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“Burned CDs are the best, and I will never change my mind about that. Besides, my truck is older than dirt, and the CD player is all we got.” He turned up the first song, and she had to admit, she knew every word of this one. She used to watch this with her siblings growing up.
As he hummed along, she bit back a smile. Without her admitting it aloud, Landon had been right—saying it out loud to someone had made her feel a little better. She wasn’t the only one who knew. It wasn’t some deep, dark secret. There was someone in the universe who knew, and he wasn’t looking at her like she was pitiful. He was offering her an out from thinking on it. He was making things fun so she could redirect her thoughts.
Perhaps Landon wasn’t as dumb as she’d thought. This was a man who could navigate a difficult conversation and say the right things that would make a hurting person feel better.
She’d taken her anger out on him, and he wasn’t making her pay for that.
Okay. Landon Fuller was interesting.
Chapter Six
Any moment she had overthought their moment in the woods, it was as if Landon could tell she was panicking, and he would say something funny. Time after time she witnessed him take away her insecurities before her brain could hang onto them too tightly. Maybe he was doing it on purpose, or maybe he just talked a lot. She hadn’t decided yet.
It wasn’t until he drove them straight through Saratoga that she began to wonder where he was taking her.
As he navigated the roads through Saratoga, Lucia pursed her lips and hid her shock. Should she tell him?
He pulled into the parking lot of the Run Jack Run Bar, and she closed her eyes tightly against the grin.
“What?” he asked, throwing the truck into park.
“Nothing.”
He narrowed those bright-silver eyes at her. “Hmm.” Oh, he smelled a rat.
“Are you doing this on purpose?” she asked, genuinely curious.
He looked utterly baffled. “Doing what? Look, we can go somewhere else if you don’t want to go here.”
He really didn’t know? Okay, she was going to have some fun with this.
“Are you sure I’m dressed right for a bar?” she asked, regretting that she hadn’t brought a trench coat to cover herself up.
“Woman, you could wear a pelican costume and you would be bangable. You look hot.”
She didn’t know why, but she liked when he said compliments. If any other male said something nice, she prickled like a porcupine, but Landon? Those Fuller boys were a different breed—they didn’t say a single thing they didn’t mean.
“I hear they have a good chicken-fried steak here,” he told her.
“Really?” she asked, pretending to be surprised.
He cut the engine. “It’s payday and I got money to burn, so you can even get extra mashed potatoes if you want.” The twinkle in his eyes said he was teasing her.
She moved to push the door open, but he yelled, “Wait!” at an ear-shredding volume.
She winced and plugged her ears. “Wait for what?”
“I swore to my mom I would open all the doors for you tonight. Wait there.”
He shoved open his door, grabbed his wallet out of the cupholder and shoved it into his back pocket, then slammed the door harder than he’d meant to, clearly, because he muttered an apology. To his truck? Landon was a strange one.
He strode around the front of his truck, and it was the first time she’d taken in his appearance. She’d been too nervous and flustered before, but now? He looked…he looked…she didn’t even know how to describe what was happening inside of her fluttering chest.
He wore a hunter green T-shirt that was all roughed-up and vintage. It clung to his muscular shoulders like a second skin, and hung down to his trim waist in the most attractive way. The breeze pressed the material against his torso, and she could make out the perfect six-pack he had hidden under there. His blue jeans hugged his powerful legs and tapered down to a pair of black Red Wing boots with the gold laces loosely tied. Before he reached for her door, he ran his hand through his hair, mussing it up. He was saying something to himself too low for her sensitive hearing to pick up.
He yanked open the door and offered his hand.
“The son of the Cursed Bear, offering to help me out of the truck.”
