by Lauren Dane
PJ shook her head. Asa came up behind her, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “Ha. No intruding. This is a welcome party for you as well as Lottie’s going away. Let everyone get to know you. Have a few beers. Relax.”
So, Carmella went back into the break room, now burgeoning with people and food, and couldn’t help but smile at them. Duke leaned against the far wall, the neck of a beer dangling between his fingers as he listened to something Chick, one of the metal fabricators, was saying.
Lottie buzzed around hugging people, trying not to cry.
PJ handed her a plate and Carmella grabbed a bottle of cream soda. Two slices of loaded pizza later, she found herself squeezed in between Duke and Asa as they argued about just where they found a part. Duke insisted it was in a junkyard in Concrete, Washington, and Asa was saying it had been in Macon, Georgia.
It was clear the two men shared a deep friendship, which she liked a great deal.
“How did you two meet?”
“We served in Iraq together,” Duke said.
Asa made a sound. “Duke saved my ass in a firefight. Three of our guys were killed. I was pinned down. I’d been shot four times and was bleeding like a stuck pig. He tossed me over his shoulder and ran for it. He saved three of us that afternoon.”
Duke waved it away with a blush. “You do what you gotta do. They’d have done it for me if the situation was reversed.”
Asa rolled his eyes and kept talking. “He does that. Like he’s shy. Which he totally isn’t. But he still saved my life, and after that, I figured he had to be pretty okay.”
“We came back stateside and Asa lived out here. I floundered awhile back East until I finally gave in and moved out here. The rest is what you see.”
“Well that and a lot of work I expect. I like that story,” Carmella said.
Asa and PJ ducked out, leaving Duke and Carmella alone. “So you want to go out for a beer after this? I mean, a group of us are heading out.”
Oh, how she wanted to. It’d be so nice to make a few really bad choices and end up with that hot man meat in her bed.
And yet, it was always the morning after that got you. “I’d better not. I have plans for the morning.” A trip over to her mother’s apartment to dole out pills and listen to complaints.
“Has Ginger been inside all day?”
Damn, it was nice that he thought about that. “No. I have a doggie door. I went home for lunch too. She’s fine. Don’t let her con you with those big no one ever feeds me eyes. She’d eat the chrome off a bumper if you let her.”
He laughed and she had to stop herself from leaning closer to get more. He had a good laugh. A really good laugh. God.
She wanted to step away but her back was to a wall and he stood in front of her. He stared at her—at her mouth—for long moments before he seemed to snap out of it.
“Okay. Well, next time then. We do lunches here on Fridays but we often hit the bar up the street for beers after work. Everyone’s happy to have you here, I know they’d love it if you came out with us.”
Maybe later. Once she’d managed to get some walls built between her libido and the man in front of her. Right then she wanted to push him back on the table and scramble aboard.
On top she’d have him spread out below her so she could dip down to kiss him as she rode his cock. He’d have access to her nipples, to her pussy. She had no misperceptions about him. A man like Duke would know how to make a woman come. Quite ably. Most likely more than once.
She’d snuck enough looks at his lap to know he was packing something thick.
She loved a thick cock.
She nearly moaned at the thought, catching herself only barely in time.
“I should be going. Unless you need help cleaning up?”
He shook his head, still standing really close. Close enough that all she could really see was him. He blocked the rest of the room with those wide shoulders of his.
“We’ll get it. Everyone works their tail off for us, we can clean up the mess. I’ll see you Monday then. Have a good weekend.” He stepped back and she gulped in some air.
“You too.” She waved her good-byes and allowed Lottie to hug her and wished her luck.
As fast as her feet could take her, she cleared out and headed home before she did something monumentally stupid like take Duke up on the sensual promise in his gaze.
She had a good job. With benefits. And a retirement plan. She could not—would not—fuck her boss, no matter how fat his cock was or how nice of an ass he had.
Nope.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t think about it when she was alone in her shower with her detachable showerhead. Which she planned to do in an hour or so.
CHAPTER
Four
Carmella was grateful she had work to dive into after the nightmare weekend she’d had. Her mother had been kicked out of one of her favorite urgent care clinics. The police had called Carmella to pick her up instead of arresting her.
So Carmella’d been over at her mother’s, keeping her fed and entertained long enough to finally sleep her way out of the manic state she’d worked herself into.
Which meant Carmella had finally fallen into her own bed somewhere after one in the morning and had gotten very little rest.
Normally she’d go in later than seven, but despite her exhaustion, she’d woken up at six. So, she accepted it, showered, ate some breakfast, and headed to her new job.
The office was now hers. Carmella would need to make her own way there. Figure out what she liked where. She’d need to find a way to handle all the people who worked at Twisted Steel as well.
She cast her gaze over the shop floor below. She’d worked in garages her entire adult life. When her father had been around, he’d been a mechanic at her uncle’s shop.
Those guys down there worked hard and played harder. They were all of a type. Asa with his taciturn super-amped-up alpha male energy. Duke, the laid-back guy, good with his hands. There were shop guys, long beards, backward-baseball-hat guys, big, quiet beefy dudes of indeterminate purpose, and yet they knew more than most anyone when it came to machines.
