Slow and Steady Rush (35 page)
“I’m … the handyman.” Not a complete lie. He was very handy. He grinned and a furrow appeared right between her eyes.
“I’d like to leave Mr. Wilde a message.” She rummaged around in a compact black tote hanging from her shoulder, muttering the word “pen” half a dozen times.
“He’ll be in by”—Logan checked his watch—“seven, if you want to come back.”
“Are you certain? He hasn’t returned my calls.”
And with good reason. His phone was buried somewhere in the mud of the Tuckalachee River. The call about the defunct stove had come through Dalt’s phone. “Positive. Why don’t you leave your name and number with me?”
She stared straight into his eyes as if gauging his intentions, and harrumphed. “I’ll be back at seven.”
She gathered her black leather bag close and walked out, the brief flash of Alabama sunlight blinding him for an instant.
What rock had that dude crawled out from under
? He looked about a month overdue for a shower. It was a pity too, because under the grime he wasn’t an ogre. And he had his teeth. In fact, contrary to the stereotype, they were straight and white, but maybe it was an illusion of the dim bar and his dark, unkempt beard.
Jessica checked her watch. What the heck was she supposed to do in this mosquito-sized town for three hours? She refused to hang out at the Wal-Mart. The heat exacerbated the headache that had been brewing since Birmingham.
The AC in her car had gone on the fritz, going in and out and not keeping things as chill as she liked. She loved her Audi, bought with her own money right out of business school. Sleek, black, expensive—at least it would have been if she hadn’t found a deal on the used car.
She tossed her bag on the passenger seat and climbed behind the wheel, the black leather, which looked buttery soft, cooking her like a hotcake on a griddle. The sweat trickling down the back of her neck would probably sizzle on the seat. She started the car, and an anemic burst of cool air chugged out of the vent. She turned the AC to max, but the air seemed to get warmer.
She reversed out of the parking spot, but before she could shift into drive, the temperature gauge blinked red and the car sputtered off. She turned the key over and back, pumping the gas pedal a few times. Nothing. An unwelcome helplessness set her knees into a tremble. She tried again. The battery buzzed, but the engine didn’t crank.
Her mind swirled until the tsking, logical side of her brain gained control. With the advent of smart phones, help was only a few clicks away. She would call AAA. They would send a truck and tow her car to the nearest garage. Then she could call a taxi. Simple. She sighed. As long as she had a plan, she could control the panic tramping around in her belly.
The car turned suffocating, the hot air constricting her lungs. She cracked the driver’s door, but the slight breeze coming off the tarry parking lot didn’t provide much relief. She riffled through her bag and came up with her phone. A tiny message in the corner of her screen sent ripples of unease through her stomach.
No Service
.
Were these people Quakers or something? No cell phone service? How did they communicate? Smoke signals? She shuddered a breath out of her dry mouth. Next logical step would be to head back inside and plead for help. A shadow crossed her body the same time a hard rap on the car made her bobble the phone to the floorboard.
“Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to startle you. Are you having problems?” Mountain Man rested his forearms over the top of her door. His wrists were thick, his hands huge. The black under his fingernails was a workingman’s polish, and fresh red scratches zagged over the backs of his hands. As he repositioned the frayed blue-and-white baseball cap shadowing his eyes, the muscles along his forearm jumped. Dark brown hair flipped into almost curls around the edges.
The sunlight emphasized the thinness of his cotton shirt, one shoulder seam pulling apart across the broad expanse of his torso. His masculinity wove around her, at once disconcerting, yet her illogical, escalating panic eased.
“My car won’t start.” God, she hated the little girl, tinny sound of her voice. She cleared her throat and tried again, forcing a practiced steel into her words. “It’s been acting funny since I hit Birmingham.”
Mountain Man assessed the parking space she’d pulled out of and pushed the brim of his hat up a couple of inches with his forefinger. He squatted, and she slid out of the car to watch. He swiped his fingers through a puddle on the blacktop and rubbed. Then, he smelled his fingers. He turned toward her, still in a squat. “Looks like a coolant leak. Your AC been working?”
“Not well. And my temperature gauge flashed red just before the engine died.”
“Pop the hood, and let me take a gander.”
