by Lily Baldwin
Ethan opened the hood.
“Whew, that’s hot,” Nathan said, waving away the steam.
Ethan bent at the waist to examine the engine. “Block’s cracked.”
Nathan raked a hand through his long, blond hair and pressed his lips in a grim line. “That’s too bad. Do you want me to deliver the bad news?”
Brooke crossed to stand alongside Ethan. “I’ll do it,” she said, looking only too eager the break the girl’s heart.
Ethan took the clipboard from her hands. “I’ll talk to her.”
He began skimming over the page. Her name was Angel Sullivan.
Angel.
Pushing open the rubber-coated door, he stepped into the waiting room.
∞∞∞
Angel’s mouth fell open. Her eyes darted to the floor, then the ceiling, anywhere but on the tall, broad-shouldered man who had just entered the room.
It was unmistakably him.
Even though her window had been rain-spattered, she knew those deep-set, piercing blue eyes. His black hair was effortlessly tousled, and his massive shoulders and narrow waist were on exquisite display in his work clothes. She swallowed hard, trying to fight down her anxiety over her car and now her nerves at being in the company of her gorgeous would-be rescuer.
“Hi again,” he said, his voice low and unhurried.
“Hi,” she answered stiffly.
He was staring at her from across the room, his gaze probing. It was not the usual kind of male I’m undressing you with my eyes look that always made her instantly wary. His gaze was intense yet somehow still distant, like he was studying her.
Behind him, the door swung open, and the black-haired bombshell returned, her eyes locked on Angel with open hostility.
Confusion, anxiety, and nerves were colliding within Angel, promising a reaction of full-blown panic.
He took a step closer. The intensity of his gaze penetrated her core defenses, leaving her feeling more vulnerable than ever. She squeezed her bag harder. “Listen, just tell it to me straight,” she blurted. “My car is shot, right?” Please, say it’s not.
“It’s salvageable, but it will take some work.” His deep voice carried a soothing tone that caressed her from across the room, but despite his best intentions, she was beyond soothing.
She pressed her lips in a tight, grim line to keep from cursing out loud. Damn it.
She shook her head. Now what was she going to do? Tears stung her eyes, but she tensed her body against the rush of emotion. She didn’t want to lose it in front of the world’s most gorgeous man, and his smug plastic counter girl who looked like she couldn’t be more pleased by Angel’s distress.
He crossed the room and stood in front of her chair, too close for comfort. She had to crane her neck back to look up at him. He slowly squatted down in front of her but didn’t speak. He continued to look her hard in the eyes. She fidgeted with her bag, her gaze darting around the room. God, he made her uncomfortable. He was too beautiful to look at, and all she really wanted to do was sprint away so she could cry in peace.
∞∞∞
“I’m Ethan,” he said. He loved how she blushed every time her flitting gaze landed on him. She exuded innocence, but at the same time she carried herself with scrappy self-assurance. She was a world of dichotomies bound together in a simply beautiful package. The artist in him loved her wide mouth, her bright amber-brown eyes and dark brown hair. Her distress was apparent to him, despite how she tried like hell to hide it.
“Don’t worry about your car,” he said. “We can hook you up with a loaner while we fix it.” She had looked at him while he spoke but then cast her eyes to the side the instant after he glimpsed her heightened distress. He leaned closer and brushed a lock of fallen hair from her eyes. It was then he caught a whiff of her. He smiled. “You smell like fresh baked bread.”
“I work at a bakery,” she said in a quiet voice. Her lip trembled.
“Hey, Angel, look at me,” he said softly.
He waited for several moments. He knew she was gathering her strength so she didn’t cry. When she looked up at him, it was with clear, tear-free eyes. But it was all there—her fear and anxiety. Damn, he had to respect her courage.
“You really don’t have to worry,” he said. “We have solid loaners, and we’ll get your car back on the road in a couple days.”
