swear it.” Frustrated tears stung my eyes. “Don’t do this, Deel. Mom and Dad would hate this.”
“They would,” she said, her own voice cracking. “They’d hate how you’re risking your life for a man—”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“And going where?” she said quickly. “To New York City? For how long?”
“I don’t know yet. A week, maybe more. And when I come back, it won’t be to Blue Ridge. I’m going to get my own place. Go back to art school.”
“So you’ll come back to Richmond?”
My gaze slid to Jimmy. Who lived in Boones Mill.
“I don’t know all the details, yet,” I said. “I’m going with the flow. But whenever I come back, I’m going straight to a judge and rescinding your goddamn power of attorney.”
“That’s not important. You’re—”
“It is to me. I want my life back. And I’m taking it.”
“Thea…”
“Go marry Roger,” I said. “Be happy, Deel.”
“Wait—”
I hung up and dropped the phone in my bag. I wiped my eyes. “It’s amazing how you can feel anger and frustration and love for the same person, all at the same time. That’s how family works, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jimmy said with a grim smile. “Keep checking in with her.”
“She threatened to have you arrested.”
“She’s worried about you.” He raised a brow. “She’s angry and frustrated and loves you, all at the same time.”
I shook my head, marveling. “You’re amazing, James Whelan. Maybe the last of the truly good men.”
His phone in my lap rang with Delia’s number.
“She’s persistent, I’ll give her that,” I said, offering him the phone. “You want?”
“She got my number from Alonzo, probably. And yeah, I’ll talk to her.” He hit a button and put it to his ear. “Ms. Hughes.”
He’s so polite and chivalrous. I wonder if his grandpa Jack taught him how to treat women.
Jim got an earful from my sister for a good minute, watching the road as he listened.
“It’s not up to me, Ms. Hughes,” he said, finally. “It’s up to Thea.”
“Amen,” I muttered.
“We won’t,” Jimmy said into the phone. “I promise.”
He listened for another ten seconds then pulled the phone away. “I think she hung up on me.”
“Typical. What did you promise her?”
“That we wouldn’t vanish.”
“Fine, but I’m not going to tell her where we’re staying in New York. Let her try to find us. What else did she say?”
“Various threats about what she’d do to me if anything happened to you. Death. Dismemberment. Castration.”
“She watches Game of Thrones too.”
We shared a smile, but the unease of Delia’s threats settled into my gut like carsickness, until he indicated a sign for a roadside diner a few miles outside of Baltimore. Then I was ravenous for a burger and fries and a chocolate milkshake.
“This good?”
“Works for me.”
Jimmy took the exit and parked the truck in the diner lot. He started to get out, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Delia can’t really have you arrested, can she?”
“Don’t know. Maybe if you were incapacitated?”
“And I’m not. I can speak for myself if she tries something. But I don’t want to get you in trouble. You already lost your job for me.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Why risk it?”
Is it because you’re as crazy about me as I am about you?
Jimmy shrugged slightly, glanced down at my fingers on his skin. “You wanted this. You deserve it. I wanted to make it happen.”
I lowered my gaze, traced a scar on his knuckle with my fingertip. “What else do you want, Jimmy?”
His dark eyes met mine and he swallowed hard. I felt the need in him under my hand. I saw it burning in his eyes. I heard it in the words he’d just swallowed down, and my heart pounded, waiting.
“I want to eat,” he said finally. “I’m starved.”
He pulled from my touch and climbed out of the truck.
“Ouch,” I said to the empty cab.
Maybe I was all wrong about Jimmy. Maybe he didn’t feel for me what I felt for him. Maybe he truly only wanted to do this for me, like some kind of field trip.
After he kissed me the way he did? I thought, going back to that beautiful morning. Impossible.
But I was suddenly too afraid to push it. Like waiting for biopsy results—maybe just better to live in blissful ignorance. Except it wasn’t blissful. It was torture.
I’ll just have do things the old-fashioned way and seduce him.
Jimmy came around and opened my door, sending a waft of summer humidity to wrap around me. I lifted my hair off my shoulders as we