Page 31 of Come A Little Closer

I blinked hard. Oh. Right. So no kiss then?

Hiding my disappointment behind a big grin, I shook my head and waved him off. “No, I’m okay, thanks. I’m just going to get an Uber. It turns out they will take you to the outskirts of town provided that it’s early enough.”

Niall stared at me for another beat, then strode over to a bowl on the table in his foyer and plucked out a set of keys. He tossed them to me without a word, only speaking once I’d caught them. “Those are to one of my cars. It’s just a humble little truck, but be careful with it.”

My heart started galloping for a whole different reason this time, and I smiled as I ran my thumb across the keys in my hand. “I won’t wreck it. I promise. Thank you, Niall.”

While I was still disappointed that it wasn’t a kiss, I supposed I couldn’t be too disappointed that he’d given me a car instead. Not permanently, I was sure, but at least to get myself home tonight. As I stood there, stunned and staring at him, I wondered if he was this generous with everyone or if maybe, he was just really starting to care about me.

14

NIALL

The morning of the block party, I woke up excited. Not in the sexual way but excited for the actual party.

Although the morning-glory thing was real too. It had been every day since Tallulah had become a more permanent fixture in my life. I didn’t touch my hard-on though, rolling out of bed and hitting my shower instead.

I wanted to be done at the office well before the party started, and in order to do everything I needed to get done, I had to get to work as soon as possible. All through my shower, getting dressed, and all the way to my office, however, she was still on my mind.

I seemed to be cultivating something of an obsession with the woman, and I was genuinely excited to see her later. While I’d simply asked her to attend the party without specifically saying whether it was a date, I was happy that she would be on my arm.

I hadn’t seen her since I’d lent her my old truck, and the mere thought of her in it was skyrocketing my level of attraction to her. Moreover, the knowledge that she’d been at my house all week was making me miss her presence when I got home—even though I hadn’t been there while she had.

As I strode into my office, my only solace was in the fact that at the very least, I’d finally be seeing her again later. After the party, I would call a therapist or something to help me deal with this developing obsession, though.

Of course, according to the all-knowing Doctor Google, it wasn’t an obsession. It was a crush. I scoffed as I sat down behind my desk, shaking my head at myself and firing up my computer. It’s not just a crush. It can’t be.

Thankfully, my computer distracted me by asking for my password, and as I entered it, I put my thoughts of Tallulah, crushes, and obsessions aside and finally got to work. Jake came in a little while later, smiling strangely at me for some reason.

“I just got back from a visit to the plantation,” he said. “Tallulah and I did a walkthrough with some of the vendors for the festival.”

I glanced at him, my eyes narrowing. “Okay. That’s nice. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I saw the most curious thing while I was over there,” he said cheerfully, dropping into the chair across from my desk and leaning back like he was settling in for a day on the beach.

I frowned. “You’re going to have to speed this up, Jake. Also, you’re at work. Act like it.”

He smirked. “Why is your old truck parked at the guest house?”

“That’s what this is about?” I rolled my eyes and turned back to my computer. “I’m letting her use it for now. She doesn’t have a car, and while she seems fine with Ubering for the foreseeable future, I don’t like it. It’s not safe and the truck was just sitting there. It’ll be good for it to be driven again and it’s a reliable vehicle for Tallulah to get around in.”

He arched a disbelieving eyebrow at me. “As it happens, I know you better than you think I do.”

“What are you talking about?” I bit out, but I knew what he was getting at.

He cocked his head, a knowing gleam in his eyes. “I’m talking about that truck being your most prized possession.”

“It’s not,” I said. “It’s one of four cars I own.”

“Sure, but you’ve had this one since high school and you refuse to get rid of it. It’s the car you drove here from New York when you moved, and you’ve never even let me sit in it.”

“So what?”

Jake narrowed his eyes at me playfully. “So have you hit your head?”

“No. Have you hit yours?”

He laughed. “No, but when I met my girlfriend, I just asked her out. I didn’t give her a house and car before we even had our first date.”