She shook her head. “I can’t afford that,” she said, clearly straining to keep her voice level. He looked at her hands white-knuckling her bag.
“You can pay me when you have the money.”
He couldn’t believe what he had just said. He never did work without payment, but he felt some inexplicable need to protect her. He tensed his jaw as two strong desires battled for domination in his own mind—the fierce urge to protect her and the part of him that kept everyone at a safe distance. Damn it, he should just shrug her off and let Brooke sort out getting her a taxi and junking her car.
But then words poured unbidden from his lips. “It’s not a big deal.”
Helping this lost, little girl was a very big deal! He didn’t do intimacy. What the hell was wrong with him?
She shook her head harder. “If it was a couple hundred dollars, maybe, but I assume you’re talking about thousands. I can’t do that.”
He could feel the emotion building within her. The dam was going to break, and it near killed him. He put a hand on her thigh. “Don’t worry, Angel,” he said, his voice low. “It will be all right.”
∞∞∞
Once more, Angel choked back her tears. Damn, how she wanted to believe him. He was so big and strong. She wanted nothing more than to slide into his arms and listen to him tell her everything was going to be all right. But she couldn’t. She was too afraid. Life had taught her that men could not be trusted. She shook her head. Then she straightened her back and steeled her shoulders. “What do I need to do to get rid of it? Do I need to pay for it to be towed to the dump?”
His hand left her thigh and swept another lock of hair from her eyes. “We can work something out.”
She shook her head again, trying not to cry. She wished he would just let her go and stop making promises that couldn’t possibly come true. “I have to leave right now. Just tell me what I need to do.”
He rocked back on his heels and canted his head as he looked at her for several moments longer. Then, at length, he stood. “We’ll take care of your car.” He walked to the counter and grabbed a set of keys. “There’s a blue hatchback out front. Tank’s full.”
She shook her head, still fighting back the tears. “A loaner is a substitute for a car being fixed. Mine isn’t going to be fixed. Now you’re just giving me a car.”
He shrugged. “Take it.”
She shook her head. “I have to go.” She zipped up her threadbare, navy hoodie against the rain and pulled open the door.
∞∞∞
Ethan watched her head out in the storm, resisting the urge to somehow force her to take the car, or tell her to get into his. He would drive her anywhere she wanted to go.
Nathan threw open the door and strode into the waiting room, wiping his oily hands off on a dirty rag. “What’s the deal with the car? Junk yard?”
Ethan continued to look outside, although she had passed from view. “No,” he said. “It’s a rebuild.”
Chapter Four
Angel sat with her knees curled into her chest on the cushioned seat of her bay window—the one amazing feature in her Dorchester studio apartment, that and the old claw-foot tub in the bathroom. The rest of the place was outdated with radiator heat that snapped in the winter and windows that whistled when the wind blew, inviting the heat or cold inside.
The kitchen was a cubby with a two-burner stove and mini-fridge—not that she cooked. She spent all day at work baking. The last thing she wanted to do when she got home was stand in front of a hot stove. Typically, she ate raw fruits, veggies with hummus, tuna fish sandwiches, and eggs. She was actually a bit of a rock sta
r when it came to cooking eggs, but a failure at the rest.
Having left home at sixteen, she never learned things like cooking and establishing good credit. Not that her mother would have taught her to cook—she would have thought the task beneath them. Still, Angel loved really good food. Twice a week she bought hot, prepared meals from the market on the corner. They made amazing meatloaf burgers and baked ziti.
She sipped her black coffee and looked down at the people on the sidewalks below. People watching was one of her favorite pastimes. When she wasn’t at work, she was usually alone—just her in her little apartment. Somehow, watching people walking together, holding hands, even arguing made her feel less isolated.
Just then, a young girl with streaming blond hair, lovingly flanked by her parents, came into view. Angel couldn’t help smiling as the little girl’s mom and dad held her hands and swung her feet up in the air, only to touch down a moment later.
“One, two, three,” Angel whispered, and on cue the little girl flew up into the air again.
