Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

“Can I pay you to call me Poppy?” I asked.

He laughed and then tried to cover it up with a stern sounding cough. “You are very—” he stopped himself. Shook his head.

“I’m what?”

“Different. This morning.” Oh, how helplessly he said that. Like he wished it wasn’t true. Or that he wished he didn’t notice. But he wasn’t wrong – I was different. And it was time for my life to look a little different, too.

“You know something,” I said, opening the driver side door to get out. “I would like to drive the Porsche.”

Theo’s eyes went wide and his smile – if you could call it that – was very nearly approving. “It’s a stick shift,” he said.

“That’s fine,” I said, though it probably wasn’t.

Ten minutes later I was grinding my way down the hill from my house.

“Clutch,” he said. Again.

“Right, right.” There was a small hill and a stop sign ahead. “Oh no. Should we go back and get the town car?”

“Don’t be scared,” he said. “And you’re doing fine. No one is great at driving a stick shift right away.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not, ma’am.”

“I’m going to stall it.”

“Clutch, shift, gas. You can do it.”

Seamlessly, I shifted out of first into second. No stalling. No grinding.

I gasped with delight.

“Nice,” he said.

Instantly I did something that made the car shudder and grind. “Oh my god, this is awful. Is it me? Is it this car?”

“It’s the stick shift and you’re doing great. You really are.” Theo was a very enthusiastic teacher and surprisingly calming. “On this hill, careful you don’t . . .”

The car stalled.

“Do that?” I asked.

Theo actually laughed, which cut my nervous energy in two, and then I was laughing.

I put the car in park and restarted it just as a man in black training pants and a sweat-stained shirt ran across the road in front of us. At the sound of the car starting, he glanced over, and our eyes met.

“Ronan,” I breathed.

He stopped in the middle of the road, facing us. His unreadable eyes traveling from Theo’s face to mine.

His dark hair was slick on his forehead, and his chest was heaving. In the thin running gear, he seemed bigger than he usually did. His chest was wide. His shoulders broad. Less a deadly blade and more a blunt object.

He grabbed the hem of his shirt and used it to wipe his face, revealing the pale skin of his stomach. The ripple of muscle.

My smile faded slowly from my face as my body remembered what he did to it last night. My body wanted more. So much more. All at once my body wanted everything this man could do to it.

“Come on, man,” Theo said and reached over and honked the horn. The car was tiny, and Theo was not a small man. We were shoulder to shoulder in the front seat, and when he reached past me we touched even more.

Ronan saw it all. But his face registered nothing. Nothing at all.

What is he thinking? Did he care? Did it matter that I was sitting so close to another man? I smiled to see if there was a reaction. His face didn’t even reveal that he knew me. Let alone that he’d put his mouth on me.

He walked to the side of the road and watched us as we drove by. The gears grinding, the car lurching.

I looked back in the rear-view mirror, and he was still there. Still watching.

“You all right, Poppy?” Theo asked. Dropping the ma’am, and I quite suddenly wanted it back. The distance. Which was ridiculous. Ronan wasn’t my . . . anything. His dark stare, that I still felt on the back of my neck, was another one of his games.

“I’m fine,” I said, and I pushed the clutch, shifted to third and took off down the hill.

Monday morning Theo drove me into the city.

“You sure you don’t want to try?” he asked. The window was rolled down, and his eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror. They were nice eyes. Brown and big. Kinder than I’d ever noticed.

“Driving around Bishop’s Landing is one thing. Manhattan is another thing all together. I’m just trying to save your life, Theo.”

“Well, I appreciate that, Poppy.”

My name in his mouth sent a strange ripple through me. I wasn’t sure if I was uncomfortable or if I liked it.

My phone rang, saving me from contemplating kissing Theo in order to forget Ronan and what a mess that would be. The screen said Zilla.

“Excuse me,” I said to Theo.

“Of course,” Theo said and pushed the button that made the window between us slide up.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you, Zilla?”

“I’m fine. Good. How are you? I didn’t hear from you after your meeting with Eden.”

“Oh, right,” I said, that weird meeting forgotten after Ronan and then the driving lesson. “It was fine. I mean. I didn’t get a lot of information. It was probably a mistake trying to pry.”