped him rebuild her.”

“He died while fighting a fire, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Ben and Jack junior had been fourteen at the time. It had devastated the both of them—Jack, who’d lost his dad, and Ben, who’d lost the only father figure he’d ever known. His aunt Dee had given Ben the truck, though officially he’d had to wait several years to be old enough to drive it.

Unofficially, though, he and Jack had used it to make more than a few illegal and illicit late-night trips. The truck had seen him through some pretty hairy times. He’d never get rid of it.

“That must have been a terrible loss for you,” Aubrey said quietly.

It hadn’t been his first loss, and even at age fourteen, he’d known shit happened. But yeah, it’d sucked hard. “I had Dee,” he said. “She kept me on the straight and narrow.” Even when he’d only added to her grief, she’d never given up on him.

“I’ve met her,” Aubrey said. “She’s a wonderful woman. Strong, too.”

Ben smiled. “She had to be to keep a rein on Jack and me.”