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His voice was groggy. “I’m Chance.”
After several seconds of silence, I said, “Aubrey.”
“Aubrey,” he repeated in a breathy whisper, seeming to contemplate my name before closing his eyes again and turning his head away.
Chance.
Chapter Two
“You just gonna keep letting that go to voicemail?” He narrowed his eyes on my cellphone buzzing on top of the center console. The damn thing was going off every half hour or so, but now the break between calls had shortened to ten minutes.
“Yep.” It stopped dancing around, and I offered no further explanation. I’d thought maybe he’d let it go.
Of course he didn’t. Five minutes later it buzzed again, and Chance grabbed it before I realized what he was doing.
“Harry’s calling.” He dangled my phone between his thumb and pointer, swinging it back and forth until I snatched it out of his hand.
“It’s Harrison. And it’s none of your business.”
“It’s a long ride, Princess. You know we’re gonna talk about it eventually.”
“Trust me, we won’t.”
“We’ll see.”
Only a few more minutes passed, and my phone was at it yet again. Before I could stop him, he had it in his hand once more. Only this time, he swiped and held it up to his mouth.
“Ello.”
My eyes bulged from my head. I almost swerved off the road, yet I sat there like a mute.
“Harry. How’s it going, Mate?”
The hint of Australian accent that lingered in the background was suddenly front and center. Harrison’s voice rose through the cell, although I couldn’t make out the words. I glanced over at Chance’s cocky face. He shrugged at me, smiled, and leaned back into his seat, quite enjoying himself. At that moment, I decided our little road trip was over. As soon as we got to the next exit, his ass was getting kicked to the curb. That perfectly round mass of muscle could walk through bumfuck Nebraska for all I cared.
“Yeah, sure. She’s here. But we’re kinda busy right now.”
I heard the next question loud and clear. Chance pulled the receiver away from his ear as Harrison roared, “Who the fuck is this?”
“Name’s Chance. Chance Bateman. Some of my friends call me Cocky,” he said with the perfect melody of intonation that I visualized causing the vein in Harrison’s throat to throb a deep shade of purple.
“Put. Aubrey. On. The. Fucking. Phone.” Each word was a short staccato burst of anger. Suddenly, I was no longer mad at Chance for answering the phone. I was livid that Harrison had the audacity to be angry at what I was doing.
“No can do, Harry. She’s…indisposed at the moment.”
Another growl of expletives came through the phone.
“Listen, Harry. I’m going to tell you this man to man, because you sound like a good chap. Aubrey has been avoiding your calls to be polite. The truth is, she just doesn’t want to talk to you.”
My anger was rapidly bouncing between the two men. Yet… AH-BREE. I wanted to strangle Chance, although at the same time, I really wanted him to say my name again. What in the hell was wrong with me? I missed Harrison’s response, busy replaying the sound of my name spoken with an Australian accent. The way it rolled off that cocky bastard’s tongue made my belly do a little flutter. I might have had a momentary lapse in time as I imagined it being whispered in my ear with a throaty strain. AH-BREE.
I blinked myself back to reality as Chance released an exaggerated sigh into the phone. “Okay then, Harry. But you’re going to need to stop now. We’re taking a nice long trip, and your constant buzzing is getting our girl’s knickers in a twist. So be a good mate and knock off the interruptions for a while. Yeah?”
Our girl. That vein had to be ready to explode in Harrison’s neck.
Chance didn’t wait for a response before disconnecting the call.
For a full five minutes, neither of us said a word. He must have been expecting the tirade to come.
“You’re not going to lay into me about my chat with Harry?”
My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “I’m processing.”
“Processing?” His voice was almost amused.
“Yes. Processing.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I don’t say the first thing that comes to my mind. Unlike some people, I think about what I’m feeling and verbalize it appropriately.”
“You filter shit.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do. If you’re pissed off, say it. Scream it if you have to. But bitch once and get it over with, and stop being a bitch all the time.”
The road was pretty barren, so it wasn’t hard to slam on the brakes and pull over to the side of the road. I crossed three lanes and jerked to a stop. It was dark, the only light from my headlights and the occasional car passing. I got out and walked to the passenger side of the car and waited for him to join me.
Hands on my hips. “You have a lot of nerve. I save your ass at the rest stop and you proceed to get in my car, eat half my food, change my radio station and then, to top it off, you answer my phone.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “You didn’t save my ass, I ate one popcorn chicken, your taste in music sucks, and Harry with the stick up his ass was upsetting you.”
I glared at him.
He glared right back.
Oh My God. The light from a passing car lit his face, and there it was. Number thirteen. His angry eyes were exactly the color of number thirteen. I used to have to peel the paper off Cadet Blue in the Crayola sixty-four pack before the other crayons had even lost their points. I liked it so much, it wasn’t just the color I’d shaded the sky. There was a whole year of my life when all the faces in my coloring books were that beautiful blue with a mysterious touch of gray. I’d never seen the color in real life on anything, especially not eyes.
I was half gone. And then he took the other half.
“Aubrey.” He stepped forward
AH-BREE.
Damn him. I didn’t say a word. I was busy…processing.
“I was trying to help. Harry needed that. I don’t know who he is to you, but whoever he is, he’s obviously done you wrong. And you don’t want to hear his apologies anymore. They’re bullshit, and you know it. Let him stew on the thought of you taking a trip with another man for a while. Woman like you, he should know men would be circling. Shouldn’t need reminding.”
Woman like me?
I tried to keep up the façade of being pissed off, but I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. “Well, don’t touch my phone again.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
I nodded, needing to feel some sense of victory. I couldn’t just let go of my anger because he had a sexy voice and number thirteen eyes. Could I?
“How about I drive for a while?”
My night vision wasn’t great to begin with, and I was starting to get a little blurry eyed. “Okay.”
He opened the passenger side door and waited for me to get in, then closed it and jogged around to the other side. Before slipping into the driver’s seat, he bent down and picked something up from the street, dropping it into his bag in the back before adjusting the seat where he wanted it.
