Unhinged (4 page)

I didn’t bother to
correct his assumption that Aaliyah and I were friends because the sound of an
engine caught my attention. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see a
Mercedes speeding down the narrow drive. I could only assume that was Aaliyah.

“Well, crap.” I realized
I spoke my thoughts aloud. Meeting the guy’s gaze once more, I followed with,
“Do you work here?”

The smile that tipped
his full lips had my knees going weak momentarily. I got a glimpse of bright
white teeth along with the glint from his lip ring.

“You could say that,”
he answered.

“And you are?” I asked,
needing to snap out of it and get on with the reason I was there. I had a job
to do, and Mr. Trovato would be expecting me back in the office before he left
for his afternoon meeting with one of the senior vice presidents.

“Name’s Sebastian.
Don’t worry, Angel, I’m sure she’ll be back after class.”

Crap. Crap. Crap.

That wasn’t going to
help me now. It wasn’t like I could sit around and wait for her to get back
just to ask if she had her father’s phone.

“Would you know if…,” I
glanced over at the front door, “if anyone else is home? I’m supposed to pick
up Mr. Trovato’s cell phone. He told me Aaliyah would be here to give it to
me.”

“Nope. No one else
here,” he said confidently as he slung the red rag over his shoulder and thrust
his hands into his pockets, the muscles in his thick arms bulging, the black
designs that twisted around his arms flexing and moving.

He was breathtaking.

But that wasn’t why I
was there.

I cocked an eyebrow as
I contemplated my next move. I had seen the butler/man standing on the front
porch, so I was pretty sure
someone
was home. When Sebastian didn’t seem
to want to change his answer, I knew I’d hit a brick wall.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

This day wasn’t getting
any better; that was for damn sure.

When I squinted up at
Sebastian one last time, I found his gaze had drifted down to my chest. Feeling
incredibly exposed, I immediately covered my breasts by crossing my arms.
“Hello-o-o.” I made sure he heard my annoyance. “My eyes are up here.”

“Sorry,” he responded
with a smirk, looking not at all sorry. “You’ve got a stain on your sweater.”

As though I didn’t know
the stain was there, I glanced down at my chest, realizing that by crossing my
arms, I’d thrust my boobs up, increasing the amount of cleavage peeking out
from the very modest V-neck of my sweater.

“Coffee,” I said
inanely.

Sebastian met my gaze
and grinned before glancing over his shoulder. “I guess I should get back to
work.”

I nodded, not sure what
else I could do. If this guy insisted that no one was home, I couldn’t just
walk right in even if I suspected otherwise. And I seriously doubted the
Trovato’s wanted their mechanic traipsing through their house looking for
Conrad’s cell phone.

Without so much as a
goodbye, Sebastian turned and walked away.

That’s when I realized
that the earth-shattering impact of seeing him for the first time was suddenly
overshadowed by the vision of him walking away. Although his jeans were loose,
I could still see the shape of his perfect ass behind the soft denim.

On hearing his sexy,
gruff chuckle, I immediately looked up and that’s when I realized he’d caught
me ogling his ass.

At least now I didn’t
have to worry about Mr. Trovato firing me.

It wasn’t going to
matter since I was surely going to die of mortification anyway.

Sebastian

Holy shit.

That was her.

That was the girl from
my dream.

As I walked back to the
garage, I did my best not to turn around and watch her drive away.

I had to give myself a
little credit. I think I handled myself pretty damn well considering I’d been
shocked as soon as I saw her. She was the girl I had been dreaming about for
the last few nights.

Stepping into the
shadows of the garage, memories of my dream came back with a vengeance, and I
stopped moving as the vision replayed inside my head.

I knew I was asleep. I
had to be. Even knowing that, I was having a hard time deciphering the dream
from reality. There was no way this could be real. Could it?

I didn’t want to wake
up. I didn’t want to lose this moment.

She, whoever she was,
she mesmerized me, drew me in. I couldn’t pull my eyes away, couldn’t break the
spell she had on me. Something in the way she walked, talked, moved.

Breathed.

So familiar, yet not.

I felt like I knew her,
like I’d met her before, but for the life of me I don’t remember any such
encounter. Had we met? Was this my mind conjuring up the image of something
from my past? Or was this some sort of vision from the future?

Either way, I didn’t
want to open my eyes. Didn’t want to face reality if she wasn’t in it. I wanted
to get closer, to look into her eyes, to know what she was thinking.

I was unabashedly staring,
unable to look away.

Whoever she was, there
was something about her…

Something that unhinged
me.

