“Blaire.”
“What?”
“Stop it.”
“This has gone on long enough, Walker.”
I know where this is going, and I’m not heading that direction. “I swear I’ll hang up on you.”
She groans in the line. “If Mom were here, she’d tell you the same thing.” With the reference to our mother, the octave of her voice drops and you can almost hear the mortal side of her that we don’t see often.
“But she’s not,” I almost whisper.
“I miss them, Walk.”
Blaire’s admission makes me gulp. Of course she misses our parents. We all do. None of us expected them to not come home that Fourth of July. We didn’t know they’d be hit in their boat and capsize, losing their lives on Lake Michigan. I know she misses them. I do too. But to hear her, the stoic one, the real badass of the family despite Machlan’s attempts to prove otherwise, say it out loud throws me for a loop.
“I thought of her yesterday,” she says, a lump clearly in her throat. “There was a woman her age with the same long, black hair in the courthouse. She laughed a high, almost singing sound, and my stomach hit the floor. I couldn’t stop looking at her . . .”
“It’s almost her birthday,” I say softly. “Dad would start bugging her right about now, asking her what she wanted.”
“And she’d say she already had it.” Blaire sighs into the phone. “I gotta go. I’m meeting a client in twenty minutes and I haven’t even found a cab yet.”
“It’s ten o’clock at night, Blaire.”
“So it is,” she sighs again. “Talk to you later.”
“Be careful. Love ya, sis.”
“Love you. Bye.”
The phone slides across the counter, hitting the napkin dispenser before stopping. The stranger takes another long draw of his drink, his fourth since I got here. Maybe I’m just not going at it hard enough.
Picking at the label on the bottle in front of me again, I allow my mind to go to the place it wants to go every time I stop purposefully focusing on something else—to Sienna.
I can’t make heads or tails of this woman. She’s too easy. Too sweet. Too confident. I’ve never seen a woman with the guts she has to do things like she does. I just don’t know what to do with her.
The money is one thing. There’s no way I can afford to go in the red on that kind of cash on a regular basis, although I see why she did it and I kind of love her heart for it. I wouldn’t have charged Dave anyway and MaryAnn’s husband would’ve worked off whatever their insurance didn’t pay. But I’m still on the hook and can’t afford to be out this much again. My customers’ money keeps the lights on.
All of that is fair enough, but not the reason I try to shove it out of my mind. I try not to think about it because as much as I tell myself to be angry with her, I can’t. Every time I tell myself to find a way to get a hold of her and tell her not to come in tomorrow, I don’t. Each attempt I make to convince myself she’s a potential thorn in my life that I really don’t need right now, I fail.
The proposition of her coming into Crank to help is idiotic and driving me mad. Will she come? Will she not? Will she be even more impossible to shake off or finally bare some flaw I can’t overlook? All afternoon, it’s been a series of questions, of “what-ifs,” of the dumbest fucking scenarios that I have no business toying with.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, tipping the rest of the beer back. It slides down my throat with ease, the cool liquid pooling in my gut and joining the churn.
“Fuck what? Actually, let me guess. Peck gave me a head start,” Machlan snickers. “Seems as if you’re gonna have a helper in the shop.”
“Not my idea,” I point out. “It was Peck’s.”
“He said you weren’t exactly against it. And I can’t see what there is to be against if he painted the picture accurately.”
Ignoring his leading, I keep things factual. “She owes me a lot of money,” I explain. “And it just seemed . . .”
“ . . . like a good idea. You don’t have to admit that out loud because I might tell somebody, I get it. Lips are sealed.”
I motion for another beer and wait until he places it in front of me. “It’s a terrible idea. There’s nothing good that can come out of this,” I say more to myself than to him.
“Well, based on Peck’s description, I can think of lots of good things to come out of that,” he grins.
“You know what I fucking mean.” I stare at him, hoping he drops his angle.
Blowing out a breath, he nods. “I do. I get it. You get her in there helping out and then you like her and God forbid you like someone. That would totally ruin your reputation as the loner.”
Glaring at him, I swipe my phone off the counter and jam it in the pocket of my jeans. “I’d hate for people to confuse the two of us.”
