Page 41 of Reticent

Sorry 🤦🏻‍♀️

Me

Np. I’ll call you later.

When I look up, Hunter is staring at me quizzically with an amused expression. “Everything okay?”

“Just texting with my sister. We’re discussing the baby shower.” My phone chimes again with another text. I roll my eyes. Hunter has resumed his typing.

Skylar

OMG. Do you like him?

Me

What? Girl, no. I want to DO him. That’s a problem.

I power off my phone before she sends any more rapid-fire texts.

Chapter Sixteen

After breakfast, we walk past Hunter’s Porsche in the parking garage and stop at the driver’s side of a black Bentley SUV. “Is this yours?”

Hunter pulls a key fob from the pocket of his hoodie and places it in the palm of my hand. “Used to be.”

I look at the key fob and then up at him, dumbfounded. “What are you doing?”

“I want you to have it.”

What does he mean by have it? No way is he giving me his car. “I can’t take this.” I try to give him back the key fob, but he won’t take it.

“You need a car, and I have an extra one. I told you I would take care of it.” He levels his eyes with mine. “This is me taking care of it.”

“But this is a Bentley.”

The corners of his mouth twitch. “I’m aware of that.”

“I’m not that good of a driver.”

“I’ll transfer the title to your name. It’s fully paid for,” he says, ignoring what I just said about my driving abilities.

I stare longingly at the shiny black SUV before snapping out of it. It’s a beautiful car, but accepting it seems wrong somehow. “I appreciate you. You were there for me last night when I fell apart. And you paid the hospital deductible—which I’ll pay you back for, by the way.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Yes. I will. And you fed me. Twice. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me.”

“What idea is that? Hmm?” Hunter repositions the straps of my backpack purse on my shoulders—a simple, nonintimate gesture that warms me from the inside out.

“I don’t need you to give me Bentleys and whatnot. I’m just a regular girl. All I want—all I care about—is for us to get along. To be friends, even. But this”—I gesture to the SUV at my back—“is unnecessary.”

Hunter regards me for a moment with his head tilted. “Most women I know wouldn’t turn down a Bentley.”

“Like your ex-girlfriends?”

“I don’t have ex-girlfriends. Just an ex-wife. I prefer to keep things casual with the women in my life.”

Women, as in plural. Not that I didn’t know that but hearing him say it out loud is something I need to be reminded of. “Makes sense. You know, after your whole fuckboy warning.”