Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(39)

Another nod and Koa offered me his small hand to fist bump before I shut the door.

Aly played with her phone and opened the driver’s side door, her lips tensed into a hard line.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, standing next to her.

“This is so big.” She nodded toward the Armada. “I’m petrified to drive it. It’s a tank. I feel like I have to climb up a wall just to get in.”

“Yeah,” I said through a laugh. She looked a little suspicious when I offered her my hand, but took it anyway, I guessed because her need for a push up into the SUV was a little greater than her suspicion. “Why do you think my dad bought it? He’s ridiculously paranoid about Mom driving anywhere without him.” I shut the door and leaned my elbows against the open window. “I think he likes to play caveman or something with her knowing damn well that she can handle much rougher shit than New Orleans traffic.”

Aly’s laugh was quick, but pleased. “Well, I can’t imagine what’s rougher than that.”

“You’ve never been to Nashville, have you?”

Lips pressed together, Aly still wouldn’t give me a smile, but she did smirk a little. “No. Never been outside of Louisiana.”

“Really?” I asked, ignoring that niggling voice in my head that reminded me I was going to be late for practice. “Man, I can show you pictures of some of the crazy places my mom’s dragged me to.”

“You ever been to France?” Her eyes got a little wider then and she adjusted in her seat to lean closer to me.

“Twice.”

“Shut up. You have not.”

When I nodded, Aly’s mouth dropped opened and I was surprised how much I liked her when she wasn’t introverted and closed off. “Germany too, and we went three times to the UK. London is very cool, real old, ya know, but nothing beats Scotland. Supposed to be the most haunted place in the world.”

“Did you see a ghost?”

“Nah. I don’t wanna be around that shit.”

“Shit!” Koa shouted from the backseat.

“No, sir, little man,” Aly said, glaring at him in the rearview.

Koa kicked the back of the seat, refusing to look away from Aly’s frown, but when she cleared her throat, the annoying thumping stopped

That was amazing. My little brother was a hellion most of the time and in under a month Aly had him behaving. Somewhat. I shook my head, smiling at her. “How the he…um…how do you do that?”

She adjusted the rearview mirror and shook her head. “Koa gets away with things from you guys because he’s so cute.” She looked back at me. “Cute doesn’t really go very far with me.”

“No? What about impossibly good looking?”

I wasn’t sure what to make of the look she gave me and I had no idea why I wanted to know her answer so badly. But for some reason I didn’t understand, I leaned closer, like I wanted to touch her, see if I could get that elusive smile. Aly stared back. There was a little buzz moving around us, some weird sting of electricity that I felt when she pressed her tempting lips together.

“Shit!” Koa said again, and I pushed back from the door.

“Koa! Non!” Aly fussed and I hid my laugh, giving my little brother a wink.

“We should go,” she said, disappointing me more than I thought was possible. I had no idea why I wanted her to stick around, but I didn’t think it was because I missed seeing my baby brother. That idea scared me, just a little.

“You gonna be at the lake house this weekend?” I asked.

“Yeah. Leann and Keira sweet talked me into helping out with the fund raiser.”

“How’d they manage that?”

Aly shrugged, starting the car and that slight grin almost became a smile. “Blue Bell Caramel Kettle Crunch ice cream.”

It was like someone else was driving my body, putting thoughts into my head, cravings that shouldn’t be there, but I leaned back again, just hoping to catch another whiff of the exotic, fruity smell of her perfume. “I’ll have to remember that.”

Aly tilted her head, gave me that cynical, small frown again. “You got plans to bribe me, mister?”

“I might.” I had zero plans and about a million immoral ideas. None I’d ever admit to her. “You never know.”

Aly shook her head, still withholding that smile I suspected she only offered to people who deserved them, but as she drove away and I watched her go, I couldn’t help wondering how the hell I could swing being one of those deserving lucky bastards and why the hell I wanted to be that bastard at all.





This close. That’s how damn close I came to knocking Mike Richard out that weekend at my parents’ lake house. I didn’t know why him looking at Aly, mumbling to Ronnie Blanchard about the way she looked in that thin, wispy little sundress, set me off the way it had.

“Shit, did you see her ass?” They’d been standing back away from the small crowd congregated around my father and our head coach at the fundraiser the coach insisted my father host. The boosters hob-knobbed and clinked glasses and we all stood around like debs on display, uncomfortable in our suits, getting the once over from rich, board, plastic-looking trophy wives and businessmen who had peaked when they’d played the game in high school. Richard talked behind his glass of beer, hiding that stupid smirk of his when Aly set out another tray of stuffed mushrooms, bending a little too far over the table to snatch up an empty tray.