Luna and the Lie

by Zapata, Mariana

  Luna and the Lie

  Mariana Zapata

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Mariana Zapata

  Luna and the Lie © 2018 Mariana Zapata

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Mariana Zapata

  Book Cover Design by Letitia Hasser, Romantic Book Affairs

  Formatting by Jeff Senter, Indie Formatting Services

  Editing by Hot Tree Editing and My Brother’s Editor

  In memory of my Tia Evi

  Love you always and forever

  Chapter 1

  It was the “Goddamn it, Luna,” that had me prying an eyelid open.

  But it was the rumbled, deep voice saying it that had me aiming my eyeball in the direction of the man standing about ten feet away.

  The man who had his hands on his hips as he frowned.

  At me.

  If I had to guess why I was the lucky winner of that mouth being turned down, it might have been because I’d had my eyes closed for… I glanced at my old but faithful G-Shock watch... the last twenty minutes.

  Who was I kidding? I would have bet all of my money that was exactly why.

  When I had seen him that morning bent over the opened hood of an early 1950s GMC truck, a hint of a white compression shirt showing beneath his coveralls, I’d known he was in a bad mood to begin with. Not that anyone was ever in a good mood on a Friday morning, but… the man glaring at me was always in a bad mood when he wore white. It was a fact.

  It definitely didn’t help that, when I had brought him his cup of coffee that morning, he’d asked me, “Did you decide?”

  And like every time he had asked the same question, I had given him the same reply I always had and would. “Ah, no.”

  You’d figure he’d have finally started to expect my reply after the seven hundred-ish times of asking the same question and getting the same answer, but it still irritated him after all this time.

  And while it wasn’t completely out of the norm for him—my boss, one of my two bosses, if you wanted to be technical—to say “Goddamn it, Luna,” it wasn’t common either. I didn’t like to get into trouble. My friends had said more than a few times that I was allergic to having people mad or disappointed with me. It was a curse I hadn’t managed to shake off, no matter how many times it worked against me.

  I couldn’t help but give the man with his hands on his hips and a frown on his face a smile. I thought about winking at him because I knew how much winking irritated him, but I didn’t. It was a white shirt day after all, and I had to conserve my energy where I could when I still had at least eight hours left before I got to go home for the weekend.

  “Yes?” I went with as a response to his goddamn it, Luna instead of what did I do? I hadn’t done anything wrong by having my eyes closed for a few minutes.

  …technically.

  Ripley narrowed his eyes, managing to level his gaze solely on me, ignoring the other seven full-time employees seated around the break room where we had our weekly meetings every Friday. At nine in the morning, two hours after I usually clocked into work, every employee at Cooper’s Collision and Customs waddled in to listen to our bosses go over things like upcoming projects, current projects, status updates, issues, grievances, arguing over who was overdoing it with the air freshener in the bathroom….

  It wasn’t exactly fun, and it wasn’t a secret we only suffered through the meeting because we got paid to. It was hard enough to stay awake on any given morning during the work week, but on a Friday with the weekend only hours away, plus the heat of so many bodies sitting around? It was almost impossible not to close your eyes.

  Staying up late past midnight to watch a scary movie with Lily didn’t help any either, but when she had asked, I hadn’t been able to find it in me to tell her no. Our time together was running out, and I knew one day I would regret not taking advantage of every opportunity we had to hang out. I’d learned that lesson with my other two sisters.

  But I was pretty sure that the man glaring at me right then didn’t know or care about any of that, and his next words confirmed it.

  “Didn’t we talk about you taking a nap during our meetings?” Ripley drawled the question in a tone that wasn’t exactly nice.

  Not that it ever really was.

  I kept one eye on him as I stayed in the same position I’d been in when he had called me out—slumped over the table with an elbow planted on it, chin propped up on my open hand. Instead of both my eyes being closed though, I only had one open. I kept the smile on my face as I told him the answer we were both totally aware of, “Yes, we talked about it.” Just in case he forgot what exactly he’d said, I reminded him. “You told me not to.”

  Because he had. Luna, you’ve gotta quit going to sleep during the goddamn meetings. If you wanna take a nap, wait eight fucking hours until you get home, got it? We’d had that conversation behind closed doors and with Mr. Cooper—the man who had hired me, my original boss and owner, and as of three years ago, the now co-owner of Cooper’s Collision and Customs—present.

  I had got his message, and I respected it.

  My boss, at least the one frowning at me, didn’t physically react to my answer. He didn’t even blink as he confirmed what we obviously both knew, “Yeah. That’s exactly what I said.”

