by Taryn Quinn
He’d believed she wasn’t that superficial. Perhaps he was wrong.
About a lot of things.
There was no denying he had strong feelings for her. First as a friend, then as a lover. Somehow she’d slipped into the girlfriend role in his mind, and clearly that wasn’t in the cards. If she believed he’d keep lying indefinitely, evidently she hadn’t been paying attention last night. Good—fine, amazing—sex wasn’t worth losing his self-respect. He’d already done that once by marrying a woman he didn’t love for the sake of a child that didn’t exist. Months later, he’d yet to shake the betrayal that came from being played. And the disappointment of losing a child he’d never truly had but had come to love.
Now there was a new disappointment and new lies. Worst of all, he’d been complicit in them. Instead of looking deeper into why Sara wanted to keep things private, he’d taken her at face value. Obviously he hadn’t learned anything from the Darla situation.
At least he knew Sara wouldn’t try to trap him in a relationship. She didn’t want one, not with him.
So much for hoping that she’d swiftly see the idiocy of her plan to hide their relationship behind closed doors. She could say she didn’t want to chance ruining their freewheeling lifestyle in the house, but she’d done that all on her own. He needed to end things now before she ruined their friendship too.
He pushed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans—mainly to keep from punching the wall—and headed upstairs. By the time he reached the top and glimpsed Sara shivering in his doorway, wearing a towel and a grimace, his anger had ignited from simmering to full boil.
“Brad,” she said, her already huge eyes widening. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Kim turned unsteadily, and he reached out to grab her elbow while she struggled to balance herself. “Yeah, well, you know how it is when you’re doing the walk of shame. Gotta be quiet.” His smile strained his cheeks. “Didn’t expect there to be a party in my doorway either.”
“Walk of shame? I thought you had to fix Sara’s car.” Kim looked back and forth between them, her dark brows fused together. “And I saw your truck in the drive last night.”
“I borrowed it,” Sara put in, still giving him that pleading look that made him feel like nails lined his throat. “While Brad worked on my car. Right?”
“Sure thing.” He couldn’t believe he was such an idiot. He’d even hummed on his walk to the shop this morning. Boy, he never learned, did he?
“How is it?” Sara asked. “All fixed?”
“Just a dead battery, clogged filter and some corrosion. I took care of it.”
“Thank you so much. What do I owe you?”
Terrific. Now she was going to piss him off by offering to pay for his work on her car, because you know, he needed every spare dime. He was practically indigent compared to the big fancy doc, right?
“Doubt you’ll ever be able to repay me, Sara Smile,” he said in his own equally loud voice. Did Sara think that shouting would add veracity to her story? Kim didn’t look like she was buying it, and he’d be damned if he helped Sara one iota. Not when she’d had the perfect opportunity to be honest, and yet again she’d shafted him without benefit of lube.
He strode up the hall and shifted around her to get into his room. As he squeezed past, he pinched her ass and she jumped. “Might want to get dressed, Doc. You’ll catch another cold.”
As he closed the door in their faces, Kim demanded, “Did he grab your ass?”
“No. Of course not. He, ah, stepped on my foot.”
His gut twisted as he put as much distance between himself and the door as he could. He took out a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his dresser and slammed it shut. Seemed like he’d be closing the book on a lot of things today.
He rushed through a shower, his only thought to get the hell out of the house before Sara could corner him. He wasn’t interested in talking to her at the moment. Maybe ever.
It was one thing for her to lie, quite another to make him lie to his own sister. And for what? If she was really that ambivalent about seeing him, he should’ve taken no for an answer the first time he’d broached the subject of wanting her. One-way streets weren’t meant for two drivers.
He went through his morning routine and changed into his standard attire—God forbid a guy not wear a suit to work—then stared at his glowering face in the bathroom mirror. In the mood he was in, he’d punch out the first person who questioned a line item on their bill.
Five deep breaths didn’t help, so he tried ten. It took fifteen for the haze behind his eyes to clear. He’d just reached for the doorknob when the knock came, soft and hesitant.
“Brad, it’s me. Can I come in?”
He yanked open the door so abruptly that she almost fell into his arms. “No, because I’m coming out. I have to get to work.”
She righted herself and shook back her long fall of brown hair. Of course she’d had to leave it down so it swirled over the shoulders of her form-fitting navy blue dress. Blue pumps revealed her pink, polished toes—toes that, even now, he wanted to suck on with all the fleeting conviction of a virgin leaving convent school.
“This won’t take long—”
“Neither will this.” He stepped around her and glanced back at her framed in his doorway. The picture she made would remain in his head forever. So defiant and resolute, with only that hint of a quiver in her shiny lower lip. “You were right.” He forced the words out despite the fist locked around his throat. “I shouldn’t have pushed this. It was a mistake, one we need to rectify.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean us.” He chuckled without humor, shaking his head. “Not that there is an us, but for the sake of argument. We’ll end things here and part as friends while we still can.”
Of all possible reactions, he didn’t expect her to back up as if he’d burned her with his words. “If we could—” She blew out a breath that stirred her perfectly arranged bangs. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
No, he didn’t fucking want this, not any of it. If he’d ever guessed she could be so blasé about them, he never would have laid a hand on her. She’d resisted his advances for a while, but he’d been convinced he could get her to see what was right in front of her.
