“Well I don’t like that rule,” he grumbles. “Bad Company is a great band—why such a hater?”
He looks wounded. I find it cute.
I purse my lips. “Honestly?” I’m probably going to regret this.
“Well yeah, honestly,” he says, crossing his arms. “Out with it.”
“They sing too much about love. It’s cheesy.”
Andrew laughs out loud again and I’m starting to think the cab driver is really getting an earful with us in his car.
“Sounds like someone is bit-ter,” Andrew says and a deep grin warms his lips.
Yep, I regret it.
I look away from him because I can’t let him see anything in my face to confirm that he’s right on target with his assessment of me. At least where my cheating ex, Christian, is concerned. With him, it’s bitterness. With Ian, it’s cruel, unadulterated pain.
“Well, we’ll fix that, too,” he says nonchalantly.
I look back over.
“Ummm, well thanks Dr. Phil, but I don’t need help with that sort of thing.”
Wait a damn minute! Who ever said I needed to be ‘fixed’ at all?
“Oh?” He tilts his chin, looking curious.
“Yeah,” I say. “Besides, that would sort of break my ground rule number one.”
He blinks and smiles. “Oh, you automatically assume I was going to offer myself up as the guinea pig?” His shoulders bounce with gentle laughter.
Ouch!
I try not to look offended. Not sure if it’s working all that well, so I use a different tactic:
“Well, I would hope not,” I say, batting my eyes. “You’re not my type.”
Oh yeah, ball’s in my court again; I think he actually flinched!
“And just what’s wrong with me?” he asks, but I’m totally not buying anymore that my comment really hurt him. People don’t normally smile after they’ve been offended.
I turn around the whole way, pressing my back against the cab door and look him up and down. I’d be lying my ass off if I said I don’t like what I see. I haven’t found anything yet that doesn’t make him my type. In fact, if it weren’t for me not being into sex or dating or relationships or love, Andrew Parrish is the kind of guy that I would totally go for and who Natalie would openly drool over.
She would wear him across her boobs.
“There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with you,” I say. “I just tend to end up with the … tame types.”
For the third time, Andrew’s head falls back into laughter.
“Tame?” he says, still laughing. He nods a few times and adds, “Yeah, I guess you’re right in saying I’m not exactly the tame type.” He holds up his finger as if to make a point. “But what interests me more about what you said is that you ‘end up’ with them—what do you think that means?”
How did the ball even get back in his court? I never saw him coming.
I look to him for the answer, even though he’s the one who asked the question. He’s still smiling, but there’s something much softer and perceptive in it this time, rather than the usual jest.
He doesn’t say anything.
“I-I don’t know,” I say distantly and then look right at him. “Why does that have to mean anything anyway?”
He shakes his head subtly, but just looks out in front of him as the cab pulls into the parking lot near the bus station. Andrew’s dad’s 1969 Chevy Chevelle is the only car left in the lot. They must really be into that whole vintage car thing.
Andrew pays the driver and we get out.
“Have a good night, man,” he says, waving as the driver pulls away.
I end up riding to Andrew’s dad’s house mostly in a contemplative quiet, thinking about what he said, but then I let it go when we pull into the driveway of his dad’s immaculate house.
“Whoa,” I say with parted lips as I step out of the car. “That’s a lot of house.”
His door shuts. “Yeah, my dad owns a successful construction and design company,” he says nonchalantly. “Come on, I don’t want to spend too much time here in case Aidan shows up.”
I walk alongside him down the curved, landscaped walkway leading to the front door of the three-story house. It’s such a rich, immaculate place I just can’t see his particular father living in it. His father just seems more of a simple kind of man and not one to be as materialistic as my mother.
Mom would faint in something like this.
Andrew thumbs through his keys and pushes the right one into the door lock.
It clicks open.
“Not to be nosey, but why would your dad want to live in a house this big?”
The foyer smells like cinnamon potpourri.
“Nah, this was his ex-wife’s doing, not his.” I follow him straight to the white-carpeted staircase. “She was a nice woman—Linda, the woman he mentioned at the hospital—but she couldn’t deal with Dad and I can’t blame her.”
“I thought you were going to tell me she married him for his money.”
Andrew shakes his head as he leads me up the stairs.
“No, it was nothing like that—my dad is just a difficult man to live with.” He slips his keys down into his front right jeans pocket.
I steal a quick glance of his butt in those jeans as he pads up the stairs in front of me. I bite my bottom lip and then mentally kick myself.
“This is my room.” We enter the first bedroom on the left. It’s fairly empty; looks more like a storage room with a few boxes piled neatly against one taupe-colored wall, some exercise equipment and a weird-looking Native American statue pushed into the far corner and partially wrapped in plastic. Andrew moves across the space to the walk-in closet and flips a light switch inside. I stay near the center of the room, arms crossed, looking around and trying not to look like I’m snooping.
“You say ‘is’ your room?”
“Yeah,” he says from inside the closet, “for when I visit, or if I ever want to live here.”
I walk closer to the closet to see him sifting through clothes hanging much how I hang mine.
“You’re OCD, too, I see.”
He looks at me questioningly.
I point to the clothes hung by color and on matching black plastic hangers.
“Oh, no, definitely not,” he clarifies. “Dad’s housekeeper comes in here and does this shit. I could care less that my clothes are hung up at all, much less by color—that’s too … wait—” He pulls away from the shirts and looks at me in a sidelong glance. “You do this to your clothes?” He points his finger horizontally at the shirts and moves it back and forth.
“Yeah,” I say, but I feel weird admitting it to him, “I like my stuff neat and everything has to have a place.”
Andrew laughs and goes back to sifting through the shirts. Without really looking at them much, he yanks a few shirts and pairs of jeans from the hangers and throws them over his arm.
“Isn’t that stressful?” he asks.
“What?