But I wouldn’t.
“Hi,” I had said, taking a step in and immediately putting my hand out between us. “I’m Luna.”
And Mr. Cooper, being Mr. Cooper, had said, “Ripley, this is Luna Allen. She does all our paint and helps out a lot with bodywork and detailing if we need her. Luna, this is Ripley, my… business partner.”
I had totally picked up on his hesitation at referring to the new man as his business partner, but I hadn’t thought much of it afterward. Especially not when my new boss took his sweet time raising his hand from where it had been resting on his thigh and slipped his long fingers and broad palm against mine, giving it a squeeze for a moment before releasing it almost as quickly. His eyes had narrowed just a little, but I had noticed, and it had just triggered that need in me even more.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I had told him, drawing my hand back.
My newest boss had watched me carefully; his eyes—this shade somewhere between an unreal blue and green—had slid back to Mr. Cooper one more time before returning to me.
I hadn’t been prepared for the question that came out of his mouth almost immediately. “You old enough to work here?” he’d asked in what I was pretty sure was the closest thing to a rumbling voice I’d ever heard in person.
I couldn’t help but glance at my longtime boss, but that was because he’d asked basically the same thing right before offering me a job when I’d been seventeen. So I smiled even wider when I put my attention back on the man with dark-colored tattoos that went up to his jaw. “Yes.”
He didn’t miss a beat, and those blue-green eyes, which seemed to pop beneath short but super curly black eyelashes, narrowed again. “How long you worked here?”
I didn’t miss a beat either. “Six years.”
That got me a blink before that deep, raspy voice asked, “What do you know about paint?”
What did I know about paint?
I’d almost lost my smile then, but I had managed not to. He wasn’t the first person to ask me that kind of question. I was one of the few females I’d ever met who did auto body paint. As a kid, I would never have thought that painting cars and parts was what I would end up doing for a living—much less, that I would grow to love it and be pretty damn good at it, if I did say so myself—but life was crazy that way.
So I told this man, who was making the same mistake just about everyone I had ever met had made too, the truth. “I know everything about paint.” And I’d smiled at him because I wasn’t being cocky. I was just telling him the truth, and I didn’t miss the way Mr. Cooper smiled as I did it.
The new man blinked again and his voice got even lower as he raised thick, dark brown eyebrows at me. “What do you know about bodywork?” he’d shot off next, referring to the act of fixing minor or major physical imperfections or damage to a vehicle.
I had still managed to keep my smile on my face. “Almost as much.” He hadn’t known it then, but Mr. Cooper had gotten me started on bodywork before moving me over to paint years ago. I’d been pretty good at it too.
But this man who had become my new boss had glanced at Mr. Cooper sitting on the other side of the desk for a moment before returning his gaze to me and asking in a tight voice I wasn’t sure what to think of, “What do you know about classic cars?”
And, shit.
Even I glanced at Mr. Cooper, but he was busy looking over at the other man to see that I wanted his attention and support. So I had said the first thing I thought of. “Some. Not everything, but not nothing.”
The man I had thought was gorgeous moments before pressed that not-thin but not-full mouth together. Then he’d asked, “Do you know how to weld?”
Did I know how to weld? I had narrowed my eyes at him. “Is this a test?”
This man I had barely met didn’t hesitate to repeat his question the exact same way he had originally presented it.
And I knew, I knew he was testing me. So I had shrugged and told him the truth. “I know the basics.”
That mouth twisted to the side as that big, bulky body leaned back in the chair he sat in. A chin covered in dark brown stubble with hints of silvery gray mixed in tipped an inch higher than it had been a moment before, and that confirmed he was still trying to test me. “If you were doing bodywork and found lead, what would you do?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Cooper sigh and cover his eyes with his hand. It was the first of many, many times I would watch him do the same thing over the next three years, but that’s another story.
Luckily—and I’d known right then how lucky I had been to know the answer because I was pretty sure he would have fired me if I hadn’t—I told him the right answer. “You can’t weld over lead. You have to burn it out.”
The man had leaned back in his seat, crossed his arms over his huge chest, and said, totally seriously, totally condescendingly—the same way he would a hundred times over the next few years—“You’ll do.”
I’d do.
And I had.
* * *
That had been years ago, and since then, I’d figured out how to deal with Lucas Ripley, or Rip, or Ripley, as he had told us to call him way back then.
So when he asked me if I understood him or not regarding his policy on taking a nap, I said the only thing I could have. “I get it.” And I said it about as happily as I could, even knowing that my response was going to irritate him even more than he already was.
But life was all about the little things, and getting a rise out of Rip without exactly pissing him off was a game I liked playing more than I should have. Every once in a while, if the situation was right and he was wearing his navy-colored compression shirt, I could get a smirk out of him. And on really rare occasions, I might sneak a quick half-smile out of him that was gone in a blink of an eye later.
And if my little heart sighed over that sneaky little smile or smirk, it was nobody else’s business but mine.
