She Fell for Her Stepbrother, Then Found Out She Was Pregnant novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Same Car

Two hours to Dayton in his car, a fight that turns honest, a rainy curb and his hand at her back; the only room left in the hotel has one bed.

We were twenty minutes outside Columbus before either of us said a word.

Caleb drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.

I sat against the passenger door with my laptop on my knees, pretending to read the freight sheet.

The car smelled of coffee and his soap.

For two days I had rehearsed what I would say to him when we were finally alone.

Now I had nothing.

"The warehouse manager has a gap in the pick sheets," I said at last. "I think the flooring got logged under the old SKU."

"I think so too."

"Then why did you say it was a freight problem?"

"Because I wanted you to find the SKU problem on your own."

I turned my head and stared at him.

"You wanted me to find it."

"You would have anyway. It would have been better if you'd done it in front of Paul Whitaker and your father instead of me doing it for you."

"You humiliated me in front of the whole room."

"I know."

"That's all you've got? I know?"

His hands tightened on the wheel.

"What do you want me to say, Lena? That I was wrong? I was wrong. I should have sent you a message first."

"You don't send me messages. You send me corrections."

"Because corrections are the only thing you read."

"Because they're the only thing you write!"

The words came out louder than I intended, and they bounced around the car and settled.

The wipers started up, because it had begun to rain.

"Why do you argue with me in every meeting?" I said. My voice had dropped. "Honestly. I want to know."

Caleb watched the road for a long time.

"Because you're the only one who fights back," he said.

It was not the answer I expected.

I didn't have a reply ready, so I looked out at the grey fields and let it sit.

Somewhere past Springfield he reached over without looking and turned the heat up on my side.

He would have done that for anyone, I told myself.

I knew he wouldn't have.

The Dayton distribution center was a long steel building behind a chain-link fence, and by the time we pulled in the rain was coming down hard.

The manager met us under the loading awning with a clipboard.

He looked like he had been dreading this visit all week.

For three hours Caleb and I walked the aisles in borrowed hard hats, reading pallet tags.

I found the mislabeled flooring in aisle forty-one, eight hundred boxes of oak, logged under a product code the company had stopped using two years ago.

Caleb stood beside me and read the tags over my shoulder.

"That's it," he said quietly. "That's the whole problem."

"I said that in the car."

"You did."

He looked at me and his mouth moved.

He wanted to say something, and he was fighting it.

"Good," he said instead, and went to find the manager.

I stood in the aisle with a box of oak flooring at my elbow, feeling absurdly pleased.

It was past six when we finished.

The manager walked us out under the awning, where the lot had become a lake.

Caleb had parked at the far end, and I started across before he could offer an umbrella.

I didn't get far.

A delivery truck came around the building, too fast, and the wave from its tire came across the pavement at me.

A hand closed around my waist from behind and yanked me backward.

I hit his chest.

The wave broke over the exact spot where I had been standing.

Caleb's palm was spread flat at the small of my back, and his other arm had come around in front of me.

He was warm all the way down my spine.

I could feel him breathing.

"You okay?" he said, near my ear.

"I'm fine."

"You nearly walked into that."

"I'm fine, Caleb."

He didn't let go.

Neither did I move away.

The rain hammered the awning, and for a moment the whole world was the heat of his hand through my wet blouse, and his chest, and a heartbeat that wasn't mine.

His fingers flexed once against my back.

Then he stepped away and cleared his throat.

"Car's this way," he said.

His voice was rough.

I followed him without a word, and I did not look at his hands.

The hotel was twelve minutes away, a tall beige building off the highway with a lit sign that flickered.

The woman at the front desk had red-rimmed eyes and a lanyard, and she looked like she had been fielding complaints since noon.

"Reservations for Brooks Mercer," Caleb said. "Two rooms, one night."

She typed for a long time.

Then she frowned at the screen.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "The second floor flooded this afternoon, a burst pipe, and we had to close eleven rooms. One of yours was on that floor."

"We're out of rooms?"

"We have one." She looked up, apologetic. "A king. It's the last one in the building."

Behind me, I felt Caleb go absolutely still.

"There's a conference in town," she said. "Everything else within twenty miles is full. I checked twice."

I turned my head and looked up at him.

His face was blank, and he was looking at the wall above the clerk, and a muscle was jumping in his jaw.

"We'll take it," I said.

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