Free Getting Lucky by Erin Nicholas Page A

had a very nice conversation with an older couple at the truck-stop diner. They were interesting too. You’re not the first.” But he was the one whose lap she wanted to curl up in while he told her all of his stories.
    Hmm. He might not be so far off on the crazy thing.
    He frowned. “You just strike up conversations with strangers at truck stops?”
    She didn’t comment on the fact that he was acting protective again, but she did absorb it. She wasn’t the type to need someone to be protective. She wasn’t used to it at all and logically thought it was very likely to make her feel claustrophobic pretty quickly.
    Still, his comment made her feel warm.
    “I strike up conversations with people almost everywhere I go.” She’d inherited that from her mother. “Truck stops have the most interesting mix of people to talk to.”
    “That’s not safe.” He said it with exasperation.
    “I don’t take candy from them,” she said with a smile. “I talk to them. I don’t tell them personal details, I don’t leave with them and I don’t give them my phone number. I just talk to them.”
    “Still, they could— Whatever.” He shook his head. “Don’t care.”
    He was trying not to care, she’d give him that. But she thought he was kind of failing. And that, stupidly, made her feel even warmer.
    “I’ve heard some amazing stories,” she said. “I’ll tell you a few if you’re nice. I’ll tell you about the guy who taught piano lessons for almost forty years before he finally made it to Carnegie Hall. I’ll tell you about the woman I met who has lived for a year in every state in the United States. Or the couple who has run a marathon on every continent.”
    “I won’t be that nice.”
    She didn’t know if he meant to be funny, but he was. “You’ll find that I’m interesting too.”
    “Sure. That’s one word. And I don’t want to be interested.”
    “Okay.” She shrugged. “So tell me more about your monkey. Tell me she’s a big old ugly gorilla.”
    “I don’t want to talk about my ex -monkey.”
    “I’ll keep my shirt on if you agree to tell me.”
    “It’s my shirt.”
    “I can put mine back on,” she offered, looking at the wet wad at their feet.
    It was white. Putting it on would be like standing in front of him naked.
    Clearly, he knew that.
    “Why do you want to talk about her?”
    Because she might be becoming a little fixated on him. “What kind of monkey is she? An orangutan? A baboon?”
    The corner of his lips twitched again. “She’s whatever type of monkey Curious George is.”
    Hope frowned even though his sort-of smile made her stomach flip. “He was pretty cute.”
    “Yep,” TJ agreed.
    Oh, great, so the ex was cute.
    “And a huge troublemaker,” TJ said. “Cute only goes so far.”
    She studied his face. He didn’t look heartbroken right now. He looked mildly annoyed. That meant he didn’t hate this woman. She reminded him of a cute, if somewhat troublesome little monkey. Great.
    “But you’re divorced. So the cute didn’t go far enough,” Hope pointed out.
    “We’re divorced because she fell in love with someone else.”
    Oh. Well, shit. Still, she couldn’t help it—she wanted to keep him talking. “So why are you still cleaning up after her?”
    His jaw tightened for just a moment, but then he said easily, “She calls me to piss him off.”
    “Does it work?”
    “Every time.”
    “Why do you keep answering?”
    “Because I don’t care if he’s pissed off.”
    Seriously, this was interesting. How could he not see that? “What kind of cleanup jobs are we talking here?”
    He sighed.
    “I can take this shirt right back off.” She raised the hem a couple of inches.
    He rolled his eyes. “She gets into squabbles in public.”
    “Squabbles? Like arguments?”
    “Like someone ends up with beer dumped on their heads.”
    Hope felt her eyes widen. “What else?”
    “She gets stranded by her friends at bars, she runs out of gas, she gets