Mustang Sassy (30 page)

The more he watched her, however, the more he felt something else too. It had been the same every day for the last few days. Yes, it was hot. Yes,
she
was hot. But there was something about her, about watching her work that got his juices flowing. His creative juices. He had no idea what the hell it was, just that he wasn’t in the mood for sanding, he was in the mood for sketching.

He ran back to his car and grabbed his sketchbook and pencils from the backseat. Then he headed back into the yard, sat with his back propped up against the Model A frame, and started to sketch. His fingers flew across the page as if they were controlled by another source, by someone or something outside the realm of this physical world. In less than an hour, he’d filled page after page with roughed out images, his fingers covered in lead from smudging.

“Carlyle! Break’s over.”

“Huh?” Jordan glanced up to find Sass standing over him.

“I don’t know how things roll at your shop, but we only break once every four hours. You’ve been sitting there now for at least an hour.”

Jordan grinned. “You been watching me, Hogan?”

Sass put her gloved hand on her slim hip and said, “Yeah. I’ve been watching you lounge around all morning. If you’re trying to make some kind of impression on me, you’re doing a pretty good job of demonstrating your laziness.”

Pushing himself to his feet, Jordan approached her, feeling a warped sense of satisfaction at the look of surprise and the flash of unease in her gorgeous hazel eyes. “I’ve given up trying to make any impression on you.” He shut his sketchbook and said, “Hogan’s isn’t paying me, what difference does it make to you if I work or not.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re right. It makes no difference to me.” She shrugged. “Might make a difference to Buck, though.”

“Okay, so now that you’re here, tell me what else I need to do to this frame.”

With one more glance in his direction, Sass sighed and then reluctantly took in the Model A. After sliding off her gloves, she walked around the shell, trailing her hand along the sanded iron. Jordan had to glance away. There was something about Sass doing that, about her touching the car so intimately that made him feel too warm. He pulled his shirt off and used it to mop his brow.

“Put your shirt back on, Carlyle!” Sass snapped.

“Why?”

“Because…” She couldn’t seem to look at him.

Jordan grinned. He wandered over to her and whispered, “I’ll put my shirt on when you start wearing a bra.”

Sass’s pink cheeks turned even pinker.

“Seriously. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be around you when you wear those tiny little tops and no bra?”

“Shut it, Carlyle. It’s hot.” She turned her back on him to finish her inspection of the car. But Jordan noticed how her hand shook as she ran it along the fender.

“I know it’s hot. That’s why I took my shirt off.”

She made some huffing sound.

“Does it bother you, Sass?”

“No.”

“No?”

She shook her head with too much emphasis. Jordan took one more step closer. Quietly he said, “Are you sure?”

She spun on him. “Of course I’m sure.”

Her eyes were flashing in that passionate way, her body was vibrating with barely repressed energy and her heated skin smelled just like he remembered it, right after they’d had sex. God, how he wanted to grab her and pull her against him, kiss her and slide his hand up under that ridiculously small top. He wanted Sass, right here, right now.

With effort he stepped back, cleared his throat and said, “Well, if it doesn’t bother you, I guess I don’t need to put my shirt back on.”

She shook her head and started to walk away, but Jordan grabbed her hand to keep her from going.

“What do you think you’re doing?” She snatched her hand from his.

Pointing at the Model A, Jordan said, “What do I need to do?”

Sass glared up into his eyes. Her gazed flicked down over his bare chest and then back up, landing on his mouth. When her small pink tongue darted out to wet her lips, Jordan was pretty sure he was going to lose it and do all the nasty things his body was urging him to do.

Finally, she glanced over his shoulder at the car. Her voice sounded shaky when she said, “Looks done for now. You can get started on that one over there.”

Jordan turned. Back in the far corner of the yard was a cool old roadster. It was about as far away from the truck Sass was working on as he could get and still be in the yard with her.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” she repeated.

They stood there staring at each other. Finally, Sass said, “Get to work, Michaels.”

Jordan leaned forward and whispered, “Carlyle.”

