The Man Who Would Be Daddy

by Marie Ferrarella

  Christa threw up her hands in surrender. She’d been trying to start the van for the past ten minutes. Taking every curve life had to throw at her, Christa prided herself on being levelheaded and calm. Today, however, her nerves were very close to the surface.

  She looked at him. “Any suggestions?”

  In reply, Malcolm circled the front of her van and placed his hands on the hood. Then, as she watched, mystified, he pushed down on it, hard. She felt the vehicle begin to bounce up and down like a small sailboat caught in a storm at sea.

  He wasn’t behaving like any mechanic she knew. Christa stuck her head out the window. “What are you doing?”

  Malcolm didn’t bother answering. Instead, he gave her an order. “Now try it.” When she just looked at him, he added, “Turn the key.”

  Not seeing how what he was doing could make any difference whatsoever, Christa turned the key in the ignition. She was rewarded with the sound of the engine turning over. The van vibrated as the engine coughed to life, shuddering like a wet dog.

  Relief coaxed a grin from her. “Is that the auto mechanic’s equivalent of a TV repairman hitting the side of a set when it doesn’t work?”

  The principle would take too much effort to explain to her. “Something like that.” He cocked his head, listening to the sound of the engine as it idled. A starter motor wasn’t her only problem. The engine sounded as if it was wheezing, and the car was idling rough. Besides that, he detected the light scent of gasoline.

  Not my business, he thought.

  But cars were his business. If he let her go now and she wound up stranded somewhere, it would be partially his fault. A great deal had changed in his life, but Malcolm still believed that omission was just as much of a sin as commission.

  Trapped by his conscience, he reluctantly asked, “You live far from here?”

  The nice thing about the condo she was leasing was that it was so centrally located. “A couple of miles.” She nodded toward the street right off the parking lot. “West Plaza Development. Just off Heather.”

  Heather Drive. That was in the opposite direction from his own apartment. Malcolm sighed. He supposed it wouldn’t be too far out of his way. “All right, I’ll follow you home.”

  Now, that was a switch. Though she appreciated it, she didn’t see any reason for his abrupt change of heart. “Any particular reason you’ve suddenly decided to become friendly?”

  Malcolm sniffed the air. Nothing. The light scent of gasoline must have just been his imagination.

  “I’m not being friendly,” he corrected mildly. “I’m being a mechanic. I don’t like the sound of your engine. You might not make it home.”

  “I hate putting you out like this.”

  That made two of them. He shrugged in reply. “Like you said, you live only a couple of miles down the road. No big deal.”

  That sounded more like him, Christa thought. Distant. Matter-of-fact. And he was wrong; it was a big deal. She was a stranger and he was offering to help. Again. She felt bound to tell him the absolute truth.

  “It’s not exactly two miles. More like five,” she amended.

  Two, five—it made no difference. He had already made the offer:

  “Five,” he repeated, accepting the correction. Malcolm glanced at his watch. “We’re still not quite into rush hour yet. Shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to reach your house.” The idling sound the van was making was beginning to sound like someone with smoker’s hack. “Unless, of course, the van breaks down,” he added matter-of-factly. “I’m parked two aisles over.” He jerked his thumb toward the LeMans. “Wait for me.”

  It was more of an order than anything else.

  He was one strange man, she thought. There was something about him that spoke to her. Despite his size and the aura of power he cast, there was something about him that was reaching out to her. She doubted if he was even aware of it.

  Tyler would have said she was meddling.

  Mentally, Christa crossed her fingers as she backed out of her space. The van seemed to shimmy and shudder more than usual. She had the impression that it was like a prize-winning stallion past its peak, trying to eke out just a little more life before it died.

  She kept her fingers crossed all the way home. The van didn’t die, but Christa had the uneasy feeling that it was touch and go all the way. It was reassuring to see the LeMans in her rearview mirror.

  The van had over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. It had brought her safely over the desert, when she had left with Las Vegas and Jim in her rearview mirror. Actually, she amended silently, only Las Vegas had been in her rearview mirror. Jim, at the time of her departure, had probably been housed somewhere at a casino table, hoping that Lady Luck had decided not to snub him any longer.

  Luck had been an elusive, capricious partner during the five years that she and Jim had been married. When she’d had enough of his gambling fever and divorced him, he’d acted relieved. He’d called Christa his Jonah. Without her, he felt confident that his luck would change for the better.

  She sincerely doubted it, but she was decent enough to hope that it had. No matter what, the man would always be Robin’s father. That meant something.

  All during the trip back to Southern California, she’d had the uneasy feeling that she was on borrowed time. Each false start and stop that the van made only increased that feeling. Today’s harrowing chase down Bedford’s main thoroughfare had undoubtedly wreaked havoc on the failing engine.

  Or whatever it was that was wrong with the van, she mused with resignation.

  Just last a little longer. Please.

  Finally, Christa pulled up in the short driveway in front of her condo. Malcolm’s car was only a beat behind her. Though there was ample room in the driveway, he parked in the street, directly in front of her father’s vintage Jaguar.

