Blow Me Away: A Mile High Matched Novel, Book 2

by Hovland, Christina

  Jase leaned toward Heather, the scent of lavender and vanilla swirling in the air around them. “Second chance. Dinner. No tacos.”

  “Saturday?” Heather asked, her voice breathy.

  “Works for me.” And that’s how it’s done.

  “I have plans.” Heather’s brown eyes sparkled.

  “Fuck me,” Jase said under his breath, low enough so only he could hear it.

  Well, maybe Heather caught it, too.

  Heather nudged his shoulder with her own. “What good is a breakup if you keep asking me out?”

  He laid his hand on her arm, the warmth of it settling in his palm. “We can always try for round two.”

  “Nah. Why ruin a perfectly good breakup?” The laughter in her tone hit him straight in the gut. She’d won this round, but he’d make sure there was another.

  3

  Chapter Three

  The delivery van pulled up right behind Jase’s shop door in the alley behind his building. The alley was tight, only room for one vehicle at a time, and bordered by a metal chain separating it from the parking lot where the business owners parked so the street spots stayed open for customers.

  He stepped up to the back of the van, opened the double doors, and did a quick check that everything was ready for the rest of the morning deliveries to be loaded.

  Jase held a clipboard and scribbled the delivery instructions for the funeral flowers before passing it to his driver, Ethan. “Funeral starts early, so those need to be there before nine thirty. Hit the mortuary first.”

  “Sure thing.” Ethan set the clipboard on the bumper of the delivery van, hopping inside to adjust arrangements so they wouldn’t topple over.

  Jase glanced across the parking lot. Along the opposite side, Heather had parked her hot-pink delivery van with a giant, plastic chocolate chip cookie perched on top. The thing was loud, obnoxious, and it made him crave cookies whenever he saw it. Her marketing worked, he’d give her that.

  He focused on the van, just as his grandmother’s black Buick crept across the lot. Slowly. Too slowly.

  He squinted. She was driving.

  His gut dropped to the floor of the alley. What the hell?

  She couldn’t fucking see well enough to drive. That’s why the family had hired her a professional driver. That’s why they’d taken her keys away. Last time she’d driven, she’d taken out three cars and one of those big blue mailboxes outside of the post office. They were lucky no one had gotten hurt. It’d taken some tricky legal work for the family attorney to get her off the hook with only a fine, restitution, and the loss of her license.

  And now she was behind the wheel again.

  Son of a bitch.

  She edged toward Heather’s cookie van like a slow-motion replay on Monday night football, with Al and Frank and Dan…

  “No. No. No. No. No.” Jase hit the side of his delivery van with the palm of his hand and sprinted toward his grandmother. He jumped over the cable chain midrun, skirting the cars in his beeline for the Buick.

  “What?” he heard Ethan say behind him. Followed by a loud, “Shit.”

  The bumper of the Buick made contact with the side of the van. The soles of Jase’s tennis shoes pushed against the asphalt, propelling him toward the accident.

  Breaths came ragged, not because he was winded from the run but because his grandmother was going to hurt herself. And get her ass arrested.

  He ran straight to the driver’s side window of the Buick and banged against the glass. His grandmother ignored him, put the damn tank in reverse, and backed up.

  His lungs released a huge gulp of oxygen.

  Okay, this was all right. There was only a small scratch on Heather’s van. He could buff that right out. No one ever had to know.

  His grandmother hit the gas, the bumper of her car crunching against the side of pink paint and vinyl cookie decals.

  Shit.

  The Buick? It was fine.

  The van. Not so much.

  The metal crumpled like it’d been hit with twenty pounds of bang.

  That would not buff out.

  “What the hell is she doing?” Ethan huffed as he jogged up beside him.

  He had to yell, because Babushka hadn’t let off the gas. The rubber of the Buick’s tires burned against the asphalt as the wheels spun, the van skidded and tilted, and, holy fuck…

  Jase’s heart thudded, but he couldn’t figure out what it was doing because it obviously wasn’t pumping blood, given that his entire body had turned to ice. He couldn’t get himself to move. “I think she’s getting revenge.”