…

By the next day, Jordan had made some good progress on the roadster. He’d tracked down Carlos, who was busy in the shop rebuilding a Firebird. Carlos gave him some pointers on how to go about cleaning more efficiently, starting with the steel brush and ending with the finest sander.

But by midday, Jordan couldn’t help himself. Stripping grime from the roadster had inspired him and he just had to put on paper all the ideas that were spinning around in his brain. He grabbed a fresh sketchbook from his car and this time he sat inside the roadster amidst whatever was left of the rodent-infested upholstery and filled another five pages. The only time he looked up was when he heard a tapping on the hood.

“Seriously, Carlyle. You have a major work-ethic problem.”

Jordan grinned at her through the empty windshield.

“What the hell are you working on, anyway?”

“You want to see?”

She shrugged as if she didn’t really care, but Jordan suspected differently. She was so easy to read. She was like a cat whose curiosity was piqued. She couldn’t stay away, even if she wanted to.

Jordan crawled out of the roadster and handed her his sketchbook. She scowled at him and then opened the book. It took her a long time to say or do anything, and he experienced a moment of artistic insecurity.

But then she started flipping the pages more quickly until she came to blank pages at the end. She slowly flipped back through them. “You did this?” she whispered.

“Yep.”

“Do you have any more?”

“Yep.”

“Can I see them?”

Leaving his book behind, he jogged off to his car to where he kept the rest and returned a moment later to find Sass sitting cross-legged on the hard-packed dirt ground still going slowly through his pages. When he handed her the other books, their fingers came in contact for only a moment. By the way she snatched them, he wondered if she’d felt the jolt of heat that he’d felt. He was pretty sure she had, because she avoided his eyes and focused on the book in front of her.

She approached it in the same way as the last book. Flipping quickly through the pictures until she got to the end of the book and then going back over them slowly from back to front.

“So in this one, you took the grille from the roadster and matched it with the front end of the truck. Then you’ve chopped the Chevy with the Model A…” She trailed off as she glanced up at him. “Holy shit, who showed you how to do this?”

“No one showed me. I was inspired.”

She chewed on the side of her thumb as she studied him. He wasn’t about to tell her that
she’d
been his inspiration.

“Can I…?” She stopped talking, regarding him with a strange expression on her face. “Can I keep these?”

Jordan scratched the back of his neck and said, “Why?”

She looked uncomfortable, gnawing away on her lip. “I thought I might build one, you know, someday.”

“Not without my permission.” He held out his hand, expectantly.

Frowning, she shoved his sketches at him. He took them, flipped through them, and wrote on the back of each.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer until he was finished. Grinning, he passed the book back to her. “Giving you permission.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

With his sketchpads held to her chest like treasure, she said, “Oh, and Carlyle?”

“Yeah?”

Her hazel eyes flashed with a playfulness he hadn’t seen in a while “Get back to work.”

Chapter Twenty-four

She couldn’t stop thinking about those sketches. They were in her mind, while at the shop, at home, in the shower—hell she even dreamed about the damn things. It was because the drawings were good and had nothing to do with the man who’d done them. Nope. Nothing.

Okay, maybe a little bit, but that was all.

The truth was, she’d never seen anything like them, particularly the latest ones. Jordan hadn’t only chopped and combined old classics. He’d added his own style of modern hybridization to the sketches. Over the last few days, she’d secretly watched him. It was like he went into a trance. He’d be scrubbing down the old shells, and then he’d stop. He’d run his hand along the body of the vehicle as if listening to it with his sense of touch, and then he’d stare off into space, jog off to his car for his sketchbook, and spend the next hour or two drawing.

At first she thought it was an act, a way for Jordan to try to make amends or to prove there was more to him than met the eye. But she was no longer so sure it was an act—this drawing shtick of his—the result was way too convincing. The man had serious talent.

Best of all, every morning when she showed up at the shop, it was like Christmas and she’d find more of Jordan’s sketches in her in-box. She’d always loved coming into the shop, but now she was waking up in the early hours, her heart pounding, her hands and feet twitching.

She hadn’t felt this way since she’d worked on the Corvette.

