His Melody (3 page)

“I think we can handle it and still make the note on this place,” Austin said. He stood and stretched. He hid a smile when he noticed her trying not to notice as he did so. “Speaking of which, I better get out there and do some work. Can’t leave Avery to do it all. Holler when you’re done with the phone.”

She nodded and looked up at him. “I really am grateful.
For the towing.
For this.
Sorry if I’ve been…” She rubbed her fingers over her forehead, and he caught a glimpse of a wedding band on her ring finger. He hadn’t noticed that before.
Probably because he hadn’t wanted to find it.
“It’s been such a long day,” she said with a sigh.

“Understandable. Can’t be much fun stranded out in the hot sun all day. Way out here in the sticks,” Austin said, realizing he didn’t know where she was from. He didn’t know very much about her at all other than she had his blood moving faster than it had in years. Faster than the women in town he’d known and been ambivalent about all his life at any rate. “That reminds me, I should have asked you earlier, but do you want anything to drink? I have some bottled water in the fridge in back.” He would’ve remembered to ask earlier if she hadn’t distracted him with that body of hers. He let his eyes drift over the soft curve of her neck as she pored over the phonebook. After all, he wasn’t handling the married merchandise; he was just browsing around the store.

“No thanks,” she said without looking up from the book she had open in front of her.

“Okay, I’m really getting out of your hair this time. I guess you’ll want some privacy to call your husband and whomever else you have to call,” he said.

She smiled and rubbed the back of her neck again while looking down at her left hand. “I’m not married. Not anymore.” She held up her hand. “It keeps away unwanted attention. And there’s plenty of it in my line of work.”

He nodded. He briefly wondered if his attention would be the unwanted kind. Quickly rejecting the thought, he reminded himself that it shouldn’t matter. She was just passing through. “I’ll be out in the garage if you need me.” He started to move past the desk, headed for the garage bay.

She said, “Hey, hang on a minute.”

“Yes?” He turned and looked down at her where she sat in his office chair.

“I feel like I know you from somewhere.” She gave a little laugh, exposing perfectly straight teeth. “Crazy, huh?”

Not this again. He hadn’t had to deal with this for years. “Yeah.” He was careful to keep his face neutral. He wouldn’t let his expression give him away. “Crazy.” He took another step toward the office door and stumbled over his own two feet. He looked back to see her give a small frown. Crap. Was he caught? Had he been spotted?

“Wait,
do
I know you from somewhere?” Squinting, she stood and took a step closer.

He backed out of the door, smiling. “I think I’d remember meeting you, Melody.” That much was true. “Now if you’ll excuse me, that oil’s not gonna change itself.” He walked toward the bay, grateful to have made his escape for the moment at least.

Chapter Three

“I understand,” she said with a disappointed sigh. She did. She hadn’t realistically expected anyone to have found her wallet and turned it in, but she’d held a little hope out until that moment. “You’ll call me if you hear anything, though?” She tapped Austin’s desk calendar with her index finger. Her bracelets jangled around on her wrist.

“Sure, honey,” the waitress from Mindy’s on the other end of the
phone
said. “Let me have a number I can reach you at.”

Melody fumbled around on the cluttered desk until she somehow, miraculously, came up with a business card. She then gave the woman the number for the shop. After getting off the phone, she walked out to the doorway that opened on the garage bays. Austin stood by a beat-up looking purple sedan, talking to a woman who worked on the next car over, her dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.

When he looked up and saw her, a grin spread across his face that almost knocked her off-balance.

“Melody, this is my sister, Avery. Avery, Melody.”

Melody said hello to Avery, and she returned the greeting. Then Melody said, “So, this a family operation?”

“Yeap,” Austin said. Avery dropped a wrench on her foot, muttered a curse, and bent to pick it up. Austin’s eyes flicked to his sister for a moment and then they landed right back on Melody. “Our brother works here, too. He’s the one out getting your car.”

Melody nodded. Something had seemed to pass between Austin and Avery—an odd vibe of some kind—but whatever it was began and ended so quickly she wasn’t sure what it was if anything.

“So, you call everyone you need to call?” Austin asked, walking over to her.

She took a step back almost without realizing it. She didn’t like this effect he was having on her. It could be dangerous. She wasn’t trying to find out if the town’s name applied literally to its residents. “I called the diner. They haven’t seen it.”

“Did you call your folks?” Austin asked. He sounded concerned.
Yet another thing about him to catch her off-guard.

“Um, the numbers are in my phone. Which is dead.” She didn’t memorize phone numbers anymore—hadn’t in years. She didn’t even have her mom’s number memorized because she’d recently changed cell phone companies and gotten a new number. Melody lifted the useless, dead smart phone from her purse and held it up as proof of her predicament.

When Austin took the phone from her, his fingers brushed hers, sending a tingle racing over her skin. She remembered that tingle. It’d been a long, long time since she’d felt anything like it.
Very long.
She’d been busy trying to save money so that she could start her new career; she didn’t have time to go out looking for men who could produce a tingle like that. Besides, the last one who’d produced that tingle ended up being more trouble than he was
worth.

Austin gave a small frown of concentration while staring at the phone then called over his shoulder, “Hey Avery. What kind of phone you got?”

“One of them new ones they just got down at the Radio Shack,” she called back.

“Is it like this one?” Austin held up Melody’s phone.

Avery walked over, wiping her hands on her dirty coveralls. She scrutinized the phone without taking it from Austin. Moving her dark blue eyes over it, she shook her head. “Naw. Afraid not.” She looked up at Melody. “Sorry.”

Austin held the phone out to Melody.