And my siblings.
And my best friend.
But that was it.
I didn’t let myself think too much of getting him to make an expression that wasn’t a scowl, a mildly annoyed one, or an eye roll. I definitely wasn’t going to think about the blank face he made that I might have kind of loved and hated at the same time. Nope.
But anyway.
It had only taken him two days of working at CCC for him to ask—with a grumpy side look—if I always smiled all the time. But it had been Mr. Cooper who had answered him that I did. Because I did.
In that moment in the break room though, I opened my other eye and full-on smiled at the man wearing a long-sleeved, almost turtleneck shirt that clung to every enormous muscle on his barrel chest. “But I wasn’t sleeping. I heard everything you said,” I finished explaining.
I wasn’t surprised when the man who had honestly only gotten more attractive over the years, even as the crease between his eyebrows had gotten deeper and the grooves bracketing his mouth had gotten more pronounced, shifted that nearly forty-one-year-old body toward me even more. “Yeah? What’d I say?” he tried to challenge.
He could be such a pain in the butt sometimes; he really did deserve me messing with him. Someone had to.
Slightly to the side of him, Mr. Cooper looked up at the ceiling, and I swear he started mouthing the beginning of an Our Father. Two of the guys sitting around the table started muttering under their breaths. I caught a hint of “micromanaging asshole” come out of one of them, and Rip must have too because his eyes immediately swept around the room like he was looking for whoever said it.
The last time he’d done that, two people had gotten fired, and I had liked them.
“First you talked about lunch breaks taking too long,” I blurted out. “Then you were talking about how the shop vac needs to be emptied after it’s been used because it isn’t your job.”
Cutting in must have done the trick to get him to forget what he’d been doing, because I’d only gotten a few words in by the time I was back to b
eing the focus of his mostly unwanted attention. And that was because he was wearing that white shirt, and I usually had a 40 percent success rate of getting out of conversations with him not griping at me on white days. Gray shirt days were about 70 percent. Navy shirt days were about eighty-five. On navy days, I knew I could slap him on the back and not get even a side-look. Those days were my favorites.
I made my smile widen and even raised my eyebrows at him, hoping for the best. “Is that good enough, or did you want me to try and give you a word-by-word replay of what you said? Because I probably can, boss.” He could suck on those facts.
That face that I snuck glances at way more often than I had any business looking at didn’t change at all. He didn’t even blink. Then again, he should have known I hadn’t been lying. To be fair though, I didn’t think Rip trusted anyone at the shop. Not even Mr. Cooper, if the arguments I had overheard meant anything, and they had to mean something. The last time I’d been around people who argued that much, they had genuinely hated each other.
I let my lips pull back so I could show him my teeth as I forced a big fake smile at him, and beside me, my coworker snickered.
My boss—this boss—still wasn’t amused.
But he didn’t say “Goddamn it, Luna” again, so I was going to take it as a win.
“As I was saying,” Rip finally continued on after maybe two seconds of staring at me with his expressionless face, turning his attention back to the middle of the room and banishing me from his train of thought—he had a lot of practice doing that, “just because we have a cleaning crew coming in doesn’t mean you got a right to leave a mess. Nobody’s here to be anybody else’s maid or babysitter.”
Setting my hand over my mouth, I hid my yawn as I glanced over at the coworker sitting to my right, staring blankly at the wall. The forty-five-year-old was breathing hard but steadily, his mouth just loose enough for me to know he’d fallen asleep with it open. To my left, my other coworker, a thirty-year-old who had been at the shop almost as long as I had, was jiggling his foot. Noticing me looking in his direction, he slid a smirk in Rip’s direction, shaking his head as he did so. Jesus, he mouthed.
It was moments like these that I really remembered just how lucky I was to have this job, how lucky I was that almost all the guys I worked with were nice and treated me well.
At least now they were.
It had taken a lot of the men getting fired or quitting, until CCC got to the employees it currently had, but I couldn’t have been happier. This job, when I’d been seventeen, had been one of the last ones I’d tried applying for. I almost hadn’t. The ad to work at what I’d assumed was a mechanic shop hadn’t exactly been what I’d been hoping for. But at that point in my life, when I had met Mr. Cooper, he had given me two choices: work for him or… not.
I had taken the work, because when you’re seventeen with two hundred dollars left, no idea of what you could do with your life, just knowing you couldn’t go back to what you’d had before, and someone gives you a chance… the first real chance anyone has ever given you…
You can’t say no.
I owed Mr. Cooper everything. I really did. He had changed my life more than anyone else ever could or would, and I had thanked him daily for years. I was sure he had no idea what to do with me back then, but he’d offered me a job, given me a home, given me a fighting chance, and everything since was history.
My phone vibrated from my pocket, and I slipped my hand inside to pull it out just as Ripley started saying something about being more time efficient. I kept an eye on him as he stood there, those brawny arms crossed over his chest, and set it on top of my thigh. I wasn’t about to get caught with it out, especially not after already irritating him this early in the day. We still had the whole day left ahead of us.
