Drive Me Wild. Gwynne Forster

then, our relationship will change for sure with you behind the wheel and me in the back.

      “Will it upset you if I sit in the front seat?” she blurted out.

      A frown furrowed his brow, and his skin lost its rich, brilliant hue. “I…uh…Whatever you’re comfortable with, but that’s kind of irregular, isn’t it?”

      “Justin, in time, you will learn that the only chauffeurs I’m used to are taxi drivers. If we’re going to be working together all the time, it seems silly for us to follow this ridiculous protocol.”

      “It’s not silly, ma’am. It keeps everything between the lines.”

      She thought about that for a moment, and it occurred to her that if she sat in the front seat, he might be uncomfortable, so she said, “All right. Forget it.” In her job at Hilliard and Noyes, she supervised half a dozen clerks of which two were men old enough to be her father, so why did she have this foolish reservation about giving Justin Whitehead orders?

      “We’d better go. The car’s probably waiting downstairs,” she said.

      In the car, Justin sat with the driver, and she wished she could have found a way to avoid having a chauffeur. As they took the exit from the Queensboro Bridge, she made mental comparisons between the poverty and ugliness surrounding her and the beauty and elegance observable from the window of her new Park Avenue apartment. Paper, glass, cans and debris littered the streets, and every building appeared to need attention if not repair. Living quarters shared premises with grocery stores, convenience stores and fish markets. Cars and buses wrestled for right of way and overhead trains rambled along polluting the area with their noise.

      New Yorkers lived in separate worlds, and she’d wager that most of the people milling around on Queens Plaza had never set foot on Park Avenue between Forty-third and Ninety-second Streets, the province of the rich. Nor, she suspected, had her new neighbors ever walked on the pavements of Queens Plaza. Did Justin live in such a neighborhood? She didn’t think so. He looked and carried himself as if he knew nothing of poverty. But it was almost second nature to her, for she had lived next door to it most of her life, and before her mother’s death, she’d lived in the midst of it.

      The car stopped, and she got out before Justin could open the door for her. He stared down at her. “Are you trying to do my job?”

      “Am I…what? Of course not, but I can take just so much of this.” She smiled to take the bite out of her words. “Look.” She pointed to the silver-gray Town Car at the front of the lot. “I wonder if that’s ours.” Why did he stare at her like that?

      His expression softened when he grinned. “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” His fingers clasped her arm. “Let’s go inside.”

      Fifteen minutes later, she sat in the back seat of her new luxury limousine. “Is there any place along here that we can eat? Getting lunch in Manhattan is always such a big deal.”

      “There are some great Chinese and Italian restaurants a few blocks from here. Which would you prefer?”

      “How about something Italian? One of these days, I’m going to Florence, Italy. I just love Italian food.”

      “That makes two of us.”

      Justin brought the car to a halt in front of an Italian restaurant favored by the locals and looked at Gina. “That’s the restaurant, but there’s no parking space. Perhaps you’d like to get out here. I’ll find a place to park and be back in a few minutes.”