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No pink lip gloss.
No blush.
Just the barest hint of eyebrow gel, then a dab of lip balm, and that was it. The perfect unstudied look.
Even though technically she’d studied harder for this look than she ever had in her whole life. She glanced at her phone and realized she’d been doing this for four hours. Her bedroom was an awful mess from choosing and rejecting twenty-seven outfits. The sink was full of things she’d picked to put on her face, then decided against. And she hadn’t even organized her extensive research notes.
She had to do it in a flustered rush, five minutes before she ran out the door. She wasn’t even sure if she had them all, as she hurried to the bus stop to get the number 10 to somewhere close to his house.
In fact, she was still checking when she noticed the car.
The one that was following her as she made her way to Crossley Avenue.
Althoughfollowingwas probably the wrong word here. It was really more like it had decided to crawl along beside her.As if the person inside knew her and was just waiting for her to stop and say hello to her oldest friend. Even though she didn’t have any friends who owned a car like that. It was roughly the size of a small bus, and so fancy it was sort of hard to look at directly. Like someone would accuse her of stealing just for letting her poor-person eyes alight upon its sleek body, or peer into its hallowed depths.
Not that you actually could.
The windows were too tinted for that.
They were practically blacked out—which had to be illegal, she was pretty sure. But then, rules didn’t generally apply to fabulously rich people. Probably the bloke in there was busy snorting coke off an endangered animal steak while smuggling blood diamonds across borders manned by the mafia.
All of which sounded ridiculous, but right.
Until the back window abruptly slid down.
And there was Alfie Harding.
In his ridiculous car.
Driven by an actualchauffeur.
Looking at her likeshewas the mad one.
And okay, yeah, technically she was. She should have known as soon as the car started crawling alongside her. But she’d been focused on looking casual, and making sure she had everything, and so she simply hadn’t realized.
Which meant she had to endure him being all incredulous and annoying.
“Are you getting in or what?” he wanted to know.
And the answer was, of course, yes.
She tried not to be too impressed by the car.
But it was hard to be anything else when the car was so impressive.
The back was partitioned off from the driver, and so big it had two sets of seats facing each other. Plus, they were all madeof the most unbelievable leather. It felt like sitting on a slippery cloud. She sank into it so deeply, her feet stopped touching the floor. And almost everything in the thing was heated.
Her butt was lightly toasted within moments.
Then somehow her boobs were, too.
Even though the only thing touching them was the seat belt.
Apparently, it had filaments in it—which if she was being honest, seemed both nuts and mildly dangerous to her. But really, what did she know? The car she’d spent the most amount of time in was her dad’s Ford Cortina, and the fanciest thing that had had was a sunroof. And evensunroofwas massively stretching it. Really, her dad had just driven it drunk under a bridge too low for it and peeled part of the roof off. Then he’d attached a latch, so you could fasten it down or take it off, depending on the weather.
Not that it really mattered much when it rained.
It pissed in regardless. She still remembered how everything smelled in there.
