by Andrews, Amy
Coop had said they wouldn’t be here until lunch time, so still being in the room at ten was hardly unreasonable. If only he’d texted her to let her know they were on their way. But then he’d thought she was going to be gone by nine so … a comedy of errors.
Resulting in egg on her face.
She’d been stuck out the back helping in the kitchen when they’d all arrived for lunch and hadn’t been able to gauge the situation between Coop and his parents. So she was dying to talk to Coop about what had transpired after she’d left.
Another hour passed without Coop returning and Lacey couldn’t wait any longer to find out what had gone down. She grabbed a hoodie, shoved her feet into some shoes and headed to the auto shop.
It was dark outside and already chilly as Lacey stepped out of the pub. Ignoring the light spilling out onto the pavement, the murmur of voices and the clink of glasses, she walked briskly in the other direction towards the auto shop.
The two extra-wide roller doors that made up most of the façade of Alec Campbell’s business were down. She tried the front door, which led into the shop area but it was shut. She knew he was in there though because she could hear some music and see a light on in the work area through the shop window, so she made her way around to the back door.
It opened when Lacey turned the knob, and she entered. The air inside was warm and stuffy, surprising given the large concrete space. It was obviously holding the heat of the day well. Diesel fumes, oil and the faint smell of old rubber tickled her nose and contributed to the airless state. Low music, all scratchy like a radio not properly tuned in, sounded weak and tinny amidst the sturdy mechanical surroundings.
It seemed like a workplace where heavy metal or hard core rock should be thumping.
A car up on a hoist directly ahead of her blocked her view and she didn’t see Coop until she walked around it and located him crouched down sans shirt, one knee on the ground, next to what appeared to be a car engine. Her car engine, judging by the gaping hole in the front of her Mini where the hood usually sat. Except there was no hood either. In fact the entire car was one big hole—no engine, no doors, no wheels, no seats or internal fittings whatsoever—just an empty shell on blocks, all its parts stripped out and placed in a pile on the floor.
It would have been a very sad sight indeed had Lacey been properly able to comprehend it. The fact that Coop was shirtless, however, made any kind of comprehension impossible. All Lacey was capable of was staring at the broad acres of his back and praying she didn’t do something stupid like try and lick him.
A light sheen of sweat at his hairline and in the small of his back caught the light belting down from the overhead lamps, as did the play of muscles beneath his skin as he fiddled with some whoosie-what. Her gaze drifted to the streak of grease on his left flank and her belly looped the loop.
There was just something so damn male about a man doing something with his hands. Something mechanical. Something sweaty. And dirty.
Watching Coop in his natural environment was seriously turning her on.
Coop looked up from his handiwork abruptly and startled her. “Oh hey,” he said.
Lacey wondered if he’d been able to sense the sudden heavy fog of pheromones clogging the air, or the thick ooze of lust emanating from her every pore. Or maybe she’d let out some kind of primal whimper without even knowing it. Either way he was standing, wiping his hands on a clean-looking rag and bringing all his lovely muscles up to her eye level.
Otherwise known as licking level.
She frowned and ground the balls of her feet into the concrete not trusting her impulsive nature one iota. He looked at her warily as he shoved the rag into his pocket, half of it hanging out. “Are you okay?”
She nodded vigorously. Maybe a little too vigorously, but it was something to do other than ogle the very distracting sheen of sweat on his pecs and the hollow of his throat or the smudge of grease streaking his flat, smooth belly.
She liked that he didn’t have any hair marring her view. That she could easily see the definition of his muscles beneath the taut stretch of his skin. But that streak of grease was just way too tempting.
“You’ve been busy I see,” she said forcing herself to make casual conversation when all she wanted to do was wrap her arms around his waist, bury her nose in his chest and sniff him. She headed in the opposite direction instead, making a show of walking around her stripped car.
“I figured I might as well get a head start.”
She poked her head into the empty shell. “Poor baby,” she murmured.
He chuckled and a wave of goosebumps prickled over Lacey’s skin. “Sometimes you gotta be cruel to be kind. Just think what she’ll look like after I’m done coaxing her back to full bloom. I’ll be gentle with her I promise.”
Lacey gripped the metal tight as she thought about how Coop could coax her to full bloom. Right here, right now. On the concrete floor with the grease and the diesel fumes, or in the grimy shell of her car.
It sure as hell wouldn’t take weeks and there would be no need to be gentle.
God knew she could do with hard and fast right now. Something wild and furious to burn off the edge of desperation building inside her with every second she spent in his company, their unorthodox past lying large and mostly suppressed between.
“I’m going to get Gav to source me some wicked mags. Have you thought about what colour you’d like her to be?”
Lacey straightened and looked at him over the roof of the car. Man, he was really into this. She was practically melting from the inside out and he was thinking about wheels and duco. It was enough to make a woman feel about as attractive as tyre rubber. Enough to make a woman want to do something about that.
Like stripping herself naked and draping herself on the hood.
Oh, that’s right, there was no hood.
“Pink?”
He shot her a horrified look, as she knew he would. “What? Don’t want a pretty pink thing amongst all those muscle cars on your website?”
