Don't Marry the Mechanic: A Sweet Romance (The Debutante Rules Book 1)

by Emily Childs

  At the end of the day, I’m still feeling lighter than I have in months. Zac locks the door behind us and pokes fun at more requests Callie made over the weekend. I glance at the time on my phone. If I hurry, I can shower before Olive comes over, and since one of the guys spilled oil all over me, I’m in desperate need.

  “Uh, hey Rafe,” Zac says with a nod at the street.

  My stomach falls out through my boots.

  Zac backs up. “I think I’ll go over the receipts again.”

  “Coward,” I grumble, but Zac doesn’t care and rushes back into the shop. I toss my keys between my hands and try to beeline it to my truck. I’m not dealing with this today.

  “Rafe,” Dalia calls out. She pushes off her little sedan, dressed to the nines, and not getting the hint that I’m not up for talking. “Rafe, will you talk to me?”

  “What for, Dalia?” I ask. The desperation in her green eyes doesn’t faze me at all.

  “Please. We need to talk.”

  “Why? We’ve been broken up for months.”

  “I know, but I haven’t stopped thinking about what you said, and what happened—”

  “You mean how you dragged someone back to my house the next day and had some fun? By the way, I’ve replaced my bed.”

  “That wasn’t my proudest moment. I was hurting. You didn’t choose me,” she whimpers.

  “See, I shouldn’t have to choose between people in my life.”

  “Rafe, I’ve never regretted anything so badly in my life,” she says. “I loved you, but it was as if I couldn’t reach you.”

  “So naturally, ultimatums, then new guys in my house would get my attention, right?”

  Dalia glances at the ground and tosses her long hair over her shoulder. “I was wrong. I was hoping we could go somewhere and . . . talk.”

  “No,” I say directly. “I don’t want to talk. I’ve moved on, Dalia. You should too.”

  “We had something wonderful, Rafe. Do you really want to throw it away?”

  “I need to go. A therapist is coming to inspect the house for when my mom comes home.”

  “Can I help? Do you need anything for Millie?”

  I climb into my truck, start it, then glance down at her. “You want to talk?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Why? You wanting to get back together?”

  “I think it’s something we shouldn’t rule out. We were good together.”

  “Olive is coming over to help me with my mom.” Dalia winces and frowns. Heat flashes through her eyes and I chuckle bitterly. “And there it is. I think that about covers all I need to talk about.”

  “I can get used to you being friends. I can, Rafe. She’s engaged anyway, right? We can all have our lives.”

  I smile, and I don’t mean to sound vindictive, more that I’m proud I can finally say the words. “She’s not engaged, not anymore. And I have a life. With her. We’re together.”

  A shadow passes over Dalia’s slender face. “You aren’t serious?”

  “Dead serious. See you around, Dalia.”

  She says nothing, but slowly back pedals as I drive out of the lot. The more I say the words, Olive is mine, out loud the less I care what anyone else might say. If I keep shouting it to the world, the president could tell me to leave her and I’d wouldn’t care. Leaving her isn’t something I’m willing to do. Ever.

  ***

  “I’m getting whiplash, Rafe,” August says. “You’re telling me it’s real now?”

  “Together, yes. We’re not engaged or anything.”

  “Why not?”

  I roll my eyes. “Most people aren’t like you and don’t propose after the second date.”

  “Don’t give me that, you and Ollie have been building tension for almost a decade. And my real proposal didn’t come for a year, with a hundred small proposals in between, for your information.”

  “Yeah, trust me, I remember.”

  “Look at us now. I should write a book on how to do it right.” August clears his throat. “How did the Cutlers take it?”

  I pick at a hole in my jeans. “She hasn’t said anything yet.”

  August pauses, but I know him. I’m sure he’s shrugging or nodding. “Understandable. What do you plan to do, though? I’m trying to figure out how Bernadette will respond. Lon always seemed to like us.”

  “I think Bernadette does too, she . . . I don’t know, conforms to certain ways of thinking more than Lon. I don’t want Olive to have contention in her family, but it’s a risk, I guess.”