  She watched Malcolm smoothly guide his car into the tight space between her father’s car and her neighbor’s. Admiration curved her lips. She couldn’t conceive of doing that. She could no more manage to parallel-park than she could fly on her own power.

  Malcolm slammed the car door shut behind him. He nodded at the dark metallic green Jaguar. Her husband must be the sporty type, he decided.

  “Nice car. Yours?”

  She shook her head. With a bank account barely in the triple digits, she could ill afford maintenance on something like that.

  “My father’s.” She smiled, thinking of the way he pampered the vehicle. “It’s his baby now that he’s retired.”

  Malcolm nodded absently, acutely aware that she had turned her electric blue eyes up at him. He didn’t quite know what he was doing here. He was going out of his way, and he’d made it a practice never to go out of his way. The less involved he was with people in general, the less there would be to trigger him, to remind him of what he no longer had.

  Of what he had allowed, because of a momentary lapse in skill, to slip through his fingers.

  Feeling uncomfortable, Malcolm slowly shoved wide, capable hands into his back pockets. He stood looking at her van.

  Now would be the time to back out. Before he got in too deep.

  “Well, you got here without any mishaps. Maybe your husband could take a look at the van for you.”

  He was already turning to go when he saw the amused smile rising to her lips. It feathered up to her eyes. The sight was appealing, though Malcolm didn’t want it to be.

  She could just see Jim staring into the interior of the engine. He would have been more lost than her.

  “I don’t have a husband, at least, not anymore. And when I did have one, he would have been far more prone to look at a deck of cards than a car. Jim wasn’t what you’d call handy by any stretch of the imagination.”

  What he had been, she thought, was a spinner of dreams. Unattainable, impossible dreams. They’d been magical once. But the magic had long since faded from his dreams and their life together.

  Malcolm gave no indication that he had
heard her or absorbed the information she offered. But he did approach the van with a resigned expression on his face.

  He was here, he thought, so he might as well take a look at it. “Pop the hood for me.”

  Obediently, Christa pulled the lever on the dashboard. The hood made a noise as it rose an inch, still tethered to a lock.

  Feeling around for the release latch, Malcolm found it and pulled. He moved the hood back and looked in, letting out a long, low whistle. That had to be one of the dirtiest engines he’d seen in a long, long time. And just possibly the worst cared for. He shook his head.

  Christa joined him and looked down below the yawning hood. She had absolutely no idea what she was looking at, other than the fact that there was a great deal of metal and rubber snaking into itself that she didn’t begin to understand.

  She was standing too close to him. The light scent she wore somehow managed to block out the smell of gasoline that was now much more prevalent since she had opened the hood. He wished she would move.

  “So, what’s the prognosis, Doctor?” Her voice was teasing as she crossed her arms before her. “Can the patient be saved?”

  Not without a hell of a lot of work, he thought. Malcolm looked at her, trying to gauge just how knowledgeable she was. “How much do you know about cars?”

  That was an easy one. “You put the key in and they go?” she offered with an apologetic shrug that should have irked him but did just the opposite.

  He laughed very softly, but she heard him and it warmed her.

  “Not this time,” he said. The hoses all looked worn. A couple of them were cracked. And he’d been right about that smell of gasoline. She had a leak somewhere. His guess was that one of the seals on the fuel injectors was cracked.

  “You’re lucky to have gotten home. From the sound of it, I’d say that your starter motor has just about had it and I’m surprised that you’re getting anything out of your battery.” He indicated the corroded couplings. “The cables are completely corroded with residue. By all rights, there shouldn’t even be a connection being made.”

  He wasn’t even going to bother getting into the hoses and the fuel injectors, except to warn her. “I wouldn’t drive it if I were you. There’s a faint smell of gasoline. It’s not safe.”

  Christa wrinkled her nose; she believed Malcolm’s assessment. She knew she’d been pushing her luck with the van, but she’d had no choice. A new one, or even a new used one, was out of the question right now.

  “Can you fix it?”

  He felt as if she had just placed a wounded baby bird in his lap and asked him to breathe life into it.

  “Well, it needs a new starter motor, and there’s no telling what else might be wrong with it—”

  This was beginning to sound worse and worse. “So it won’t be fixed by tomorrow?”

  Did she think he was a miracle worker? He began to say just that, then decided against it. “No, it won’t be fixed by tomorrow.”

  Christa sighed, dragging her hand through her hair. “Oh, God.”

  She sounded as if he’d just told her the car was terminal. “Is tomorrow important?”

  “It might have been.” She dug deep, trying to rally her sinking spirit, but it wasn’t getting any easier. “I have a job interview. Had,” she amended. “I was counting on getting there with this.” She waved a disparaging hand at the van.

  “Not unless the place interviewing you is located at the bottom of a hill.”

  Christa nibbled on her lower lip again, thinking. Watching her stirred a distant feeling in Malcolm that he had been certain had completely vanished from his life the day he’d buried Gloria.

  He pushed it away.

  Christa knew she had no right to impose. But she was desperate. “Could you work on it for me?”

  Malcolm had never seen so much hope in a woman’s eyes before. Unfounded hope, he thought, but hope nonetheless. It pinned him to the spot and kept him there. It also gave him no choice.

