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“You be nice, or I’m going to set the station to Radio Disney and leave it there,” I warned him.
“Fine.” He climbed over the seat, unwilling to get out of the car, I supposed, just in case the gathering crowd had torches and pitchforks handy.
“Could you take off the jacket and relax a little?” I asked, reaching down to silence another of Jason’s calls on my phone.
“Don’t push it,” he said, adding, “Miranda.”
Despite myself—and the enormous jugs on my hood—I smiled as we pulled out of the parking lot and onto the highway.
LAID BARE … AND NOT IN THE FUN WAY
5
Collin—whom I was calling by his first name without explicit permission—was surprisingly easy to talk to when he didn’t have that enormous stick up his ass. I won’t say that we had a life-altering, soul-baring exchange, but he managed not to lecture me when I left a soda cap in the console. And I didn’t say a thing when he insisted on keeping the radio on the classical station. I considered that progress.
He was still as intimidating as ever, with the whole leisurely predator thing, lounging on the front seat in perfect, unwrinkled elegance while I drove. But he was attempting to make conversation, even if it was because he wanted to hear more of my embarrassing history.
“Tell me something,” he said. “You’re only twenty-three human years old?”
“I’ll be twenty-seven in March, but thank you.”
“Why does your family allow you to drift about the country in this fashion?” he asked.
I laughed. “They hardly allow me to do anything.”
“Then how are you supported?”
I snorted. That was the million-dollar question. I’d moved out of my apartment with Jason after the Lisa fiasco and was living with my parents again. I was still technically in the firm’s employ, but even with the continual disasters we were suffering, I found that working for Iris was much more pleasant. I was more entertained on the road than in months at Puckett and Puckett. And that included the time one of my dad’s clients tried to use an iguana as a character witness in a divorce trial.
There were too many strings attached to my parents’ support, and most of those strings had hooks on them. I’d known I was making a mistake, borrowing the money from them. After I dropped out, I was working two or three jobs to keep my head above water—almost all of which ended in disaster. But when the studio deal presented itself, the temptation to be “legitimate” in my parents’ eyes was too great. I wanted to do something that they would consider respectable, that didn’t involve working for them. I’d wanted what I wanted, right away, instead of waiting until I had enough credit to get a bank loan. So I took the easy way out. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
It’s not that I didn’t appreciate what they’d done. And I understood that paying them back was the moral, responsible thing to do. Accepting that money meant losing my right to make decisions for myself, to live without my parents scrutinizing every decision I made. Every time I did something my parents didn’t approve of, there was a comment about “all they’d done for me.” If I bought something frivolous, my dad reminded me of the balance due on the loan. Being with Jason had shielded me from all of that temporarily. Was I ready to go back to living without that protection?
And why was that the first thought I’d devoted to Jason all day?
“Are we going to talk about you anytime soon?” I asked, clearly stalling. “I’d like to know more about this plane-crash thing.”
“It’s a simple question, Miranda.”
“OK, but we’re coming back to you,” I promised him.
“Miranda.”
I was enjoying the way he said my name just a little too much. I shook it off, waving the thrall of his voice away like smoke rings drifting around my head. There was no way I was going to admit to him that I worked for my mommy and daddy, so I hedged. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I work for a living. I am, in fact, working right now.”
Unfazed by my snippy tone, he continued. “Miss Scanlon mentioned that you were a recent hire. What did you do before?”
“Iris didn’t mention?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. Was this some sort of conversation setup? Had he become so irritated over the painted-boobs thing that he’d decided to make me confess all of my professional dumbass-ery? Was he trying to prove something? Because I was not above tossing that cup of leftover coffee into his face.
Eyeing me carefully, he took the cup out of the console, opened the window, and dumped the coffee. He sealed the foam cup in the little trash bag he’d insisted on after the Great Hamburger Wrapper Scandal. He looked really pleased with himself, smirking and crossing his arms over his chest. I arched my eyebrows. I scowled at him. How did he know? And why did he seem to think of coffee disposal as a personal triumph?
“I’m only asking because I’m curious,” he assured me, holding up his hands defensively. “Honestly, beyond your penchant for violence and preference for nutritionally bankrupt food, I know very little about you.”
“I did lots of things,” I said, vaguely … and realized that made my history sound far more porn-ish than it was.
“What was your last job before this one?”
“Look, I told you I crewed a yacht that summer? It hit a commercial fishing boat and sank—not when I was at the wheel, thank you very much. I worked at a camp for troubled kids, and I was actually pretty good at it. But the kitchen staff nearly killed some of the kids with food poisoning, and the camp was shut down. I was working to get my masseuse license through an on-the-job training program, but the cops closed the spa down because my coworker got handsy with a health inspector in the wrong anatomical area … She was a little high at the time.”
