“Deacon,” he said in a low tone. His gaze went from me to his sister, then back again.
“Jag.” I dipped my head in his direction, and tried not to follow Charlie’s movements as she left the room.
“Deaton, Deaton! Guess who I am!”
I pulled my attention away from the entrance to the halls, and watched Keith as he raced toward me with a piece of a cinnamon roll in his hand.
“Uh,” I sucked in a quick breath as I glanced as his forehead. The A had been wiped away, leaving only black smudges. “Definitely not Captain America. Let’s see . . . Loki!”
“No! I’m Darf Vaber!”
My head jerked back. “What? Darth Vader isn’t a superhero. He isn’t even with Marvel, kid!”
Keith sighed like he was getting annoyed that I wasn’t keeping up with him. “Supaheroes can’t defeat the ladybugs ’cause they take away the supapowers, memember?”
“So you need to be Darth Vader in order to get rid of ladybugs?”
Another long, drawn-out sigh. “Yes, Deaton,” he said as he went to go sit at the table. “One day you’ll undastand.”
“You’re right, kid. Maybe one day.” I caught Graham smiling impishly at me, and my smile abruptly faded. “What?” I demanded.
He gestured from Keith to me. “Thousand bucks, man.”
I flipped him off, but held back any verbal retort as I slipped quietly from the room while Jagger’s eyes were off of me.
I set off toward the hallway to try to find Charlie, but as soon as I turned the corner, I nearly knocked her over.
“What—” Charlie began as she danced out of my way, and hurried to finish pulling her hair on top of her head. “Deacon, what are you doing back here?”
“Looking for you.”
She bit down on her full bottom lip, and her cheeks turned pink. “Uh . . . I have to get to the café.”
“Right, about that. I was wondering if I could take you.”
Her steps abruptly halted, and she turned slowly to look up at me. “Why would you want to?”
If only she knew it was the least of the things I wanted to do with her at that moment. Pushing her up against the wall and tasting that lip she kept biting on came close to the top. “I can take you, and then I’ll take your car into the shop—try to figure out something else to do with it.”
Surprise settled over her features. “You’re really going to do that?”
“Charlie Girl,” I said with a laugh. “Yeah. But I was serious; it’s really temporary. It’s just something that will have to continue being fixed. You need to look for a new car.”
Her surprise faded into defeat. “I know, I just . . . I know.” With a sad sigh, she began walking again, her voice trailing behind her. “I will.”
I followed her back out to the main room, and tried to ignore Jagger’s warning glare when he found out I was taking Charlie to work. Graham’s assessing gaze that kept bouncing back and forth between Charlie and me was harder to miss. Each time he made the pass back to her, the mixture of confusion and worry in his eyes grew.
I was already struggling with trying to understand why I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl standing just a handful of feet from me. I didn’t want to spend time trying to understand the way Graham was looking at her, or why it was bothering me.
But I thought about that damn look the entire drive to Mama’s.
Fucking Graham. Whatever was going on between them, I knew it hadn’t been like that before, and it was pissing me off more each time I saw them together.
“Hey, Charlie, what time do you get off today?” I asked before she could get out of her car once I pulled up in front of the café.
“Oh, it’s a weird shift, I get off at three thirty. But don’t worry about it if you’re not finished with my car, I can walk back.”
“No, I’ll be here no matter what; my car or yours. Since you get off early enough, do you want to go to some dealerships in Richland after?”
“With you?” she asked, clarifying.
“Yeah.”
For long moments she studied me as her head slowly shook. “Why do you keep doing this? Why do you—I don’t understand why you’ve been talking to me the way you have been, or trying help me. And now—”
“Would it really be so hard for you to believe that I just want to spend time with you?”
Her cheeks turned red as my question hung in the air. “Yes,” she finally replied.
“Why?”
“Because you’re Deacon Carver, and the minute I believe that you do want to is the minute I find out this is one huge joke to you.”
An agitated huff left me. “And you can say that because—”
“I know you.”
“Do you?” I challenged. “I’ve already proved that you were all wrong about me the night of the wedding, didn’t I?”
Whatever response she’d had waiting for me died, and her lips pressed firmly together. After a few seconds, she nodded distractedly, and whispered, “Why, Deacon?”
“Why? I told you, I just want to spend time—”
“No. Why now?”
The silence in the car felt like a living thing as I searched for an answer, but I’d been searching for an answer for over a week now, and I still hadn’t found one.
“I don’t know, Charlie Girl,” I said honestly.
For some reason, my answer seemed to surprise her. After a second’s hesitation, she nodded, and said, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“If you want to take me, let’s go. Jagger and Grey are leaving for Seattle for a little over a week, so Grey’s supposed to drop Keith off at the babysitter. I’ll just ask her to keep him longer.”
I tilted my head slightly at the mention of Jagger. “Your brother’s going to kill me.”
“For taking me to look at cars?” she asked, her tone both curious and testing.
My eyes slid down her body, and before I could stop myself, I said, “Let’s just say he has every reason to tell me to stay away from you, Charlie Girl.”
By the time I was looking at her face again, her eyes were wide and her cheeks were the brightest red, and it looked like she was fighting a smile. “Um, okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you then. After work. When I get off,” she stammered as she opened the passenger door of her car.