Page 17 of Quiet as Kept
“Not so much embarrassed by her as concerned about her reliability.” He held up his hands to stop me from talking, when honestly, I didn’t have anything to say. “I know the truck made it here, but I would feel more at ease with you and the girls drivingaround in a newer vehicle. Like I said before, with Trinity in Atlanta, there’s no back up. It’s you and me.”
I nodded my understanding.
“I get it. And I would feel terrible if I got stranded somewhere with the girls and you had to leave a job site to come rescue us.” I rubbed my hands together in playful anticipation. “So, what do I get? A Benz? A Caddy? An Infiniti?”
He gestured around the oversized garage. “Is there a specific one you want?”
I quickly walked around the space, pretending to make a calculated decision. I wasn’t a car girly. I’d never been in the position to research or pay attention to cars. I spotted a pretty sage g colored SUV.
“The green one,” I told him.
He didn’t hide his chuckle. “The Volvo?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Yes?” It came out as a question.
That caused him to chuckle again. “You got it. I’ll have you added to the insurance and get you a set of keys.”
“Seriously?” I practically skipped over to his Range Rover.
“Yeah.” He lifted Dakota and leaned in the truck to buckle her in.
I scooted around to the other side and did the same with Destin.
“When I bought my truck, I spent the entire day at the used car dealership. This was the fastest transaction ever,” I teased.
“Stick with me, kid.”
Back at the house, Kept and I moved around each other rhythmically. I took the girls to the bathroom to use it then washtheir hands. He put the groceries away then prepared lunch for them with leftovers from the night before.
“You want some lunch, Xarielle?”
“Nah. I think I want to test out the truck you’re letting me drive. I want to go exploring, find the mall, find the Chick-fil-A.” We both laughed. “I know you don’t eat fast food, but I do.”
“All right.” He shrugged his shoulders. “See you later. There’s a remote to raise the garage attached to the visor of the truck.”
“Thanks. See you.”
I walked out to the garage and climbed into the green truck that had initially caught my eye. The upholstery was leather, and it smelled like heaven. The seat seemed to conform to my body, just as the bed in the guestroom had done.
I realized one thing about luxury materials—they conformed to the curvature of the body. I set my GPS for the mall, raised the garage door, started the truck, and I was off.
Six
Kept
After I got the girls down for bed that night, I decided to do a little work on the back deck. The weather was perfect for an April night with the temperature at an unseasonably warm seventy-four degrees.
I had just closed the French door and stepped out on the deck with my laptop in one hand and a forty-ounce insulated cup filled with iced water in the other. I caught a quick glimpse of movement and then spotted her as she bent the corner from the deck entrance off the guest bedroom.
“Hey,” I said, in an effort not to surprise her.
I failed. She jumped in surprise anyway. “Oh, hey.”
I chuckled. “Hey. You out here trying to get some night air too?”
“I actually came out here to look at the ocean at night. I felt like it would be beautiful. Nobody told me that it’s pitch black and you can’t see a thing.”