The Match (It Happened in Charleston 1)

“Thanks for giving me a ride,” says Evie.

“Happy to.” And I am. Actually, I’m way too happy to have her seated beside me. “Where am I headed?”

“Oh, here, I can type my address into your phone.” Her emerald eyes, along with her soft vanilla scent, hit me for the first time since she got in the truck. She’s saying normal words, and her tone is completely casual. And yet, my heart is racing as if she just whispered something dirty in my ear.

I hand my phone over to her, and once she’s done typing in her address, we set out toward her apartment. Because I have no idea how to talk to this woman without accidentally flirting, I do the same thing I’ve been practicing all day in her company: keep my mouth shut. I also squeeze the steering wheel, because out of the corner of my eye, I can see an impressive amount of her tan legs, and I swear to myself that I will not give in and look at them.

I WILL NOT.

After a minute of silence, Evie adjusts in her seat to turn around and look at Sam. I’m not sure why this takes me by surprise. “What do you think about your first day of training with Daisy?”

Man, I like her southern accent. I grew up here. I’m used to women all around me having accents. Hers is different, though. It’s sweeter, somehow.

“It was great. I wish she could have stayed with me tonight,” says Sam.

>

“I know. It’s sad to have to say goodbye to them at night, isn’t it? But until you’ve learned everything you need to know about how to interact with her, it’s better to let her sleep at her volunteer’s house. But you did so great today. I was really impressed with how quickly you caught on to all of the techniques.”

I catch Sam’s eye in the rearview mirror and see the moment Evie’s praise hits her bloodstream. She wants to smile. She wants to soak every ounce of that compliment up, wring it out, and then soak it up again. Other than my sisters, she hasn’t had a woman offer her praise like that since Natalie left. I feel as if I can see the void inside her and watch Evie’s words fill a small part of it.

“Thanks.” Sam pushes her unruly hair that I have a hard time brushing behind her ear and looks out the window. Only when her head is fully turned do I see the slight grin touch the corner of her mouth.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I want Sam to receive the praise she needs. But on the other hand, I’m scared to death of Evie. After this week, she’ll be gone, and it’ll just be me and Sam again.

Evie turns back to the front, and I hear her take in a deep breath through her nose. She lets it out like it’s the first one she’s taken all day.

“How was your dinner?” I ask, proud that it sounded innocuous enough. Polite. Business talk between two colleagues.

“Dinner?” she asks with a furrowed brow.

“Yeah, weren’t you just leaving that restaurant? I assumed you were eating there.”

“Oh.” She looks down at her lap. “I was supposed to, but…my company wasn’t so great, so I left before eating.”

My eyes slice to her, and my mouth goes rogue. “Was the guy a jerk to you?” I have no idea why I said that. I don’t even know if she was there with a guy.

One minute, I’m driving Miss Daisy, and the next, I’m a psycho-jealous boyfriend, fighting some random jerk wad in a bar because he looked at my girl wrong. I’ve never been that guy before. Not even with Natalie, and part of me wonders if we really ever loved each other.

I think Evie finds my comment amusing. She relaxes into her seat, and I can tell she’s fighting a grin by the way she’s biting her lips together. “Uh, no. I was actually having dinner with my parents. But someone was…never mind.”

My grip on the wheel relaxes. I see Evie’s fingers (and bright-yellow nails) creep toward the release button for the center console. For a second, I think she is going to open it and look inside, but she catches me looking at her hand and pulls it away. All day, I caught her peeking around corners of the house when she thought I wasn’t looking. I think I even heard her open a cupboard in the guest bathroom at one point. She wouldn’t have found anything fun in there. I keep all my personal items in my bathroom.

Maybe I should find it creepy that she was searching my house. I don’t. Actually, it makes me smile, because I know she’s as curious about me as I am about her—even though I really shouldn’t be. I wish I could put her out of my head.

Speaking of curiosity, I want to ask her more about her parents and this mysterious someone she stopped talking about, but Sam chimes in from the backseat before I get the chance.

“If you haven’t eaten, you could come with Daddy and me to dinner.”

I try to flash Sam a look in the rearview mirror that says no she absolutely cannot!

Evie is not coming with us to dinner. I can’t handle any more hours with this beautiful woman than I already am. After spending the first half of the day together, I feel like I’ve been staring at the sun. I shut my eyes, and the image of her face is burned there. I might never see properly again.

Also, she made Sam laugh ten times today. Ten. I kept a tally.

Yeah, Evie’s not the only one being creepy.

I realize belatedly that Evie saw me give Sam that look. I try to play it off and smile at Evie, but she just chuckles a laugh that sounds like she’s giving me the middle finger in her head. She thinks I don’t like her all that much, and although it’s kind of torturing me, I’m also okay with her thinking that, because I’ve been working hard to give her that impression all day.