Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

driver’s side window brushing his palms together to get rid of the grime. “I know a guy who’s good with cars. He can probably look at it tomorrow and he won’t charge you anything.”

Probably, Bree couldn’t help thinking, because Rufus would tell the guy to send him the bill instead. So she’d have to find some other way to repay him. Some way that didn’t involve doing anything personal that might make him think she cared about him. Which she didn’t. Maybe she could get him a gift card for someplace. Someplace impersonal. Like Kroger.

Bree eyed him hopefully. “Can’t you call the guy now?”

Rufus arched his dark brows in surprise. “At two A.M.?”

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “You and I are still awake.”

He smiled. “You and I work nights.” He leaned toward the window, propping an arm on the roof of the car. “This may come as a shock to you, Bree, but some people don’t work nights. Some people use nights for sleeping.”

There was something in his eyes that told her he was thinking about something else people used nights for, but he didn’t put voice to it. He didn’t have to. And, anyway, Rufus didn’t do stuff like that. Unlike most guys, he didn’t use every opportunity for sexual innuendo to say something suggestive. He was too good a guy for that.

She sighed fitfully. As much as she hated to, she was going to have to ask Rufus for a ride home. She steeled herself for the dizzying sensation that always overcame her whenever she looked him in the eye and met his gaze. Damn. Steeling herself never worked. She still always felt herself drowning in the dark espresso depths of his eyes. There wasn’t a man on earth who had more beautiful eyes than Rufus Detweiler. Hell, she doubted there was a woman on earth who had more beautiful eyes than Rufus.

She inhaled a fortifying breath, but all that did was remind her of how good he smelled. How anyone could walk away from working a shift behind a bar and not smell like, at best, rank crème de menthe and, at worst, bar slime, was beyond her. Bree just hoped he wasn’t close enough to her to notice the half bottle of Cutty Sark she’d spilled down her front tonight.

“Rufus,” she said softly, “I don’t suppose I could trouble you for—”

“It would be my pleasure to give you a ride home,” he told her before she even had the chance to finish asking.

She smiled, though not too brightly. She didn’t want to give him any ideas. “Thanks,” she said. She started to say, I’ll make it up to you, but thought better of it and instead told him, “I appreciate it.” She’d tuck a bottle of Grey Goose with a thank-you note into his backpack tomorrow when he wasn’t looking. That should take care of the debt.

His old Jeep Wagoneer, complete with fake wood paneling, was parked three spaces away, and he had to unlock the door the old-fashioned way, by inserting the key into the lock, before opening the passenger side door for her.

“Buckle up,” he said with a grin as he closed it behind her.

As she watched him stride around the front of the truck to the driver’s side, she could have sworn he mouthed the words precious cargo to himself as he went. She told herself she should feel indignant at being considered cargo. Instead, the words sent a warm thrill of happiness through her.

Oh, damn. That was one of those -nesses she’d been trying to avoid. There would be no thrills of happiness around Rufus.

The two of them chatted amiably on the drive to her apartment about the evening’s events, laughing over one especially obnoxious patron. Rufus didn’t ask where she lived, obviously remembering from the other time he gave her a lift, but he took a different route from the one she had navigated for him last time. Instead of taking Broadway to Bardstown Road, which would have been the more direct, but less interesting route, he turned down Baxter and drove the more scenic way, making the approach to her intersection via the side street instead of the main thoroughfare. Bree wasn’t sure if it was because he was just that familiar with the Highlands and knew to go that way, or if he’d learned more about her neighborhood after finding out where she lived. She decided not to think about it. For all she knew, he lived in the Highlands, too. She’d never asked.

“So where do you live?” she said as he braked for a stop sign a block shy of her building. Damn. That was nosiness. Another -ness she didn’t need to be feeling around Rufus.

“Crescent Hill,” he told her.

“Oh, I love Crescent Hill,” she said anyway. She smiled. “They got some good eatin’ there on Frankfort Avenue.”

“Oh, yeah, and there’s such a dearth of good restaurants in your neighborhood.”

“I know,” she said with mock disappointment. “You could eat four-star cuisine every night around here. Gets boring after awhile.”

He looked over at her, but in the darkness, she couldn’t make out his expression. “Some kept woman you’re going to be, complaining about four-star cuisine.”

Something about the way he said kept woman sent another one of those ripples of gladness—damn those -nesses, anyway—down her spine. Heat exploded in her belly and seeped outward, pooling in places she’d just as soon not have heat gathering while she was in a darkened car on a deserted side street with a man like Rufus sitting next to her.

“Well, it’s just that I’ll expect my Sugar Daddy to take me to five-star restaurants every night, that’s all,” she told him. But the words came out a little too cursory, a little too quiet, and a little too uncaring.

Dammit. This was another reason she avoided Rufus. Whenever she tried to emphasize how important it was for her to live the lifestyle of the fabulously rich and unbelievably famous, she never sounded