His eyebrows drew together. “You seriously want pink?”
Lacey laughed at the distaste on his face. “No, just trying to get a rise.” Because clearly nothing else on him was rising. “Maybe something yellow.” He frowned some more. “Ish?”
“How do you feel about an electric red?”
“How about electric purple?”
“Shall I get you some fluffy dice to go with it?” he said with a grimace.
“What about a rainbow down the side?”
He winced this time and Lacey smiled at his barely contained horror. “What about British racing car green? That’s very classy.”
“I don’t know,” she sighed, as she wandered around the other side, deciding to put him out of his masculine misery. “Do I have to decide this right now? Isn’t there some kind of a paint guide I could look at?” She squeezed past the innards of her car that were taking up a large patch of concrete to one side.
“Yeah, there’s some stuff online.” He moved away as she neared, standing at the front of the car near the headlight. Or where it would have been had it not also been on the ground. “I’ve also got this design program where you can look at different colours on your car on the computer first. I can log on remotely and we can look at it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lacey said, drawing to a halt just outside where she could feasibly reach him with her hands. She congratulated herself on her control. “What did your parents say after I left?”
He held her gaze for a beat or two then glanced down at his hands. He pulled the rag out of his pocket and rubbed absently at some grease he missed. “They said they hoped I knew what I was doing.”
“And you said?”
He looked at her. “I said it was complicated.”
“I’m sorry if it caused a problem for you. I really am.”
He shrugged. “It’ll be fine. Which is exactly what I told them.”
Fine?
Complicated she go
t, but nothing about sharing a hotel room with Coop felt fine. Being back in Jumbuck Springs felt fine. Going to Mrs Hoff’s and to school with Connie and running into Caroline all felt fine. More than fine.
But being behind closed doors with Coop? Nope.
That felt … loaded. Combustible. Like the tinder dry landscape surrounding Jumbuck Springs—just one spark and poof!
Lacey’s gaze drifted to his hands and their continual motion with the grease rag, clearly habitual, rubbing at nothing now. His belly on the other hand …
Her eyes lifted a little to take in the tautness of the sling of muscle she could see above the waistband of his low-riding Levis. Smooth and flat, the tempting streak of black grease slashed across from the slope at his hip to just above the button of his fly.
She let her gaze wander higher over the more defined muscles of his upper abdomen to the scar that ran down the centre of his chest. It was white and faded now, innocuous looking if a person didn’t know the story behind it.
Her eyes lifted again. Over the other faded scar from his tracheostomy—so many scars—up the ridged strength of his throat, over his square jaw and sensual mouth, all the way to lock with the blue of his eyes, their gazes meshing.
He was watching her, the rag still absently working at his hands. She was aware of the thick bound of his carotid in his neck and the expansion of his chest as he breathed, his pecs expanding and his ribs flaring, then everything deflating again.
Slow and steady. In and out.
While her heart raced like a train, her breath more like that of a frightened animal.
“You always work with your shirt off?” Her voice was husky in a silence barely punctuated by the scratchy music playing from a battered-looking radio on the nearby workbench.
“No.” He looked down at himself then back at her. “I hadn’t planned on starting this, I wasn’t dressed for it, but then I thought I’d do the basics and one thing lead to another and before I knew it I was in the engine. You have no idea how many shirts I’ve ruined with grease stains because I always think it’s going to be okay and then of course it’s not.”
He stopped talking for a moment and looked uncomfortable like he knew he was babbling. “Anyway … it was hot. Pulling a car apart is hot work so …”
So he’d pulled his shirt off.
“You could have pulled the garage doors up, let in some air.”
He shook his head. “People in this town are mighty chatty.”
Lacey laughed. That was so true. Apart from the pub, Alec Campbell’s had always been the centre for male congress in Jumbuck Springs.
Plus he was shacked up with little Lacey Weston.
“Sorry.” His hands stilled finally and he looked around as if trying to locate his shirt. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Like she was complaining. Coop with no shirt and low-rider jeans, all sweaty and greasy, was pretty damn easy on the eye.
“You missed some,” she said, reaching out to grab the rag from him. She half expected him to resist but it slipped from his hands and before she knew it she’d taken a step forward and was rubbing the soft cloth along the streak of grease.
His abdominal muscles jumped beneath her touch then twitched with each swipe. Lacey watched them, unable to drag her gaze from the hypnotic undulations. Lucky for her, grease was stubborn so she got to rub a lot, her strokes getting surer and firmer, disappointed when the streak finally disappeared but continuing the caress anyway, brushing the cloth lower, hooked on the dance of his muscles and the rough burr of his breathing.
Or was it hers?
Her fingertip brushed the waistband of his Levis and his hand suddenly clamped down over hers. She looked up at him. He didn’t say anything for a moment but his eyes were brimful with the kind of tension she’d felt in his muscles.
“I think it’s gone now.”
His voice tumbled over her like water on river stones. Lacey held his gaze for another beat or two before pulling her hand away and surrendering the cloth. Her pulse whooshed slow and muffled through her ears and her gaze dropped as she tried to catch a breath she didn’t know she’d lost. The scar bisecting his sternum, thin and white, stared back at her and before she could stop herself she was bringing her hands up to his chest, one laid over the steady thud of his heart, the other tracing the scar with her fingertips.