He’d been wrong.
“Is that what you were coming to tell me?” he asked, unable to let it go that easily.
Her throat moved. “No. But it should’ve been.”
He pushed a hand through his damp hair and vowed to get it cut that afternoon. Maybe he’d shave it all off and tattoo something badass on his scalp. Why not? He didn’t have anyone to answer to but himself.
“All right then. I’m out of here.” He turned away and sneezed, then sneezed again.
“Oh no, did I get you sick?”
“No.” He rubbed his nose and pretended his cheeks weren’t on fire. He’d chalked up his temperature to his overly hot shower, but what did he know? Clearly nada. “See ya.”
He’d made it down three steps when her voice stopped him. “Thank you for my car. I started it and she’s running like a dream. Are you sure you don’t want me to pay you?”
He continued down the steps. Looking at her was too damn painful. “No. You’ve already done enough.”
Normally she would’ve avoided Brad until their disagreement faded with the passage of time. Except she happened to have real, strong feelings for him, ones that had made themselves painfully known the instant he’d told her it was over. Plus there were the logistical issues of living with the man who’d broken up with her. Her best friend was acting odd too, which Sara suspected had more to do with her strange behavior outside Brad’s bedroom that morning than Kim’s new boyfriend’s supposed “performance issues”. From what she and Brad had heard last night, he’d performed just fine.
Basically, everything was fucked up, and since she was responsible for some of—most of—the mess, she’d have to figure out how to make things right. Tal
king wouldn’t do it. Empty promises that disappeared when her innate desire to cling to the status quo overrode everything else definitely wouldn’t. She needed to act.
She started with lunch.
At noon, she dropped off five sacks of sandwiches, chips and sodas at O’Halloran’s. When she walked in the door, all conversation stopped like last time. The guys looked up from under the hoods of the cars they were working on and away from their clipboards. And stared.
“Brought some stuff for you all to eat, if anyone’s hungry.” She maintained her mega-watt grin as she dumped her sacks on the counter.
No one moved. Or spoke.
Finally the tech she remembered as Kevin ambled over from the classic Chevelle he had on a lift, scratching his stomach through his misbuttoned work shirt. “Are you looking for Brad? He’s out back talking to a customer.” He aimed a wink over his shoulder at one of the other guys. “Real pretty one too.”
She nearly groaned aloud. Pretty? Already? God, she couldn’t catch a break.
Even so, she wouldn’t lose sight of her objective in coming here. Being with Brad had helped show her that she still lived in a lot of boxes, and the time had come to break free.
She’d visited the shop a few times before yesterday, and his men had always treated her as if she were a possibly hostile visitor from another planet. Always polite, yes, but also wary. Before she’d accepted that as the way things were. Now? It seemed imperative that she make friends with these men. Or at least try.
Still smiling, she reached over the counter to turn up the radio one of the other mechanics had lowered upon her entrance. “I’m looking for all of you, actually. And please, don’t turn off the music on my account. I loved Brad’s show last night.”
Kevin returned her smile. “Yeah, he has this thing about singing near closing time. It started as a joke—now he does it whenever the shop’s empty. Me and the guys join him sometimes. ‘Course only Woody has a decent voice. The rest of us sound like a bunch of warbling cats.”
“Cats in heat,” one of the other guys put in.
Sara laughed. “I don’t believe that. Why don’t you sing something for me?”
“You expect us to sing for our supper, huh?” He leaned in close and added, “Is this payment for that super rush job the boss did for you?”
Was it her imagination or were Kevin’s eyebrows wiggling? “Nope. Just thought some hardworking men needed a good lunch. And maybe I was hoping for a free concert.”
“This ain’t no barbershop quartet, lady.”
Since she could tell Kevin was teasing, she cocked her head and batted her lashes. “Come on, don’t be shy. I’ll sing with you.” The words were out before she could stop herself, then she shrugged. What the hell?
“Oh really? What are you going to sing?”
She flipped the dial on the old-fashioned radio until she came to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”. She lifted a brow. “How ‘bout it, boys?”
“You heard the lady. Hit it,” Kevin said before starting to sing in a high falsetto that made her laugh again.
A couple of the other guys picked up the song, clearly trying to outdo each other while they worked. True to her word, she sang with them. She even swayed her hips a bit at Kevin’s impatient gesture for her to dance.
By the end of the song they were all laughing, the tension broken. Everyone crowded around to grab a sandwich and she grinned, happy she’d made inroads. It was a start.
“Sara. What are you doing here?”
She braced at Brad’s crushed gravel voice and looked over her shoulder. He stood in the open garage door at the back of the row of car bays, arms crossed over his broad chest. Waiting.
Whether he wanted an explanation or for her to leave, she didn’t know. She walked toward him, determined not to flee like the coward she’d become recently.
Not anymore.
