Fender Bender Blues (23 page)

Craig’s brows drew together and he stroked his chin stubble with the fingers of his right hand. “As a car man,” Craig finally said, “I know for a fact your car isn’t worth the money to fix it.”

Rach puckered her lips and scrunched her nose. “Thanks, I think. Either way, it’s getting fixed and instead of a new car, I get the same old piece of crap. Story of my life.”

Craig’s silence was deafening and in his eyes was a sympathy she did not want, not from a man who could drive a different vehicle every day of the year if he wanted to. There’d been a time when she’d been on top of the world—much like Craig probably was every day. Of course, in her past life she hadn’t been as well off as Craig, but she’d been making her way quite well.

His soft “sorry” and the emotion behind it caused a lump in her throat. She could have turned into a sobbing mess in front of him and knowing he’d hold her while she cried made her sigh. He seemed distant now, his eyes zoned out as he looked out the diner window. The sun was setting and the sky outside the lightly tinted diner window was turning pinks and oranges. As he stared at the view, she wondered where his mind had gone.

“This is all your fault,” Rach accused and captured his attention.

He chuckled and raised his brows. “Oh?”

“That’s right, you heard me,” she went on. “In fact, it might be true that I pulled into the street and I should’ve looked both ways beforehand,” she waved her hand in front of his nose when he started to speak, “but if that’s true then it’s also true that
you
should have been looking. Which means you
weren’t
looking, as can be proven by the fact that you ran into my car. Yes, that’s right,
you
were the one who actually collided into me. I think we are both at fault and therefore you should let me drive your Corvette while I’m waiting for my car to be repaired.”

She sat back and crossed her arms, thoroughly pleased with the lecture she’d just given. Craig sputtered, opening and shutting his mouth in a series of silent movements.

“So you agree?” she demanded.

“Hell no!” His blue eyes radiated horror. “I’ve seen how you drive. There is no way I’d let you drive my ‘Vette. It’s a classic.”

Rach glowered at him. “You’re such a baby. You have insurance.”

“Yes, and I don’t need them dropping me because I let you drive my car,” Craig stressed with a shake of his head. He looked as though he were questioning her sanity.

“Fine.” No amount of begging would win her that car and she hadn’t expected it would. But she had to try, right? “Maybe we could practice for a few days. You could come over and let me drive it after work—after
you
get off of work, I mean—and if you think I’m responsible enough by then you can let me keep her,” she suggested, only half kidding.

Craig smiled and patted her on the hand. “Not in a million years. But thanks for asking—you’re a trip.”

She sighed. “Guess I’ll just have a talk with the sweaty chauvinist who’s fixing my car. Maybe he’ll put a rush on it.”

He grinned and cocked his head to the side and she looked down at his hand still resting on hers. She could have moved hers away, or pushed his away, but she didn’t. Instead she pretended not to notice. So much for hating his guts. She sighed.

“You want me to call the chauvinist?” he laughed and still he didn’t move his hand.

Rach had to fight back the grin that was bubbling under the surface. “Nah. My dad said he was going down there. Maybe he’ll scare the daylights out of them.”

Rach looked around the room and did a double-take at a group in the back. Melting into the backdrop would’ve been much easier if she’d been born a brunette. If Mrs. Petska walked by, she’d spot Rach in an instant. She scrunched down as low as she could without looking like a lunatic, and Craig peered over her head to see what was wrong. She gave a vehement shake of her head and leaned across the table to grab him by the collar of his dark blue shirt, pulling him in. “Don’t you dare make it obvious,” she whispered.

Out of instinct Craig imitated Rach’s posture. “Make what obvious?”

Instead of listening, he peered over her shoulder again and Rach caught his face between her hands to stare him in the eyes. “Mrs. Petska is in the back of the room. She tried cornering me the other day before I left my house. She is
not
happy those lights are still up and the gnomes are still out.”

Craig’s eyes twinkled under the bright café lights. His breath was a sweet whisper against her skin and smelled of peppermint gum.