Carmella took her attention away from the shop floor and went back to setting up her office. The Friday before, Lottie had taken home a big box of shiny things, pictures, dolls, buttons, and all manner of busy, sparkly crap that people tend to gather over years at a place.
That had all been picked clean so the slate was totally blank. Carmella wasn’t one for sparkly little bits of crap. It wasn’t as if she would have been able to keep anything anyway as a kid, so she never developed that habit.
But she liked pictures, so she’d brought some of them from home and had begun to set things up the way she liked them best.
Carmella wasn’t a Nobel prizewinner or anything, but she knew numbers and shops and that world. It had taken a while to get there, but Carmella liked what she did. And she had zero problem being proud of it.
Duke had wanted to go next door all weekend long to visit with Carmella. He told himself it was about making a new employee feel comfortable but really, he just dug her.
But he’d been out late working at the shop, and it wasn’t until she walked in Monday morning looking ridiculously adorable that he was able to be around her.
Of course, he got sucked into a crotchety engine and swept up in making it right again so he lost track of time until Asa spoke.
“You can stop looking at the door. She came in a few minutes ago,” Asa said as he walked over carrying a fender.
“I know when she got here.” Duke liked the earliest hours at Twisted Steel, when it was just him and his machines. There were a few others who liked it when it was quiet and Duke wondered if Carmella was one of them.
“Before you go moon at her, let’s see if this fits.”
“I don’t moon at anyone.” Nevertheless he pulled his head out of the engine he’d been elbow deep in and helped Asa get the fender into place.
They machined it
at the shop, which took longer than ordering one, but that was far more expensive. This client was happy to wait for something that met her exact specifications and Asa, the weirdo, seemed to love that sort of excruciatingly boring work.
“She’s our employee. It’d be stupid to moon at her.” Duke wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.
Asa raised one brow and went back to sliding the fender into place.
After a little bit of to and fro, they managed to get it lined up so Asa could then secure it.
“I’m not going to lie. After the last two times I was beginning to wonder if this fender was cursed.”
“I love how you’d chalk it up to a curse instead of owning your shit,” Duke teased his perfectionist partner.
Asa flipped Duke off as he examined his work.
Duke kept on, cleaning up a little. “If I can get her running by the end of today, I think we should be able to deliver at the end of the week probably. For now, I’m breaking for some coffee.”
He not only grabbed a cup for himself, but one for Carmella too, bringing it up to the deck where her workspace was.
“Morning.”
Carmella wore her hair in some sort of braid wrapped around her head. It should have looked ridiculous, but it didn’t. It exposed the beauty of her face. Big blue eyes, those damned freckles he couldn’t stop thinking about, her lips, glossy with a little makeup but not too much.
The blouse she wore was nearly the same color as her eyes and it skimmed over her curves lovingly but was entirely appropriate for work.
“I brought you some coffee.” He should have invited her into the break room. There was cream and food and stuff in there. “Or if you wanted sugar or milk, we could have a cup in the other room. Have you had breakfast yet?”
Her smile was patient but amused at the edges. “I have sugar right here.” She pointed at the coffee station she’d placed in her office. “I may be what’s termed a caffeine junkie so I like to make my own half-caf brew so I can drink it all day and not act like a bee in a jar.”
He had to pause to think for just a moment about all her parts jiggling as she bounced around the office. “’Scuse me for saying so, but that might be fun to see.”
Carmella laughed. “I’m glad to hear my hyperactivity would be appreciated.”
Duke leaned his butt against the empty desk, tipping his chin at her. “You’ve done some work in here.” Not a lot, but certainly she’d claimed the office. Some of the furniture had been rearranged and he noted the baskets neatly marked with each employee’s name along with one for invoices and the like.
“How are you settling in today?”
“Not too bad. Moved some stuff, made labels.”
“Your eyes just sparkled when you said you made labels. I’m a little nervous,” Duke said. And sort of turned on. Huh.
“I like things in their place. I like knowing things are where they should be when I have to find them.”
“Right on.”
“Okay, you need to tell me where you’re from with that accent of yours. Before that, though …” Carmella nudged him toward a pink pastry box. “Go on. Cherry popovers. There are more in the break room, but I kept these three back. I’ll share one.”
“I think the better question is what kind of planet you came from bearing all that red hair and pastry too,” Duke said as he leaned over her, taking a deep breath as he grabbed his pastry.
“I might smell like window cleaner,” she murmured.
That might make you even fucking hotter. He managed not to say it out loud, but damn, who knew?
“Was it that bad in here?” he managed to say, like he hadn’t been sniffing her and she didn’t know it.
“Nah. I just figured since I had everything off the desks when I moved them, they may as well get a bit of a wipe down. I hope you don’t mind that I rearranged things.”
“This is your domain. Do whatever you need. But don’t forget there’s a floor full of big-ass burly dudes who would happily move heavy stuff if you asked. Me included.”