She took it from him. “Don’t be. It’s fine,” she said, making a mental note to ask to get her suitcase, which contained her charger, out of the trunk of her car when it got back to the garage. “Does anybody have a computer I can use? I can send some emails if nothing else.” The more she anticipated Saeed’s reaction to all this, the more anxious she got.

“Austin has that great big old dinosaur in the office,” Avery said. “We don’t have internet access here at the shop, though. I don’t even know if that thing is capable of
internet
access.”

“The library’s got a couple, but they’re closing any minute now,” Austin looked over her shoulder, and she followed his gaze to a clock on the wall behind her. “They close at four on Fridays.”

She suppressed a groan.
Of course.

“But Mom, she wouldn’t mind you using hers. That is, if you’ll come on home with us after we close up the garage for the day.” He went on to explain though she hadn’t asked, “Mom likes having us live there. She says she’d get too lonely if we didn’t live in that giant house with her.”

Melody really wanted to get things taken care of as soon as possible so she could get somewhere. There was still a possibility—even if a small one—that she could get to Miami on time if she could book a flight and get back to the airport in Atlanta by Monday. She was desperate now. She’d blow as much cash as it took to get to this group in Miami. A lot was riding on them.
Like her entire future.

Still, that left only two days to make it back to Atlanta. And she’d be willing to bet there wasn’t so much as a bus depot or a car rental place in Sweet Neck. If her jalopy wasn’t going to get running again any time soon, and it probably wasn’t, she’d need a ride to wherever the nearest car rental office or bus station was. Best to follow the people who had cars.

“Sure,” she said. I don’t mind waiting.” Like she had a choice. “What time do you close on Fridays?”

“‘Round six,” he said. “We like to give folks an extra hour. So we close down when the banks in town do on Friday.

“There’s more than one?” She didn’t know if she was teasing or not.

He nodded. “There are two.” She didn’t know if he thought she was teasing or not, either.

“Okay. I guess I’ll wait in your office if you don’t mind,” she said.

“‘Course not.” Austin walked back over to the purple car. She didn’t realize she’d been staring until he waved to her with that stupid, cocky grin still on his face. His dimples made it even worse. There was no time to be attracted to this man—she had to get back to Atlanta. Flustered, she hurried back to his office.

Melody couldn’t find a comfortable position in the desk chair in Austin’s office. Not that the chair was the most comfortable thing to begin with. On top of that, her skin was uncomfortable and sticky with salt and sweat. She felt gross and out of place, even in the somewhat dank mechanic’s shop. All she wanted was an ice-cold shower. But where in the world was she going to get that?

She didn’t even have the money for a hotel. She hoped this town had a Western Union. Maybe once she got to a computer she could email for someone to send her a wire—her mom or Jen. Then she could try to talk the local innkeeper or whoever into letting her have a room until she could get the money to pay him back. She’d have to get some money to pay Austin, too.

She’d been sleepier than she realized. She woke up with a jolt when a door slammed out in the garage. Next, she heard a booming voice. Out of curiosity, she went out to the railing of the walkway that separated the office from the garage bays. She saw a tall, lean man with brownish red hair leaning against the car Austin had been working on earlier. He must have finished with it because the hood was closed.

“Got your car, miss,” the man said to Melody.

“Donnie, Melody. Melody, meet the charmer of the South. Also known as Donnie Holt,” Austin said. His back was turned to her when he said it, so she couldn’t see his expression, but it sounded like Austin was paying his brother only half a compliment.

“Nice to meet ya,” Donnie said, walking over and pumping her hand. Then he said to no one in particular, “Yeah, like I said, we’re fixin’ to get a good one. The sky is darkening up right good out there.”

“A storm?” Melody asked. She was pretty sure that was what he meant, but she wanted to be wrong. After all, she still didn’t have a roof over her head for the night and didn’t know if she would have one.

“Oh yeah. That’s putting it mildly,” Donnie said.

“Shoot,” she said.

“Well, I guess I’ll drive this one out.” Austin nodded at the purple beater. “Then I’ll get your car in here, and we’ll have a look at it,” Austin said.

“Okay,” Melody said, trying not to dread the prognosis too much.

#

Austin walked into the office and sat on the edge of the desk so that he was less than a couple feet from her, and she was very much aware of it. “Bad news,” he said.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said. “Give it to me.”

“Engine threw a rod.” He scratched the corner of his strong, angular jaw. “If we’re gonna get a new one in here, it’s gonna take a while. It’ll be at least a few days, and it’s not gonna be cheap.” He put a hand behind his neck and screwed his lips to the side. Then he said, “I don’t guess you have a warranty on that thing.”

She deflated in her chair, shaking her head. “When you say expensive, are you talking hundreds or
?...
”

“Thousands.”

Damn. And there was a good chance she was in the process of losing her job. She couldn’t afford this.
In more ways than one.
Thousands would put a huge dent in her savings account, and she was definitely not in a good place for having that happen. If she forked over thousands, and she lost her job before she was ready to start her own business, she’d be sunk.

“You said a few days. What’s the quickest you could get an engine here?”

“I have to make a few calls, but Monday at the earliest. Maybe Tuesday,” he said. “Those are your best case scenarios.”

“And there’s no bus depot close by?”

“Closest
one
is
a few towns
over.”

“No car rental places?”

“Not here in Sweet Neck.”

That was what she’d thought. There couldn’t be much at all here in Sweet Neck. “This is not happening,” she moaned, burying her face in her hands.

“Sorry,” he said. And he sounded like he really was.

She looked up at him, forcing a smile. “Not your fault.”

“Look, I can give you a ride to the nearest bus depot tomorrow if you want, but tonight with this storm brewing, it wouldn’t be a good idea. Plus, I don’t know what the schedule is. They probably don’t have any more buses leaving ‘til the morning anyway.”