Blitz (Blast Brothers #3) - Sabrina Stark Page 0,63
my ear. "She has a tiara?"
His breath tickled, and I tried not to laugh as I replied, "Don't ask."
"Oh, I’m asking," he said. "And you know what?"
"What?"
"You're gonna tell me." His lips grazed my ear. "Or else."
Chapter 43
Chase
We were halfway across the open field before Mina started laughing. "I can't believe you just did that."
I looked over my shoulder toward the building we'd just left. The door was still propped open, but the sounds of bickering had faded in the distance.
I was still holding Mina's hand – and not for show either. Did she realize that? Maybe. Maybe not.
Either way, she wasn't letting go of my hand either.
Her hand felt soft and warm, and I was liking the way it felt. I gave her fingers a playful squeeze as I told her, "You owe me."
"Oh, I know," she laughed. "I swear, you came along just in time."
"No kidding," I said. "But that's not what I meant."
She gave me a sideways glance. "So…what do you mean?"
I smiled. "I mean, I'm calling bullshit on the weather thing."
"Oh." She wasn't laughing anymore.
I missed the sound of it, and I felt like a dick for pushing the issue. But the more I'd been thinking, the more I'd decided that something was bothering her.
Whatever it was, I wanted to know.
And for some messed-up reason, I wanted to make it right, assuming I could. Considering everything I had at my disposal – money, influence, you name it – I figured it would be easy enough to solve whatever problem was on her mind.
But first, I had to know what it was.
I could demand to know. Or I could take a roundabout way to get there.
"Listen," I said, "if you don't want to tell me, I get it." I gave her hand another squeeze. "But I can't have you thinking you pulled one over on me, can I?"
With an embarrassed laugh, she said, "Actually, I was pretty sure you were onto me from the start."
Onto her.
From the start.
If she only knew how good that sounded.
Now, it was time to pull my own thoughts out of the gutter. "Oh, yeah?" I teased. "So you didn't think you had me, huh?"
"Oh, boy." She gave another embarrassed laugh. "Actually, I'm pretty sure you don't want me to answer that."
I wasn't sure what she meant, but I liked the sound of her laughter. It made me feel warm and happy in ways that were unfamiliar – and oddly unsettling.
Did she have any idea what she was doing to me?
Or the things I'd been wanting to do to her?
We were heading to the last stop of our tour – the big red barn where the festival staged hayrides for kids, families, and whoever else. I'd never been on a hayride, but I didn't feel like I'd been missing it.
But I had been missing something, even if I hadn't known it at the time.
And that something was Mina. She was the most genuine person I'd ever met. There was no pretense, no posing, no pretending to be something she wasn't.
I thought of the chick in the red dress. And then, I thought of her mom, Ginger Whoever.
I'd fucking hated them.
In that kitchen, it was all I could do to not show it.
Before I'd gone in for the rescue, they'd been talking plenty loud enough for me to hear, whether I'd wanted to or not. I hadn't liked what they were saying, especially those bits at the end.
I'd wanted to storm in there and give both of them holy hell for hassling somebody who was worth more than both of them combined.
But if I knew Mina – and by now, I was pretty sure I did – she wouldn't have liked it. She might've been embarrassed, or even worried to see me hassling a couple of women half my size.
Nice girls were like that. Or so I'd heard.
I'd never been with a nice girl.
But over the past few weeks, I'd been wondering what I'd been missing.
Already, I'd had my share of empty encounters with superficial posers like the chick in the red dress, whatever her name was.
I thought of what she'd told Mina near the end – that someone like me would never go for the "country look" or however she'd put it.
She'd been dead wrong.
Yeah, maybe I hadn't gone for Mina right away, but that wasn't because she wasn't appealing. It was because I'd been sick to death of easy hookups with star-fucking strangers.