  Beside him, but hanging back verbally, Mr. Cooper coughed but didn’t say a word. I didn’t take it personally. I’d overheard enough of their fights to know it had taken them long enough to just get to this point in their work relationship—disagreeing with each other but not arguing over it in front of us. I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who didn’t miss that phase in our lives at CCC. For a while there, we had all mastered sitting as still as possible and staring at the wall, pretending we were somewhere else.

  I had gotten that Ph.D. a long time ago.

  “And nobody gets paid to be taking a nap during our meetings,” Rip finished, like it wasn’t common sense, hands still on his hips. That rough face, which was still shaped into the form of a scowl, somehow added a nonverbal touch of not even you to the end of his statement, like I expected some kind of special treatment.

  I didn’t and I never had, despite whatever he thought when he was in a bad mood. It… not even you… was just only… me. The employe
e who came in earlier than everyone else, stayed later than everyone else, and had only called out of work a handful of times in the last nine years. The person who had never said no to extra hours.

  But it was and always had been my choice to do all those things, and I knew it. That’s why I kept my mouth closed. I could have said no when they asked. It had been my decision to stay late and come in on the weekends each time I did.

  You didn’t jump off a bridge, break your legs, and then blame the friend who dared you to do it for why you were in the hospital.

  Taking responsibility for my actions and not blaming other people for things I brought upon myself was one of the few positive lessons I’d learned from my family, even if it was something they hadn’t tried to teach me on purpose.

  I cut that train of thought off real quick. Some things and people were so acidic, even thinking about them could destroy. I was going to choose to be happy, and that meant not thinking about old crap. Today was going to be a good day, and so was tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

  It was with that thought that I kept the smile on my face and let it linger on the man staring at me. It took a lot more than Rip in a white shirt to make me frown or hurt my feelings. It took a lot more than thinking of certain people for all of a second to do it either.

  The point was: I was tired. I’d closed my eyes. He’d called me out on it. There was nothing to get upset about.

  “Luna,” Rip said my name in that ridiculously low voice that had caught me totally off-guard the first time I’d heard it. “We understand each other? No fucking naps during the meeting. It’s not that hard to get, is it?”

  From a couple chairs down, someone snorted, but I knew from the sound of it who it was, so I didn’t bother wasting my time even looking in that direction, much less letting his amusement at me getting put on the spot bother me.

  I still kept the corners of my mouth up high on my face as I nodded just once at my boss. I understood him loud and clear. I also understood the look that Mr. Cooper was giving him from his spot on Ripley’s left. He wasn’t supposed to be cussing at me, or any of us at the shop. That was something else the two owners of one of the most successful auto body shops in Houston, Texas had spent a lot of time talking about in the office when they didn’t know I was eavesdropping….

  Which was all the time.

  Not that they knew that.

  At least I hoped they didn’t, but it wasn’t like they were subtle or secretive about it either.

  * * *

  It all started three years ago.

  Cooper’s Collision and Customs had been a family-owned business that had been started by Mr. Cooper’s father in the 1940s. The shop had been successful for a lifetime by the time I got my job almost six years before that day that set everything into motion. Every employee at CCC got paid fairly, got paid every other week, and Mr. Cooper had been—and still was—just about the best boss in the world. In my opinion, he was one of the best men in the entire world period, and I doubted anyone I worked with would argue that.

  One day, everything had been normal. We’d had one boss. There had been ten of us. Everything had been fine. And the next day, I got to work, ignored the classic Ford pickup parked in the tiny customer lot upfront, and then overheard Mr. Cooper’s familiar voice and a much deeper one in the office at seven in the morning, talking about how they were going to split profits and where the business would move to.

  It had shocked the hell out of me. Then again, I wasn’t sure how it couldn’t have shocked the hell out of me. Splitting profits? Moving a business that had been in the same place for the last eighty-ish years? The shop had always been busy. Things had seemed to be fine.

  Honestly, even now, I still didn’t get why Mr. Cooper had decided to take someone else on to handle his business.

  I had listened to them talking as long as I could before I’d taken off to pretend like nothing had happened, even though part of me was freaking out big-time at the implications of what their conversation meant. It wasn’t until a couple months later, months where I’d kept my mouth closed in case I hadn’t eavesdropped correctly when Mr. Cooper had dropped the bomb on everyone during a Friday morning meeting.

  “I have some big news,” the angel of a man had told all of us. I was probably the only person who had noticed how badly his hands had been shaking then because no one else had ever brought it up afterward. “We’re moving the shop.“

  Everyone had started talking at once, but Mr. Cooper ignored them and kept on talking.

