Page 26 of The Law of Attraction
“So you’re afraid of failure. Or is it hard work?”
She could tell she’d scored a point from the way he bristled. “Neither.”
“But you never try to learn new skills because you won’t be good at them at first?”
“I’ve found you a car!” the agent announced as Adam opened his mouth to reply.
Olivia pasted on her brightest smile before turning back to the counter. “That’s amazing! Thank you so much!”
“The closest one I could find is up at our Farmers Branch location, about twenty minutes away.”
“That’s okay,” Olivia told him. “We can get a cab or something.”
“I switched your original reservation over, so they’re holding a car in your name.”
“Thank you so much! You’re a real lifesaver!” She threw a pointed glare at Adam.
“Yes, thank you,” he said to Glen, dredging up a smile. “We really appreciate it.”
“Have a good day!” Olivia chirped and offered Glen a wave goodbye. “See?” she told Adam as they walked toward the taxi line. “You are capable of being friendly.”
Between the wait in the airport taxi line and rush hour traffic, it took them more like forty-five minutes to get to the Farmers Branch rental car office. But they made it, and there was in fact a car waiting for them, just like Glen had promised.
“It’s not much of a car, is it?” Adam observed as he opened the hatchback trunk of the Honda Fit they’d been assigned.
It was pretty small, Olivia agreed. And it looked like it had seen better days. But it was theirs, at least.
“It’s a car,” she said as she hefted her suitcase into the back. “It’ll do the job.”
“Will it? I’m afraid the hamsters will crap out on the open highway.”
Olivia stared at him with an expression of shock. “Oh my god. Did you just make a joke?”
“I do actually have a sense of humor,” he said as he slammed the hatch closed.
“My data doesn’t support that thesis.”
“Seriously though, what if Barbie decides she wants her car back?” he deadpanned, and Olivia’s stomach did a giddy flip-flop. He was even hotter when he was being funny, which was really unfair.
She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the Texas summer sun, but really it was to shield them from Adam’s face. “Barbie drives a Corvette. She wouldn’t be caught dead in this.”
“Smart woman.”
“Want me to drive?”
His hands clenched around the keys like she might try to take them from him. “I can do it.”
“It’s my home state, you know. I’m used to the highways here.” It wasn’t that she wanted to drive—she didn’t, actually—it was the fact that he didn’t want to let her that rankled.
“Highways are highways.”
“Who’s the control freak now?” she muttered under her breath.
“What?” Adam asked, shooting her a narrow glance.
She gave him her fakest of fake smiles. “Nothing.”
They got in the car, and he plugged the address of their hotel into his phone’s GPS and let it direct them out of town. Unfortunately, the rental car place was on the north side of the city and they needed to go south, which meant driving through the most congested part of Dallas smack in the middle of rush hour.
