Driving Her Crazy - By Amy Andrews Page 0,41

to go with you.’

He nodded. ‘It does.’

Which didn’t stop him from knowing that being in a car with her for hours on end was not at all sensible. Nor was lying on a rooftop with her under the stars.

Not after the kiss.

‘Please,’ she asked quietly as his face remained in an uncompromising mask. ‘I really just need to get as far away from Leo as possible.’

Well, now that reasoning he couldn’t fault. If he had his way, he’d be on the other side of the planet to the man.

Sadie watched his features soften a little and quickly jumped in. ‘I promise I’ll be quiet as a mouse.’

Kent snorted as he pulled his wallet out and threw money on the table. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it Sadie Bliss.’

Sadie’s vow of silence didn’t last long in the car. ‘About last night.’

Kent’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. He flicked a glance at the dashboard clock. ‘Ten minutes, Sadie, you’re slipping.’

Sadie ignored him. She could feel the tension rolling off him and didn’t want to spend fifteen hours absorbing the fallout. ‘I think we need to talk about it... It’s kind of the elephant in the car at the moment, don’t you think?’

Kent shrugged. ‘It happened. It shouldn’t have. Let’s leave it at that.’

Sadie blinked at the very neat summation of what had been going through her head. How surprising that Kent should be so succinct!

‘It was just a kiss,’ he dismissed as Sadie’s silence worried him. ‘It was a weird moment in a strange night.’

She nodded. It certainly had been. But it hadn’t just been any old kiss. There’d been nothing friendly or brotherly about it. Nothing comforting. It might have been brief but for those few seconds she’d never felt so out of her depth.

‘Stop it,’ Kent said as the silence stretched loudly between them.

Sadie frowned. ‘Stop what?’

‘Stop humming the “Wedding March” in your head.’

Sadie glanced at him, alarmed. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Kent Nelson. It wasn’t that good,’ she lied. ‘I’m not into strong silent times. I like to be able to converse with a potential future husband, not have to bargain for every word that comes out of his mouth.’

‘Good.’ He nodded, satisfied.

She glared at him, feeling tenser than when she’d first opened her mouth. ‘There, now, don’t you feel better it’s all out in the open?’ she asked sarcastically.

Kent didn’t deign to answer and not least of all because the answer was no. All she’d done was put the kiss front and centre when he had been almost successful in burying it with the other stuff in his do-something-about-it-later box.

Sadie spent the next few hours feigning interest in the scrubby red-earth scenery but her brain was busy with other things. She couldn’t work out whether she was more upset that he’d dismissed the kiss as nothing or that he’d kissed her in the first place. She certainly had relived it more times than was helpful when the man responsible for it and all its cataclysmic glory was just an arm’s length away, those lips of his tantalising her peripheral vision.

Lips that knew how to get down to business.

By the time the dash clock hit five she desperately needed a distraction from the direction of her thoughts.

She glanced at Kent, his strong silent profile unchanged, an ear bud jammed in the ear closest to her. She reached over and pulled it out.

‘Why haven’t you done an interview since the accident?’ she asked, her idea of a feature story on him returning.

Kent ignored her, not taking his eyes off the road. And to think her silence had lulled him into a false sense of security.

Sadie rolled her eyes. ‘So we’re back to ignoring me again?’

‘If I thought it’d make a difference I just might.’

‘You must have had offers,’ she pressed when it became obvious he wasn’t about to say anything else. ‘It’s a fascinating story.’

‘Yes I have,’ he said, gaze fixed on the white lines running up the centre of the highway.

‘And?’ Sadie prompted.

Kent turned his head and looked her straight in the eye. ‘It’s no one’s damn business, Sadie.’ He looked back at the road. ‘What happened to me is private—very private. It’s not for general consumption.’

Sadie got the message loud and clear. But it was pretty obvious Kent needed to talk to someone.

‘What if I interviewed you? I’m pretty sure Leo’s on the phone right now to Tabitha revoking all rights to the interview material so I’m going to need a back-up plan.’

‘You have the road-trip story,’