If someone had told Farrah last week that she’d willingly go on a road trip to upstate New York with Blake, just the two of them, she would’ve laughed in their face.
Yet here she was, ensconced in a rented Range Rover with her ex-boyfriend while they drove around Syracuse, looking for a place to eat lunch.
In her defense, she’d been desperate.
Farrah had gone into a tailspin when she received Blake’s text telling her the apartment had to be finished by late June because Mode de Vie was shooting a lifestyle feature on him there. It’d almost been enough to make her forget their inappropriate encounter at the lounge two-and-a-half weeks ago.
Mode de Vie. The most influential lifestyle magazine in the country. They always asked for the interior designer’s name when they shot at a subject’s home, which meant Farrah’s name would appear in its hallowed pages in a few months. That was the equivalent of an author getting their book featured in Oprah’s Book Club. One mention in the esteemed magazine could vault her from being an unknown to the brightest star in the sky…if her design was good. If not, Farrah could forget about her future in the industry.
Blake didn’t want any major remodeling done, thank God, which shaved weeks, if not months, off the process. But seven weeks was still a tight turnaround for redesigning an apartment his size.
Farrah had been a whirlwind of activity since she found out about the new deadline: calling contractors and pushing them for quotes and start dates, sourcing materials, and searching through every website and every store in the five boroughs for the perfect pieces that would transform Blake’s apartment into his dream home.
She’d succeeded, for the most part.
The only hiccup was the vintage trunk sitting in a little shop in Syracuse, four hours from New York City. Farrah had found it on the store’s website but when she called, they informed her they didn’t ship large items. She’d have to pick it up herself.
That wouldn’t have been an issue, except Farrah hadn’t driven since she moved to New York. She sure as hell wasn’t going to brave the city streets on her own. None of her friends in the city drove either, and she’d seriously considered hiring an Uber for the eight-hour roundtrip drive before Blake called her for a progress update.
She’d mentioned her dilemma; he’d offered to rent a car and drive her, and she’d accepted.
Now, here they were, with the trunk from the shop nestled snugly in the back of their car.
“This looks promising.” Blake slowed in front of a diner on the edge of downtown Syracuse. Since it was summer, the town swarmed with tourists instead of students from its eponymous university.
Farrah spotted several out-of-town license plates in the parking lot: Vermont. New Hampshire. Pennsylvania. Fortunately, there were a few parking spaces left. All the other restaurants they’d passed had been packed.
“Fine by me. I’ll eat anything at this point.” Farrah’s stomach growled with a ferocity that could scare off a pride of lions. “Hurry, before someone takes those spots.”
Blake smirked. He pulled the Range Rover into one of the empty spots, his muscles flexing against his shirt sleeve as he turned the wheel. Even in a simple white T-shirt and jeans, he could melt the panties off a nun. “I forgot how snippy you get when you’re hungry.”
“I’m not snippy.”
So what if she was? Farrah only had a bagel and coffee for breakfast, and that’d been hours ago. When she wasn’t fed, she got a little…well, snippy.
That, plus Blake was acting weird. Not in an overt way. He’d been a perfect gentleman all day. He’d picked her up, let her choose the playlist with no complaints—not even when she played five Taylor Swift songs back to back—and didn’t blink an eye when she spilled water on her shirt.
Water. On her white shirt. And not a single comment, not even a glance. He’d merely handed her a napkin and hummed along to “Blank Space” while she dabbed at her semi-transparent top.
Which is a good thing, Farrah reminded herself. It wasn’t like she wanted any extra attention from Blake, aside from what their professional relationship entailed.
Heat rose on her cheeks when she remembered their near kiss. She’d woken up the next morning hungover and mortified. They technically hadn’t done anything, but the whole experience felt so intimate they might as well have had sex.
At least, Farrah thought so. Judging by Blake’s cool attitude, he didn’t feel the same way.
They walked in silence toward the diner. The beautiful blue skies from earlier that morning had darkened into an ominous slate grey, and Farrah smelled the earthy promise of rain in the air.
Despite the few empty parking spaces, the inside of the diner overflowed with patrons, and Blake and Farrah waited thirty minutes before the hostess showed them to a table. By the time they received their food—well over an hour after they’d parked—Farrah was ready to snap someone’s head off.
“Jesus.” Blake’s jaw dropped as Farrah tore into her chicken sandwich with a gusto she usually reserved for Anthropologie sales and Henry Cavill. “You’d give some of my college teammates a run for their money. And these are three-hundred-pound linebackers we’re talking about.”
Farrah washed down her food with a healthy gulp of her chocolate milkshake. “I’m hungry.”
“I can tell.” One of Blake’s dimples peeked out before it disappeared, and her stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.
They lapsed into silence.
Farrah was beginning to think aliens had kidnapped the real Blake and replaced him with a robot version of himself. He was never this quiet. She felt like she was in the backseat of an Uber with a driver who didn’t particularly care to converse with his customers.
“I didn’t do this for the money, by the way.” Farrah tried to fill the silence.
Blake arched a questioning eyebrow.
“The road trip,” she clarified. “I found the trunk on the store’s website and it seemed so perfect for your living room. All the other trunks I found were off. Weird color, wrong size, ugly details. I didn’t specifically choose an item that couldn’t be shipped so I could bill you more hours.”
His laugh boomed against the chatter in the diner. “It’s okay. I didn’t think you were trying to swindle me.”
That was it. No teasing. No banter. Just, “it’s okay.”