  “What the hell did the van do to her?” Ethan asked, dumbfounded.

  Jase got his feet unstuck. He fell against his grandmother’s window and pounded with his fists. She had a one-track mind, or she didn’t hear him, because she didn’t acknowledge he was there. Hands at ten and two, she stared straight ahead at the vinyl cookies attached to the crumpled metal of what had been Heather’s delivery van.

  “Should we call someone?” he heard Ethan ask.

  Someone would be great right now. They should do that.

  But a vortex of what-the-fuckage had sucked him in. He yanked on his grandmother’s locked driver’s side door as she put the car in reverse again. It moved back. Jase jumped away. He preferred his toes on his feet and not crushed under the rubber tires of his grandmother’s cookie-van-destroying machine.

  The Buick slammed against the already crumpled metal of the van, and the whole vehicle tilted. The giant plastic cookie on top of the van creaked, broke loose, and crashed to the pavement.

  “Stop,” he shouted. His desperation wasn’t lost on him. He threw his body against the side of the car, banging on the roof.

  His grandmother finally glanced to him, his entire body plastered against the side of her door, his fingertips gripping into the roof of her tank-of-a-Buick.

  The wheels stopped spinning. She tossed the car in park, grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, and pushed open the door.

  Jase stumbled back, right into Ethan.

  Babushka stepped from her tank as though nothing had happened. “I think I tapped it.”

  Jase pressed his hands against his temples as he took in the damage. “What were you doing?”

  Babushka inspected the crumpled pink metal. “Moving my car. I probably should’ve vaited for my driver.”

  “Yeah, probably.” If he had to guess, his eyes were likely bugging out right about now. “How the hell did you get the keys?”

  “I asked for them.” Babushka licked at her thumb and buffed at a scrape on her bumper. “My driver, he says okay.”

  And that driver was officially fired.

  Jase blew a breath between his lips. “Why were you moving your car, anyway?”

  “I didn’t like the spot it vas in.” Babushka shuffled around the damage. “This belongs to the horrible voman who broke your heart?”

  He did some heavy nose breathing. “Yeah.” And Heather was gonna kill him.

  “It is… Vat do they say? Karma,” Babushka grumped.

  He never should’ve told her Heather broke his heart, but the damage was done and now he needed to keep his grandmother from getting arrested. She had no business driving anything.

  “Someone should probably go notify Heather,” Ethan piped up. “You want to go, or do you want me to?”

  Jase took in the damage once again. This wasn’t the kind of thing they could just leave a note about.

  “I’ll go get her. Can you keep an eye on Lead Foot here?” He gestured to his grandmother, who at the moment was inspecting the front of her bumper.

  Ethan sighed. “Sure thing.”

  Jase started his walk of shame to the cookie shop. He punched his buddy Brek’s number into his cell. Brek knew car repair. He’d know what to do about the van.

  “You’ve got Brek.”

  “I need a favor.” Jase’s breath huffed against the mouthpiece. “Babushka just rammed Heather’s delivery van wi
th her Buick. Everyone’s fine. Nobody’s hurt. But the van doesn’t look so good. I’m going to tell Heather right now, but I could use a second opinion on bodywork.”

  There was a long pause.

  “The pink van?” Brek asked.

  “Yeah.” Would there be any other van?

  “Shit,” Brek replied. “That’s her baby. She sold her car to buy that thing.”

  “Brek, what’s going on?” Jase could hear Brek’s wife, Velma, asking in the background. There were some muffled sounds while Brek relayed something to her.

  Velma and Heather were tight. Once Velma knew, she’d call Heather. He picked up his pace to a jog.

  “I’m on my way,” Brek said before the line went dead.

  Phone shoved in his pocket, Jase rounded the corner to Heather’s shop. The outside was as pink as her van. She’d added cookie decals on the windows with polka dots all around. It looked like the happiest business on the block. At least, it would be until he told her what his grandmother had done. He pulled on the door, the jingle bells attached to a Come In! We’re Open & Awesome sign bouncing against the polka dots on the glass.