  Shrugging, he acquiesced. “Sure. I could have it towed to the shop—”

  Towing. Something else to consider. “Is that going to cost?” Before he could answer, she flushed ruefully. “Of course it’s going to cost.”

  She ran a slender hand over her face. God, but it was hard not to feel as if her back were against the wall. She knew she could always turn to her brothers and father for money, but her pride wouldn’t let her.

  “It was a stupid question.” Looking at him, she tried to explain what had caused her to blurt it out. “It’s just that I’ve budgeted everything down to the penny. Most of my money went into securing the lease on this house. Anything extra—there wasn’t much—I earmarked for Robin’s birthday. She’s going to be two at the end of the month.” And she really wanted to make it special for her. They both needed that.

  The woman was tugging at feelings that he wanted to leave untouched. Malcolm felt as if the words were being dragged out of him.

  “I suppose I could work on it here.” As soon as he said that, he saw her eyes light up. It was like standing in the midst of magic. She really did think he could perform miracles, he realized.

  She hated being crass, but money was a definite object here. She had to ask. Christa didn’t want him working on the van if she couldn’t pay him.

  “How much do you think it’ll run? The starter engine,” she clarified.

  “Motor,” he corrected.

  “Motor,” Christa repeated. Her error didn’t faze her. “And your labor, of course.”

  The woman was the last word in naivete, he thought. An unscrupulous mechanic’s dream come true. They’d see her coming a mile away.

  Something protective took over before he could stop it.

  Malcolm ran a hand along the back of his neck. He was getting in deeper than he had wanted to, but there didn’t seem to be a good way of turning her down. Not when she was so obviously in dire straits. If he did, he’d have her on his conscience.

  There was enough on his conscience already.

  “We’ll work something out,” he promised with a resigned sigh.

  She wasn’t about to accept charity. She wasn’t going to accept it from her family, and she was even less inclined to accept it from a stranger.

  “I will pay you,” she promised fiercely. “In the meantime, you’re a saint.”

  His eyes darkened, fathomless and dangerous. “We’ll work something out on one condition.”

  Christa drew a breath and held it. “Yes?”

  “That you don’t deify me and you don’t keep thanking me.” It went beyond making him uncomfortable. It just wasn’t true.

  She still didn’t understand him. Twice he’d come to her aid and then gotten angry when she reacted. “Under the circumstances, punching you out just doesn’t seem to fit the occasion.”

  He could feel his mouth curving involuntarily. “One ‘thank you’ will do.”

  The smile on her lips was inviting. “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  It wasn’t a game. He was serious. “Those are my terms.”

  She nodded. “I understand.” She didn’t, but that was beside the point. There were bigger things to concern her at the moment. “Now all I have to do is find a way to get to the interview tomorrow morning.”

  He turned away from her, but not before he saw the hopeful look reenter her eyes again. “How about your father?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ll need him to stay with Robin.”

  That wasn’t what he had meant. He was talking about the Jaguar. “But his car isn’t going to be in the living room with him.”

  Christa laughed. She’d sooner ask her father to go to the interview in her place than ask him to lend her his precious car. “Dad loves me, but he doesn’t let anyone else drive the Jaguar, and he’s not about to start now.”

  “Then I’d say you have yourself a problem.”

  She didn’t ask, but he could see that she wanted to. It was there, in her eyes, as plain as if it were writ
ten down on a page. She was hoping he’d offer to take her. Well, she could hope for that from now until hell froze over. He was already putting himself out more than he had ever intended on doing.

  A hell of a lot more than he knew he should.

  “Yes,” she agreed quietly. “I guess I do.”

  Her quiet tone bothered him almost as much as the look in her eyes, and there was no reason either should.

  He had to be getting back, before he did something else he’d wind up regretting.

  Malcolm slid in behind the wheel of his car. “I’ll be back to take a look at your van later this evening,” he told her. “After I close up.” The gas station remained open all-night, but the garage closed its doors at seven. A man needed some time to himself.

  She nodded, then hurried over to his car just as he was about to pull away from the curb. Now what? he thought.

  “Dinner?” She shot the word out as if she were guessing the answer to a clue on a game show.

  “What?”

  Tyler always said she talked faster than most people thought. “Can I at least make you dinner tonight? To thank you—silently,” Christa added.

  He eased his foot off the brake and onto the accelerator, amused despite himself as she trotted along beside him down the block. “I thought you said you were on a budget.”

  She glanced up the block to make sure there was no car coming into the cul-de-sac.

  “There’s always room for one more. Besides, feeding you will cost a lot less than having the car towed to your garage.” She could see that he was about to refuse. “Please? It’ll make me feel better.” She stopped in the middle of the street. The LeMans continued to the corner. Christa raised her voice. “I don’t like being in debt.”

  Well, they had that much in common. Though he guessed that she probably couldn’t see him, he shrugged carelessly in response to her question. It was easier than arguing with her.

  “We’ll see,” he muttered.

  Christa stood in the street, watching him drive away. He could see her in his rearview mirror. The woman didn’t even have enough sense to come out of the street, he snorted with a shake of his head.

  Damn, what the hell had he allowed himself to get sucked into?