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Sully smiled at her and shook his head. “Honestly, the only thing I’ve been doing over the past few days is trying to get my cat to like me.”
“I know how that goes,” Alanna said. She needed another swig of wine. Why did it still hurt to think of Petunia? How had such an ornery cat somehow clawed her way into Alanna’s heart?
“Sorry,” Sully said. “I shouldn’t bring up cats.”
“It’s okay,” she replied as she brought the wine glass to her lips.
Sully sat back in his chair, and Alanna appreciated how his collared shirt fitted his trim body. The pale blue color looked great on him, and he didn’t even seem to notice. “I mean, there’s still a lot of work I want to do on my house, and I’m getting some traction with my weightlifting program… butThe Sully Projectis feeling kind of…” he searched for the word. “Empty.”
Alanna put down her glass. “You said that when you were a little kid you wanted to save the world. So, how do you want to save the world now?”
He laughed, a warm sound full of honey. “No idea.”
“What do you want?” She pressed him.
Sully didn’t answer, but something lit in his eyes behind the lenses of his glasses. Thatsomethingmade Alanna’s stomach tighten and heat blossom between her legs.
“You’ve got to figure out what you want and take it,” Alanna said.
“Maybe I will.” His voice was low, soft.
“Alright you two, closing time.” Jax approached their table, then stood, hands on her hips. “And you aren’t driving, just in case that idiot idea crossed your mind.”
Sully held up his hands in surrender. “No way. I’ll get us an Uber.”
“That’s a good boy,” Jax said.
When the Uber pulled up, Alanna recognized the Grateful Dead decals on the back window of the blue Civic. The driver—his hair in the same silver ponytail she remembered—stuck his head out the window and smiled.
“Alanna! We ain’t picking up another cat today, are we?”
“Not today, Roger,” she told him, then put her hands on her hips. “Does this town only have one Uber driver?”
“There’re a couple of other ones who think they’re Uber drivers,” Roger said, batting away the idea with a hand. “Amateurs, all of ‘em. They’ll drive, maybe an hour or two a day. No commitment.”
Sully watched the exchange, clearly amused, then moved to open the back door of the car for her. That was another surprising part of his good-guy repertoire. Alanna hadn’t opened a door or pulled back a chair for herself all night. In other men, she might have found these chivalrous gestures patronizing. In Sully, however, she sensed his gentlemanly ways were a show of respect.
“Do you know everyone in town?” he asked, as she slipped by him into the car.
“Just about, but Roger is a new acquaintance,” she admitted as Sully slid into the backseat and closed the door. The warmth of his body next to hers sent zips of electricity through her skin.
She watched Roger check his Uber app, then tried to ignore a sting of disappointment as he typed her address into his phone’s navigation app. A small part of her had hoped that Sully had made a boss move and instructed the Uber driver to drop them both off at his place. But, of course, Sully was too polite for that kind of thing. She knew him well enough by now to know he wouldn’t presume her intentions or try to pressure her into anything.
Roger turned up a Janis Joplin song and pulled out of The Rose and Thorn parking lot. It was probably for the best that she was being dropped off at her house. Another thing Alanna knew about Sully was that he wasn’t a one-night-stand type of guy. The idea of a quick fling with him didn’t feel right, as if it would somehow tarnish this thing they were building together.
Woah girl!This thing they were building together? Alanna shook that thought right out of her head. There was nothing.There couldn’t be athing.She was going to crush Chip’s non-compete clause beneath the heel of her Jimmy Choos and then build a new public relations agency in Los Angeles. As in… far away from little Yucca Hills. Far away from Sully.
He was an unemployed handyman. She had a PR empire to build. They were from two different worlds. Bottom line—it couldn’t work.
So, it was a good thing they were getting closer to her house by the minute, accompanied by the plaintive chords of Janice.
She’d gone to dinner with Sully to make up for her past boorish behavior. They were even. Yes, it’d been an amazing evening—hell, probably the best date of her life. And yes, she was finding this nice guy sexy in a way that filled her with glowing embers of heat.
But that didn’t matter. This had to end. Here. Now.
“The stars are so beautiful,” Sully said gazing out the window. “That’s one of the things I love about Yucca Hills. This sky has stars.”
“Every sky has stars,” she responded automatically.