Unfortunately, every
time the dream got that far, my eyes would come open, the dream drifting off
into nothingness. No matter how hard I tried to call it back, it never worked.
Just that morning, I’d lay motionless in my bed, my chest heaving, my heart
pounding while the first rays of the early morning sun peeked in my bedroom
window. After getting my breathing under control, I had glanced at my alarm clock.
Groaning, I then rolled over, refusing to get up at six.

But I was awake now.
Completely. Payton Fowler, she was the girl from my dream. And she’d been
standing right there in the driveway, looking just as she had in my dream.

Well, save for the outfit.
She hadn’t been wearing that prissy skirt when I’d dreamed about her. No, she’d
had on jeans and a T-shirt, her cute little feet were bare. Her long, dark hair
had been pulled back in a ponytail, not hanging loosely over her shoulders. But
her smile, the smoothness of her alabaster skin, her pert little nose, those
full lips and the way her hazel eyes had lit up when she looked at me… It had
all been the same. Every last detail.

“Do I work here, she
asked?” I was grumbling to myself as I made my way back to the truck where the
stupid ass engine was waiting for me. “Yep, Angel, I work here all right,” I
mused aloud.

From the moment I laid
eyes on her, I’d nearly tripped over my own two feet. It had been surreal, and
for a brief moment, I’d wondered if I were asleep again.

I pinched myself, the
pain ricocheting up my arm.

Nope, not dreaming. She
was real.

And now I was smiling.
Even as I resumed my place in the garage where I spent most of my time,
—
in my world,
eight bays, air conditioning and a kickass sound system equaled a garage
—
the smirk was
still plastered on my face.

I thought maybe the
muscles were stuck or something. I didn’t spend much time smiling these days
and certainly not today.

Until I’d heard the
guttural purr of the Mustang pulling up, I’d spent the better part of the last
three hours fiddling with the damn engine on my cherry red, ‘63 Chevy truck,
yet it was still idling too fucking high. Since the engine was a prototype that
I was working on in my spare time, I was used to the minor quirks from the damn
thing, but for the life of me, I couldn’t get the bugs out of this one.

“Stupid ass engine,” I
groaned loudly.

After that
interruption, I doubted I’d be able to get my mind back in gear. That woman
—
Payton
—
had
single-handedly knocked me for a loop there for a second. From the moment I saw
her walking toward me in those killer fucking heels, I’d had a damn hard time
keeping my boner at bay.

I felt like I’d just
stepped into a bad porno
—
the kind where the hot, young executive woman meets the mechanic and things get
hot fast.

Yeah, that hadn’t
happened.

I had reined in my
instant primitive reaction to her, but my lust had been quickly replaced with
confusion.

At first, I thought I’d
met her before, but when I heard the lyrical sound of her voice, I realized
there was no way. I would have remembered her. But there had been something
niggling in my head. I may not have met her, but I’d certainly seen her before.
That was when I remembered the dream.

That chick was fucking
hot, even if that outfit didn’t do a damn thing for her. The way her glossy
brown hair sparkled in the sunlight... It was the first thing I noticed, but
certainly not the last.

“Did I work here?” I
repeated, grinning.

Thrusting my hands into
my hair, I stared at the engine that was hell bent on dissolving my patience.

And still I was
smiling.

Conrad’s new assistant,
huh? Interesting.

My amusement still
didn’t die off even as I accepted the fact that, by working for Conrad, Ms.
Fowler was technically off limits to me.

My grin widened.

Right. Like that had
ever stopped me before.

It wasn’t until she mentioned
her name that I realized who she was, but that hadn’t quelled the notion that
I’d seen her before. For the last two weeks, Conrad had been going on and on
about the new assistant he had, but it wasn’t like I’d been introduced to her
yet. Needless to say, Conrad didn’t make a habit of introducing me to the women
in his office. I doubted that was going to change anytime soon either.

While I’d stood there
studying her, I tried to convince myself that the only reason she sounded
familiar was the fact that Conrad had been talking about her for the last
couple of weeks. I think he was still trying to convince himself that she would
work out, eventually, but he had plenty of concerns regarding her ability to do
the job.

She was an assistant
for chrissakes. How fucking hard could that be?

Not that I’d asked him.
I didn’t really give a fuck, truth be told.

The only time I’d
uttered a word had been when he admitted that he missed his old assistant,
Jasmine. I, personally, was grateful that the snooty bitch was gone, and I’d
told him as much. If anyone could make me feel like a two-bit reject, it had
been Jasmine.

Then again, that’s what
happened when you were in the shadows, pretending you were nothing more than an
employee who was paid extra to make house calls. Right. Like I’d willingly work
for Conrad if there wasn’t something in it for me.