  “We’ve needed more space for years now. We’re too cramped. You’re all aware of that. We’re moving to a forty-thousand-square-foot facility….” He’d said some other things I couldn’t remember as he sat there, hands tucked into the pockets of his worn jeans. Then, and only then, had he taken a great big breath and dropped the real bomb on everyone—everyone except me, at least. “That’s not the only thing growing either. With more room, we can handle more business.”

  Everyone had stopped talking at that point, and I’d just sat there with my hands between my thighs, pressing my lips together as my stomach flip-flopped at the knowledge that I hadn’t imagined that conversation months ago.

  “Lucas Ripley will be joining the team,” Mr. Cooper, a man we all loved, had breathed out, almost like he wasn’t sure about the news either. Or maybe I’d just been imagining it. “He’ll be a co-owner for Cooper’s and will be growing and handling the restoration part of the business from here on out.” He had swallowed hard, crossed his arms over his chest, and asked, “Any questions?”

  Luckily for me, everyone had been too busy freaking out by the mention of the shop moving, expanding, and the new owner to notice that I hadn’t asked a single question.

  None of us had wondered who Lucas Ripley was or why he was joining the business.

  And the next day, when I got to work and found a semi-familiar truck parked right next to Mr. Cooper’s beautifully restored Mustang, I had figured out real quick who the car belonged to. Because in the years I’d worked for Mr. Cooper, no one else but he and I showed up so early.

  No one.

  And when I had gone into the building and walked by the office to head to the space where I spent most of my time painting, doing bodywork, or detailing, I hadn’t been totally surprised to find Mr. Cooper behind his desk, talking to a man sitting on the other side of it.

  The man was huge, and the long-sleeved shirt he had on in the middle of July was basically a second skin. It covered everything from his wrists up over his collarbone, only managing to show off a few inches of tattooed skin on his neck. Maybe, I had thought, it was one of those shirts that kept a person cool.

  As I’d stopped right by the doorway, I’d noticed that, even in profile, the man had the grouchiest, meanest face I had ever seen in my life. I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but he did. And he was straight-up gorgeous.

  And I mean just freaking masculine. Like just testosterone and whatever the heck else was all man.

  I saw gorgeous men in the wild every once in a while. I saw them online even more often. But that one, the one who I instinctively knew was going to be my new boss, the one sitting in the chair swallowing it whole with shoulders and an upper body that belonged on a professional wrestler, had to beat most of those men I’d seen in the past. He wasn’t what my sisters would have drooled over. He didn’t look like a model. His cheekbones were broad, his bone structure square, and his mouth hadn’t even been exactly full. Yet packaged together it was an unforgettable face.

  A stunning face.

  And I’d known instantly that his face and those thigh-sized biceps and calf-sized forearms that were covered in a tight long-sleeved shirt were going to haunt me.

  And that had surprised me.

  Then it had irritated me for a second as I thought about how much I didn’t want a new boss. Hot or not. I loved Mr. Cooper, and I knew where I stood with him. He made me feel safe. This new man was a stranger I wa
sn’t sure what to do with. He wasn’t just going to be someone I might casually work with.

  Looking back on it though, there had been no way for me to know then how much Lucas Ripley would haunt me in the future. I’d had no idea as I had walked into that room to introduce myself what he would end up owing me.

  And I definitely hadn’t known how much that debt would end up bothering him day in and day out.

  What I did know and remember was how I’d gone to stand at the doorway to the original Cooper’s Collision and Customs office and waved and smiled at the two men inside.

  “Luna,” Mr. Cooper had greeted me immediately, grinning so wide that, if I hadn’t known him so well, I would have missed how tense his shoulders were. “Good morning.”

  “Morning, Mr. Cooper,” I had replied before turning my attention to the giant man sitting on the other side of the desk.

  The huge man had looked at me, looked back at Mr. Cooper, then finally glanced back in my direction. That face, mean-looking because of the tightness along his jawline and the constant notch between his eyebrows, hadn’t changed at all. He hadn’t smiled back at me or even tried to look friendly. He’d just… looked.

  In the blink of an eye, that look turned into a glare.

  And my heart did what it always did when I met someone who didn’t want to like me—it made the rest of me want this person to like me, this maybe-possibly new boss of mine.

  That was another curse I hadn’t been able to shake off even after all these years; the need to be liked. Realistically, I knew I could and would survive someone not being a Luna Allen fan, but… I had always tried. I could blame Those People I Wasn’t Going to Think About for that need, if I ever let myself think about it.