Thrill Ride Read online

  “Me and Megan.” She glanced over at me. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  How could I say no without seeming ungrateful?

  “Sure.” If I’d used a longer word, my response would have been a stammer.

  “So see?” Jordan said to Parker. “You get a free meal out of the deal.”

  “I’m not sure that makes it worth it.”

  “Sure it does,” she said. “Pop the trunk so we can get our bags out.”

  Hardly knowing what else to say or do, I walked around to the back of the car to get my bag. Parker opened the trunk.

  “Good Lord!” he said when he saw all the bags inside.

  He reached in at the same time that I reached in and we bumped heads.

  “Sorry,” we said at the same time, each of us rubbing our respective heads.

  “I just have the one little bag,” I said, pointing and reaching, but he was reaching too and somehow with us both grabbing it, the shirt fell out.

  “Sorry,” he said again, quicker at grabbing it than I was.

  It unfolded as he was lifting it out. Then he was staring at it, a grin forming over his face, before looking at me.

  I snatched it from his fingers. “It was Jordan’s idea.”

  His grin grew. “But you’re going to be the one wearing it. Are you too hot to handle?”

  “You’ll never know.”

  His grin faded and I bit my lower lip. Why had I said that? Why was I so touchy whenever he was around?

  Because he belonged to Jordan, but didn’t act like it, and I belonged to Nick, but had a hard time remembering that whenever this guy was around.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled again, but I don’t know if he heard me. He was too busy gathering up all of Jordan’s bags and carrying them to his car.

  And now I was going to have to spend the evening fixing this guy supper?

  Could life get any more complicated?

  Chapter 10

  It could.

  Or if not more complicated, it was definitely beginning to feel out of control.

  The reason Jordan had so desperately wanted to swap cars with Parker was because she had an appointment to get a manicure and pedicure, and since we were running late, she didn’t have time to drop me off at the dorm. So by default, since they had an opening, I got a manicure and pedicure as well.

  The place where we went was called the Salons of Indulgence. It was actually a lot of little rooms in this main building, and different things happened in different rooms. And of course, Jordan had appointments lined up in several of the rooms.

  “You don’t have to get an eyebrow waxing,” she said after we were finished at the nail salon. Then she leaned toward me. “But what can it hurt? Just a little more shaping than you have now.”

  I stood by the doorway and watched as she laid back in the recliner and the woman waxed her brows. I’d never actually had a waxing done. But it looked relatively painless.

  When Jordan was finished, I decided what the heck. Plucking my eyebrows was a tedious chore anyway, so I took a turn.

  Ow! I was wrong. It did hurt! And the reason it hurt was because she’d removed a good portion of my eyebrows.

  I stared in the mirror when she was finished.

  “You have a natural arch,” she said with an accent from some Scandanavian country. “You weren’t taking advantage of it. See how much bigger your eyes look now? The men will be dazzled.”

  “I don’t need to dazzle men,” I grumbled. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “Then he will be charmed.”

  “She’s right,” Jordan said. “Your eyes really do stand out now.”

  “My brows are still tingling.”

  “That’ll stop soon, and if it doesn’t, you can put some ice on them when we get back to the dorm. But honestly, next week, it’ll hurt even less.”

  “Next week?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Monday maintenance is a weekly ritual for me. Since we’re both off, you’re more than welcome to come along, only next time we’ll make appointments for you.”

  Monday maintenance? Geez.

  “Once a month I do hair, facial, and massage,” she added.

  I shook my head. “Jordan, I can’t afford to do this weekly. A haircut and an occasional manicure are really about all my budget can handle.”

  “Daddy gave me a credit card to use on anything I wanted. I can use it to pay for your stuff, too.”

  Was she crazy?

  “Thanks, Jordan, but I’m not going to have your dad pay for my stuff.”

  “Why not?”

  I couldn’t believe she was asking.

  “Because I believe in paying my own way.”

  “He won’t mind, Megan. Money is so not an object with him.”

  “Well, it’s an object with me. I’ll join you when I can, but not every week.”

  “Okay,” she said, a little sadness in her voice, “but if you change your mind…he said I was supposed to use the card to have fun, and spending time with you is fun.”

  “If your dad is paying for so much, why are you even working this summer?” I asked, hoping that I didn’t sound rude.

  “The experience. I don’t want to be too spoiled. Besides, it’s nice to have money of my own, you know?”

  Yeah, I knew, but hanging around with Jordan, I wasn’t going to hold on to it for long.

  I’d barely dropped my stuff on my bed when Jordan announced that we didn’t have much time to get ready.

  “We need to go grocery shopping for tonight’s dinner,” she said before disappearing into the bathroom.

  I heard the shower. What a tornado of activity!

  But she was also a lot of fun, in a frenzied kind of way.

  I thought about changing into the shirt I’d bought today, but decided it conveyed a message that I definitely didn’t want Parker taking the wrong way. Especially since he’d already seen it.

  I tried to think of an excuse to get out of helping with the dinner, without looking weird, but there was no way around it. Any excuse was a definite show of weirdness.

  So after Jordan got out of the shower, I had my turn. Put on a light application of makeup, stared at myself in the mirror. Did a change to the shape of my eyebrows really make that much difference in the way that I looked?

  I looked, gosh, I didn’t know. Prettier?

  Maybe it was the dark green of my tank top. Couldn’t be the white of my shorts. But something sure made me look different. I decided to leave my hair loose, hanging around my face. Maybe it would detract from the radical change in my eyebrows. Did guys even really notice eyebrows?

  On the way to Parker’s, we stopped at this little grocery store. Jordan knew everything about Parker. That he only ate dark meat chicken, never white, which was important because we were going to make chicken and rice. He ate wheat rolls, again, never white. Kernel corn, never creamed. Unsweetened tea, never sweetened. Plain brownies, never double chocolate or iced or chunky chocolate.

  “If it weren’t for his love of roller coasters,” she said, “the guy would be totally dull.”

  I almost told her I didn’t think he was dull at all. But if she thought he was, why did she hang out with him? But I kept my opinion and curiosity to myself.

  After we finished shopping, we drove over to his place. It was only about fifteen minutes from the dorm, but the setting was totally awesome. The house, like a few others that I could see, was set back along the lake, massive trees in front. It was a log cabin with a wide porch that wrapped around the front and sides. Each side had a couple of wicker rockers.

  It was an incredibly peaceful place. No wonder Jordan spent so much time here. It was far away from the madness of the theme park. I couldn’t hear the roller coasters or the screaming riders or the crying kids. As I stepped out of the car, I couldn’t hear anything except the water lapping at the shore and the breeze rustling through the trees.

  “Come on,” Jordan said.

  “What about the groceries?�€