The Proposal(33)

“I never run out of gas! I can’t believe I let this happen to my car. I never even get down below a quarter tank, but this week has been so busy and I let it go way longer than usual.”

Nik narrowed her eyes at his steering wheel.

“Didn’t you notice your gas light go on?”

He refused to make eye contact.

“The thing is . . . I always keep my gas tank at least a quarter full, so the gas light in this car has never gone on before. So . . . yes, it went on, but I was preoccupied, and I’d never seen it before so I didn’t . . .” She held her laughter in so well, even when he finally turned to look at her, but something in her eyes must have betrayed her. He frowned at her. “The gas light in this car is in a weird place, okay? Are you laughing at me?”

She shook her head and rubbed her hand up and down his arm.

“No, I’m not laughing at you. I’m desperately trying not to laugh at you, here.”

She knew how touchy men were about their cars. He would probably get mad at her for that, but she couldn’t help making fun of him.

But he grinned at her.

“Okay, fine, I will admit that this is a little funny.” He put his arm around her shoulders and lowered his voice. “You have to promise to never tell anyone about this, though. I have a reputation to uphold.”

She nodded and turned so her lips were almost touching his ear.

“Cross my heart; it’s our secret. Just one question: do you think you maybe want to call Triple A to get us out of here?”

He pulled his wallet and phone both out of his pocket.

“Right, of course.”

He made a face at her when he got off the phone.

“They’re on their way, but it’ll be a while. Apparently, ‘out of gas in a safe spot in the hills’ is low priority.”

Nik took off her seatbelt and leaned toward him.

“We might as well get comfortable while we wait for them.” She looked around the car. “How long have you had this car, anyway?”

He closed his eyes for a moment before answering her.

“Almost five years.”

His car had confused her, ever since she’d gotten to know him a little bit. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be obsessed with his bright red sports car, but from his reaction when the car had run out of gas, that seemed like exactly what he was. Granted, people in L.A. tended to care about their cars more than anywhere else she’d ever been, so maybe it was just that.

“Why did you buy it?” she asked. “A celebration of a new job or something?”

He shook his head, but didn’t say anything. He ran his fingers down the steering wheel. The silence went on so long that she didn’t think he was going to answer her at all. She opened her mouth to ask him another question when he finally spoke.

“My dad died. Almost five years ago, my dad died.”

Oh God. Leave it to her to ask the asshole question.

“Oh Carlos, I’m so sorry. You don’t have to . . .”

He shook his head and kept talking.

“My parents didn’t have lots of money—they always managed to give us all of the important stuff, but they were both school teachers for thirty years; they were never flush. But it turned out that he had a ton of life insurance. Some in my mom’s name, of course. But some in mine, and some in my sister’s. After he died and I got this enormous—to me, at least—check . . .” He paused for a second before continuing. “Well, I didn’t know what to do with it. I deposited it in my savings account, and just let it sit there for a while. I was going to use it to pay off some of my med school loans. I probably should have used it to pay off some of my med school loans. But then one day, I took a different way home from work. I saw the sun gleaming off of a bright red sports car with a big price tag on the windshield. I turned straight into the lot and bought that car an hour later. My dad always liked flashy things. Sometimes I feel like that was a stupid way to use his legacy, but . . . I think he’d like this car a lot.”

She pulled him into a hug. His head dropped down on her shoulder, and they sat there together for a few minutes, breathing with each other.

“Thanks for telling me,” she said.

“Thanks for listening,” he said.

His hands moved up and down her back, and then gently through her hair.

She turned her head and kissed his jaw. His cheek.

He pulled back to look at her. She looked back at him: his kind big dark-brown eyes; his thick almost-black hair that she was dying to touch; his warm skin, with stubble already visible along his jawline; that hint of a dimple in his cheek; his lips, a dusky pink, not quite smiling, but looking like they would smile at any minute.

He lifted his hand from her shoulder and stroked her cheek, and she smiled.

He slid his hand around to the back of her neck and pulled her toward him. And finally, finally, he kissed her. Soft, at first. Not tentative, but slow. Gentle. Tender. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d wanted him to kiss her until just this moment. She kissed him back the same way, happy to let him take the lead, as long as he stayed here in this car and kept kissing her.

Her hands went up into his hair, that hair she’d been wanting to touch for so long, and she sighed with some combination of relief and lust.

That sigh seemed to signal something to him. He pulled her tighter against him, and his hand ran down the side of her body. His lips, his tongue, got stronger, and she met his urgency with her own. He pulled away, and she almost moaned in frustration, but then he trailed his mouth down her neck, kissing and biting and kissing again, until her hands gripped his hair and she gasped.