Page 10 of The Beauty Who Loved Him

“Okay?”

He smirked. “With your father.”

“I still don’t see what that has anything to do with boots.”

“Soon you will.”

3.

Vera appreciated that Vaslav wasn't a liar. She did soon learn why she needed boots and exactly how he returned to the house so fast after her initial arrival. The sporty four-wheeled ROV featured a roll bar painted in neon yellow and decorative stickers of black flames on every wheel well.

Only one helmet waited in the passenger seat of the two-seater recreational off-road vehicle, and Vaslav didn't give Vera any time to argue about who would wear the helmet before he plucked it up where it waited on the black leather racing seat beyond the loose mesh that clipped to the roll bar like a makeshift door, and plunked it down on her head with a gentle plunk of his fist on the very top.

“Might be a little loose,” he told her as his fingers spread wide on the top of the helmet to jiggle it.

Vera glowered playfully at him when he lifted the visor of the full-face shield high enough for him to see her face inside the helmet. “A little warning would have been nice.”

“I don't like when people know my plans, actually.”

“It’s just a helmet.”

Vaslav winked. “Is it?”

Vera, still holding the reasonably-sized storage cooler Mira had packed with lunch, only sighed. There wasn’t much else she could do considering her hands were full. He soon took the cooler, shifting the lever handles on either end from her hands to his and shoved it to the middle block between the two seats of the side-by-side. The only spot it could go other than on her lap considering the ROV didn’t even have any rear trunk space.

“Jump in,” he said as he rounded the front, “and buckle up.”

Vera eyed him as he went, enjoying the view of him in dark-wash denim and an old cotton sweater with lettering across the front that had long since faded. She couldn’t remember a single time when he had dressed down in her presence, but he still looked good to her with every long stride of his muscled thighs.

“Will you, too?” she asked back.

“What?”

“Buckle up? I don’t see a helmet for you. Safety first and all.”

That made him laugh. A delight she wasn’t expecting considering the way it lit up his scarred face. Vaslav jumped in the driver’s seat of the side-by-side making it rock on the suspension from the sudden weight. “Get your priorities straight, kisska. Helmets and seatbelts are the very least of my problems when it comes to safety. Come on, he’s been down there thirty minutes or more. I bet he’s about ready to kill me for it, too.”

“Kill you for what?”

“I might have left him a little busy.”

Vera still didn’t understand. “Are you messing with me?”

An entirely plausible scenario.

Vaslav flicked a switch on the dash and then turned the key to spark the engine to life. He had to yell over the roar of the ROV coming to life for her to hear. “Do you want to walk?”

That did the job.

Vera soon found a comfortable spot in the side-by-side’s passenger seat, but she barely had time to buckle up before Vaslav yanked the shifting lever into drive and hit the gas. Her immediate reaction was to reach for the cooler to keep it steady, but she soon figured out that the way he wedged it between the seats kept it firmly in place.

Vaslav didn’t speak as the ROV took the almost six acres of grass leading down to the far tree line in a mere minute at a speed that kept both passengers glued to their seats. She had noticed the dirt road that lined the trees and rounded the far edge, they even walked it together during her first visit, but they hadn’t gone far enough where the metal gate closed the road from going any further beyond the bend in the tree line.

Except today.

The gate was wide open.

“Do you keep the side-by-side in the big shed with the Rolls?” Vera asked.