Instead, she stands there looking at me, and I can see it happening in real time, the way her eyes move over my face like she’s reassessing something she thought she already had figured out.
She’s looking at me differently now.
Not at the club, the promise, or the patch…
Just at me.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
Clearing my throat, I move back to the counter. “One more thing. When you need to get around the city for meetings, errands, wherever, Remy drives you. That’s his job when I’m not here.”
She blinks, pulled back from wherever her head was.
“You’ve assigned me a babysitter?”
“I’ve assigned you a driver. There’s a difference.”
She opens her mouth.
“Non-negotiable,” I say, before she can get there.
She closes her mouth and looks at me for a long moment. “Fine.” But the way she says it tells me she’s filing it away for a future argument.
That’s fine.
She can argue.
Remy is still driving her.
She turns and walks down the hallway.
She’s halfway down it when I say it. “Be ready in half an hour.”
She stops, and there’s a beat of silence before she turns her head just slightly, not enough to look at me fully. “To go to the clubhouse?”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
She doesn’t say anything else and continues down the hallway, but I catch the smile before she rounds the corner, and I’m left standing in my own kitchen, wondering what exactly just happened to my morning.
Chapter Twelve
SOPHIA
Stepping out of the house into the Nevada heat, I’ve gone with the most practical thing I own for a day like this—denim shorts cut just above mid-thigh, a fitted black tank top, and my hair pulled up into a ponytail off my neck. It’s usually about seventy-five degrees before ten in the morning, and the sun is already doing its absolute best with the heat right now.
Tate is waiting by the truck.
He has his cut on, keys in hand, dark sunglasses already in place against the glare. Memphis has reappeared from wherever he’d spent the morning and is sitting at Tate’s feet, looking thoroughly unbothered by everything, which seems to be his default state.
Tate looks at me.
I look back at him.
“Ready.”
His gaze moves over me, not slowly, not obviously, just a quick sweep that lasts maybe half a second longer than a purely practical assessment requires, starting at the shorts and working its way back up.
“You got something less…” he starts.