  “She’s got a calm side. I mean, Bernadette allowed Lily to live with them, and I’m pretty sure Lily knows her better than we do now. I think she’ll come around. But who knows, it’s her own daughter this time.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been saying the same thing to myself all week.”

  “This is what you want?”

  I lean back against the couch, feeling like a fool when the stupid grin pulls at the corner of my mouth. “Yeah. It’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time.”

  “I know. We all knew.” August blows out his lips. “It’s strange, though. Olive Cutler—I still think of her as a little sister with pigtails and a glare that could cool fire.”

  “Yeah, she wasn’t ever a sister to me.”

  “A good thing since you’re eating her face off,” August laughs. “What about the money, Rafe?”

  I groan. “I told Olive I didn’t want to keep taking it. Doesn’t feel right.”

  “Let me guess, she didn’t take that sort of talk.”

  I laugh, remembering the scowl she gave me when I protested. The discussion ending with lips locked, but she knows how to hold her ground. “She wouldn’t hear it. The woman insists it’s for Mama, not for us anyway. It’s hard to argue when she throws the mom card, you know.”

  “I get it.” August mutters in the background. I hear Lily’s voice, Olive’s name, then cheering and laughing. “Hear that? You’ve made my wife happy.”

  “I live to make Lily happy.”

  “Ah, it’ll be good to see y’all soon. And Mama. I miss her, and I don’t care if that makes me a mama’s boy.”

  “You’re coming out next month, right?”

  “Next month. As soon as the semester is over.”

  “You know we just want to see Brin. You and Lily don’t even need to show.”

  August laughs. “I’ll remind you of that when she’s screaming at all hours. You can sit up with her.”

  “No, that’s when I check out.”

  “Right. Hey, I gotta go, but don’t screw this up, Rafe. Lily and Mama will murder you.”

  I have no plans on screwing anything up with Olive Cutler. I smile and hurry to get ready for her to show her beautiful face.

  All I can think about is how I’ve resisted this for so long.

  There isn’t much sense in looking back, but I intend to make up for lost time in all the best ways.

  Chapter 19

  Olive

  Ten days later, I finally give in and agree to talk to my parents about Tom. Calling seemed cowardly, but my insides are all twisted the closer we get to the Big House. I glance at the passenger seat. Rafe watches the tree go by, his hand in mine. He doesn’t even know how much him being here calms me down.

  “I think we ought to stop with all these late night—slash—basically sleepovers,” I say when we pull onto my lane.

  I snort a laugh when Rafe faces me, his face incredulous. “Why would you say something crazy like that?”

  “Millie is coming home in two days. I need to give you both some space to get settled.”

  He leans over the console when I park the car, doesn’t even glance around for prying eyes before he kisses my palm and smiles against my skin. “Come on, knowing the way my mom thinks, she already assumes you’re staying there anyway.”

  I have many memories of Millie trying to hide her fog-up-the-windows romance books lying around their apartment.

  “I’ll still com
e over,” I say, “but I’m practically camping out. You’re distracting me from my final project too, I hope you know.”

  He presses a quick kiss to my neck. “But distracting you is my new favorite thing.”

  Can’t say I don’t agree. I’m nearly finished with my final project for student teaching. The light is there at the end of the tunnel. Four weeks, and I’ll have my diploma and be free of testing centers and textbooks.

  “I do love your distractions. You ready?”

  Rafe glances toward the magnolia trees near the garden shed. “I might stop in and see Arnie. I haven’t been helping up here at all since this whole thing started. Figure I should say hello.”

  I peck his lips before I free his hand. “Liar. You’re just being a chicken.”

  Rafe laughs and I nearly tip over when he kisses me, slowly, right in the open for anyone to see. “Maybe a little one.”

  He swats at my backside when I leave him, but I’m still a little breathless that he kissed me without care by the time I make it to the kitchen.

  “Mama?”

  “Olive,” my mother’s collected voice echoed from the study. “In here.”

