“Great.” I move over to her side and open the door for her.

Her eyes travel up my body to my face. She says, “What are you doing?”

“Being a gentleman.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I know I don’t need to.” I keep the door open and nod toward the opening. “Come on. Get in.”

Tentatively and skeptically, she maneuvers into the car. When she’s settled, she glances back at me. I smile, and she nervously nods. As I shut her door, it makes me wonder who made her so jaded.

From the quick rundown Mika gave me, I know he met her at Stockings, she moved to the city recently to begin a new chapter in her life, and she’s not a fan of her current job. Given all those factors, I’m wondering what made her run away from the life she was living.

Not something I need to find out right now though.

Once she’s in, I shut the door and then round the front of the Jeep and get in on my side. Once the address is plugged in, we head off.

“I’ve never been in a Jeep Wrangler before,” she says, looking around. “Very utilitarian. Nothing fancy about it.”

“That’s why I like it. It has everything I need without a lot of the fluff.”

“Do you ever take it off-roading?”

“Sometimes,” I say.

“Do you ever scale rocky cliffs like it shows in the Jeep commercials?”

“No,” I answer as I stop at a stop sign and wait for a lady pushing a stroller to walk by. “But I did drive over a trash can once. It was small, but I felt cool doing it.”

“Wow, really living on the edge over there. My fake husband is a genuine thrill seeker.”

I chuckle. “I am. I like doing things like bungee jumping and skydiving.”

“Really?” she asks, surprised.

“Yeah. Why so shocked?”

“Because you’re telling me that you’re bored, hence this current situation. Why don’t you skydive or do more bungee jumping, things like that?”

“That’s something I do for special occasions. It’s not an everyday thing. And it’s not that I’m bored. It’s that I just want new experiences is all.”

“Yeah, but with your money, you could go off to Africa and help build schools. There’s experience there. Why are you staying here, in New York, when you could literally go anywhere in the world?”

I grip the steering wheel tighter and say, “I can’t leave here for long.”

“Why not?” she asks.

“Because of Mika,” I answer as I stop at a light.

“Oh,” she says, and I can see her working through the information. She knows what I’m talking about. She’s stayed by his side through the mental health struggles he’s dealt with.