I was pretty damn obvious. And Autumn caught me red-handed on more than one occasion, but each time she’d smile, rather than call me out. I knew she had an idea of what was going through my head, but I wondered if she could read my mind as well as I could sometimes read hers. Since I hadn’t gotten smacked, I’d say we probably only had one mind reader in the room.
After we’d polished off an entire pizza pie, Bud needed to get ready to head out for dinner service, and Autumn had to get Storm back to Park House, so I drove them over to the body shop to see if they’d been able to repair Autumn’s car enough to get it to a drivable state. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be just a simple crack in the rim, and it needed to be sent out for welding. So we left her car there, and Autumn and I dropped off Storm together. Right before he got out, she asked him if he had any plans for the night, and he responded that he was going to study.
“Do you really think he’s going to study tonight?” she asked me once we were alone in the car.
“Definitely not.”
“Maybe he actually listened to you say you had to work twice as hard?”
I glanced from the road to her, flashing a face that said not a chance.
“Well, I’m going to think positive and assume he was being truthful.”
I smirked. “You do that. But he wasn’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m good at telling when people are lying. It’s my superpower. I’m a human lie detector.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
She tapped her finger to her lips. Even while driving, I could see the wheels in her head turning.
“I love pineapples on my pizza. It’s my favorite food.”
I raised a brow. “Am I supposed to tell if you’re lying?”
“Yup. Go ahead, Human Lie Detector. Let’s see how good your superpowers are.”
We were about to pass a Wendy’s, so I put my blinker on and turned into the parking lot.
Autumn’s forehead wrinkled. “Are you hungry?”
“No. But I need to look at you for my superpower to work.” I pulled into the first available parking spot and put the car in park. Then I shifted in my seat to look at her.
I definitely like this game. With this view, we should play more often. “Go ahead,” I said. “Talk about your favorite pizza again.”
Autumn turned to face me and straightened in her seat. Her amused smile was freaking adorable.
“I love pineapples on my pizza. It’s my favorite food.”
I actually couldn’t tell whether she was lying or not, but I figured I had a fifty-fifty shot, so I bluffed. “Lie.”
Her eyes sparkled. “How did you know?”
“Told you. I have a bullshit-arometer.”
She laughed. “That could have been just luck. Let me try again.”
“Have at it.”
She gazed out the window a moment and then turned back. “When I was twelve, I ran away from home.”
Her presentation was pretty different from the way she’d spoken about the pizza, so I figured this wasn’t a lie. “Truth.”
Her jaw dropped, but she did her best not to look impressed. “Another lucky guess.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “How many is it going to take for you to believe in my skills?”
“I don’t know. Five in a row?”
“Well, then, let’s go. Actually, hang on a second. I’m curious. Why did you run away from home?”
She frowned. “My mom had died six months earlier, and my dad came home with a woman I’d never met and told me he was getting married.”
“Shit. Sorry.”
Autumn shrugged. “It’s okay. I only went a few doors down to my friend Jane’s house, and her mother made me cookies, so I wasn’t exactly roughing it with a bandana tied to a stick slung over my shoulder. Plus, that marriage only lasted eight months.”
“That marriage? How many have there been?”
“A lot. He just got engaged again recently.”
That bit of truth made me wonder if her dear old dad was part of the reason she was so sour on relationships.
“Okay…I have another one,” she said. Only this time, as she spoke, she reached up and adjusted her earring. “I once had an affair with my college professor.”
“Lie.”
“How did you know that? I could’ve. I had one hit on me a few times.”
“Bullshit-arometer. Told you.” I reached up and fingered her earring. “Plus, you play with this when you lie.”
Her eyes widened. “I do?”
“You do.”
“Wow. I’ve never noticed that. Are you just super perceptive? Do you notice things like that on everyone?”
“I don’t notice it on everyone.” My eyes searched hers. “Just people I’m interested in.”
Autumn’s eyes softened, and I completely forgot we were in a busy parking lot in the middle of Brooklyn. Cars pulled in and out of the drive-thru line behind us, a random car blared its horn somewhere in the not-too-distant vicinity, yet the moment felt oddly intimate and romantic—and I’d definitely been accused of not being romantic over the years by more than one woman.