  I plan to skip down the hallway in all my pleasure, but slam into Beau’s backside, loitering in the hallway. “Beau—I didn’t see you there. What are you doing up here?”

  My cousin is a broad man, and he’d be impeccably handsome if he wasn’t such a mean dummy.

  Beau smirks, the glint in his eye is borderline malicious. “Just stopping in on business. What’s got you so chipper?”

  “Nothing.” The last person I want to know about Rafe and me is Beau Cutler.

  “What’s Whitfield doing with you?”

  Is he sneering? Oh. Oh. Did he see? No, Beau would be beet red and raging if he’d seen Rafe kiss me like that, no ruse, everything wholly real.

  “None of your business,” I say. “Excuse me, I need to speak with my parents.”

  Beau steps aside and slips his sunglasses over his eyes. With a deliberate grin, he struts outside the same way I came in. I roll my eyes. Beau is family, but he’s mighty exhausting. Inside the study, my parents are sitting together on the sofa. My mother is grinning as he speaks to her about something. She needs to smile more often, but sometimes Daddy is the only one who can draw out her softer side. It’s a beautiful side.

  “Hi, Mama, Daddy,” I interrupt, wishing my mother didn’t stiffen immediately. She doesn’t need to impress me if that’s why she does it.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” my father says. “This is a nice surprise having you call. Sit.”

  “What did you want to speak to us about?” Mama asks.

  This shouldn’t be so difficult, but I feel rather squirrely. It’s hard to say how my parents will react, we’ve never dealt with this sort of thing before. I hope they come to my defense, but then again, the Abernathys are close with our family. Rocking the boat of our inner circle is never pleasant.

  “Baby, what’s going on?”

  I must’ve been quiet too long. Daddy’s voice has an edge in it.

  I take a sip of sweet tea my mother has laid out. “I need to tell you about something that happened after the gallery. I don’t mean to make waves, but it was frightening, and I think you’d want to know.”

  “What is it?” Mama asks.

  I let out a slow breath and say it. “Thomas confronted me outside my apartment building. He’d heard rumors I was engaged and wasn’t happy.”

  Daddy’s eyes darken the same as his voice. “What do you mean confronted?”

  With a touch of caution, I rehash the entire situation. I go into Tom’s shouting and ranting, and I’m glad the small bruises he left on my arms are gone because after I say Tom grabbed me, using terrible, lewd words to describe me, my father is on his feet, pacing.

  “Mama,” I say when I finish. “Are you all right?”

  My mother’s face is flat, her mouth in a tight bloodless line. “I’m wondering, that’s all. How did you diffuse the situation?”

  At least she’s not blaming me, but I kind of hoped she might show a little anger on my behalf. “Rafe stepped between us.”

  “He was there?” my father asks. “That boy better have broken Thomas’s jaw.”

  “Lon,” Mama says with a gasp. “He most certainly should not have. Olive Jane, Rafe didn’t hit Thomas did he?”

  “I pulled him back. Told him Tom would turn it against him and then Millie would suffer.”

  “Sensible,” she says. And that would be the closest I’ll get to a compliment, no doubt.

  “I didn’t want to upset y’all, but I thought it best to tell you.”

  My father points a finger at me, his eyes a little wild. “If he comes close to you again, Olive, I’ll bury that son of a—”

  “Lon Cutler, keep your voice down,” Mama warns. “It’s over, now. Olive you weren’t harmed, correct?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No use losing our heads then, and we can all be glad there won’t be a wedding with the man. This will be the end of it, right, Olive? No one is going to go and have more words with Thomas?”

  I jolt to my feet, frustration bleeding to the surface. “If you mean is Rafe going to go beat Thomas senseless, then no. He’s not an animal and has self-control.”

  “Don’t take that tone. It’s as much for Rafe’s protection as Thomas’s.”

  I tug on my blouse. I can’t argue that it is for Rafe’s benefit he leave this alone. “I apologize—”

  “Stop apologizing, baby girl,” Daddy grumbles.