“I was going to suggest letting Peck take a shot at that, but I can see that wouldn’t go over well,” he jokes. When I don’t budge, his lips frown. “Fine. Moving on . . . Let me toss an idea by you.”
“Shoot.”
“The two lots behind the bar are for sale. I was thinking about trying to buy them.”
“For what?” I ask, half in the conversation, half wondering what Sienna is doing.
“I have lots of ideas. We could build a room for meetings and wedding receptions and that shit. We could build a couple of apartments and rent them out.”
Machlan’s talking too fast, his eyes darting around too much to be telling the truth.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re really thinking?” I ask.
“That is what I’m thinking.”
“Sure.” Standing up, I snag a twenty from my pocket and toss it on the bar. “Go get into wedding receptions. Seems right up your alley.”
I wait for him to give in, but he doesn’t. “Have it your way. See ya tomorrow,” I call out.
Stepping out into the late summer heat, I stop and breathe in the warm, humid air. It reminds me of nights at the lake with a girl in my arms and barbecues and homemade ice cream. All things that annoy me to pieces.
FLIPPING DOWN THE VISOR, I silently curse the yellow light illuminating my face. Taking a calming breath, I remind myself I don’t need to look my best. I’m just going in to work off a debt. That’s it.
“Why did I agree to this?” I whine. “You know why you agreed to it. It’s the right thing to do.” Snorting as I run a hand over the top of my head to smooth out a bump in my ponytail, I laugh. “Yeah, it has nothing to do with how sexy he is. Don’t lie to yourself.”
Stomach sloshing as I pick apart my appearance, I set aside the excitement building in my gut and focus on the reflection in the poorly lit mirror. My skin is decent, except for the pimple that decided to spring up during the night. My makeup is light and casual to go with my strategically ripped jeans and short-sleeved red and black plaid shirt with a lacy white cami underneath that took way too long this morning to choose.
“Stop,” I chastise myself, working a strand of hair from the center of one of my large hoop earrings. “You’re here to do the right thing. Walker doesn’t even like you anyway.”
Gathering my phone and lip gloss from the passenger seat, I slip them into my purse and open the car door. If this happened in any normal situation, I would’ve already paid him back by now. But if I tossed him some cash, I think he might actually be offended. Still, knowing enough money is tucked in my wallet to pay for the damage if things go south is a little balm to my uneasiness.
Confidence is one of my best qualities. I can walk into a room of political powerhouses or professional athletes and hold my own. It’s a regularity of my life in Savannah, how I was raised. So why am I walking into a mechanic’s shop in the middle of Illinois and feeling like I’m naked in Times Square?
Ignoring the roiling in my stomach, I take the handle and yank the door open. The chimes I’m already starting to hate ring as I step inside. The air conditioning is a welcome reprieve from the heat. It’s almost as nice as the view sitting at the desk.
A tight black t-shirt grips his muscled frame as Walker sits in the chair and clicks around on a computer. He knows I’m here; there’s no way he doesn’t. But he doesn’t look at me.
I wait a few seconds before finally clearing my throat. “Hello?”
“Hi.” His head doesn’t turn, his eyes unmoving from the screen. He couldn’t pretend to be more bored with my arrival if he tried.
I pick at the hem of my shirt, silently begging him to have mercy on me and just speak. But after almost a minute, it’s obvious he’s not going to.
“Good morning to you too,” I say flatly.
Readjusting my purse on my shoulder, I wait for him to respond. He continues doing whatever it is that he’s doing, and I’m two seconds from walking back out when he shoves away from the desk. The sudden burst of movement startles me. Large arms cross his chest, and his eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them before as they settle on me.
“I didn’t expect you to come today,” he says simply.
“I’m a woman of my word.”
A hint of a smile plays on his lips, but never quite breaks free. I want to ask him why he’s so constrained, why that sentence amuses him, why he didn’t expect me—but I don’t. Instead, I just stare back at him, giving as good as I’m getting.
He gives nothing away with his steady gaze, two-day stubble, and wild hair like his hands have been in it all morning. My heart strums in my chest, each moment that passes without any sort of break in the standoff giving me way too much time to examine him for all the wrong reasons. To smell him. To almost taste the energy spiraling off him in waves.
If I stand here much longer, I might start to pant.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask.