When she didn’t answer right away, the rest of the group stopped and looked over at her. She blinked a few times, shook her head, and cleared her throat.
“No, it’s…” She blinked again and swallowed hard. “It’s nothing.”
It didn’t look like nothing to him. In fact, it looked like a whole lot of something, but he knew better than to push it. The last thing he needed was her referring to him as Dudley Do-Right or Poncherello in front of the class.
When they finally broke for lunch, Junjie and Angus scattered, while Ellie and Mrs. G both pulled food out of their bags.
“Will you join us?” Mrs. G asked, making Ellie chuckle when Brett balked.
“Oh, I, uh, thanks,” he said, shooting a quick glance Ellie’s way. “But I think I’ll just run out and grab something.”
“Nonsense. We have plenty, don’t we, dear?”
“Plenty,” Ellie parroted behind her smirk as she slid her sandwich toward the middle of the table. “Help yourself.”
Mrs. G held out a small thermos and nodded at the lid. “Would you open that for me?”
Ellie poured some of the soup into the small plastic bowl Mrs. G set out. “It doesn’t feel very warm—can I go heat it up for you? There must be a microwave or stove around here somewhere.”
“I like it on the cool side, but maybe you could heat some up for Brett there.”
“No,” he said, maybe a little quicker than he should have. Asking Ellie to go heat him up soup was just inviting trouble, and they’d done pretty well so far. “It’s fine.”
A couple of mouthfuls of lukewarm tomato soup out of the thermos lid and half of Ellie’s BLT—that was lunch.
“Look at us,” she mumbled when Mrs. G got up to stretch her legs. “Two meals together in one week; if that doesn’t get people talking, I don’t know what will.”
“They’re probably already—”
“Oh, drat,” Mrs. G interrupted. “I thought I had some candy in my bag, but it looks like I’m all out. Is there a vending machine somewhere?”
“Will these do?” Brett reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small bag of red Swedish Berries, hands down the best candy in the world. “Consider it my contribution to lunch.”
“Lovely.”
He poured them into a napkin in his palm, held them out to Mrs. G, then moved back over to the table and held them out to Ellie, whose gaze narrowed suspiciously.
“What?” he asked. “You don’t like candy?”
“No, it’s not—” She stopped, still watching him with a bit of disbelief as she reached for some. “Never mind. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. For a second there, you had me thinking my choice in candy was going to be yet another strike against me.”
Again, he meant it as a joke, but she didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile.
Great.
Chapter 6
“Uh, no, Ponch. When we first met, you had just fallen off a dirtbike.”
—Officer Jon Baker, CHiPs
Days later, Ellie still wasn’t sure what had happened during that first class. Somewhere between Understanding Intersections and Know Your Road Signs she’d found herself staring at Brett, and she had no idea why. To make it worse, he’d not only caught her staring, but the whole class had ended up staring back at her.
And then at lunch, when he pulled those red berries out of his pocket…she gave her head a brief shake. Candies? Really? Was she actually that pathetic that she’d let a handful of candies make her change her opinion of him?
Well, it wasn’t just any old candy, and he’d almost smiled when she took some, so, yeah, there was that.
A little time with the girls, that’s what she needed, and Tuesday night couldn’t come fast enough. Last week had been a little awkward because she’d sat there all night going back and forth over whether or not she should say anything about Brett having dinner at her house, and had ultimately said nothing at all. Why?
That was a damn good question. It might have been because she didn’t want them to know how easily her mom could steamroll her, or it might have been because they’d want to know what she and Brett had talked about, and it wasn’t Ellie’s place to tell them about his transfer. And then, of course, there was the fact that a simple smile from him made her do a face plant into the door.
Yeah, explain that one, she mused. In the end, the only thing she’d told them was that Ponch was the only driving instructor in