he helped her out and made sure she had a secure grip on her cane.
Brett hated this. Mrs. G and her husband had helped build this town, the old girl was the sweetest, most generous person he’d ever met, and yet her family treated her like nothing more than a burden. Her grandson Jeff was an idiot, but he was right about her driving.
“It’s okay, dear,” she said. “Not your fault. And to be honest, I don’t really like driving much; I just don’t want Jeff telling me what I can and can’t do.”
Once he had her safely inside, he turned to go, but she called him back.
“Would you be able to get me some of those transfer papers for my car?”
After she’d explained her idea, Brett left there loving Mrs. G even more than he had when he’d picked her up.
It took Junjie a couple of minutes to fully understand what Brett was telling him.
“Miss Goodzen to give me car?”
“That’s right. She can’t use it anymore, so she wants you to have it.”
“But I save for car. The bank is money.”
“I understand, but she wants to give it to someone deserving, and you’re her first choice.”
The poor kid still looked dazed when Brett dropped him off and headed to Angus’s house.
Throughout every lesson that day, as he’d done every other day, Brett remained focused, professional, relaxed. If he wasn’t those things, he couldn’t expect the students to be, so it wasn’t until he’d finished with Angus that he finally let himself exhale.
He’d screwed things up with Ellie, let things push right up against the line, and then he’d made it worse when he couldn’t get out what he’d wanted to say earlier this afternoon. She’d gotten stuff out, though. Boy, had she.
“Don’t go and do something stupid”—that’s what Sarge had told him, and technically, he hadn’t. He’d taken her out, spent time with her, and put on a pretty good show of being her new man. He’d only kissed her twice, and both those times were for the benefit of the case. Okay, they had been for his own benefit as well, but he didn’t have to admit that.
Other than those times, he’d hardly touched her, and if that didn’t prove how dedicated he was to his job, he didn’t know what would. He’d done what Sarge had told him to do. He’d played his part, and he’d played it pretty well, but Ellie was right—when you lived a lie long enough, you started to believe it.
Didn’t make it any less of a lie.
By the time he got to the game the next night, the rest of the team was already warming up, including Ellie, who was as far away from the dugout and him as she could get. She still put on a show, though, waving and flashing him a big smile. If anyone other than him had been looking, they wouldn’t have noticed the slight dimness in her eyes.
That smile might have been big, but it didn’t even come close to reaching her eyes, and it didn’t last more than a second before she turned and started talking to Regan, stretching beside her.
“Hey.” Nick slapped him on the back with his glove. “How’s it?”
“Yeah, good.”
“You ready?”
“Yeah,” he lied. “Let’s do it.”
Out on the field, Ellie was all business. Focused, ready, relaxed, she made every play, called out encouragement to the rest of the team, and laughed with everyone else when the ball dropped right in front of Maya while she was shading her eyes from the sun.
In the dugout, though, she was tense and twitchy. To keep up their lie, she had to at least show some interest in him, so she sat right next to him, her foot bouncing up and down, her fingers tapping her knees.
At one point, he put his hand over hers to try to settle her down, but that only lasted for a couple of seconds before she stood up and walked over to the dugout door, where she stayed for the rest of the inning.
They didn’t win, and neither of them cared. All Brett wanted to do was get the hell out of there. As soon as the game was over, he threw his gear into the truck, gave Ellie a token kiss on the cheek, and took off for home. There, he stood in the middle of his living room staring at the end of the couch where she’d sat a little over a week ago, ogling that skinny goof