Retrieving the grease
rag from my shoulder, I carried it over to the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren that
I’d been tinkering with the last few days. Some hot shot millionaire that
Conrad knew was willing to pay an absurd amount of money to have the damn thing
supercharged. As if half a mil wasn’t enough to drop on a car already, now he
was willing to pay
my
price to make the damn thing go faster
—
in a way only I
knew how.

Like the asshole could
handle the speed in the first place.

While I grabbed my
tools, I let my mind drift back to my brief encounter with Payton a few minutes
before.

Yeah, I know. I should
have probably told her who I was, but she seemed to have drawn her own
conclusion already. I didn’t want to disappoint her.

The mechanic.

That actually made me
laugh.

Technically, it was
true. But I wasn’t the
family’s
mechanic. I was the brains behind the
stupid Trovato fortune, although Conrad would never willingly admit as much. He
took full credit and I pretended that I wasn’t bothered by it. Hell, he was the
one responsible for convincing the media that I was nothing more than a lowly
employee of Trovato, Inc., but I certainly hadn’t tried to correct him.

Little did they know.

It would probably blow
their fucking minds to know that if it weren’t for me, Trovato, Inc. would
still be moving along at a snail’s pace, trying to come up with a performance
engine that all the damn car manufacturers were looking for these days. Then
again, there were even bigger secrets that they’d latch onto if they had the
chance.

But, I wasn’t looking
for glory or acknowledgement.

In fact, I preferred to
spend my days entangled in an engine or screwing around on the computer away
from the cogs of the company. Even if I wanted to, I would never fit in there.
Hell, I barely fit in here.

So, Conrad and I had
come to an agreement, he would leave me the hell alone, and I would, in turn,
make him more money.

As for me, I wasn’t
hurting.

At twenty-five, I had
enough that my grandkids would never have to work. But that was only one of my
secrets. You see, I happen to be the heir to the Trovato fortune… Conrad
Trovato’s illegitimate son. So, yeah, lowly mechanic I wasn’t.

“You’re a dumbass,
Trovato.”

Yep, I’d gotten used to
talking to myself. Today was no exception.

I could’ve let Payton
in the house because I happened to live here, too. Although I didn’t live in
the main house. That wouldn’t have been pleasant for anyone involved, just ask
my stepmother
—
the woman who despised me probably more than Conrad did
—
or my
half-sister Aaliyah.

No, I chose to live on
my father’s estate, in the guest house, of course. The guest house was
four-thousand square feet, mind you, so I certainly wasn’t slumming it. I
wasn’t there because the prospect of family made me leery to leave either. No,
I was there for convenience. Pure and simple.

The chirp of my cell
phone across the room had me ducking out from beneath the hood and wiping my
hands again. Seeing that it was my father, I was tempted to ignore it. I knew
without answering just what he had to say.

“Yo,” I greeted after
putting the phone on speaker.

My father hated that.

“Where are you?” he
asked, the frustration in his tone echoing through the cavernous space.

“Garage. Why?”

“Where’s Aaliyah?”

“School.” Not that I
was her keeper or anything.

“Why the hell did you
tell Payton that no one was home?”

“I didn’t know her from
Eve,” I lied. “What was I supposed to do? Let her in to rummage through the
house?”

In case I hadn’t
mentioned it, I lived to torment my father. We had a love/hate relationship
that we’d perfected over the last few years
—
ever since I was introduced to
him.

You see, I’m Conrad
Trovato’s dirty little secret. Or my mother was anyway.

Needless to say, we
didn’t particularly like each other, although he’d insisted on taking me in
when my mother died. I’d been fourteen at the time, and since I didn’t have any
other family willing to take in a wild kid with a growing juvenile record, I
hadn’t had much of a choice.

I was still wild, more
so now. The only difference was that I didn’t get caught anymore.

Conrad didn’t appreciate
my wild living, and I didn’t appreciate how he had treated my mother. Or the
way he talked down to me. We’d come to an impasse before I was twenty-one and
the years hadn’t improved our relationship one fucking bit.

“I need my phone,” he
groused.

“Come and get it,” I
snapped.

“Sebastian,” Conrad chastised,
drawing my name out in way too many syllables.

I didn’t say anything.

“You need to grow up,
Sebastian,” he finally added.

And you need to go to
hell
,
I thought to myself.

“Was there something
else?” I asked, pretending my head wasn’t about to explode.

“Actually, there is,”
he stated.

Damn.

I bit my tongue,
knowing he would eventually say something.

“We’re having a party
tomorrow night.”

“Great. Have fun.”

Unfortunately, Conrad
and his wife Lauren had a penchant for throwing parties all the damned time.
They claimed they were for charity, but I knew better. My stepmother loved the
limelight. She loved to show off her riches and inviting other affluent
assholes to their home was the easiest way for her to do that.