I kept my gaze on my boss as I unlocked the screen from muscle memory. Rip was still going on, his attention lingering around the room like he was making sure none of us were falling asleep on him. I glanced down and saw that I had gotten a new text message from a number that wasn’t saved on my contact list. I had thought for sure it would be one of my sisters, but it wasn’t. I didn’t let myself get disappointed over it.
One eye on Rip, I opened the message and read it as fast as I could.
210-555-1230: THIS IS JULIUS THOMAS. I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. PLEASE GIVE ME A CALL AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.
Julius Thomas? I didn’t know anyone with that name. The same number had called me yesterday, but I had ignored it and the voice mail they had left. It was a San Antonio number… but there shouldn’t be anyone calling me from there.
I had paid all my bills. I’d forgotten to pay my electricity bill on time, but it had only been two days late. It was probably a scammer, I’d bet. Losers.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket with my attention straight on the man still talking with his butt against the counter. I slid my gaze over to Mr. Cooper who was there, listening to Rip with a funny expression on his face that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t frustration for once.
They hadn’t even been in the middle of an argument when I’d gotten to work that morning.
Just as I started trying to figure out what Mr. Cooper’s expression meant, a snore from my left had me sliding my foot over and kicking my coworker, Miguel. He sucked in a rough snore, his whole body tensing as he pretty much jolted awake.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered as he sat up a little straighter. “Thanks, Luna.”
I wouldn’t let any of them get into trouble if I could help it, and they knew that. Not even the one on the other side of the room who had gotten a kick out of Rip catching me with my eyes closed. I loved this place. Lucas Ripley picking on me every once in a while or not, I loved this place and the people who worked here. I was loved, I had a home, I had a job, and it was Friday. There wasn’t much else I really needed.
And more than anything, today was going to be a good day. When you had so many good things and so many good people in your life, how could it not?
“Before we wrap up this morning’s meeting,” Mr. Cooper’s sudden voice made me realize I’d completely zoned out the last couple of minutes. “There’s one more announcement I need to share.”
Chapter 2
Maybe I had spoken a little too soon about having a good day.
My day didn’t instantly start going bad after the meeting ended, but… it went downhill soon afterward.
Things could always be worse though. Always.
When I’d gotten to work that morning, I’d started working on a smaller project that wouldn’t take me long to prime; primer was kind of a preparation coat you put on things before painting. It helped paint stick to the surface better, helped increase paint durability, and helped protect the material being painted. When you were dealing with a car that might not ever get another paint job in its life, primer was one of the most important steps before changing its color.
By the time the meeting rolled around, I had finished my project and gone to the break room, already knowing the other jobs I had on the schedule. Usually, I had a pretty decent idea at least a week or two in advance of what work I would be doing on a specific date. Everyone at the shop did. We were a well-oiled machine because we passed around projects in different stages. Proper scheduling was something that Mr. Cooper excelled at to get cars back to their owners as quickly as possible.
That was part of the reason why the shop hadn’t just survived but thrived despite recessions. We worked hard, worked as fast as possible without compromising quality, and Mr. Cooper charged fair prices for everything. Cooper’s wasn’t the cheapest, but it wasn’t the most expensive either. I’d heard from more than enough friends over the years about how they were overcharged or how a mechanic had taken too long to work on something.
Mr. Cooper didn’t play those kinds of games. We were all supposed to work together. And we usually did.
Usually.
The issue was that the car I needed to
work on next had been added onto my schedule as an emergency job that the owner had requested, and was paying out of his butthole for, for us to have done by next week. But the instant I went to look for the car, I found it in the same condition it had been in the last time I had seen it.
Not freaking ready. Not anywhere close to being ready.
And that was why, two hours after our meeting had ended, I found myself going to lunch, just a little irritated.
Just a little. Because I wasn’t about to really get mad. It wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of life. If something didn’t kill or injure me or anyone I loved, I didn’t let it linger in me for too long. The body guys—the employees whose only job it was to fix the imperfections before sending a car over to me—hadn’t finished. There was no point in getting all bent out of shape, but a little bent out of shape was all right.
I had better ways to spend my energy; on that day it was finishing the freaking bodywork.
My frustration had to be apparent on my face, because I’d barely walked inside the break room when Mr. Cooper asked, “What’s wrong, little moon?”
I couldn’t help but smile at the term of affection the older man called me when we were out of the shop or when no one else was around while we were working. We had never talked about it, but I knew he did it so that no one would assume he had favorites. I was pretty sure everyone knew I was his favorite anyway.
It wasn’t just anyone he took into his home and into his life and family.
We didn’t hide that we spent birthdays, Thanksgivings, and Christmas Days together, and in years past, New Year’s Eve too. Now he claimed he was too old to stay awake until midnight. He was part of my family and had been for going on a decade. Just like his wife was. Just like my siblings were too.
Luna and the Lie Page 2