Bad for Her

by Christi Barth

  “Everybody loves you here.” Karen reached over to pat Mollie on the knee. “It’s a big part of why you came back. I don’t understand why you think you’re seen as tainted goods.”

  “Not tainted.” Great. Now she’d think of herself as smelly, two-week-old egg salad. Not sexy at all. “I just don’t see myself the way most of the town does. You know, a pathetic, wounded victim of my mother’s desertion? Not that you guys do, of course.”

  “Weeeeeel,” Elena dragged the word out into three syllables. Then she added insult to injury by flip-flopping her hand back and forth.

  Wait . . . what? Mollie shoved up the sleeves of her sweater. She was getting her fight on, and they’d better be ready. “You really think I’m too much work for a man to jump into a relationship with because of my stupid, unimportant emotional scars?”

  Even though her words peppered the air like verbal buckshot, all loud and harsh, none of them looked even the tiniest bit remorseful. No, they all looked straight at Elena, waiting for her to continue leading the charge.

  She wrinkled her nose, as if smelling an old shoe. “I wouldn’t call them unimportant. I’d also point out that your dating history isn’t chock-full of long-term relationships.”

  So what? It in no way proved Elena’s point. “That’s not a character flaw. If you try a new shade of lipstick, and it doesn’t make you feel like a better version of yourself, you stop wearing it. Men are the same way.”

  Lily snorted. “Your defense is that you’re holding out for His Royal Highness, Perfect Prince Charming?”

  Yup. The people who knew you best knew just where to find the chinks in your armor. Chipping away with, of all things, logic at every one of her rationalizations made her lemon drop martini suddenly not sit as well in her stomach. Could they be right?

  No.

  Or if they were, even a little bit, Mollie wouldn’t think about it tonight. Definitely not until she was done enjoying Rafe.

  “I don’t need to defend myself. Especially to you guys, I hope.” A little bit of her self-doubt came through in her embarrassingly shaky voice.

  “We’re picking at you, aren’t we?” Karen moved to sit on the arm of Mollie’s chair. She gave her a one-armed hug.

  Mollie didn’t want to admit how much she needed one right at that moment. “Mmm-hmm.”

  Lilly rolled her lips in, and then firmed them. “We’re sorry. It’s just . . . don’t you want someone to cuddle up and watch movies with on a Friday night?”

  A new text vibrated against her palm. Mollie would rather text with Rafe than cuddle anyone else right now. “Look, I know you all mean well. But Rafe is the bad boy fling of my dreams. He’s a living, breathing male fantasy. He’s hot. He’s uncomplicated. He’s fun. He’s drop-dead sexy.”

  “Uh, you already mentioned that he’s hot,” Karen said as she went back to her own club chair.

  Saying it every hour on the hour wouldn’t begin to encapsulate his hotness. “Trust me, it bears repeating.”

  Lily made frantic jazz hands in front of her chest. “You said Rafe? As in the tall, dark, and dreamy new mechanic over at Wick’s Garage?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Omigod, he’s so yummy!” Mollie’s eyes must’ve narrowed into a totally unconscious death glare, because Lily hastily backpedaled. “For you, I mean. Yumminess strictly for you to lap up.”

  Lap up was right. Mollie couldn’t wait to trace her tongue over all those tattoos he’d mentioned—whatever and wherever they were. “He’s delicious. Intense and with a hard, dangerous edge that I can’t explain but makes me shiver. And yet he’s got the manners of a high-powered broker at the Chicago Board of Trade. Much more polished than you think of a mechanic.”

  “What exactly have you let him polish?” Elena punctuated her question with an eyebrow waggle.

  “A lot.” Not nearly enough. “A lot that happened crazy fast, so we’re in a holding pattern. I don’t want to plan for the future, but I do want to be with someone I can talk to between all the copious rounds of hot, dirty sex.”

  “Of course.” Three heads bobbed in agreement.

  Mollie said lightly, “There wasn’t time for fun in med school. Now I’m only looking as far into the future as my next, oh, dozen orgasms.”

  Lily ticked off a few fingers, then looked up. “Which should take about six months?”

