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I hold up my hands in surrender. “I’m not here to bother you. If you tell me where the kind woman works in that booth right over there, I won’t bother you again.”
The woman in front of me gives me a blank look that says all the money in the vaults of Gravenland would not buy that information from her.
“Billy Joe, is that you?”
Relief floods me at the familiar voice. The woman I’m looking for loiters next to a metal door at the back of a small, horrid office building at the far end of the toll plaza.
She looks different. Instead of an orange and yellow vest, she wears a snug-fitting sky-blue tank top and ripped denim shorts. Her soft, curvaceous hips and tanned, freckled thighs send the blood from my brain straight to my cock. Her hair is out of its previous ponytail and flows down past her shoulders and over her breasts in soft blonde waves.
“I’m sorry, I would have requested you by name, but you didn’t give it to me, madam.”
She tilts her head to the side in a way that I find rather fetching. “Sylvie, it’s alright. I know him. I think.”
The woman called Sylvie slides her suspecting gaze from me to my benevolent tollbooth ambassador.
“I’m Hailey Wild.”
“Hailey Wild!” Her name feels like an exhale that I feel down to my bones. I can’t help but smile when I say it. “I am Tor…Ben! I’m Ben. Just Ben. I’ve come to see if you would be inclined to show me the sights of your western territory of Virginia.”
Hailey laughs, but I don’t know why. Drivers are honking their horns. Some are leaning out their windows to shout at me to move.
Sylvie is not amused.
“Sir. You have to move your car before I have it towed,” Sylvie orders.
Hailey bounces from one foot to the other, biting her lip, considering my request.
“Wait!” Hailey bounds across the land of stopped cars, waving apologetically to other drivers. “Stay right there. I’ll come to you.”
It seems like a terrible idea for a woman to hop into a car with a man she doesn’t know.
As she approaches, I hear her having the same thought, chanting to herself. “This is crazy. This is insane. My Memaw will kill me when she hears about this. April will kill me. Everyone will kill me.”
When I hold the door open for Hailey, she pauses and smiles up at me, showing me her soft dimples. The ache in my chest is amplified by a thousand in the best possible way. She is the human embodiment of summer to me. Sunkissed, dewy, tropical-scented, barely dressed but ready for anything.
Whoever may have opinions about her daring behavior, none of it matters to me. I have found my partner.
Who needs a month to decide when there is a Hailey Wild on the turnpike of the western territory of Virginia?
“You call me and let me know you’re okay. I mean it; I’m gonna call the police!” Sylvie shouts after her.
“I will!”
Hailey grips the door frame and nods at the passenger seat.
“Get in,” she says.
I am taken aback. “Pardon me? I shall drive you, and you will navigate.”
She shakes her head vigorously, bathing me in more of the tropical scent coming from her sunshiny hair. “No, sir. You are not allowed to drive this car anymore anywhere in my state. You’re a menace to the good people of West Virginia. Get in.”
No one has ever spoken to me like this before. It’s outrageous. Back in Gravenland, anyone who used such a tone with me would be…well, they just wouldn’t.
I slide into the passenger seat and scowl as I fasten my seatbelt. I don’t like feeling affronted at the notion of not driving. I can’t parse it out. Do I want to be in charge, or do I want to be of service? Am I sexist, or am I sulking because I like driving and I never get to drive back home in my kingdom?
Sylvie shakes her head and presses a button somewhere to lift the gate.
I’m at the mercy of a bossy woman, and I did ask for her help. So, I suppose this will have to do.