“Ah,” he drawled, “The dreaded neighbor. I can’t believe you haven’t put those things away yet.”

Rach groaned and rested her head in her hands on the table. She shook her head back and forth. “I meant to take them down, but I got busy.”

“Too busy to take down out of season lights off your porch?” he mused, a smile hovering at the corners of his lips.

“Oh, shut it. You have no idea what kind of crazy shit I’ve been dealing with, and that includes you,” she accused. Since his expression seemed more like pleasure than sympathy, she told him, “And since you helped put them up, you can help me take them down. We’ll do it tomorrow. Preferably after dark when she goes to bed. Ten o’clock.”

“I suppose I could help a damsel in distress,” he joked and she rolled her eyes. Craig leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Mrs. Petska’s table. “We could get our dessert to go,” he suggested. “Take it back to my place so your neighbor doesn’t see you.”

The muscles in Rach’s back tensed in anticipation but her mind scoffed at the idea—she couldn’t possibly go to his house where they’d be alone. Not an option. She didn’t trust herself or him. She answered, “Sure. Let’s go.”

Damn it
. She needed to do something about her libido—it was getting her into all sorts of trouble.

Craig was up and out of his seat in seconds, leaving her in the booth to wring her hands together. She willed her heart to stop its frantic racing and told herself to stop thinking about his lips. She gave that up when her imagination played out a sweaty naked scene.

Craig slid back into the booth, putting an abrupt end to her little fantasy. “She’s boxing it for us so you can go outside and wait. I’ll meet you outside with the food.”

Rach nodded and, with a sneak peek at the table in the back, scrambled up and hurried to the door. She slid behind the wheel of the Toronado and exhaled a breath of relief.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Craig opened the front door and followed Rach inside his apartment.

“This is nice.” Rach gazed around the large living room just off the entryway and set her purse on the table next to the door. Funny how the sight of Maggie’s purse in the same place had always made him claustrophobic, but Rach’s oversized purse sitting there made his heartbeat race inside his chest.

“Thanks. I’ll miss it when I move. It’s nice and small. The new place is going to be trouble to keep up with.” He shut the door behind them and pointed in the direction of the kitchen. “Just around the corner, light switch is on the wall.”

The large kitchen had dark-stained wood cabinets and a black speckled granite top. Masculine and simple. All the appliances were matching black and stainless steel. A stark contrast to the house he’d be moving to. The new place was warm, with soft-colored walls and a kitchen waiting for a woman’s touch, halls ready for kids to run rampant through. All of which would come in time, he’d promised his mom a few days before.

She sat down at the table and fixed an intense gaze on him. “Why didn’t you tell me you own a dealership?”

Craig broke the eye contact. He turned to pull two forks from a drawer and told a half-truth, “I let you make your own assumptions.”

“Really? Because I thought maybe you just didn’t want me to know.” She searched his face.

“Thought I’d let you enjoy the car salesman jabs.”

True, he didn’t tell women right-out he owned a business. It sometimes made it difficult to judge their sincerity. In Rach’s case, since she hadn’t enjoyed his company in the beginning, he’d withheld the information out of habit. After a few weeks of not getting along, whether he owned a dealership or not wouldn’t have mattered to her anyway.

She smiled and teased, “So you make lots of money by instructing your salesmen to brag up beater cars to unsuspecting customers.”

Craig grinned, hoping she was kidding at least a little, and replied with a shrug, “Something like that. Except my dealership mostly deals with new cars. Our used section isn’t very big and I make certain our inventory is of the finest quality. The beaters, as you so eloquently put it, get donated to charity for low-income, struggling families.”

“Well damn, there’s my foot in my mouth again.” She smiled. “The place I bought my car from a couple years ago guaranteed that piece of crap. The guy even looked like the stereotypical sleazy car salesman with the slicked back hair and pearly white smile. A few months later I was replacing the fuel pump, the alternator and then the engine starting knocking. I’m actually surprised it didn’t blow up before you hit me.” Her wide mouth broke into a smile. “Now some big, sweaty jerk is cobbling it back together and probably doing a bad job of it.”