  “I need to talk to Heather,” he said to the lady running the cash register.

  “She’s in the kitchen. Just one sec.” Cash-register lady raised her just-one-sec finger and continued helping a customer.

  No time for this. He practically jumped over the counter and pushed the swinging door to the kitchen open.

  “Hey, you can’t go in th—” Cash-register lady started to say, but he was already through the door.

  He skidded to a halt.

  There, laid out before him, were trays and trays and trays of cookies shaped liked penises and iced in bright colors. Fuchsia. Yellow. Teal. Neon green.

  Hair-netted Heather glanced up from where she was icing the tip on a batch of blue-balled man rods.

  He had thought the day was weird before. It wasn’t.

  “That is a lot of dick,” he said to no one in particular.

  Two of her staff were boxing them up, and one was arranging several dicks-on-sticks into an arrangement in a vase. The symmetry was on point, and one truly had to look closely to see the phallic shapes of the cookies. They looked like an adorable assortment of cookie flowers. Until you did a double take and realized they were a handful of multicolored edible erections.

  “Jase?” Heather asked. The tip of her icing bag leaked blue icing onto the table.

  “Okay, so first...” He shook his head. “We’ll get to that. Second”—he waved an arm toward the erectile bouquet— “what the hell are these?”

  Heather raised her eyebrows. “You’ve never seen a penis before?”

  “Of course I’ve seen one. Every day, in fact. But why are they in cookie form?” And what alternate reality had he been transported into that morning?

  Heather dropped the bag to the table. “They’re cockies. They sell like crazy. What was the first thing?” She moved a finished tray to the waiting rack.

  Right. His grandmother’s personal demolition derby. “There’s been a little accident with your van. My grandmother shouldn’t have been driving, but she gets determined sometimes.”

  She turned back to him, the color lost from her cheeks. “What happened to my van? Is your grandmother okay?”

  “She is fine. Totally fine.” He kept his tone upbeat, despite the verdict he was about to render. “Her car is also fine. Your van, on the other hand…” He paused. Pinched his lips and did a little shake of his head.

  “My van…” Apron and vinyl gloves still on, Heather pushed beside him and bolted toward the door.

  “It’s not so fine,” he finished.

  Turned out, Heather was a good sprinter. He hurried to keep up with her pace. She bolted across the street, pausing when the broken plastic chocolate chip cookie came into view.

  “My cookie.” Only two words, but they were laced with desperation. She rounded to the side of the damage, and then she did that thing a woman does when she’s at her most dangerous. She got quiet. Real quiet. Peaceful, almost.

  That’s what happened right before a bomb went off. Most people didn’t know that from firsthand experience, but he did. That moment of still right before shit got real.

  “Are you okay?” she asked his grandmother.

  “Of course; is just a scratch.” Babushka gestured to the not-just-a-scratch damage on the van. The old woman raised her weathered brows. “We have not met. I am Nadzieja.” The old woman gave Heather some serious stink eye. “Everyone I like calls me Babushka. You vill call me Nadzieja.”

  Heather paused a beat. “Okay.” She looked back to the damage. Then to Jase. “Well, you can call me Heather, and we should call the police. Get a report started for insurance.” Heather patted the pockets of her icing-splattered, yellow-polka-dot apron. “Damn. My phone’s at the shop.”

  “You can use mine.” Ethan began to hand over his cell.

  Jase stepped between them. “What if we…didn’t. You know, involve the police? Just handled this between neighbors?”

  “Jase.” Heather looked at him like he’d been the one icing dick cookies, still oh-so calm. “This is a lot of damage. We need to exchange insurance cards. Get a police report. And I’ve got to figure out how to make my deliveries today.”

  Velma’s Prius crept behind Babushka’s car, stopped, and Brek opened the driver’s side door. His wife got out of the passenger side.

  “Holy cow.” Velma’s eyes went wide.

  “Yeah,” Jase said under his breath.

  “Is just a scratch.” Babushka lifted a shoulder.