“Hey.” A sudden blast of wind tossed back her hair, and she twisted it into a quick, makeshift bun. It gave her something to do other than stare at the partial handprint on his previously pristine white shirt. Though logically she knew his “pretty” customer hadn’t dipped her hand in motor oil and tried to feel him up, she couldn’t help imagining the worst. How could any woman seeing that incredible body in tight, faded jeans and a snug T-shirt not want to get dirty with him? “Your guys are nice.”
“Since when?”
Since his impassive face never changed, she wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question or a joke. Or a slight. Probably a slight. “I wanted to get to know them a little. We sang together.” She shrugged. “It was fun.”
“Are you slumming on your lunch break or is there a problem with the car?”
“You’re convinced I think less of you no matter what I say.”
He jerked his shoulder. “Can you blame me?”
“Yes, I can blame you.” In fact, had she not been an advocate for non-violence, she might’ve been tempted to sock him in one of his ridiculously muscled biceps. “You’ve done very well for yourself, and any woman would be proud to be on your arm.”
“Any woman but you,” he said, clenching his jaw.
“Don’t put words in my mouth. You’re doing a hell of an impression of a guy who doesn’t know his own worth right now, and that’s not the Brad O’Halloran I know.”
“I’m not ashamed of what I do. I’m great at it, and I make a decent living. So do my men.”
“So don’t put that between us too. We have enough there already.”
He gave her a long, searching look, the kind that made her want to do something utterly foolish and female. Like throwing herself into his arms. “Sure there isn’t something wrong with the car?”
She shook her head. “No, I told you she’s running like a beaut. Whatever you did made her purr.” She looked at the fists he’d tucked into the crooks of his elbows. “Magic hands, like you said.”
He moved past her to the long, wraparound counter against the wall and wiped his hands on one of the rags that seemed to be everywhere. “Yeah, well, they’ve lost their touch recently.”
Though it cost her, she didn’t approach him. “Says who?”
His head rose and his glittering, blue-gray eyes sheared her straight to the bone. “I’ll ask you once more. Why are you here?”
“I brought lunch.” Pathetic save. But dammit, his expression didn’t just make her quiver from anxiety. It was hot and intense, filled with a range of blazing emotions that ached inside her too. She’d screwed all of this up so badly, and all she wanted was a chance to make it up to him. To show him they were still friends, that she still cared.
So much.
He went back to the pile of papers spread across the countertop. “Thanks, not hungry.” He got the rag up to his nose as he sneezed. Then twice more for good measure.
“Here.” She rushed over to give him a tissue from her purse, not wanting him to inhale oil or antifreeze or God knows what else from that filthy thing. “Use this instead.”
“Thanks. I’m good.” He tucked her floral-scented, lotion-infused tissue back in her designer bag with a lip curl that would’ve been a smile yesterday. Today she was reasonably certain it was a sneer.
Prissy doctor with her fancy tissue. As if she’d ever fit in here.
Except he was wrong. She’d been wrong. These were decent guys, no different than the ones she worked with. In fact she’d bet they wouldn’t try to cop a feel under the guise of being a “good Samaritan” like Dustin had tried yesterday. They seemed more honest and sincere than that.
She leaned in to touch his forehead. A light flush rode his cheekbones, the beginnings of a fever. “You’re burning up. Let me get you some soup.”
“Why do you keep trying to take care of me? I told you last night I don’t need it.”
“Maybe I want to,” she murmured, hating that she’d reared back as if he’d slapped her. Her once sturdy backbone had gone soft if she couldn’t handle a little deserved backlash from the man she’d so
callously hurt. She was still working out why she’d done it, beyond the obvious reasons.
That she was just beginning to learn the man he truly was, rather than the one she’d sketched in her mind. That of the two of them, he’d proven himself to be more mature.
That he scared her to death.
It had taken him putting the brakes on their relationship for her to understand what was truly at risk. They’d stopped being merely friends the moment he’d offered her his apple. There was no going back to the way things had been. Not when she knew how much more they could be. She needed to regain his trust—and show him she wanted him exactly as he was.
He gripped the edge of the counter, his knuckles white. “You don’t need to feel guilty. I was the one who pushed you into this, and I told you I’d deal with it if it ended.”
She stepped closer and lifted her hand to his jaw, leaving it there even when his body tensed. “What if I can’t? What if I made a mistake?”
“People can see us, Sara.”
She knew that very well and was already fighting to stop imagining what his buddies would say about them together. They both had chips on their shoulders, and it was past time to knock them off. “So?”
Shaking his head, he looked at her for so long that she had to fight the urge to break his stare. Then he set his hands on her arms and nudged her back, gently but firmly. “I have to call a customer. We’ll talk later.”
Her first instinct was to nod and step away. This was his workplace, and she’d helped create this situation. Forget “helped”. It was all on her. The right thing would be to leave him be.
But when she met his gaze again, the startling color of his eyes reminded her of a fresh bruise, put there by her hands. She couldn’t stand it.
She stretched up to grab a fistful of his silky, messy hair and dragged him down for a hard, brief kiss. As their lips crushed together, she tasted his groan. Felt it echo through her body. She’d barely touched his tongue with her own when he started pulling back.
It didn’t matter. The sizzle that erupted between them the instant their mouths clashed told her everything she needed to know.