He handed her a fork and their fingers grazed before she tugged the utensil from his hand.

“Why don’t we bring your car to my dealership and we’ll do another estimate.” The words had come out before he’d had a chance to think about it. She seemed as surprised as he by the offer and he marveled at her widened eyes. He shrugged. “I’ll make sure it gets done right. I have an excellent team at my service shop.”

Rach’s fork stopped halfway to her lips. “Serious? You’d do that for me?”

Craig’s laugh burst from his chest in a deep rumble and she blinked at him, startled. “Don’t sound so amazed. I’m really not that bad of a guy.”

Rach looked sheepish and stuffed the pie into her mouth. When she’d finished chewing, she answered, “Okay, I admit you’re not so bad and this is nice of you. I really appreciate it. My dad’ll be ecstatic. Just one thing—how do I get the car to your place? It doesn’t drive at the moment.”

She was cute when she wasn’t sassing him. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll have it towed for you. Just let me handle everything.”

He studied her face as she considered his offer, wondering what was going on behind those amazing eyes. Finally, she nodded. “You’re a life saver. Must be amazing owning a dealership.”

“I’d rather not talk about it. Work gives me a headache. At least it has lately. I’d rather talk about you.” There was a small spec of whipped cream on her lip and he longed to lean across the table and lick it off. He tore his gaze from her lips and back up to her eyes. “How is your job hunt going? Leah said you’d found a few places to drop your résumé off.”

Rach cocked her brow and licked whipped cream off her lip, then off her fork. My God, she had him so turned on he considered throwing her over his shoulder and running with her to his room.

“So you talk to Leah a lot? What else does she say?”

He grinned. “Oh, not much. Why, have you been talking about me?”

Rach flushed and ate more pie. The muscles in her jaw and neck worked as she swallowed and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Everything about her was sexy.

“No,” she denied. “I didn’t tell her, you know, the details.”

Craig couldn’t help it, her blush was too endearing. He asked, “Really? So what are the details?”

“Do you do this often?” she accused.

He smiled and pushed his plate away, no longer hungry for food, but for the woman across from him. “What?”

“Act like a perv to your dessert guests,” she stated, making him laugh. She stood and asked, “Can I use your restroom?”

Craig nodded his head toward the door. “Around the corner to the left.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Rach dug around in the side pocket of her purse for dark brown eyeliner to fix her makeup. Once she’d finished lining both eyes she gave herself a wink, looking more confident than she felt.

Leah said Craig’s ex was pretty.
Blonde.
She scrutinized her own hair and ran her fingers through wavy, windblown tangles. After straightening her blouse she stepped out of the bathroom and strolled to the kitchen, willing her heartbeat to return to normal.

Craig stood at the counter with his back toward her. She needed to leave. Pronto. His dark shirt splayed across the muscles of his back and she bit back a sigh. Maybe he’d been thrown into her life to test her willpower.

He turned, flashed the boyish grin she couldn’t resist. If this was torture it was the best torture she could ask for.

He pushed a glass of water across the table.

“Thanks.” Rach’s eyes followed his strong hands as he tidied the kitchen and rinsed the forks in the sink, all the while imagining those hands on her body.

“So what about your job hunt?” he asked as he wiped down the table. Rach wadded up the napkin, and fisted it into her lap under the table. This was as good a time as any to excuse herself from his apartment. Why couldn’t she get the words out?

“Not going so well. I applied at Dexler’s a couple weeks ago and thought I’d get the job easily, but a bitch from my past quashed that opportunity. Long story short, I’m still looking.” She sighed in frustration and dropped the wadded napkin onto the table. “I don’t know what to do. I have a
degree
, damn it! I’m not some teeny bopper just out of high school.”