Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
“Damn, that is on fire.”
“Yeah. Summers and leather do not go together.”
Maddox got into the driver’s side, rolled the windows down, and headed back toward Savannah. I leaned my head out the window, letting the wind cool the sweat off my skin. Maddox’s air-conditioning was intermittent at best. We could have taken my BMW, but there had been a crime spree the last couple weeks, and Maddox had said no one would break into his junker.
I cut a glance at him. He’d grown a handful of inches since the year before. Now, he was easily over six feet tall. His curls were wind-whipped, and those dark eyes were intent on the road ahead. He’d tugged a heather-gray T-shirt over his muscular torso, but I’d gotten my fill all afternoon.
Maddox and I had danced around this thing between us since that night over spring break. Marley had made her thoughts about it clear. So I’d always stayed away, but I knew that Maddox still had feelings for me. He was much worse at hiding it than I was.
“What are you looking at?” he asked, sliding his eyes to mine with an arched eyebrow.
I winked at him. “I like that shirt.”
His throat bobbed. “It’s just a T-shirt.”
“Yeah, but it shows off your muscles.”
He shot me a disbelieving look. “My muscles?”
I wrapped a hand around his bicep. “Have you been working out?”
Maddox huffed. “You’re a relentless flirt.”
“Obviously.”
“You know you don’t have to do that with me.”
I jerked backward in my seat. Maddox knew as well as I did that the flirting was more a defense mechanism than anything. When I really liked someone, the bravado fell away, and I was just me. It was what had happened senior year with my first real boyfriend, Brandt. But he got to know the real Josie under the over-the-top behavior and promptly ditched me for someone else. Except he hadn’t told me before getting high and sleeping with some strange girl at a party. Someone had recorded it or else I wouldn’t have even known. I’d put up even more barriers after that.
“Just … sort of happens,” I muttered, looking out across the marsh as we crossed through Whitemarsh Island and back toward home.
Maddox didn’t say anything else as we moved into downtown. I cursed when I saw the line to Leopold’s.
“Holidays,” Maddox grumbled. “Hop out, and I’ll park.”
I grabbed my wallet, stuffing it into the back pocket of my shorts, before jumping out of the truck and getting into line. It was going to be at least an hour wait. We could probably give up and find something else, but Leopold’s was the best in town.
Twenty minutes later, I found Maddox scouring the line. I waved at him, and he took the spot next to me.
“Parking was a nightmare.”
“When isn’t it?”
When we finally got to the front of the line, Maddox pulled the door open for me. I sighed in relief at the air-conditioning.
Maddox rested his hand on the small of my back. “What’ll you have?”
It was the small things with Maddox.
The look that said he knew exactly who I was. The smirk on his lips when I got him to loosen up. The Southern gentleman in him that opened my doors and walked on the outside of the sidewalk and offered me his coat when I was cold. Guys were just not raised like this in Atlanta.
“I’ll have a Savannah Socialite.”
Maddox shook his head. “Of course you will.”
It was my mother who was the Savannah socialite, but the ice cream was to die for. Milk and dark chocolate ice cream with roasted pecans and bourbon caramel.
“I’ll take a banana split,” Maddox ordered.
I took my cone and stepped down to the end of the line to pay, but Maddox was already there, handing over some cash and dropping a tip into the jar.
“You didn’t have to pay.” Even if I was secretly happy.
“I’ve been working a lot.”
He took his banana split, and we walked back into the heat. There weren’t seats in front of the ice cream shop. So, we turned north toward Reynolds Square. We dropped onto a bench under the Spanish moss. Despite the thousands of tourists in the city this weekend, the squares always felt like I’d been transported back in time to when Savannah was first constructed on a grid system.
“Your square is my favorite,” Maddox said.
I laughed softly and licked the dripped ice cream from my cone. When we had been younger, I’d claimed Reynolds Square as my own. “Josephine Reynolds Square,” I’d proclaimed for all to hear.
“Mine too.”
“What’s your plan after this?”
I shrugged. “Anything but going home.”
“Don’t want to see your mom?”
“Would you want to see yours?”
Maddox cringed and ditched the empty ice cream tray in a trash can. “Not particularly.”
Marley and Maddox had been left at their Gran and Gramps’s house at the age of two. Their mother only showed up when she needed money in between the guys she was seeing. She’d never been a mother to either of them. We had that in common.