“Here, please,” stammered Brenton suddenly as he opened the passenger door of his Maserati for her.
Jade climbed in, and for a second her coffee-colored hand brushed against the pale skin of his hand, with its wispy, pale brown hairs. She could swear she felt electricity jumping from his skin to hers, like a brief charge of static.
If he noticed anything, however, he didn't show it. He closed the door behind her and walked around to the driver's side of the car and climbed in.
“Okay Jade,” he said cautiously, “Are you sure you're alright? Where am I taking you?”
“I live just down the avenue, straight for six blocks. It's really easy to find. Thank you so much, Brenton. I really, really appreciate it. It's been a real bad end to an already difficult and disappointing day.”
Brenton's face reddened with embarrassment at this last sentence, and Jade suddenly felt a flush of regret rushing through her veins. She wished she hadn't said that.
“I hope, er, I hope that my, um, rejection of your proposal didn't have too much to do with that,” he stammered, following it up with an awkward chuckle as he began driving.
“No,” she lied. “There was a lot more to it than just that.”
Actually, your callous rejection of my proposal had everything to do with why my day turned out so bad. I had so many hopes and dreams resting on that proposal, and you just tossed it aside, threw it away as if it were nothing but trash.
She felt as if she should be angry at Brenton, and in a sense, part of her still was, but at the same time she could hardly hold a grudge against the very man who had just saved her life. And she could not deny the powerful, almost animal attraction she felt toward him. Even now, she allowed her eyes to roam over his powerfully-muscled arms as they gripped the steering wheel, and the memory of his heroic actions earlier, performed with such skill and confidence, got hot blood gushing through her veins.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “you ever been in a car like this?”
“I've been in a Porsche, once,” she replied.
“Which model?”
“I don't know, I don't know anything about cars, really,” she replied.
“Oh yeah? Well how did it compare to this?”
She couldn't lie; this was by far the most expensive and luxurious vehicle she had ever had the pleasure of riding in, but a part of her didn't want to give him the satisfaction of admitting that.
“It was kinda similar, really. I don't know. I mean, this is a really nice car, but, I'm not really the kind of girl to be impressed by such things.”
“Really? Even by this?” he asked as he suddenly dropped a gear and floored the accelerator.
The supercar's engine howled and the vehicle surged suddenly forward like a rocket, throwing Jade back into her seat and keeping her body pressed there with the force of the vehicle's acceleration. Brenton laughed loudly and whooped with glee as the car ripped through the New York streets, and Jade, even with everything terrible that had happened thus far, could not resist letting out a shriek of delight at the vehicle's mad speed.
“Wait! Wait!” she shouted as the outside scenery flew past in a blur. “You're gonna blow right past my place like this! It's right there, coming-, no, you've blown right past it!”
“That isn't a problem,” laughed Brenton. “See, I'll just do this!”
He cranked up the handbrake and spun the car into a doughnut turn. The tires screeched and smoked and the whole vehicle swung around 180 degrees, throwing Jade violently against the side of her seat. She couldn't help but shriek again with sheer delight, and as she added a chuckle onto her scream, she saw Brenton grinning at her, his blue eyes alive with life, excitement and... and something else.
Is he as attracted to me as I am to him? Could it even be possible that a billionaire mogul, who has been on the cover of Forbes magazine, could be interested in an average girl like me?
“You're crazy!” she laughed. It seemed that at this moment, she had forgotten about everything bad that had happened earlier in the day.
“I prefer to think of myself as 'spirited' rather than merely crazy,” he replied with a devilish grin.
“Alright, alright,” she laughed. Look, my place is just over there, the entrance to my building is on the left there, on that block we just passed. Damn, how fast were we even going back there?”