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“All right, I suppose we do need to leave if I’m going to get there on time,” Danae says. She looks at Jason once more. “Listen to Samantha and have so much fun, okay?”

We walk to the entry, pausing for Danae to put on her coat. Sam and Jason are already talking loudly about their plans for the night, which seem to include fort building and card games. Danae looks back over her shoulder once then looks apprehensively at me.

“Ready?” I ask, giving her what I hope is my most reassuring smile.

The apprehension doesn’t leave her eyes as she mumbles, “Okay.”

Her apparent reluctance to be in the car with me is so palpable, it’s becoming impossible not to take it personally. It’s also such an unfamiliar experience that I’m a little baffled as to how to turn the situation around.

As she locks the front door behind us, I stretch my neck from side to side. Winning Danae over just became my top priority.

Chapter nine

Danae

After locking the front door, I turn around to peruse the parking lot. I’m looking for whatever sort of outlandish, expensive sports car I’ll have to ride in tonight. My perusal yields no obvious vehicle discovery, and I wonder if Griffin parked a long distance away in order to protect his precious car.

“So, where does your book club meet?” Griffin asks as he begins walking along the sidewalk. I hurry to follow him, which results in me bumping into him when he stops much sooner than I expected. He motions to a large, black Jeep and says, “This is me.”

“Oh,” I say, flustered after colliding with his rather muscular back. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting a Jeep.”

Griffin grins as he holds open the passenger door. “Expecting a cherry red sports car?” he asks before closing the door behind me.

I can’t think of a good way to dismiss my assumption in the five seconds it takes for him to walk around the car and climb into the driver’s seat. “I mean . . . yeah, I was,” I sheepishly admit.

Chuckling, Griffin starts the ignition. “I was obsessed with Jeeps when I was a teenager. Begged my dad for a Jeep to be my first car. Of course, I wanted one of the off-roading versions at the time, which was a hard pass from my parents. I bought my first Jeep when I got called up to the Crowns, and they’re all I’ve driven as an adult.”

“But not the off-roading type?” I clarify, gesturing around the vehicle.

He smiles again. “Turns out I’m not much of an adrenaline junkie. I went off-roading once with a friend in college and spent the entire time gripping the panic bar and praying he wouldn’t roll the Jeep. I was too afraid of getting injured to enjoy the ride.”

I hum, returning his smile.

He looks at me expectantly. When I don’t say anything, he asks, “Where are we headed?”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” I say, flustered all over again. I was so massively unprepared to see this man standing outside my door tonight. Even though I know Samantha is planning to babysit as often as I need her, I still assumed I’d never cross paths with her brother again.

“The book club is at my favorite local bookstore in Overland Park. Here’s the address,” I say, showing him my phone screen. He quickly puts the address into the GPS, and I buckle my seatbelt.

I wish there was a proverbial seatbelt to buckle around my nerves. I’m not sure how to handle a conversation alone in a car with Griffin West.

The past few days, Jason has continued showing off his encyclopedic knowledge of Griffin’s baseball career, sharing far more statistics than I could ever care to know (or understand). I’ve resisted the urge to Google Griffin’s name because I amnotcurious to know more about him. And I’m certainlynotinterested in analyzing photos to figure out how to classify his gray-blue eye color.

The baseball cap he’s wearing tonight makes it hard to study his eye color at all.

Griffin glances over at me with an air of expectation. I must have completely missed him saying something.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I ask, sensing my cheeks turning pink.

Even in the dark, his profile lights up with his warm smile. “I asked what book you’re talking about with the club tonight.”

“Oh, yes,” I say.Stop saying the word “oh,” for goodness' sake, Danae.“We rotate genres each month, and this time it’s a historical fiction novel set during World War II. Well, it’s a dual timeline, so I suppose only half of it was set during thewar.”

“Did you like it?” he asks as he glances over his shoulder before changing lanes on the highway.

“Loved it. Everything about the book was incredible. It was so thoroughly researched and well-written. There was a huge twist that made the entire story so much more emotional. It was incredibly moving, and I cried my way through the ending,” I reply with growing enthusiasm. I may be mentally struggling with how to interact with this famous athlete, but even he can’t smother my passion for talking about literature. “It’s one of those books that you know is going to stick with you, that you’re going to continue thinking about for a long time. That someday you’ll be standing in line at the grocery store and think about a particularly poignant moment from the story and feel the urge to reread the whole thing all over again. I can’t wait to discuss it with the book club tonight.”

Looking over at Griffin, I see his smile has grown wider. “Big fan of books, huh?” he observes.