  Hardly. An incredibly smug grin stretched her lips sideways. “I get the feeling Rafe could get it done in six hours. Definitely within six days.”

  Elena raised her glass. “On behalf of all womankind, let me say wow. And congratulations. If you keep him around long enough, he’ll be one hell of a date for the Cranberry Festival. Everyone will be jealous.”

  “Now tell us everything,” Karen gushed.

  “And start with how you met.” Lily tapped her lips with one finger. “How good a kisser he is. If he used tongue on the first kiss.”

  Mollie could tell her friends were going overboard with their enthusiasm to balance against their airing of concerns. Which was fine with her.

  Focusing, or even wishing for a future with someone? That was just a hop, skip, and a jump to thinking about when said hot person, say, a mechanic, would inevitably leave her.

  Thinking about the now was a much better way to go.

  She’d ride that orgasm train until it ran out of track. And try super hard to jump off before it crashed.

  Another buzz. “I’ll tell you everything. I just remembered that I have to, ah, return one message from a patient first.” Mollie jumped out of the chair and hurried out of the room.

  RM: The burgers are here and we’re all still at the table and talking. So I guess the night’s not going so badly.

  Oh, good. Maybe you guys aren’t so rusty after all.

  RM: I sure felt a crack coming on tonight. But I think you helped me hold it together.

  That’s what us doctors do. Patch things up.

  RM: I’m not used to leaning on people. Leaning on you isn’t so bad, though. Thank you. Seriously.

  Mollie leaned against the sea-grass papered wall with a sigh. A sincere thank you from a man was every bit as knee-weakening as a dozen red roses. Just in case, maybe I should resort to the old-fashioned kiss it and make it better?

  RM: Tease. You and I both know you aren’t bailing on girls’ night. I hear that’s sacred.

  True. But Mollie refused to take any more than fifty percent of the blame. You wouldn’t bail on your brothers, either.

  RM: Does it count that I want to?

  It counted for a lot.

  Chapter 9

  Wick’s Garage, 11:30 a.m.

  Mood under the car—chilling to tunes with a wrench in his hand = pretty damned peaceful for once

  Frieda Wick squeaked every time she walked. In Rafe’s first five minutes at the garage, he’d been borderline ape-shit with annoyance from it. She’d discovered Crocs the day he started. Loved ’em. Bought five pair in different, butt-ugly colors she loved them so much. She wore a new pair every day to break them in, and it was sure as hell breaking Rafe’s spirit.

  But hey, squeaky shoes weren’t the worst thing in the world. His old boss? Tried to frame Flynn to get five years in the slammer. He was definitely involved in the deaths of both of their parents, and may have even pulled the trigger on Rafe’s dad himself.

  So Rafe could put up with some squeaky rubber shoes from his new boss.

  Today’s pair—bright yellow rain boots, because the sky had been pissing for the last four hours—stopped right next to his head. “How’s that engine coming along?”

  He didn’t bother telling her he’d been changing the oil. If Frieda knew her way around cars, she wouldn’t have needed to hire him when her husband had a heart attack. Rafe pushed his creeper out from underneath the Jeep and sat up on it. “Purring as sweetly as every woman that gets into my bed.”

  “You’re just full of it, aren’t you?”

  “Full of the truth.”

&nb
sp; That got a bark of a laugh out of her. “I swear I don’t know if I hired you for your looks, your skills beneath a hood, or the sheer entertainment factor.”

  “I’m a triple threat.” Rafe actually liked Frieda. A whole lot. If he’d been in the Al Capone-era Chicago mob, he’d have called Frieda an honest-to-god dame. You could tell from her bright orange, spiked-up hair that the middle-aged woman had spunk. The way she’d held together two businesses with her husband in the hospital and then rehab without breaking or even slowing down showed her steel-hard spine. And no matter how outrageously he flirted with her, she just laughed and took it in stride.

  It’d been six days since Frieda became his boss.

  Rafe already hated lying to her.

  The marshal insisted that they weren’t supposed to think of it as lying to people 24/7. Delaney said their old lives, who they used to be, no longer existed. The only reality was who they were right now, which made it not a lie at all.

