I glanced through the interior as he rounded the hood and vaguely wondered how he’d get his tall, sizeable frame in it then I looked out the windshield, weirdly despondent and suddenly not nervous or even excited about the evening.
Very weird. Very stupid. And also judgmental.
But there you go. Men were men and, just like Cooter but for Sam in a bigger, showier way, they all found their ways to prove they had a big dick, even Sam Cooper.
It wasn’t until Sam burst out laughing that I realized he’d folded in beside me and he’d been there awhile.
I turned my head to look at him.
Okay, I was suddenly nervous and excited again. This was because he might want the world to know he had a big dick but he was unbelievably gorgeous while he was doing it.
He stopped laughing but kept smiling at me when he declared, “It’s Luci’s.”
“What?” I asked.
“The car,” he answered and I felt my lips part.
Jeez, was he in my head or what?
Sam kept speaking. “She has five cars and she insisted I use one and not rent one. She also insisted I stay with her. I won on having some privacy and not spending every minute I wasn’t workin’ having Luci in my face about all the things Luci gets in my face about, and, baby, there’s a lot of that shit. I gave in on the car. I see from your face I shouldn’t have. Then again, I didn’t know I’d meet a beautiful blonde who’s the only beautiful blonde on five continents who would not get off on sittin’ beside me in a car like this.”
“I didn’t –” I started to deny through a lie.
He kept smiling, though bigger, and interrupted through it, “You did.”
“I –”
He leaned toward me, his hand reached out, his fingers curled around the side of my neck again and I shut up.
“You did,” he said gently and kept going, “and I don’t care because I agree. This car is not me and it’s good it’s not you either. But,” the smile came back, “wait ‘til it goes. This ride screams euro-trash and anyone who’s got a hint of class feels like an ass**le sitting in it but when it purrs, it makes it worth it.”
“Okay,” I whispered and I whispered because I couldn’t get my voice to go louder. There were three reasons for this. One, he was touching me again. Two, it hit me he called me a beautiful blonde. And three, I really wanted to feel that Lamborghini purr.
“Buckle up,” he murmured, let me go and turned away.
I buckled up. Sam turned the ignition and the car came to life.
I sighed with deep content and I did this audibly.
Sam burst out laughing again.
I bit my lip to stop myself from doing anything (else) stupid as Sam backed out of the spot, still chuckling and my mind turned to Celeste’s advice because I was getting the distinct feeling I was not holding anything secret.
I pulled myself back on track when we were away and I did this by asking, hopefully casually, “Uh… Luci, that is, Luciana owns five cars?”
“You can call her Luci, I’ll say it before she says it and when she meets you, she’ll definitely say it.”
This was a somewhat weird comment but I had no time to decipher it or ask because Sam kept talking.
“And yeah, she owns five cars. She’s loaded. Her parents are loaded, she’s a trust fund baby and, on top of that, before she hooked up with Gordo, she was a model. A successful one. You see her face, you’ll probably recognize her.”
Oh man. I wasn’t sure that was good.
Sam went on.
“Sayin’ that, about ten seconds after you get over it, you’ll see she’s not a Luciana, she’s a Luci.”
“How is she a Luci?” I asked.
“She’s a Luci because, regardless if she’s sittin’ beside a catwalk at a fashion show in Milan or sittin’ on your deck, drinkin’ a beer, she always acts like she’s sittin’ on your deck drinkin’ a beer.”
I felt my heart flutter because I liked that he liked that because I was the kind of girl who knew all about sitting on a deck drinking a beer and not the kind of girl who knew what it was like to sit beside a catwalk at a fashion show in Milan. And I felt slightly less nervous because I liked that Luci was like that. It was only then I realized that part of my anxiety was about meeting Luciana, going to her party and being amongst her set which was not my set.
But the way he described her, at least she was.
“So, uh,” I started cautiously, “what does she get in your face about?”
“The better question is, what doesn’t she get in my face about?”
I looked from the view of the road, the brilliant blue of the lake stretching out on one side, sharp rises of green mountains dotted with gray stone on the other, to Sam.
“Sorry?” I asked as a prompt.
He glanced at me then back at the road.
“She’s an only child. Gordo was like a brother so she thinks of me as her brother-in-law. Before we lost him, they didn’t have kids. She loves kids and since she can’t have her own and won’t be an aunt any other way, she’s counting on me and she’s impatient.”
I found this open declaration intriguing for more reasons than the fact it was an open declaration.
Before I could say word one, not that I had any clue what to say, Sam kept going.
“She’s desperate for me to hook up. I’m thirty-five, she’s known me five years, Gordo’s been gone one of those. She’s spent that time concentrating on me.”
“I get this,” I said softly, because I did but not for the reason Sam thought I did and I knew the reason he thought I got it because, at my words, there was an intense pulse coming from Sam that hit the air of the car. I powered through the pulse and continued, “My friend Missy lost her husband in a car crash. Sudden. They’d been married less than a year.” I looked out the side window and kept sharing. “I never saw her cry. That was a long time ago and I still have never seen her cry. But she had a full-time job and still, she volunteered for, like, seven charities, went for every promotion going and enrolled in night classes to get her MBA. All this time, she’s never slowed down. She’s done anything she could do to concentrate on anything other than losing Rich, what that meant, dealing with it and moving on. Now she’s a Deputy Director of one of those charities she volunteered for. It’s her life. It’s been years and she hasn’t even dated.”
I told Sam this but what I didn’t tell him was one of the charities she went all out for was me.