“Disgusting…” she mutters, but the corners of her eyes are sharp and coquettish, and I shake my head.
We’re only in my car because I dropped her Buick Enclave off at the dealership this morning after she forgot to get her oil changed, again, and Zoe was convinced if she didn’t take it in today then it would explode on her drive home. Yeah, okay. And I told her it was stupid to take it to the dealer, but that only earned me an earful about how it’s her car and I was more than welcome to just zip it and do what she said.
I swear, I don’t know what her problem is lately. She’s been swinging between fun and easy-going to grouchy and short-tempered, one minute acting like everything couldn’t be better and the next she’s freaking out about a tiny little tear in the upholstery as though it’s the end of the world. And whatever is causing her to act like this, I hope it’s fixed before I have to tell her to knock it off. There’s only so much flip-flopping I can stand before I’m gonna snap, and I don’t want to go off on Zoe, but I’m also not about to let her stomp all over me in her high heels just because she needs a prescription strength mood stabilizer.
But for now at least she seems content to act like her normal self, immediately pulling out her cell phone, crossing her legs and looking right at home in the passenger seat of my Stingray.
“We have to go get my car,” she tells me, typing away at a rapid speed without looking up, and I nod.
“I know.”
“While we’re there,” she says, her tone slipping into a smooth drawl I’ve seen buy wholesale beds at a quarter of the price, “you may consider checking out the lot and getting something that isn’t older than you are.”
I narrow my eyes at Zoe, and she rolls hers, going back to her cell phone.
“Fine, but I still don’t see the allure of a car with no backseat.”
I gun the engine. And since the vehicular design places us almost directly over the rear wheels, the vibration of the V8 shoots up my legs and I know it’s slipping under Zoe’s skirt. Because she sucks in a breath then re-crosses her legs, turning her blushing cheeks towards the passenger window.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“Don’t need a backseat,” I say more huskily than I ever dare around her other employees. “Besides, I travel light.”
“Yeah, okay, Luca,” she taunts, but it’s the truth.
After I was finished being the property of the U.S. government, I spent plenty of time doing nothing except for what I wanted. I bought my dream car with all the tax-payer funded money they had been depositing into my checking account each month, restored it and then repainted it in a shade of midnight blue that reminds me of the sky just before the sun rises. I travelled and hiked and climbed with some of my buddies from basic training, but that life gets expensive and I was burning through cash like it was flash paper.
Glared at my bank account and then reluctantly answered an ad looking for someone capable of moving furniture, and it was: Greetings, Pearce Home Designs. After spending years carrying dead weight through the desert and every other terrain known to man, I figured hoisting a couch would be a breeze. Plus, it would keep me in shape. I didn’t realize I was signing up to be Zoe’s personal servant when she hired me, but then again, she’s always played her cards close to her chest.
You’d think after working for her for the last year, I’d know more about her. Whether her one true love is a goldfish or how she came into enough money to start her own business, but I don’t. What I do know is she’s a workaholic, addicted to Starbucks and doesn’t take crap from anybody. She’s a ruthless negotiator, knows what she wants and how to get it, and she has serious problems with control, as in she wants it all of the time. Her trust issues are even worse. Basically, she’s crazy. And her attitude is occasionally so domineering that sometimes, I forget what she really is.
I glance at her high heels kicked off and just lazily resting on the floorboard, and when my gaze travels upward, I see her hands lightly holding her cell phone. But now it’s just laying on her lap and when I check, her eyes are closed as she leans her head against the headrest.
Sometimes, I want to ask what happened to her. If she’s alone in the world and always has been, like me. Or if she didn’t use to be, and that’s why she is the way she is. Because she’s determined to act like she’s impenetrable: always put together, eternally poised, and she never looks like anything less than a million bucks. Not once have I seen her tear up, even when we’re booked with more stages than she has the furniture to supply. But to my eyes, she just looks fragile. Slender neck and thin arms, long legs balancing on needle-like stilettos.