She pulled the lever on the dashboard and joined him at the front of the car “Are you a mechanic?”
“I’m a handyman, remember?” Again, he graced her with a grin before leaning over the engine compartment to jiggle hoses.
His scent filtered through the humidity to her. Not the stench of unwashed male she expected. Underlying the clean sweat and grease was a mystery that hooked her closer, until she was leaning over the hood too, close to his shoulder. The one with the ripping seam. She swallowed, her throat stiff as if a noose had tightened. Usually, panic accompanied the feeling, but not this time. This time a covey of birds beat their wings in her stomach.
He turned toward her, one hand on the edge of her raised hood. His eyes were brown, but not a plain brown or even a deep, intensive one, but an electric brown with sparks of gold. They danced over her face. His voice came out gruff, almost a whisper. “I understand your problem.”
She massaged the taut cords of her neck. For a heartbeat, she wondered if he referred to her or her car. Hope lilted her question. “You do?”
“Yep. One of your hoses is cracked. Probably due to the heat.”
She swayed on her heels and dropped her face, pretending to study the hulk of metal and plastic under her hood. No matter her degrees and successes, sometimes she was a complete and total idiot. Like now. This redneck mountain man could never understand her. Her hair swished forward, pieces sticking to her cheeks, hiding her face. “Can you fix it?”
He left her standing over the puzzle of her engine. He hadn’t even offered to call a tow truck. She felt oddly abandoned.
He stopped at an old blue-and-white Ford pickup truck parked in the shadow of a huge oak tree. Instead of climbing in and driving off with a grin and a wave, he flipped open a white, metal utility box in the truck bed. Clanging metal accompanied his search. He made a satisfied exclamation before trotting back toward her. “Duct tape. I always keep a roll handy. You mind hanging on to my hat?”
Without giving her a chance to answer, he pushed the ball cap into her hands, dropped to lay on the ground, and scooched under her car. Bent at the knees, his legs stuck out from under the bumper.
An embroidered flying falcon on the side of his cap had lost half of its thread, and she picked at the fraying brim. She shuffled her feet apart and flapped her blouse to catch the slight breeze ruffling her hair. The occasional rip of tape punctuated the unidentifiable song he hummed.
His shimmy reversed itself, and he emerged with new brown stains on the front of his shirt and a glossy smear along his cheekbone. He wiped his hands along the edge of his shirt, dirtying it further, and ran the back of his wrist over his forehead, wiping away a rivulet of sweat.
“You’ve got some grease on your cheek.” She pointed like a three-year-old.
He brought the edge of his T-shirt to his face and scrubbed it clean. At least she assumed that’s what he was doing, because she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his torso.
Michael, the boyfriend she’d broken up with six months ago, had kept his chest waxed to show off the contours he worked hard for in the gym. Mountain Man did not wax. Curly brownish hair led from his partially revealed pecs straight into the waistband of the gray boxer briefs peeking out of his jeans. And for all the time her ex-boyfriend had put in at the gym, he never built the solid, thick muscles of the man standing close enough to touch.
Mountain Man didn’t lift weights for an hour then push papers around a desk for the rest of the day. Maybe he chopped wood or moved bales of hay or broke horses. She’d watched a documentary on real-life working cowboys one sleepless night and had unusually erotic-laced dreams when she’d finally drifted off.
“Do you ride a horse?” Wait a holy-rolling second … had she said that aloud?
His shirt dropped, breaking the trancelike state induced by his abs. “A horse? No, I mostly get around in a truck.” His laughter rumbled through her, but instead of embarrassing her, she had to choke off a teenaged giggle. What was wrong with her?
He added, “My schedule’s crazy. I’d love a dog, but I’m gone too much.”
Did that mean no wife or live-in girlfriend? What did it matter? She was about to drive off and probably never see him again. “Thanks for fixing my car, I guess I’ll be—”
“Hold up, now.” His ringless left hand came up between them. Relief shot through her body. “It ain’t fixed. It’s patched. Where’re you staying?”
“I’ve got reservations at a hotel in Tuscaloosa. It’s the …” She grabbed her phone from the front seat to pull up the details from her email. She muttered a curse and tossed the phone back in her purse.
