him.
“What was that all about?” Scribe asked a while later as they took a booth at the back of a fast-food restaurant.
“What?”
“Your mom.”
Nola shrugged, lifting her soda straw to her lips to take a sip.
“She looked pissed.”
“My mom thinks I should be home in bed like a good little school girl.”
“Maybe you should be.”
Nola pushed at his hand where it rest on the table inches from hers. “Are you my daddy now?”
A soft smile touched his lips as he tilted his head, his eyes moving over her tight tee and low rider jeans. “There could be some benefits to that, I suppose.”
“Dirty minded.”
“How can a man spend any amount of time with you and not have dirty thoughts?”
Nola took another sip of her drink, trying to hide the hot blush that burned her cheeks. Scribe reached across the table and took her hand, pressing it between both of his.
“She doesn’t like you spending time with me.”
“She doesn’t know anything about you. She never bothered to ask.”
“And that pisses you off.”
“I don’t know what that does.” She pulled her hand from his. “Can I ask you something?”
Scribe shrugged. “You can ask anything. I just can’t promise I’ll answer.”
Nola ran her fingers through her hair, brushing it back from her face. She was nervous, but when she looked at him, the funny ache in her chest lessened a little.
“Why haven’t you introduced me to any of your friends?”
Scribe was saved from answering when their food arrived. It took the girl delivering it an inordinate amount of time to set everything down, and she seemed to need to bend low in front of Scribe a few more times than seemed necessary. Then she ignored Nola’s request for ketchup, but the moment Scribe asked for some, she instantly found a handful in the pit of one of the deep pockets of her greasy apron.
“She likes you,” Nola observed.
“She likes the jacket.”
Nola’s eyebrows rose. “Then you don’t think it has anything to do with the muscles the jacket covers up? Or those amazing blue eyes?”
Scribe cocked his head. “You think my eyes are amazing?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
She tossed a fry that he tried, unsuccessfully, to catch in his mouth. She laughed, even as this absurd thought crossed her mind. Jake—her ex—would never step foot in a place like that, let alone goof off with her the way Scribe did. None of the boys Nola had ever dated would do the things Scribe did with her. Most of them wouldn’t be caught dead in a restaurant that had less than a single Michelin star, would not eat French fries if caviar was available, and would never touch leather unless it was on their car seats. They were snobs, members of an elite society that Nola had once thought was preferable to the world she read about in novels, but never had—or wanted—to experience herself.
Except, of course, those occasional fantasies.
She’d been in love with Patrick Swayze when she was a preteen. She saw Dirty Dancing at a friend’s house—they were having a slumber party, and it was the only thing showing on cable that wasn’t locked by the system’s parental locks system—and knew that Johnny Castle was the man she wanted to marry someday. That was, of course, until her mother explained that women like them didn’t marry boys like that. It only happened in the movies.
But there was still something about the way Johnny broke his own car window that filled her erotic fantasies from that point forward.
Was that what Scribe was? Her real life Johnny Castle? Would he break her heart? Or would he pull her out of a corner like Johnny did for Baby?
“You don’t want to know my friends, Nola.”
She’d almost forgotten she’d asked. She looked up at Scribe and watched as he shoved a couple of fries in his mouth, quickly washing them down with his soda.
“Why not?”
“This isn’t high school. We’re not just a bunch of guys who dress tough and act tough, but go home