She was close enough, tuned in to his body enough, to hear the catch in his breath.
“Lacey.”
“You could have died,” she murmured, her fingers continuing their caress, reading his scar—his skin—like braille.
“I didn’t.”
She glanced up into his eyes, the incredible blue that had struck her right from that very first night still holding her in thrall. “Ethan said it was close. That you nearly died.”
“Ethan likes to embellish,” he rumbled.
Lacey gave a half smile. They both knew her brother wouldn’t know embellishment if it came up and bit him on the ass. “Were you scared?”
Coop frowned. “When he shot me? Or after.”
“Both.”
“I didn’t really have time to be scared when he shot me. It all happened so fast. And then after that all I really remember is the pain.”
Lacey couldn’t bear the thought of that. Coop lying on the ground in pain and bleeding because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her hand moved up to touch the horizontal scar transecting low on his trachea. His throat bobbed beneath her fingertips. “So you weren’t scared?”
“Yes.” The vibration of his voice buzzed the whorls of her fingertips. “In the hospital when I woke up and couldn’t seem to move or remember anything because of all the drugs they’d given me.”
She raised her eyes from his throat. “That must have been awful,” she whispered.
“Not something I ever want to repeat.”
Lacey gaze drifted to Coop’s mouth. He was a man of few words. King of the understatement. “What would I have done without you these past couple of years?” she whispered.
“I’m sure Ethan would have found you someone else to torture.”
It took Lacey a second or two to comprehend the words, busy as she was watching them form on his mouth. She gave a half smile as they sank in, raising her hand to touch those lips.
She expected him to flinch or to rear back. He didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her gaze lifting to his, her voice tremulous as she traced the contours of his mouth.
He drew in an unsteady breath, his palm sliding to cup her cheek as the blue of his eyes burned into the brown of hers. “It’s fine.” The space around them shrunk down to just the two of them, the air thicker and heavier, pressing in on them.
His gaze dropped to her mouth and Lacey knew he was going to kiss her. Yes. Dear God, yes. Her heart banged against her ribs and throbbed at her pulse points, her fingers fell from his lips, giving him permission, inviting him in, asking him for it.
But it had to come from him this time. She wanted it to come from him. Needed it to. Wanting to kiss him was a default position for her. It was a given. But if it came from him? If he initiated it, it would be something else. Something more. A confirmation of the mutual attraction he’d denied for so long. A sign that he still wanted her.
No matter how crazy.
His head moved slowly towards hers, almost imperceptibly, and Lacey’s pulse trebled, the muscle fibres in her belly tangling and twisting hard. She didn’t move. She daren’t even breathe lest he change his mind. She could feel his breath warm on her face, see the dilation of his pupils.
And then he halted, his gaze roaming over her face, searching her eyes for who knew what. Whatever it was he didn’t find it, instead shutting his eyes and pressing his forehead against hers with a groan that seemed to come from his boots and plucked those muscle fibres deep inside her to an unbearable tautness.
“I can’t do this, Lacey,” he muttered, his forehead lifting, his hand slipping from her cheek,
his body backing up a step or two.
What? Lacey blinked and placed her hand on the car frame for support. What had just happened? He wanted her. Did he think she didn’t know that? “No matter how much you want to?”
He shook his head. “Because of how much I want to.”
Lacey took heart at his words and ignored his closed face. He did want her. “I’m twenty-one, Coop. I’m well above the age of consent and old enough to know my own mind.”
He swore under his breath, glaring at her. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a hundred and one. You will always be my best friend’s little sister. You’ll always be off limits, Lacey.”
The thought was so bleak she didn’t even want to think about it. She knew his parents and others found his honourable streak commendable, but right now Lacey wanted to strangle him with it.
“You should go,” he said, tucking the cloth back in his pocket again and snagging his shirt off the end of the workbench. “Go ahead and eat without me.” He shoved his arms into it. “I’m going to be a while yet.”
And with that he turned back to her engine on the floor.
Stung by his dismissal, Lacey didn’t even have the fortitude to argue.
* * *
The restoration job on her car came to define their days over the next week. Coop went off to work before Lacey was awake most mornings and when he shut up shop for the day he started on her car, often not getting in until nine or ten at night, dog-tired and utterly sexy in his greasy way. Sometimes he ate, sometimes he didn’t. Then he showered, hit the sack and they started all over again the next morning.
Their conversations, when he was around long enough to have them with her, usually revolved around car stuff—progress updates or decisions on paint and upholstery. Lacey went for black leather seats with an ochre stitching and trim and for the duco chose a candy apple red base paint and a shimmer gold pearl for over the top to produce a metallic ochre look that threw hints of either red or orange from its pearlescent hide, depending where the sun hit it.
Occasionally he asked Lacey about her job hunt or the pub or about the costumes for the high school musical, but essentially they passed like ships in the night. Coop was clearly getting through their forced cohabitation with the minimum amount of conversation. Or at least the minimum amount of opportunity to find himself in the sort of clinch they’d ended up in on Thursday evening.