The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil #1)(2)

I’d often wished I was that kind of girl.

In fact, my mom was that kind of girl.

And until she’d gotten married, my sister was too.

I just wasn’t.

I was too shy.

To be honest, I was also a hint of a prude. I tried to drive that out of me, the need I felt to be proper, modest, good. However, I’d learned from a young age what “bad” could bring you, and my inherent shyness and that lesson didn’t allow me to be anything else.

I’d also learned at a not-young age the way men could be, falling into a trap that from my history (and my mother’s) I should have seen from a mile away.

So I wasn’t just shy. With men, these days especially, I was skittish.

But not with Johnny.

Not Johnny Gamble.

And not just because he was so handsome.

It was also not just because he bought my drinks. Though it was partly because, between drink three and drink four (all of which he bought me), he’d stopped the waitress and said, “Could you bring my girl here a glass of water?”

That said that he didn’t want to get me drunk so he could then have his way with me. He didn’t mind me feeling relaxed and loose, but he didn’t want to take advantage.

That also said a lot of good about him. But it wasn’t just that either.

And it wasn’t just because he listened. He didn’t talk much, but he listened and he did it in an active way, asking questions as I talked about my job, my mom, my sister, my pets, my house. He was interested. He was following everything I said. His gaze didn’t roam to other women at the bar or the game on one of the television sets.

His attention was all on me.

It also wasn’t just because he had a great grin and an even better smile. His grin was broken, hitched at one corner, creasing one side of his face in a way that made his dark eyes seem like they were twinkling.

His smile was more. Big, bright and white in that dark beard, curving those full lips, it was sweet and it was sexy, both achingly so, both in equal measures.

And he gave me both a lot, his grin and his smile, which was also another reason why I was right then naked in his bed. He thought I was funny. And I liked that. It felt good to make him grin and smile, and definitely chuckle (something he did a lot of too).

Adding all this together, after drink four, when he’d leaned into me and asked in his deep voice, “You wanna get outta here?” I said yes.

I didn’t hesitate.

I nodded and verbalized my agreement with a shy, somewhat breathy but still definite, “Yes.”

That earned me another smile.

I would find it only got better after that.

It started with the fact that he opened the door to his truck for me.

And after I was in, he closed it behind me.

Then, as he started us on our way and it hit me it might not be the smartest thing to do, to get in a strange man’s car and go to his house, I looked at his profile in the dashboard lights, the timidity hit me along with some panic, which made me blurt, “Am I . . . uh, going home tonight?”

He didn’t ask my opinion on the subject. He also didn’t hesitate.

He just said, “No.”

At that point, after I experienced a pleasant trill down my spine, I pulled my phone out of my purse and told him haltingly, “I just . . . need to text my friend. I have dogs. Cats too. And some, uh . . . other animals. She lives close to me. I want to ask her to pop around in the morning to feed them, let the dogs out.”

“First, I think it’s cool you’ve got a mind to your pets, and second, I’d think you were stupid if you didn’t have a mind to yourself and let a girlfriend know where you were and who you were with.”

That was his response. He knew why I was calling Deanna, and that reason wasn’t only because I wanted someone to have a mind to my pets. And like getting me a glass of water between drinks, it showed that he, too, had a mind to me.

So yes, definitely yes, he started out great and kept getting better.

I texted Deanna with this information, and although the anxiety sheared away at his earlier comment, it came back because we went out of town. I lived out of town in the opposite direction on three acres with my house, my small stable, my two dogs, three cats, two birds and two horses, but I didn’t live as far out as he did.

Deanna might have my text but she wouldn’t know who he was, where he was taking me, and as he turned into a dirt road that was surrounded entirely by woods I wondered what I’d gotten myself into.

Serial killers, I was sure, lived on dirt roads in wooded areas.

And maniacs that forced you into underground bunkers and kept you captive while forcing you to make babies so they could build armies (or whatever) also surely all lived on dirt roads in wooded areas.

When his headlights finally fell into a clearing that had a two-story building made of stones in varying shades of mellow cream, tan and brown (the water wheel was on the other side so I hadn’t seen it), flanked by a large creek, I felt nothing but the panic because we were in the woods, nothing around us, and I had a long way to run to get to anything if I had to run away.

And he was tall and fit, he had very long legs, so I had the distinct feeling if I had to run, he’d catch me.

He got out, came around and opened my door (mostly because I was frozen in my seat).

He also took my hand, and when I turned my head, I could feel through the dark that he was looking into my eyes.