  With that kind of smooth-talking ability to explain away anything, Delaney would’ve been a great criminal. Working for the feds was a waste of her natural talent.

  Frieda tossed a rag at him. “Clean yourself up. You’re going to lunch.”

  Eyeing the clock over the battered metal desk in the corner, Rafe said, “It’s too early. I can get halfway through the tire rotation on that MINI Cooper before breaking.” Talk about an awesome car. It wasn’t a ’64 Aston Martin, but it was the star of one of the best heist films of all time, The Italian Job.

  “You’re not listening. You’re going to lunch. You have to leave now to get over to Billy Smoothboar’s by noon.”

  “Who? Where? And, here’s the big one, why?”

  “Chamber of Commerce meeting. You’re representing the garage.”

  Rafe stood, crossed to pause the Paramore blaring out of the iPod. “No.”

  Hell, no. A bunch of small-town saps sitting around jawing over tuna salad? It sounded like hell on earth, and a punishment he didn’t deserve. He’d sat through more than his fair share of meetings back in Chicago. As Danny McGinty’s right-hand man, he’d led more than a few of them. Amazing how even with hard-ass mobsters a meeting could easily degenerate into jaw-fests. Or arguments. Or both. The only thing that made it tolerable was caring about getting the job done.

  He didn’t care about the Chamber of Commerce. Wasn’t entirely sure what it did, but knew he didn’t give two shits about it. Small-town politics. God help him.

  “Wick’s Garage and the Coquille River Creamery are both long-standing members in the Chamber.” The Creamery was Frieda’s other business. A freaking cheese shop. Apparently, this pimple on the Oregon coast was famous for cheese. He’d gotten an earful about it his first day.

  If it was so damn famous, how come he’d never heard of it before moving here?

  “Fine. So you go.”

  “I can’t. We’re short-staffed at the Creamery today. Besides, Neil always went and represented both of us. He’s all torn up about not going.”

  Was she really playing the guilt card? Using her husband still in recovery from the triple bypass as leverage to get his ass to the meeting?

  Frieda was good.

  But Rafe had once stared down a coked-up human trafficker with a gun. Gotten the gun, gotten some licks in on behalf of humankind, and left him tied up on the steps of the CPD. He could say no to a middle-aged woman and make it stick. “I’ve only been here a week. I don’t know enough to be your representative.”

  “You’ve got ears, don’t you? Common sense, too. That’s all it takes. Then report back to me. It’ll get you the added bonus of a prime rib sandwich at the best steak joint in town, on me.”

  Rafe toed the creeper across the concrete to the edge of a wall. Everything had its place in a garage. Out of place equaled danger. He hadn’t dodged bullets in Chicago to crack his skull tripping over a loose tool and slamming into a hydraulic lift.

  “What if they ask me—you—to vote on something? Or sign up for a sponsorship? I don’t want to spend your money.”

  Frieda crossed her arms over her green Coquille River Creamery button-down. “You’ll do this because it truly is part of the job. You’ll do it because I asked. Most of all, you’ll do it because you owe me for hiring Jesse Vickers without asking first.”

  Shit. She’d just turned over an ace-high flush on the river. Kicked a fifty-yard field goal in the last second on the clock. Rafe was stuck now.

  Both going to the damn meeting—and giving an apology.

  “Look, this place had been shut down for three weeks when I came on board. We’ve got cars backlogged and a wait list. Kenny only helps out part-time.” Frieda called it paternity leave, letting the other mechanic downshift his hours since his son was born last month. Rafe called it bad business without a plan to pick up the slack. So he’d done just that—and made Mollie happy in the process. “We need another pair of hands. Jesse can fill the gap.”

  “I didn’t say it was a bad idea,” she said calmly. “Just that you should’ve asked me first. As you pointed out, you’ve only been here a week.”

  In Rafe’s old life, he was the problem solver. Big or small. People came to him, or he noticed things. Put a problem within his view, and it’d be worked through and solved. Period. Running his plan past somebody wasn’t part of his routine.

  Bypassing Frieda wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t a sign of disrespect. It was just how he did business. No middleman. No reporting. Just fixing.