A pang cut straight through Angel’s heart as she rested her head back and looked up at her ugly, white popcorn ceiling. Once upon a time, she had felt the security of being loved and protected. But that was before the veneer of her existence shattered and truth reared its ugly head.
“Not now,” she said out loud, shaking her head to dispel the past from her mind. Right now, she had present day problems to contend with.
It was the end of her “weekend”, and she had yet to figure out what she was going to do about her lack of a car. Wednesday and Thursday were her customary days off. She might have gone up north and stayed in a quiet, cheap motel off the I-95 in Maine or New Hampshire. Surrounded by trees and birdsong, her mind was clear. She could focus. But without a car, she had to remain shut away in her apartment. Now, she was trapped in the city. Not that she disliked city life. It was the suburbs she couldn’t handle—the in-between places.
“Come on, Angel. Stay focused,” she groaned aloud. Surely, her circumstances were not so grave as to defy solution. She simply needed to figure out how she was going to get to and from work.
Bake Off was in the North End, which was historically an Italian neighborhood. The owner, Suzi, with her frizzy blond hair and pale, freckled skin, was about as Italian as a bottle of ketchup, but she did make amazing cannoli. Unfortunately, it would take Angel two hours to walk there. Not only was that unreasonable and exhausting, it was also dangerous, considering many of her shifts started at three o’clock in the morning. The bus wasn’t an option. The last ride out of the city to Dorchester was close to midnight, and then the bus stopped until well after she was already supposed to be at work.
You could always take the subway.
A cold chill shot up her spine.
First—she argued with herself—the T stopped running at 2AM. Second—she didn’t ride the subway.
The fact that her brain would even bring up the subway was evidence that she was her own worst enemy. She grabbed a pillow, squeezed it close, and rested her cheek against the softness.
She couldn’t go down there, beneath the city, not after staring down the barrel of a gun.
She pressed her eyes tight against the memory of sitting by herself on a bench, waiting for the next train. The air had been hot and thick and smelled of sulfur. She didn’t hear him coming. Everything happened so fast. She bent down to dust flour off the top of her chef clogs. When she sat up straight, a man appeared in front of her and shoved her hard against the wall. She fell off the bench and sprawled on the ground. An instant later, he hovered above her, the barrel of a gun pressed right between her eyes. He grabbed her purse and fumbled in her pockets for her phone while she lay paralyzed with heart-pounding fear.
And then he was gone, and so was any confidence she had in public transportation.
She wiped at the tears that had pushed beyond the confines of her lids.
“I need to get a grip.”
She sat up and swung her legs around to stand, then walked the few steps to her “kitchen” to warm up her coffee.
A taxi was out of the question. At the moment, she didn’t have the fare, even if she rolled quarters. In a few days, her check would be deposited into her account, but she couldn’t afford to take a taxi to and from work on a regular basis.
“I’ll just have to walk,” she said out loud, but then all she could picture was Landon Street, which would be hard to avoid. Landon turned into a virtual frat house every morning at two—not that she had ever been in the basement of a fraternity. She hadn’t even finished high school. But her friend Matty from work went to college, and he loved to regale her with tales of beer and mud-ridden basements packed with wasted and obnoxious co-eds. Although entertaining, his stories had done little to rid her mind of her distrust of men.
She sagged back onto her couch. It was hopeless. She should have just taken the loaner from Ethan.
For the hundredth time that day, exquisite blue eyes came to the fore of her mind.
Ethan Calloway was a name she would never forget. Just thinking about him made her palms sweat. She set her mug down on a trunk she had found at a yard sale, which held extra blankets and her favorite movies and doubled as a coffee table.
His body had been so close to hers, and his eyes had been so warm with concern when he offered her a replacement car. He had certainly seemed sincere.
She shook her head, resisting the temptation to trust him.
Just the idea of accepting Ethan’s charity set her heart to race, but not in a good way.