When she walked into the shop that Tuesday, Sass tried not to show just how excited she was to check her in-box. Jordan had gone back to Denver Sunday and Monday the shop was closed so he should be back at Hogan’s that morning. Sass couldn’t wait to find out what he’d come up with over the weekend. But when she got there, her in-box was empty.

She checked the floor to make sure nothing had fallen out. Nothing. Her stomach sank in disappointment.

“Looking for something?” a much too deep and cocky voice said from behind her.

Sass spun around. “No. Nope.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay. Then I guess you don’t want these.” Jordan held a fistful of sketches out to her but when she went to take them, he held them higher, just out of reach.

“Very mature, Michaels,” Sass said. Then she covered her mouth as heat crept up into her cheeks. She had a vision of Jordan standing there half-dressed, holding her hotel key out of reach.

She’d said the exact same thing. ‘Very mature, Michaels. Give me the key.’

Angling her head to one side, she studied him, remembering the confusion on his face when she’d said his name. She remembered him repeating it with a frown and then saying, ‘Sass, we need to talk, and it’s really important.’

Had he meant to tell her the truth that day?

“Here,” Jordan said, handing her the sketches and bringing her back to the present.

“Um, thanks.”

“And, Sass?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Carlyle.”

“Right.”

She took the sketches to the table and sat down, though instead of hurrying through them like she normally did, she watched Jordan leave through the side door. Craning her head a little, she observed his movement through the yard. God, the man was big. She was reminded of her first impression of him. A solid mountain of male flesh.

Something awakened in the pit of her gut, wriggling and stretching and reminding her of other times she’d spent with City-boy. X-rated times. It seemed so long ago, maybe because she’d purposefully banished all thoughts of him and every hot thing they’d done together from her mind. Oh, there were times when she wavered, like the other day when he took off his shirt and flaunted his ridiculously well-built chest all over the place. In an instant she was back at the cabin, spying on him as he had a go at the speed bag.

She wiped the corner of her mouth where moisture pooled. That had been a good day.

Tearing her gaze from the window, she glanced down at the sketches and sighed. Was it wrong to want to repeat that day?

Her heart fluttered behind her breastbone and she crumpled the sketches in her sweaty palm and strode out to the yard, intent on staying as far away from Jordan Carlyle as possible. He’d done it on purpose. She was sure of it. He’d held those sketches up to remind her of their time together. But it was all a ploy to trick her again so he could steal Hogan’s. She was sure of it, almost eighty percent sure. Well, if he thought she’d fall for that again, he had another think coming.

Too bad her stupid body and a good portion of her heart didn’t agree with her.

Sass tugged the hood of her jacket up over her head, thankful that something had changed in the weather and the morning promised to be a bit cooler. The crisp air calmed her overheated cheeks as she crouched behind the old Ford F1. She flattened the sketches out across her knee and stared. A weird chill raced up and down her spine as she studied the second sketch. She’d never seen anything like it. Never. Sass had always considered herself to be a classic girl through and through, but this one, hell, it was something else. It was a masterpiece.
This
was the car she was going to build.

…

Sass spent Tuesday and Wednesday morning keeping busy, helping Manny in the hotbox and doing some minor repairs and bodywork, sanding, patching, welding, there was plenty to keep her busy. But her mind was always planning. She was so excited about getting started on Jordan’s car she could hardly stand it.

But she had other things do that were important too, like picking up groceries for Libby and her mom after work on Wednesday. When she went to drop them off, Libby invited her in for a visit, but Sass didn’t have time. She still needed to go home and change before heading to Chesterville.

The first thing Sass noticed when she entered the front door of the house was the smell, fresh baking. Whatever Mary-Lynn had in the oven, it smelled amazing. The second thing she noticed was the house itself. It wasn’t that Mary-Lynn had changed things around or added some stupid girlie touches like colorful pillows or fancy drapes. It was that the house was neat and clean. And, the third thing she noticed was Mary-Lynn herself. The woman was out in the back pruning one of their plum trees. She wasn’t just clipping around the bottom. No. She was sitting in the tree and sawing off big branches.