Road Trip with a Nerd - Stephanie Street Page 0,3

ancient truck and marveled once again that he’d been brave enough to drive the thing all this way. Didn’t he worry about it breaking down?

Grant slid the rest of the way into his seat as I reached for the handle and pulled.

Nothing.

I pulled again.

“Sorry,” Grant mouthed as he reached across the seat to open the door from the inside. “I forgot. I never use that door. It only opens from the inside.”

“No problem,” I said even though it was a huge problem. The truck was a huge problem. I’d never seen so much rust on one vehicle in all my life. The faded blue paint had faded until the color was barely distinguishable. The rust-speckled, off-white stripe wasn’t much better.

I climbed through the open door, my heart sinking even further. The interior wasn’t an improvement over the exterior at all. The bench seat had been covered with a blanket woven with geometric shapes. The floorboard had been worn almost clean through to the point I worried if I put all my weight on it, my feet would hit the road beneath us.

Under the antique radio, a long chromed stick shift jutted out. A stick shift! Who knew how to drive one of those anymore?

Apparently, Grant did.

From the corner of my eye, I watched as Grant’s long fingers turned the key in the ignition behind the largest steering wheel I’d ever seen. The truck rumbled to life before he moved to the gearshift, deftly shifting into reverse. If the truck hadn’t been surprising enough, I was more shocked than I should have been by how tan and rugged his hands appeared. If I’d ever thought about it at all, I would have imagined Grant with pasty white hands, callused only on the fingertips from all the typing he did, because whenever I saw him—he was always at his computer.

These hands looked like they spent a lot of time working outside.

“What?” His deep voice pulled me out of my stupid thoughts about his hands. Seriously, who sat and stared at a person’s hands? Me. Because I was a weirdo.

“What?” I pulled my gaze away from his mysterious hands to peer into his face. Another surprise. Had I ever really looked at Grant before? Because I could almost swear, this was my first time seeing him.

He had an expressive brow. I noticed that in the hotel lobby. Maybe I’d seen it before then. His eyebrows were thick, not overly, just full. They pulled together when he concentrated. They’d formed a thick knot earlier when he stared at me as though I presented him with an unsolvable puzzle—me.

What did I really know about Grant? Next to nothing. I had no idea he drove a beat-up old farm truck and had hands that looked as though they knew a thing or two about hard work. I knew he was wicked smart, and for some reason, his parents let him drive almost fifteen hundred miles by himself in a vehicle better suited for a junkyard.

“You’re sitting over there all, I don’t know, scared. Judgy.” He waited to back out of the parking space, watching me.

My cheeks warmed. I decided to be honest. We’d be riding together in the small cab of this truck for the next day or so. Maybe if we talked a bit, I wouldn’t feel so nervous about it.

“I was just thinking I don’t know you very well, and now we’re kind of stuck with each other.”

His brows pulled together again. I had an inexplicable urge to smooth them out. Didn’t he get a headache from carrying all that broodiness above his eyes?

“And you’re just now thinking of that?” he sputtered. “You were the one begging me to drive you back to Indiana.”

“I know, I just—” Wait. What? “Begging? I don’t think I begged.”

Grant snorted. “You cried. I’m a guy. Crying is the equivalent of begging to us.”

“It’s been a rough morning, I’m sorry if my emotions bother you.”

His lashes fluttered toward the sagging ceiling. “I didn’t say they bothered me. I’m just saying you wanted to come with me. Now you’re acting all worried.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not like I get into cars with strangers on a regular basis, you know.”

Not the correct thing to say.

Grant’s brows immediately smoothed, his expression going flat. “We’ve known each other since kindergarten.” His jaw ticked just the slightest bit as he glanced in his rearview mirror then over both shoulders before finally backing out of the parking space.

My cheeks burned again. What he said