“I’ll be keeping that in mind. Mainly it was just desks so it wasn’t a big deal.”
He didn’t like the idea of her moving stuff. Or maybe he liked the idea of doing it for her. Duke wasn’t that alarmed by the wanting to take care of her part. He liked to make things easy for people when he could. But this was … odd. Far more intense than he usually felt about women he dug.
The phone rang and she grabbed it, her voice going soft and sexy. Duke stood, dumbfounded by the way she effortlessly stepped into the job.
Carmella was an adult. A woman in charge of herself. So. Fucking. Sexy.
“I don’t even know what to do with him, Ginger,” Carmella said later that night as they took a walk around Green Lake after work. “He’s really hard to resist.”
Ginger barked and kept walking alongside.
“You like him too. I know.”
Duke flustered her in ways she wouldn’t have allowed in anyone else. It was his rhythm. He took his time. With every word. With every step. And yet he didn’t come off lazy so much as totally enjoying every moment.
He was intense the same way watching a big wave safely from the shore was intense. And right then he looked at her like he wanted to spread her on a cracker and take a bite.
It didn’t matter that she was fully clothed, when Duke looked at her, Carmella felt naked. And it wasn’t predatory. He wasn’t being lecherous. It left her exposed and a little off balance.
She never did find out where he was from with that surfer boy drawl with a hint of Northeasterner flavor to his words because the day was flat-out crazy after that.
Maybe she needed to stop even thinking about this whole thing. The man was her boss. It was such a bad idea to let herself get tingly.
“I need this job. Men are plentiful if I should find a need for one. I can keep all my dirty thoughts to myself. I’m not a toddler. I have self-control.”
The path was full of people out enjoying the warm evening walk around the lake so a few people gave her a look as they passed, but mainly no one seemed to care that she was talking to herself and her dog.
Which was good because by the time she’d made her third go-round, she was ready to head back home, feeling a little more solid in her you can look but not touch plan.
Mostly.
CHAPTER
Five
I don’t know if you like racing or not, but Twisted Steel has a team and we’re headed out tonight. I wanted to invite you,” Duke said as he poked his head into her office.
Ginger, who’d been draped over Carmella’s feet under the desk, nearly broke something at the sound of Duke’s voice.
Seeing her, he grinned and knelt. “Hey, gorgeous girl.”
Ginger was so excited she shook, making her little bark growls of joy as he scratched behind her ears.
“Unfortunately I think it might be too noisy and dangerous for you,” Duke told the dog.
Carmella loved racing and had been out to the track a few times to watch the Twisted Steel team. It was pretty nice to be invited in person, though.
“I just might be there.” She needed to check on her mother first, and be sure all was well before being out, but it sounded like just the thing.
Duke gave Carmella a lopsided grin and she got a little faint.
“Ginger, you want to hang out with me awhile? I need to root around out back for some stuff,” Duke asked her dog, and obviously Carmella too.
Ginger barked, wagging her tail so hard her entire rear end vibrated.
“No one compares to you, Duke. You’ve spoiled her.” Carmella winked and Duke blushed.
Blushed.
“Well, I’ll be back shortly¸” Duke said as he left with the dog and she tried to pretend it didn’t make her all fluttery. It wasn’t a date. Carmella had noted the people who worked at Twisted Steel also hung out socially a lot. Duke was just involving her like everyone else.
Her first week there had been m
ainly about learning the ropes and getting people in line with her way of doing things. Asa and Duke left the office stuff to her, which she approved of. The other guys quickly adopted her system of what invoices went where and of what they needed to call to her attention so it wasn’t as hard as it could have been.
The work was something she knew. Her first real job at the age of sixteen had been helping out in the office at her uncle’s shop. He’d pushed her to go on, attend college, go out and be something more than his accounts person.
But that wasn’t what she wanted. Some people had a calling or whatever, but she liked her job. It was a way to get money to pay her bills and that was fine. She didn’t need to be fulfilled by her job.
Though she did need to be fulfilled by her life and that part was a work in progress. Which was one of the reasons she planned to head out to the track that night.
PJ strolled in as Carmella was in the break room grabbing some iced tea.
“Hey you,” PJ said as she came over to hug Carmella. “What’s up today?”
“Just grabbing something to drink. How are you? Down here working or dropping something off?”
“Doing some detail stuff for a motorcycle build.”
“The bike with the hand-tooled leather accents?”
“One and the same. I put in little bits and pieces from the seats and other leather work. If I do say so myself, it’s pretty cool.”
PJ was an artist with her work in much the same way Asa was. They both loved cars and clearly loved one another and it made Carmella happy to see her friend doing so well in every way.
“Excellent. I’ll need to go look at it later before I leave for the day.”
“You going to the track tonight?” PJ asked with faux casualness.
“I was thinking about it. Duke just told me about it a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, he did?”
Carmella rolled her eyes. “You’re so transparent.”
“Please. He’s ridiculously adorable. And the track is full of hot guys if you’re inclined otherwise. Plus Asa will be all involved with his car and stuff so it’ll be nice to have you there.”