  But his new life had new rules.

  Why hadn’t the marshal given them a rulebook?

  He unzipped his coverall. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I knew we needed help and took a step. I should’ve taken a moment, too, and consulted with you.”

  “Glad we’re clear. It’s a good temporary fix. It’ll be good for the little hooligan, too. From what Norah tells me, he’s got a hard row to hoe, with all the damage his idiot mother did. The influence of a decent, stand-up man could make all the difference. You did the right thing.”

  Decent. Rafe Maguire had been called a lot of things in his life. Decent, though? This was a first.

  “Now remove whatever bug crawled up your butt today and get to that meeting. I texted you the address.” She handed him a key, attached to a fuzzy bumblebee key ring. “Take the brown Mazda in the lot. Listen for the ‘weird, clacking, rolling noise’ that Delia Chung described.”

  Huh. Maybe he did have a bug up his ass. Holding it together for Flynn and Kellan was hard fucking work. The garage was the only place he could let go and relax into the rhythm of what was black and white. An engine needed a tune-up, he did the required steps, and it ran well. No emotions. No hand-holding. No guessing three steps ahead for what might set off his brothers next. No hiding his own feelings about being dropped into this town and being forced to pimp it out to the others like it was Miss America and Miss Universe mud wrestling in bikinis.

  Here, surrounded by harsh metal and the stink of oil, he’d let himself think about what he’d given up. What he didn’t like about Bandon. What he missed from Chicago. Worry about them being tracked down by someone from McGinty’s organization, then killed, one by one. Everything that couldn’t be said to his brothers.

  Everything he couldn’t say to Mollie in their nightly texts.

  Texts that made him want her more. Made him want to see her more, talk to her more.

  Which hadn’t been the plan at all. Shit.

  Their texts weren’t about sex. Well, not just about sex, anyway. The nights they texted were already more interesting than any of the nights he’d spent with a woman back in Chicago in years. Just texts—and Mollie—stacking up against nights out at clubs with free-flowing booze and gropes and craziness. She didn’t just listen. Not just a string of emojis. She volleyed back, which Rafe wasn’t used to at all.

  How much he liked texting with her was . . . surprising. Rafe was still wrapping his head around it.

  Rafe tossed the silly key ring in the air. Well,
the prime rib sandwich alone would make the meeting worthwhile. He’d never say no to a thick slab of meat. Whatever inane weirdness got discussed would at least get him out of his own head. Distract him from worrying about being found.

  Killed.

  Or worse yet, seeing one of his brothers killed—and living to remember it the rest of his life.

  One thing was for damned sure: the Irish mob would never, ever look for Rafe Maguire in this restaurant.

  The walls were covered in diagonal wood paneling that maybe flew as a style in a 1970s basement rec room. Nowhere else. A couple of older guys were rocking knit caps against the thick mist hanging in the air. Lots of layers and a couple of shapeless knitted things he thought were called ponchos. They looked like the plastic cover-ups they passed out at Bears games in the rain. But none of the tables held anything more exciting than tea and coffee.

  A summit meeting without booze never worked. If you didn’t get people lubricated, they wouldn’t screw up and be totally honest. Or totally embarrassing, which worked equally well in long-term negotiations.

  No. He’d sworn to leave his mood at the garage.

  Delaney hounded him to at least pretend to fit in, find ways to make Bandon his own, and town leadership fit the bill pretty well. But pretending to care wasn’t good enough. If the Maguires were spending the next fifty years here, Rafe might as well make it more to his liking. Take a stand. Take charge. So he’d stop counting the rows in the blue fishing net tacked up on the wall and tune in to the conversation. Hell, maybe he’d even find Kellan a better job.

  Then his brother couldn’t be mad at him anymore.

  Now he’d pay attention.

  “Hey, there. Thanks for saving me a few square inches.” Mollie wheeled a chair into the catty-corner space at the edge of the table.

  Still paying attention. Just not to the meeting. Now it was to the gorgeous woman who smelled of antiseptic, wore scrubs and sneakers, and had him at half-chub underneath his napkin. Rafe shifted to mutter against her cheek. “What are you doing here?”