  I smile softly. “I need to be on my way. Rafe is out there waiting.”

  “Why didn’t he come in?” Surprising that it’s my mother who asks.

  “He’s visiting with Arnie. We’re out buying the last few things for Millie since she’s getting released on Friday.”

  I hug them both quickly, Daddy is still red in the face, but he smiles and kisses my forehead. I breathe a little easier when I find Rafe leaning against the side of my car. He smiles at me, but it fades when his eyes lift over my head. My father is stalking toward us, a deep frown on his face.

  Rafe straightens, and I think he’s holding his breath when Daddy sticks out his hand to take his.

  “You defended my girl. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Always, sir,” Rafe says.

  Daddy claps Rafe on the shoulder, then backs up. “Ollie, you keep in touch with us. No more visits by angry men.”

  “From the look on your face, if it happens again and I tell you, I have a feeling you’ll make him disappear. Consider my silence keeping you from committing felonies.”

  “I’m still deciding this time around.” We all grin at that. “I suppose we’ll see you both on Saturday. Though if this charade is going to cause crazed exes to come out of the shadows, maybe it’s best to end it now.”

  I don’t want anything to end. It’s not hard to pretend anymore, and these events simply mean more time with Rafe. “We’ll come, Daddy. You can say what you will about us, but we’ll come.”

  “We’ll see. I care little what anyone says, but I’ll be calling Hugh Abernathy to let him know my thoughts on his boy. That’s what I care about now. See y’all later?”

  I blow him a kiss before getting back into the car. I laugh when Rafe frees a pent-up breath. “You thought he was going to shout at you, didn’t you?”

  “I thought you might have told them and he was coming to kill me, yes.”

  “He was too livid over Tom. It didn’t come up.”

  Rafe stares out the window again. “It will, though?”

  “Yes,” I say with great deliberateness. “It will.”

  He presses a kiss to my fingertips. The smooth touch of Rafe’s hand on mine is like a gentle river, luring me away from the monotony, propriety, and trivial cares of life. There might be rapids ahead, but Rafe is a safety net holding me steady through the storm.

  Olive

  3 months ago

  I rub the
sleep from my eyes. Something rouses me, but fatigue still keeps my head foggy, like I’m underwater. Nestling back into my pillow, I spread out on my mattress like a starfish. Grateful Tom went on a last-minute business trip. He doesn’t stay over much anymore, and in the back of my head I know I shouldn’t be pleased with it. Not when I’m going to be marrying him in less than five months. I like the idea of marrying, and Tom is a decent man, and he loves me. He tells me, and it’s sweet. The trouble is I always imagined a fiery, passionate want with the guy I’d marry, but also a unique friendship. Tom isn’t my confidant. He’s not my friend either. I can’t tell him my deepest thoughts, and I certainly can’t spread out like a starfish when he’s around.

  The buzzing comes again.

  I snap my head up. My cell is aglow. Hair in a tangled mess, I scramble across my bed, and reach for the incoming call.

  “Olive,” Rafe’s gasping breath breaks through the line.

  Now the lights are on inside my body. I sit straight up in bed. “Rafe, what—”

  “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know who to call. Zac is . . . out of town and—”

  “Rafe, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” I’m already on my feet, darting about, changing my tattered T-shirt for a hoodie.

  “No,” Rafe says. His voice is a rocky rasp. “It’s my mom.” My heart stops cold. My fingertips go numb as he goes on. “Something happened. Arnie found her outside the apartment.”

  My phone brightens against my ear. I pull it back. Mylanta. My mother is calling me at three in the morning. Something has truly happened. Thinking the worse, I try to keep my voice steady for his sake. “Rafe, where are you, where’s Millie?”

  “I’m at the hospital.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Ollie, I—”

  “Don’t think of arguing with me, Rafe Whitfield. I’m coming.”

  I watch Rafe pace. Intensive care is bustling, but at least Millie is sleeping, despite the machines, oxygen tubes, and poke marks from needles littering her body.

  A stroke.

  Millie is forty-six, how can she be having strokes?