Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
“It’s all true,” I told her, my stomach fluttering again. “I had no idea how heroic your brother could look in a headlamp.”
She laughed. “He does love his manly accessories.”
I grabbed a couple of root beers out of the cooler to go with lunch before heading for the garage across the street. A horn honked when I didn’t move quickly enough over the sweltering crosswalk, and I tried to pick up the pace, but my feet wanted to drag. I’d already slain one dragon today. Did I really have to face this one so soon?
You’ve wanted to talk to him for days. Don’t chicken out now.
It had taken years to perfect my ability to avoid things and people, and now I was trying to quit cold turkey? What would I even say? “Hey Wade, want to stop ignoring me and jump into a more comfortable bed together? Naked?”
Two of the overhead doors were open, so I bypassed the office entrance and went straight into the garage. Like the icehouse, it was equipped with strategically placed fans that made the air feel a good twenty degrees cooler, and I sighed in instant relief.
This place hadn’t changed much either. The original owner had framed in one end of the large steel building, adding a front desk/waiting area, an office and a restroom, plus the small apartment upstairs. When Wade bought the garage, he’d framed half the area above all four service bays to create storage for parts, tires, tools and equipment. The addition had been expensive but necessary if he wanted to keep up with and compete with the dealerships.
I looked around at the cars in various states of repair. An older sedan hovered above me on a lift, and a newer-looking SUV with its hood up was connected to some kind of diagnostic computer, but nobody was working on either of them.
I could imagine Wade in here, bent over to show off that fine ass as he diagnosed my car’s problem and offered me a special kind of payment plan.
Stop perving and give the man his food.
I crouched down to peer under the nearest car, looking for a pair of familiar size-thirteen boots. “Wade?”
13
WADE
“Damn it, Bernie,” I muttered as I scrubbed the worst of the dirt and grease off my hands at the utility sink.
She’d called to say she was sending August over with a late lunch for me in a few minutes and hung up before I had a chance to ask why. Dalton was there now—she could have sent it back with him. Since she hadn’t and she was a natural born shit-stirrer, it made me think that August was pissed at being railroaded into working without warning, and Bernie thought a lunchtime confrontation might be funny.
This day kept getting better.
I’d done more than drop August into a post-hurricane circus, which by all accounts she was handling like a pro. I’d also been steering clear of her for the last day or so—for both our sakes. I was genuinely up to my neck in fires to put out, but I’d also needed time to think about everything that had happened that night. To rework my plan, since a friendly, helpful neighbor didn’t usually admit to staying away from a woman for years because he wanted her.
Because it made you sound obsessed and might scare her?
Maybe a little.
But she hadn’t been that scared, and she’d let me in too. More than she’d planned to, at any rate. All I’d known about her writing up to that point was that she hadn’t had a release out that I could purchase in a while, and Morgan was worried. Now I’d seen how much she’d been struggling with it, and blaming herself for things she had no control over. Knowing her sister and mine like I did, I was astonished neither one of them had dragged her out, whether she was reluctant or not, to go dancing or to one of those wine-and-painting parties they took each other to whenever one of them was in a funk. Maybe they didn’t realize how much better she was doing now.
That night, in the dark, I’d told her about Cody and the race. I might have shared more, but then I was touching her, and she was enjoying it. If Lucy hadn’t shown up when he did, I might not have been able to stop myself from taking more. She’d wanted me to take more. I could see it, plain as day.
But he had shown up, so I’d spent the night caught between heaven and hell, offering her a job instead of pulling her into my arms, too aware that clothes weren’t the only obstacles still between us. There were years of distance. Our family complications. My tendency to hold back and hers to rabbit and run away. She wasn’t ready for what I wanted. I didn’t know if she’d ever be.