“No service? Only one carrier operates in Falcon.” He bared his teeth and shook his head. “I can’t, in good conscience, let you drive to Tuscaloosa, especially with no phone service.”
“I wouldn’t make it?”
“You might. Then again, you might overheat and damage your engine block. It’s all two-lane roads and not much but fields between here and there. How long is your business in Falcon going to take?”
She ran her fingertips under her bangs to press at the center of her forehead. The throb had roared back with a vengeance. “I was counting on at least a week.”
Mountain Man scrubbed at the patch of hair sprouting below his bottom lip. His mouth was pinched tight, and he seemed to be assessing her anew.
“A friend of mine is opening a bed and breakfast soon. There’s no reason to be driving back and forth between Falcon and Tuscaloosa. You can be her first customer, have the place to yourself. It’s walking distance to downtown. Shopping, food, entertainment.” His lips quirked. “Well, entertainment might be overstating things a bit, but the first football game is only a couple of weeks away. It’s quite the spectacle. Not to be missed. What do you say?”
“I doubt I’ll be around that long,” she said vaguely, buying time. “What about my car?”
“I’ll get it towed to Jeb Harrison’s shop. He’s a good, honest mechanic.”
The promise of a cool shower before the hour was up was tempting. Her hair stuck to her neck, and she’d be shocked if sweat stains hadn’t ruined her blouse. The man had done nothing to warrant distrust on her part. In fact, he’d gone above and beyond to help her, and if she had to meet with Logan Wilde more than twice, it made sense to stay closer. And if things appeared at all shady, she would hightail it away, coolant leak or not.
She nodded. “All right. Can I get a loaner car from your mechanic friend?”
“I’ll have my buddy Dixon drop one off for you. He owns a dealership.”
“Do you know everyone in this town?”
“Pretty much. I grew up here, and I suppose I’ll die here. Someday they’ll bury me next to ancestors who settled this land, fought in the Civil War and both World Wars.” He dropped the hood closed, and the bang reverberated like a gunshot.
An annoyed blue jay flew over them and squawked. A sense of melancholy tightened her chest, and she covered with a tight laugh. “Geez, that’s morbid.”
Surprise lifted his face. “You think? I find it comforting myself. Why don’t you grab your stuff, and I’ll give you a lift?”
“Will my car make it to the B&B?”
His eyes crinkled as if he suspected she didn’t trust him. Which was an accurate assessment.
“Probably.”
“Then I’ll drive myself.” She slid behind the wheel but left the door open.
Mountain Man nodded, tapped his fist on the fender, and retreated to his truck. His gait was relaxed, assured, confident. The man had probably never suffered an anxious moment.
She gritted her teeth and turned the key. The car started, and coolish air blew from the vents. The rumble of his truck grew louder. His window rolled down, and she pressed the button to lower hers.
He raised his voice to be heard over the truck. “We’re going to turn left out of the lot. If you have problems, flash your lights and pull over. I’ll go slow.”
She followed him, prepared for her car to betray her at any moment. The farther down the road they travelled, the less she worried about her car making it, and more about where they were headed.
She questioned the thought process that had led her to this point. Without an operational phone, she couldn’t even fall back on 911. Did a pokey, still-water town like Falcon even have 911?
She was following a strange man to a strange house. A frenzy of nerves shot from her stomach through her body like electric currents, triggering irrational threads of thought. What was Mountain Man’s real name? She would expect a Bubba to be wearing overalls. How about Buford? Not likely. Beau? Old-fashioned, upper crust. Didn’t fit. Chester? That made her jump straight to Chester the Molester. Dear Lord, what if that was actually his name?
They turned down a wide street lined with hundred-year-old oak trees. Houses were set well back from the road, each on at least an acre of land. Most were modern stucco or two-story brick.
Sitting at the end of the street like a queen on her throne, an antebellum-style mansion looked ready for a
Gone with the Wind
remake. Massive magnolias framed the white-columned beauty. Mountain Man pulled into a gravel driveway that lay in a semicircle up to the front steps and tooted his horn.
Jessica pulled in behind and turned her car off, but she was ready to turn the key, and her foot hovered above the gas pedal. The front door opened as Jessica held her breath, ready for a gentleman in a top hat and tails or a woman in a hooped skirt to sweep out.