Hot Driver - S01 E04

Story 1 day ago

Hot Driver - S01 E04

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 4

Rodriguez Mansion — Afternoon

The Rodriguez mansion was the kind of home that suggested its owners had discovered, midway through the architectural process, that they were enjoying themselves too much to stop — spacious, warm, bright.

Tyler Rodriguez — twenty-eight, broad, laughing in spite of himself — rounded the kitchen island for the second time, leather belt held loosely in one hand, making zero effort to actually look threatening.

“I said,” he called, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice and failing entirely, “that the remote was on my side—”

“Your side of the couch does not legally exist, Tyler—”

Abigail Bennett-Rodriguez — twenty-five, all warmth and quick feet and her mother’s eyes in her older sister’s face — darted around the island and through the kitchen doorway, shrieking with laughter.

She was in a yellow sundress, her hair loose, and in every visible way she was the happiest she had ever been in her life, including the fact that her husband was chasing her with a belt because of a television remote.

Tyler caught her at the bottom of the stairs, and they were both laughing, completely, entirely — when the sound of a car horn cut through the house. Once. Twice.

Then a third time, long and impatient, with a distinctive I have arrived and I expect acknowledgment quality that was immediately recognizable.
They both froze.

Tyler straightened. Tucked the belt away. Smoothly. Reached for Abigail, pulled her close, wrapped one arm around her shoulders, and began stroking her cheek with the calm, deliberate tenderness of a man who had absolutely not, moments ago, been chasing his wife around the kitchen.
The front door opened.

Ivory walked in — heels, suit, sunglasses she hadn’t yet removed, phone in one hand, with the specific energy of someone doing four things mentally while appearing to do only one.

She stopped. Looked at Tyler’s arm around Abigail. Looked at Abigail’s slightly flushed face. Looked at the suspiciously deliberate quality of their pose.

“Please,” she said, removing her sunglasses. “I’ve had a day. I do not need you two being rosy and lovey-dovey in my direct face the moment I walk through the door.”

“We were just standing here,” Tyler said.

“You were never just standing there, Tyler, you don’t have a just standing there setting.” She crossed the room and hugged Abigail properly, squeezing her once. She pulled back, and her eyes — a fraction more honest now, away from the office, away from the performance — moved over her sister’s face with the subtle, searching attention of someone looking for things that weren’t being said. “You look thin, Abi.”

Abigail laughed. “I’m not thin.”

“Thinner.” Ivory looked at Tyler. “Are you feeding her?”

“Every day,” Tyler said, with such immediate earnestness that it was either entirely genuine or extremely practised. Possibly both.

“Hmm.” Ivory looked between them. Her eyes lingered on Abigail for one more second — the question she would ask in a different moment, alone, without Tyler present, waiting just behind her teeth. Then she released it for now and moved toward the kitchen. “Does anyone have coffee that actually has sugar in it? Mine didn’t this morning and the day has never recovered.”

Brooke Residence — Evening

When Duane came home, he smelled of restaurant and cooking oil, and he kicked off his shoes at the door with the sigh of a man shedding a day.

Celeste was in the kitchen. She had been there for twenty minutes since getting home from her cleaning job, moving between the stove and the counter with the focused energy of someone preparing a meal out of limited ingredients and unlimited intention.

She turned when he came in.

Duane read her face immediately — because he always read his mother’s face immediately.

There was something there. Something contained and trembling, the specific look of good news being kept on a leash until the right moment.

“Mama,” he said slowly. “What happened?”

“Sit down,” she said.

He sat.

She told him about the call. About the Bennetts. About the position. About the salary.

When she said the number, Duane went still.

Then he said it back, as a question.
She nodded.

He sat with it for a moment — the number, the weight of what it would mean. Luis’s school fees. The cracked phone screen. The gate that squeaked. The washing line.
“Who are the Bennetts?” he asked.

“Who are the—” Celeste looked at him. “Duane. The Bennetts. Arthur Bennett. Bennett Holdings.”

He nodded slowly. He knew the name. Everyone in Creston City knew the name.

“Their daughter,” Celeste continued.

“The eldest one. She drives — apparently she drives like she has a death wish and they’ve decided she needs someone to drive her. The mother was very kind on the phone.” A pause. “She said the daughter is… particular.”

“Particular,” he repeated.

“Her word.”

He thought about it for exactly the length of time it took him to look at his mother’s face — at the hope she was trying not to show too much of, at the careful way she was holding herself.

“When do I start?” he said.
_

Bennett’s Mansion — The Next Morning

The morning was bright and efficient, the kind of day that had the decency to be presentable.