Frustration coiled in Farrah’s gut. Why? She had no idea. This was what she wanted. A relationship in which they were designer and client, nothing more.
So why did she feel so uneasy?
“Well, thank you for driving me. I know you must be busy, so I appreciate you taking the time.”
“No problem.”
Farrah grit her teeth. She wanted to shake Blake until more words tumbled out of him because he was freaking her out.
Their waitress, a Rachel Bilson lookalike with a toothy smile, swooped in. “How’s the food? Can I get you anything else?” She directed her question at Blake. Farrah might as well be invisible.
Blake’s dimples showed up in their full glory. “The food’s great.” He glanced at Farrah. “Do you need anything?”
“No.”
He appeared unfazed by her curt response. “We’re all good, thanks.” He upped the wattage of his smile, and Farrah swore the waitress nearly melted into a puddle at his feet.
As the other woman tottered away on shaky legs, Farrah drained her milkshake with one long, hard slurp. The straw rattled angrily at the bottom of her empty glass.
“Do you want another milkshake? I can call her back,” Blake offered, still so annoyingly, irritatingly polite.
“No, thanks.” The way Rachel Bilson 2.0 eyed Blake, like he was a juicy steak and she hadn’t eaten in months, rankled Farrah more than it should have.
She took a deep breath. She and Blake had cleared the air about his ex-girlfriend at the lounge, and now it was time to address the other elephant in the room. “Look, about the other night. We were drunk and got carried away. I mean, we didn’t do anything, but…” Farrah trailed off, trying to arrange her thoughts into a coherent sentence. “What I’m saying is, I left because, uh, I had to wake up early the next morning.” Lame. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about my feelings for you. Not that I have feelings for you.”
Ugh. Why was she so bad at this?
“It’s forgotten. Don’t worry about it. Like you said, we were drunk. I don’t think you’re in love with me or anything.” Blake went back to eating his burger, a little more aggressively than before.
Farrah gaped at him in disbelief. She’d spent three weeks agonizing over that night only for him to brush it off like it meant nothing. Like they hadn’t almost kissed, and his arousal hadn’t pressed against her thigh, so hard it could’ve drilled a hole through his zipper.
Need slashed through her at the memory, even as she resisted the urge to hurl the rest of her food in Blake’s face.
“We should head back soon.” Farrah gripped her necklace, the anchor to her swirling thoughts. She needed alone time with her vibrating bedside buddy, stat. “It’s a long drive back to the city.”
“Are you talking about New York City?” Their waitress popped up again.
Jesus. Didn’t she have other customers to serve?
“Yes.” Farrah tried not to hold the way the other woman ogled Blake against her, but what if Farrah were his girlfriend? Would the waitress still ogle him like that? Didn’t seem smart. “Can we get the check, please?
“Sure thing, but I’d advise against driving back in this weather.” The waitress clucked her tongue, not taking her eyes off Blake. “It’s crazy out there.”
Farrah stared out the window. Between the noise in the diner and her inner turmoil over Blake, she’d missed the near-apocalyptic scene outside. The gray skies had escalated into a harsh downpour worthy of hurricane season. Angry bolts of lightning streaked through the sky, chased by the furious roars of thunder, and the rain fell so fast and heavy she couldn’t see their car parked right in front of the diner.
“There’s a severe storm warning until tomorrow. You’ll have to hunker down in town,” their waitress chirped, like they were discussing a picnic instead of a rainstorm. “There’s a nice B&B just down the road. Their owner dropped by earlier and mentioned one of their guests canceled last minute, so they should have a room open. I can call them if you’d like.” She whisked their plates off the table.
Dread settled in the pit of Farrah’s stomach. The last thing she wanted was to spend a night here with Blake—not when he was acting so weird, and not when her body was a live wire waiting to explode. He was like the chocolate milkshake she’d ordered—delicious and nice to look at, but oh-so-bad for her.
Unfortunately, the waitress was right. It was too dangerous to drive back to the city.
A loud boom of thunder rocked the diner, underscoring the need to stay put in town for the night.
Farrah forced a smile. “Thank you. That would be great.”
Across the table, Blake turned ashen. “I can’t drive in this rain.”
“It’s ok. We’ll check into the B&B.” This day was not turning out the way Farrah had expected. “Hopefully, the storm passes before morning.”
“No.” Blake gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned whiter than his face. “I mean I can’t drive in this rain. We have to wait it out here.”
“What?” Farrah laughed. “We can’t wait this out here. The storm doesn’t look like it’s going to pass anytime soon.”
“Farrah, I mean it.” He bit out each word like they were poison-coated pills. “I’m not driving in this rain.”
Farrah had never seen Blake so shaken. The sight of his turbulent eyes and trembling shoulders awakened a part of her that was infinite times more dangerous than her body’s craving for him. It was the part that wanted to dig into his darkest secrets, extract the bloodied bullets, and nurse him back to health, even if saving him meant losing herself.
It’s not your job to piece him back together.
“I’ll drive,” Farrah said softly. She could handle the rain. They weren’t going far. “Okay?”
Blake’s jaw clenched. After a few seconds, he jerked out a nod.
The waitress returned with their check, confirmation there was one room left at the B&B, and a piece of paper that Farrah was sure contained her phone number, which Rachel Bilson 2.0 slipped to Blake.
He didn’t notice. His head bowed, all traces of sunny, irreverent Blake gone. In its place was a darker, brooding version of himself that had Farrah’s heart aching and wondering what, exactly, had happened to him in the time they were apart.
