Page 8 of Wright Together
Piper’s blue Jeep Wrangler was parked next to it, and she came running out, holding up her cell phone.
Eve popped the passenger door open. “Forget your phone again?”
“Having a work phone and a regular phone is ruining my life,” Piper said. She winked at Eve. “What’s going on here?” Her tone was light and suggestive.
I got out of the car. “Hey, Piper.”
“Whitt,” she said with a head nod. “Why are you driving my girl home?”
“My car wouldn’t start this morning,” Eve filled in.
“And you were together…why?”
“We’re working together,” I told her. “Eve is the agent for my new survey project in Midland.”
Piper’s eyes widened, and she and Eve spoke volumes without saying anything.
“Ohhh,” she drawled. “Well, that sounds…fun. You told me about your new job. I didn’t know you’d be working with Whitt.”
“Neither did I,” Eve said. She knocked her fist into Piper’s shoulder. A clear sign to tell her to shut up. Piper just smirked. “Can you give me a jump?”
“Oh, I would,” Piper said, her eyes flickering between us, “but I have to get back to work. CouldWhittdo it? Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can do it,” I told Piper. “Tell Hollin I said hi.”
Piper snorted. “Tell him yourself. He’s a pain in my ass.”
“Literally?” Eve asked.
Piper and Hollin had been dating for a year, and sometimes, it was still hard to decipher whether they liked or hated each other. Somehow, constantly being at each other’s throat worked for them.
“I’m going to forget you asked that,” Piper said as she strode to her Jeep. “Thanks for taking care of my girl, Whitt.”
“Anytime.”
“See y’all tomorrow.”
Then, she was pulling away, leaving us alone once more. Eve looked after her friend in dismay. Maybe she’d hoped to get out of my presence sooner. Too late now.
“You have cables?”
She jolted out of the reverie and nodded. She dug around in her bag and tossed me her car keys. “They’re in the back. I’m just going to change.”
I watched her practically hustle to get inside. Once again, I wasn’t sure what to make of her. It was apparent that she was flirting with me. Just like she had the first time around. Because Eve had come on to me when we first started talking. I’d been a willing participant. But I’d dated enough back in Seattle to know that I preferred a relationship to a situationship. It was fine if that was what she wanted. It just wasn’t whatIwanted. No matter how my dick reminded me that I couldn’t stop fucking thinking about getting her naked.
I ran a hand back through my hair. She’d made herself clear the first time, and I wasn’t going to do this again. We were working together. That was it.
4
Eve
Ileaned back against the front door and ran a hand down my face. “Get it together, Houston.”
Whitt was just a guy that it hadn’t worked out with. He was no different from the parade of exes who had masqueraded through my life. In fact, we hadn’t even gotten far enough for that. He’d wanted more than I could offer, and I shouldn’t still be interested just because he was hot as fucking sin. I shouldn’t make an exception for him.
Once it was over, it was over. I’d learned my lesson to never look back. What was in the past was only ever going to drag down my future. Or completely blow up my future, like Arnold Sinclair had done. One moment, I’d been on a pedestal, and the next, I’d discovered he wasn’t separated from his wife. Suddenly, I was a homewrecker and not just trailer trash.
It had been hard to want any kind of relationship since then. Especially from someone like Whitton. He was Wright royalty, smart, driven, and intensely attractive. He was everything a girl could want. But girls like me, who had grown up in a trailer park and been crowned the town slut, didn’t end up with guys like him. And contemplating what it would be like to live through this fantasy didn’t help anything.