want me to grab your bag too?” Couldn’t very well leave it sitting in plain view.
“Yes, please.”
Burke stretched an arm out and hooked his fingers around the twill strap. This was definitely not like the fancy bags he was used to seeing in New York. Or LA for that matter. This chick might not be what he imagined a country girl would be like, but between the truck, the boots, and her bag she was definitely different from the women he knew.
She was interesting. And trusting too, allowing a stranger to grab her purse, not to mention accepting a ride from him.
Burke’s protective nature sparked up as he considered what this scenario might look like if he were a different sort of man. One who took advantage of or even harmed women. The very idea caused an icy streak to dart through his chest. He bumped the old fashioned lock with his fist, slammed the door closed, then spun back to see that the blonde was…gone.
He looked sharply over his shoulder but still came up empty. “Hello?” he blurted, feeling startled now.
“Back here.” The sound of her distant voice came from further behind him—all the way back to his BMW. There she stood next to the passenger side, cradling the box with one arm while reaching for the handle. Burke watched as she pried open the door, pushed it open with her hip, and proceeded to climb in.
“Huh. Okay…”
It was another display of how comfortable she felt with him—a perfect stranger blowing through town. As much as it unnerved him, and it did unnerve him, a small part of him was charmed by it too. She was unlike anyone he’d met.
With her groceries tucked into one fist, the purse strap caught in the other, Burke made his way toward his car, the pretty stranger and her dead-because-of-him cat in the box. Perhaps this, like the weird game show he’d dreamed about, wasn’t reality at all. If that were the case, he would be disappointed to wake up; Burke wanted to see where this would lead.
He fought the urge to peer at the groceries tucked into the bags as he walked; he was hungry for added layers to the enigma before him. He spotted an avocado through the sack as he lowered it behind the driver’s seat, but that was all he could identify with the obscured view.
Soon, Burke was climbing in behind the wheel, that strawberry scent hitting him full force as he shut the door.
The distant beat of a rap song kicked on as he started the car. He was quick to reach up and turn it down.
“You can turn it back up if you want,” she said. “I like that song.”
She did? “You do?”
Her face scrunched into one of those duh expressions. “Who doesn’t?”
An odd dose of heat stirred in his belly. Who was this chick?
Burke cranked it back up, lowered his sunglasses, and squared a look at the pretty stranger in his car.
“Where to?”
Chapter 4
Holy holy…
Justine stared into the hypnotizing eyes of the man at her side. With his sunglasses lowered just so, those blue pools of wonder aimed right on her, she momentarily lost her breath. She’d encountered plenty of pretty rich boys in nice cars and tailored suits. Enough that they’d all started to look the same.
But he wasn’t like the others. In fact, the only thing typical about this guy was his clothes and his car. He filled out the driver’s side with ease, his physique more like a mountain man’s than a businessman’s. His face had a rugged quality too. A bold, rather angular jaw with promising hints of a five o’clock shadow. Even his thick, dark hair defied the typical length; the tips hung long enough to graze the corner of his eye.
Wait, he’d asked her something, hadn’t he? “What was that?”
His brow furrowed. “Which way should I go?”
She saw something else that set him apart from the other men passing through town—something in the deep blue of his eyes. A familiarity almost, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Focus, Justine. She pointed straight ahead. “Just go in the direction I was going.”
“Right,” he said, a tinge of chagrin on his face.
“We’ll head to my grandfather’s place. He’s got somewhere we can bury her.”
The man kept his gaze trained on her for a blink. “Okay,” he said. “My name’s Burke, by the way.” Then, instead of sliding the glasses back into place, he tore them off and rested them above the