Boom - Sabrina Stark Page 0,57

Maybe something on the river?" Her voice grew husky. "Like last night?"

Last night?

I tensed, although heaven knows why. Yesterday evening, they'd both disappeared for several hours, and they hadn't returned until midnight. It was beyond easy to guess that they'd gone out for dinner, and possibly something more.

And Brody did have a condo on the river. For all I knew, they'd gone to his place for a nightcap of the naked variety.

The thought bothered me more than it should've. But it also posed an odd question. I looked to Brody and said, "There's something I don't get. If you live right here in the city, why wouldn't you just stay at your own place?"

Brody looked at me for a long moment before saying, "Good question."

Hey, I thought so. And yet, he still wasn't answering. I waited, refusing to let him off the hook.

Finally, it was Waverly who broke the silence. "It's not that good of a question," she said. "His condo's thirty minutes away. So of course he'd want to stay closer to the site to keep an eye on things." Her gaze slid to Brody. "Me too. We run a very tight ship."

It was a decent story. But I wasn't buying it.

And judging from Brody's continued silence, the story wasn't quite as simple as Waverly had made it sound.

I was still trying to figure it out when Waverly turned back to Brody and practically purred, "So, should we shower before we go?"

We?

Did that mean what I thought it meant?

I mean, sure, if they wanted to hop into the shower together, it was none of my business. And yet, an odd empty feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't even hunger. It was something worse.

Disappointment.

What on Earth was wrong with me, anyway?

I didn't even like Brody. And besides, I wasn't the type to get naked with someone just because they were pretty – not that Brody had ever offered.

In the end, I turned away with some off-handed comment about ordering pizza for myself, only to turn back at the sound of Brody's voice.

"Sounds good," he said. "Make sure there's pepperoni. My treat."

Next to him, Waverly sputtered, "Pizza? Seriously?"

He gave her a look. "You got something against pizza?"

"No. Definitely not," she stammered. "I love pizza. It's just that…" She lowered her voice. "I was thinking of something more intimate."

He glanced in the general direction of the driveway. "You've got a car," he said. "So get whatever. I won't stop you."

I looked to Waverly. "Wait, you have a car?"

"Of course I do," she said. "Don't you?"

"Not at the moment," I admitted. "But even you didn't have a car yesterday."

"Well I do now," she said. "It was just delivered. So where's your car?"

I bit my lip. "Actually, I'm sort of between cars at the moment."

With a sly smile, she asked, "So how'd you get here?"

"I, um, got a ride, actually."

"Yeah," she said with a laugh. "In a Greyhound bus." She looked to Brody as if sharing a secret joke. "We saw the ticket, remember?"

Heat flooded my face. "When?"

Waverly was still laughing. "Last night, when you were hiding in the bathroom."

"I wasn't hiding," I said. "I was talking to my cousin." I turned and gave Brody an accusing look. "And you went through my stuff?"

He frowned. "That's what you think?"

Before I could answer, Waverly chimed in, "Oh, please. We didn't go through anything. The ticket was just sitting out there for anyone to see."

Damn it. She was right. I'd left that stupid bus ticket along with some other receipts on the dresser. Tonight, I vowed, I'd rip the ticket to shreds and burn the pieces.

But for now, I still felt violated – or maybe I was just embarrassed by the fact that I was twenty-four and had no car of my own.

Again, I looked to Brody, and it struck me all over again how different his life had turned out compared to mine. He probably had a dozen cars and a dozen houses. But me, I had zero of both.

When our gazes met, he gave me a look that I couldn’t quite decipher. Our gazes held, and the moment stretched out longer than it should've.

The moment – or whatever it was – might've lasted even longer, if not for Waverly practically jumping between us to announce, "On second thought, pizza sounds fabulous."

In the end, it was pretty fabulous. At Brody's suggestion, I ordered it from a local place, not a national chain. By the time it arrived, Brody had already showered