She stood and started pacing two steps in one direction, then two in the other. She was twenty-one. She had been on her own for five years. She could figure this out. One good thing was that she didn’t have to be at work until the following morning, which meant she still had time to devise a plan.
She grabbed the notebook from her bedside table, which she kept next to her birth control pills and nasal spray. The former her doctor prescribed to regulate her periods, the latter worked wonders against her dust allergy. Chewing on the tip of her pencil, she sat down and went over everything she knew for certain—she had no car. She was too afraid to ride the subway after dark. Taxis were too expensive.
Her depressing list-making was thankfully interrupted by her cell vibrating in her pocket.
She pulled it out and looked at the number. It was work. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I’ll tell you what’s not up. Minnow’s working today, and he’s wearing sandals with socks.”
Angel couldn’t help but laugh. Matty always managed to cheer her up. “Did you honestly call me to complain about your lack of you-know-what?”
“I believe the word you’re searching for is hard-on. Come on, Angel, say it.”
“No,” she laughed.
“Stiffy, erection, throbbing member.”
“Matty!” Angel said, feigning indignation, although her face did feel warm. One of Matty’s favorite pastimes was to make her blush—no great feat considering she was a twenty-one-year-old virgin.
“To answer your question, I didn’t just call to tell you about Minnow’s woody-defeating fashion choices. Amanda cut herself. Suzi’s driving her to the ER.”
Angel groaned. “Was she texting and slicing again?”
“I don’t know what that girl was doing. I gave her a freshly cooled French baguette and suddenly the slicer and chopping block looked like a cheesy horror flick.”
Angel sat up. “Did she lose a finger?”
“Who knows, and right now who cares? The after-work rush is on. People want their lattes and Italian cookies. Will you come in early?”
Angel looked at the time on her phone. “Now? It’s only six o’clock. You know I’m not supposed to be there until 3AM.”
“So?”
“So, you’re essentially asking me to come in a day early.”
“We pull doubles all the time. Come on, Angel, pretty please. Eric’s in Vegas, and Cindy can’t come in because of her k
ids. And I’m supposed to be leaving at eight to meet Darren. I’ll make it up to you—I’ll be back after midnight to start the morning prep. And I’ll work the rest of your shift, so you can go home early.”
Angel groaned again. “It’s been a shitty couple days. Just cancel with Darren.”
“No way. I’ll quit first,” Matty threatened. Then his voice softened. “Come on, Angel. Be an Angel. I haven’t met a guy like Darren in a long time. He’s hot and a decent human being. Seriously, Ms. Virgin—you know how freaking hard it is to meet a hot, decent guy.”
Angel lifted her eyes heavenward as if seeking divine intervention—but as far as she was concerned, God couldn’t be trusted. After all, he did make man in his image. Matty was right—most men did suck, at least the men she had known, not that she had known many. Still, her only exposure had scared her off them altogether
Her birth father had left her mother before Angel had even said her first word. Her stepfather, who she had idolized her whole life, turned out to be a shameless scumbag. And the only man she had ever dated freaked out when she said she wanted to wait to sleep with him. He hit her so hard he knocked her out. She woke up hours later with a black eye, a bruised cheek, and short one TV and the stash of cash in her desk draw. She had been just eighteen.
Now, she was twenty-one and still a virgin with no plans for changing that despite how curious she was.
Her mind drifted once again to Ethan Calloway and his iridescent blue eyes and full lips. She couldn’t picture his hand raised at her in anger, but then again, as a little girl she always dreamed of marrying a man like her stepdad.
“Angel, are you still there?” Matty said, his tone insistent.
She fell back on the couch. “Fine. I’ll come in, but it’s going to take me a while to get there.”
“Angel, I could kiss you, but I wouldn’t want to ruin you for straight men.”
Angel let her phone drop from her fingers onto the table. “Walking it is,” she groaned as she leaned back in her chair. At least it was early evening and not the middle of the night.