Brant pulled the last of their bags from the baggage carousel and wondered to himself, What now? Emma was standing beside him awkwardly. “Did you drive to the airport?” he asked.
“No, root canal, remember? I was too high to attempt that.” They both laughed for a moment, remembering all that had taken place after her out-of-it plane ride to Miami. He was secretly relieved to have an excuse to extend their time together. He wanted nothing more than to ask her to come home with him, but he wasn’t sure how she would feel about it.
He took her carry-on bag from her. “Come on, baby, I’ll give you a ride.” Damn, was it okay to call her baby now? Should he have just said Emma? She didn’t seem uncomfortable over his slip, so he decided to relax and stop overthinking everything. If she jumped out of the car at her apartment without looking back, he would know that she wasn’t feeling what he was. Simple, right? Fuck, except why did it feel anything but?
Emma came to an abrupt halt when they reached his car. He popped the trunk of his Mercedes SL550 and stored their luggage inside. She gave him an incredulous look. “You drive a sports car?”
He paused in the act of opening her door. “Why is that a surprise?”
“This is one sexy car, Brant. I always had you figured for more of a car and driver or maybe a Volvo.”
He couldn’t help it. Rather than take offense, he burst out laughing. “I know there’s an insult in there. I find it hard to believe you’ve never seen my car in all this time since we work at the same place.”
Putting her hands on her hips, she smirked up at him. “Honey, there is a bit of distance between the executive parking and the rest of the Danvers staff parking. You guys probably have some kind of protective cover pulled over your vehicles during the day.”
“It doesn’t get that good. You didn’t notice it when you were invading my beach area a few weeks ago?”
“Um . . . no,” Emma said. “I was too busy trying to get away from you to peek in your garage.” Opening the car door herself, she jumped inside. “I’m not complaining; this car is off the charts!” Brant whistled as he walked around the car to open the driver’s door. At least he knew there was one thing of his that impressed her. Maybe he would keep her in the car for the rest of the night. The way she was purring against the leather seats, she probably wouldn’t complain.
She gave him her address and it took him a moment to figure out why it sounded familiar. “Isn’t that the complex that Nick and Beth live in?”
Nodding, Emma said, “It used to be. They bought a house closer to Suzy a few months ago.”
Brant shuddered. “That’s one scary lady.”
Emma asked, “Suzy?”
“Yeah, Suzy. Don’t look so surprised. All of you women may love her, but she makes most of the men at Danvers want to cover their balls and run.”
“Oh, come on!” Emma defended her friend. “What has she ever done to you?”
Cringing, Brant said, “It’s not what she’s done to me; it’s how she looks at me. Sort of like I’m a cross between a toad and a cockroach. I feel like I’ve really disappointed her at some point, but I have no idea when.”
Putting her fingers up to form quotation marks, Emma teased, “She thinks you’re ‘prime man candy,’ which is a major compliment.”
Brant smirked back at her. “I believe you mentioned something along those lines when you were intoxicated on the plane. If my memory serves me correctly, you also agreed with her.” Before she could answer, he added, “Now, I found that very flattering but also a bit disturbing that I was the subject of such an . . . intimate conversation.”
Emma slid her hand along his thigh, murmuring, “Oh, honey, you have no idea.”
Before their flirtation could escalate, Brant was pulling into the driveway of her apartment complex. A sudden onset of nerves seemed to hold them both speechless. Should he ask to come in or let her make the first move? Wasn’t the guy usually expected to do that? Hell, he didn’t know and he’d never really cared before. You didn’t have these kinds of complications with casual sex. Everything was defined ahead of time. Now he felt like he had been reduced to a teenage boy on his first real date.
This kind of indecision was completely foreign to him. A few days ago, he would have imagined the final leg of this journey being much different. He could think only that if he had been forced to take her home, he would have brought the car to some kind of a rolling stop and asked her to jump out. When she did, he would have peeled out of the parking lot in his haste to finally be free of her after a weekend of complete hell.
The reality now, though, was so different. Just a few days with someone whom he finally admitted to himself that he desired had changed everything. He wanted nothing more than to follow her into her apartment and make love to her until they both passed out from sheer exhaustion. The fact that he thought of it as making love and not having sex was not lost on him. “So . . . do you . . .” They both almost jumped out of their skin when Emma’s phone shrilled in the confined space of the car. He thought he heard her mutter a curse under her breath when she looked at the screen.
Brant saw her wage a mental debate before clicking to answer the call. “Hi, Mom, can I call you back in a bit? We just got home.” She listened for a minute before exclaiming, “What! Oh crap, are you kidding me?”
Brant laid a hand over hers, quietly asking, “Is something wrong?”
Putting her hand over the phone, she said, “Boston got busted in a campus raid for possession of marijuana.”
He fought the urge to ask why they were so surprised by that fact but decided now might not be the best time to point that out.
“Mom, let me get in my apartment and I’ll keep trying to reach Uncle Ted.” She clicked to end the call and sagged back against the seat. “I so didn’t need this today.” She turned her head to look at him. “I have to go in and try to reach my dad’s brother, Ted. He’s a lawyer in Destin.” Brant did his best to hide a smile when she repeated his earlier thoughts. “Why is any of this surprising? Everyone in the family knows he is high as a kite more often than not. He’s studying botany, for God’s sake. Not only is he constantly smoking weed, apparently he’s growing the stuff as well.”