  Jase slid his gaze to Heather. The calm was gonna blow any minute. She pinched her lips into a flat line.

  Brek wasted no time in running a hand over the damage while Velma grabbed their kid out of the back seat. Normally, Jase would go all Uncle Jase on the baby and coo and cuddle, but today he had a cookie-van-disaster to sort.

  Brek dropped to the gravel and scooted so he could see under the van.

  Then he pushed himself up, dropping his elbows over his knees.

  “Frame’s bent.” Brek dusted off the sleeves of his leather motorcycle jacket.

  Son. Of. A. Bitch.

  “Then we’ll bend it back.” Heather gestured to where Brek sat on the ground, like he should get on that.

  Velma had moved beside Heather, her free arm around Heather’s back. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “It’s gonna be scrap.” Brek confirmed what Jase already suspected.

  “Like I say, only a scrape. Nothing serious,” Babushka chimed in.

  “I don’t understand.” Heather glanced between Brek, Jase, Babushka, and Ethan.

  “He means, it’s not fixable,” Jase confirmed. “I mean, it’s fixable. Everything’s fixable. But it’ll be too expensive. A bent frame is going to total the van.”

  Brek nodded in agreement. “I have a guy who can take a look. But it’s bent as all shit under there. There’s no way this isn’t totaled.”

  Heather’s mouth dropped, her pretty raspberry lips turning pale.

  Babushka sat against the bumper of her Buick and pulled a peppermint candy from her bag. She carefully unwrapped it, popped it in her mouth, and glared daggers at Heather. “Tell me, vill you break all the hearts in the neighborhood? Or just my grandson’s?”

  Heather seemed to choke on air. Jase didn’t have a mirror, but he knew his eyes were definitely huge. Babushka could not seriously be bringing this up right now.

  “He’s really upset about it all,” Babushka continued. “You vill fix things.”

  Heather stared at Babushka. “Jase is upset…because we broke up?” She was still doing that calm thing. The one that did not bode well for anyone within a five-foot radius. Namely, him.

  “You and Jase?” Velma asked, clearly confused. “Really?”

  Why would it be such a shock if they’d hooked up?

  He slid his gaze to Brek.

  Brek, who obvi
ously wasn’t buying any of it.

  “Heather? Can I have a word?” Jase jerked his head toward Velma’s Prius, and started in that direction.

  Heather followed. Silent. Too silent.

  Jase hadn’t expected his grandmother to approach Heather. He hadn’t expected her to get revenge by smashing her van. He’d expected she’d let it go. He’d expected her to mind her own goddamned business and let him live his life.

  He should’ve known better.

  They reached Velma’s Prius.

  Heather crossed her arms, leaned against the edge of the trunk, and waited. Her gaze bore into his.

  He knew this game. First one to talk lost.

  Fuck it. “I told Babushka you broke my heart so she’d lay off her insistence that I need to meet someone. I had no idea she’d go all Cruella de Vil on you.”

  “So, this is your fault?” Heather waved a hand toward the van. “This is what you meant when you said your family goes a ‘little nutty’ about your relationship status. You did this to me? You did this to my cookie?”

  Here it came. Where was a goddamned bomb suit when he needed one?

  “I don’t even know what to say right now.” Her voice was getting pitchy. Raising with each word. “I mean, this is outrageous. You’ve totaled my van via your grandmother. I didn’t even know that was a thing.” She paced away from him. Then back. “Oh my God. Oh. My. God. My van is trashed.” Her finger pressed against his sternum. “I sold everything I own to open this shop. I sold my car to buy that van.” And she was yelling. “Now, it’s gone because you couldn’t tell your grandmother you didn’t want to date anyone?”

  He nodded and pressed at the bridge of his nose. “I fucked up.”

  Three words a guy never wanted to say.

  The fight deflated out of her. She just stared at him.

  “I don’t suppose at this point there is any way you’ll play along with the breakup so they will, in fact, lay off?” he asked.

  “Your grandmother just took out my van.” Heather tossed her arm toward the totaled van in illustration. “And you want me to pretend we were together?”