The guard at the front gate appeared at the mansion’s main entrance at eight-fifteen with the specific posture of someone delivering information they know will generate reactions.

“Ma’am. Sir. The new driver is here.”

The Bennett family appeared in various configurations. Mrs. Bennett came through the front doors with her warm, early-morning composure, Diana in a cream trouser set, pearl earrings already in place. Hazel followed in her school uniform, pigtails, one sock pulled higher than the other, finishing the last of a piece of toast.

Arthur Bennett came last — upright, unsmiling, hands clasped behind his back, with the expression of a man who had agreed to something he found mildly distasteful but logistically necessary.

And Ivory came through the door behind them all, pulling on her blazer with the economic efficiency of someone running seven minutes behind schedule, phone in one hand, bag over her shoulder, sunglasses already on.

The young man standing at the edge of the driveway, beside the black company car.

Hazel stopped walking.

She stood there with her piece of toast halfway to her mouth and simply stared.

He was tall. Broader in the morning light than a person reasonably had any right to be. He stood with the relaxed, easy posture of someone completely comfortable in whatever space he occupied — hands at his sides, a light jacket over a plain white shirt, dark trousers, clean trainers.

His face — even from here, even across the width of the driveway — was the kind of face that registered before you had made a conscious decision to look at it.

“Oh,” Hazel said, very quietly, to no one. The toast remained forgotten.

Diana Bennett, beside her, pressed her lips together in the specific way of a woman suppressing amusement. The young man looked up at their approach and smiled — natural, easy, warm — and Diana felt the very human and entirely involuntary softening that occurred in response to genuinely good-natured energy.

Well, she thought. He seems lovely.

Arthur looked at the young man with the flat, assessing efficiency of a man pricing livestock.

Poor, was the singular, complete content of Arthur’s thought. He said nothing.

Ivory had been texting. She crossed the driveway without looking up, reached the driver, held out her hand sideways without making eye contact.

she placed the car keys in his palm.

“Excuse me,” he said, and his voice was low and even and unhurried.

“The keys are for me.”

She looked up.

Duane Brooke looked back at her.

The look on his face was not submission. It was not deference. It was the particular, maddening, specific look of someone who was entirely at ease and had decided, before this interaction began, that they were going to remain that way.

She looked him over. Slowly. With the comprehensive, dismissive attention of someone assessing a purchase they hadn’t approved.

His clothes were clean. His shoes were clean. His shirt was pressed. But they were not expensive. They were simply — present. And his posture, and his face, and the unhurried set of his jaw — all of it said, with absolute clarity, I am not afraid of you.

Ivory held his gaze for three seconds.

Then she walked to the passenger side — the back seat — and got in.

Duane exchanged greetings with the family with the easy, genuine warmth of someone who meant them. He shook Arthur’s hand — Arthur, who had not offered his hand, found it being shaken anyway, which was a small miracle of social confidence.

He smiled at Hazel, who responded by saying absolutely nothing and turning slightly pink. He nodded respectfully to Diana, who said, “Drive safely, and please excuse our daughter, she takes time to warm up,” to which he simply smiled.

Then he got in the car.

He adjusted the mirror. Started the engine.
He saw her in the reflection — dark eyes, already looking at him with an expression like something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe.

He said nothing. Pulled out of the driveway. Turned onto the road.

The silence held for forty-five seconds.

Which was forty-five seconds longer than Ivory had patience for.

“You didn’t greet me,” she said.

“Good morning,” he said, without looking away from the road.

“That’s not when I meant.”

“I know,” he said pleasantly.
She looked at the back of his head. At the easy, settled set of his shoulders. At the way he drove — completely calm, one hand on the wheel, like the car was an extension of something he wasn’t bothered by.

It was deeply irritating.

“Next time,” she said, “when you arrive at a client’s home, you greet everyone present. That includes the client.”

“You were on your phone,” he said.
“I beg your—”

“You were on your phone,” he repeated. Same tone. No aggression. Just fact. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Her jaw tightened.

She looked out the window.

She looked back at him.

She raised her hand.

It happened quickly and didn’t happen at all — because his right hand left the steering wheel and closed around her wrist with a calm, complete certainty, not tightly, just there, like a sentence being stopped mid-word.

The car didn’t swerve. He hadn’t even looked back.

He held her wrist for exactly two seconds. Then he released it. Returned his hand to the wheel.

“Wanna slap this handsome face?” he said, and he was smiling — she could see it in the mirror, small and and absolutely maddening and disgusting. “That’s a taboo.”
Ivory stared at the back of his head.

He kept driving.

“You—”
“Ivy Fashion Empire, right?” he said easily. “About twenty minutes from here. I’ll get you there.”

She sat back in her seat.

She was furious.