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“Theharpy.”
“Hilarious,” she muttered, moving faster.
“So.” A beat. “Where ya going?” I asked, unable to return to my apartment.
Not when I could walk beside her and push her buttons.
Her shoulders hitched up. Then dropped on an audible sigh, her gaze still pointed forward. “The gym.”
I glanced back to where her little SUV was parked (not remotely close to the school at the end of the street). “There a reason you’re not parking closer?” I paused. “Say, like in the school’s parking lot?”
A cold look shot my way, a clear glimpse of disdain, of that disapproving mayor. “It’s not like there’s a lot of street parking.”
That was true enough. This town, Grizzly Valley, had taken the brunt of evacuees.
Still, the parking lot at the school was large and reserved for those from River’s Bend.
She answered my next question before I could ask it. “Bailey and the Gold cavalry have set up a supply drive and that parking lot is going to be full of delivery trucks soon enough.”
Truckloadsof supplies.
And her arms were full of bags.
This woman was confounding.
“So is there a reason you’re carrying shit when trucks are en route to deliver supplies?”
A pause, her legs still moving at a rapid clip. “Trucks were full,” she clipped out. “Some of the overflow made it into my car.”
I looked back at the SUV again, closer this time, seeing it with a new light—or a lack of one. As in, it was a fucking miracle that any light could make it through the windows because it was so full of shit.
“You drove up here like that?” I asked, not missing that my tone was icy.
Deadly.
Protective.
I ignored all that.
And Billie Rose ignoredme.
And…kept walking down that damn sidewalk.
And…I lost my mind.
Six
Billie Rose
“You drove up here with your car like that?”
It wasn’t a simple question. Nor the first time he’d asked it.
Nope. On the second round, it had become almost a roar.
One that had my feet sliding to a stop, my gaze unerringly going to a face I’d sat on,comeon. I registered that it was contorted in fury—not an uncommon reaction for me to induce in Joel, but the fury on his face in this moment was…deeper.
Rawer.
