A string of curse words shot from her brain to her mouth. She’d heard her brother mutter choice words after busting his knuckles working under the hood of his car. What would her brother think of her right now? She could almost hear his laughter, and it made her smile.
Wait. Someone flesh and blood was laughing in the garage. She scooched from under the car.
Sutton Mize and Wyatt came to an abrupt stop. Wyatt’s laughter petered out and his smile turned questioning. “What in the world are you doing, Ms. Boudreaux?”
Wyatt reminded her of her brother in so many ways. Easygoing with laughter at his fingertips. Memories of her brother added to the stress of the oil change and sent her emotions to the edge of control. Tears gathered for an exit. She ran her clean forearm over her face and took a shuddery breath. She couldn’t allow herself to cry in front of any of the Abbotts.
“I’m changing the car’s oil. And call me Ella, please.”
“I was going to take care of that after lunch.” Wyatt squatted down next to her and peered under the car, his eyebrows rising. She glanced back. It was an unholy mess compared to the rest of the garage.
“Yeah, well, Mack asked me to do it.” Ella tried to smile up at Sutton. Their paths had crossed at a few Cottonbloom, Mississippi, functions. While they weren’t friends, Sutton seemed nice and down-to-earth and obviously in love with Wyatt.
“This is crazy. Where’s Mack?” Sutton set her hands on her hips and looked around.
“He had an estimate to handle. A Mustang, he said.”
“I swear, sometimes I’m not sure what goes on in that hard head of his. Want me to finish up?” Wyatt asked.
She was tempted to say yes, but her damnable pride reared up. She wanted to be able to tell Mack she’d done the job without lying. “Maybe you could supervise me?”
“We’ll take that walk later, babe.” Wyatt rose and dipped Sutton back for a kiss.
When Wyatt let her go, color had flushed her face becomingly and she shuffled as if slightly off-balance.
“Don’t let me interrupt your plans. The Mr. Fix-It website can guide me through the rest.” Ella waggled her phone at the couple.
“Don’t be silly. Looks like you need him more than I do at the moment. I’ll see you at home, Wyatt.” Sutton winked, then turned her smile on Ella. “Good luck, Ella. Mack needs to be shook up. I’m rooting for you.”
Sutton’s smile wasn’t strained or fake or anything other than warm and slightly sympathetic. Ella returned it sheepishly. “I need all the support I can get.”
“Wyatt better be helping you settle in.” Sutton narrowed her eyes and twisted her engagement ring.
Wyatt cleared his throat, gave Sutton a double thumbs-up, and disappeared under the car.
“These boys.” Sutton shook her head. “Be patient with them. Especially Mack.”
Sutton was assuming Ella could act like an emotionally mature adult around Mack. If her current situation—sitting in a pool of oil and getting ready for further torture under a car was any indication—Ella was not taking the high road.
“Let’s go, fancy lady,” Wyatt said from under the car.
She scooched in to join him shoulder to shoulder in the pool of oil. “Not so fancy at the moment.”
Wyatt turned his head to meet her eyes, his grin white against the dark metal and rubber. “Nope. Not so much. Now, where were you?”
Wyatt walked her through getting the oil plug back in place and changing the oil filter. He stayed calm and patient throughout, and with a little guidance, her confidence grew.
“That’s it for under here,” he said.
She didn’t make a move to slide out, and neither did he. “I know you don’t want me around. Thanks for helping me anyway.”
“Sutton would send me to the couch tonight if I hadn’t.” His attempt at levity sunk. He cleared his throat and fiddled with a black rubber hose. “It’s not that I think you’re a bad person or anything. But this place is ours. The Abbotts. Ford destroyed that history.”
“I’m not making a play to rename the garage Abbott and Boudreaux. And, Ford didn’t destroy your history. You’re all still family. Even Ford. The garage is just a place.”
“Don’t tell Mack that.” Wyatt’s laugh was dry as he slid out from under the car.
Ella would do anything to have her brother back. Anything. What was wrong with these Abbott men? Coming out from under the car, she let Wyatt guide her through refilling the oil and checking the level on the dipstick.
“I’ll start the car. You check underneath for leaks.” Wyatt cranked the engine. She got on her hands and knees and scanned the underside. No sprays or drips.
She rose and gave Wyatt a thumbs-up. Her hands were filthy, and her hair was stuck to her neck in a sweat-oil combo. She felt disgusting and probably looked even worse. Wyatt turned the engine off, his gaze darting over her shoulder, an unusual grimness coming over his face. He turned and walked away. She felt strangely betrayed and thrown to the wolves.
She tensed. Wiping her hands on the legs of the coveralls, she waited for the wolf to pounce.
“You finished it?” Suspicion laced Mack’s voice.
She turned slowly and pasted a smile on her face as if wearing oil-covered coveralls was totally in her wheelhouse. “You’re back early. Yep, all done and tested.”
“With Wyatt’s help.”
“I did everything myself except crank the engine, thank you very much.”
His gaze lit a fiery path down her body, and her body heated like an aluminum foil–wrapped potato in the oven. His continued silence was like a blowtorch.
“Have I proven myself adequate?” The bite in her voice rose up from a place she thought she’d put firmly in her past. She’d spent too much of her childhood and marriage being tested and failing. Her marriage had ended with a big fat D.
He squatted to glance under the car. “You made a mess.”
Screw him. Screw the garage. Screw her dream of finally building something for herself. She unzipped his coveralls and peeled them down her body. Anger and disappointment and the desire to pop Mack Abbott right on the mouth brought tears to her eyes. She was mostly mad at herself for thinking if she worked hard enough, Mack would eventually accept her.
She yanked the coveralls over her foot. Her shoe went flying into his crotch. He grunted and covered himself. A maniacal laugh threatened to break out of her.
She got the other leg off with minimal hopping and no shoe flinging. She stepped forward and shoved the grimy coveralls at his chest and slipped her foot in her shoe at the same time.
The Ella of a few years ago would have slinked off to lick her wounds. But, she’d made a promise to herself after the divorce. No longer would she allow anyone—but especially a man—make her feel less than again.
“I completed your pissing contest even though I’m not a trained mechanic. How about a ‘good job’ or ‘way to go’ or even a ‘you did better than I expected’? Is this how you treat your brothers? Is this how you treated Ford? No wonder he sold out and left. You can be a real asshole, you know that, Mack?”
His eyes widened and his jaw unhinged. She liked him like that. Shock and awe. Performing an about-face, she grabbed her purse and laptop from his office and stalked toward her car. She swore she could feel his footsteps on the concrete behind her like little seismic shifts in her world.
“Hold up.” His voice was gruff and commanding in a way that said his orders were used to being followed.
She only stopped when she reached her car and was forced to stow her things on the passenger seat. “What do you want?”
He didn’t speak, and she glanced over her shoulder. His mouth opened and closed as if he was at a loss for words.
“Well? Do you want to yell at me some more? Test me? Humiliate me?” She flung her purse to the floorboard.
“I didn’t— I mean, that’s not—” He rubbed the back of his neck.
He couldn’t finish his half-ass apology becau
se that’s exactly what it had been—a test designed to humiliate her. At least he didn’t lie.
She slipped into the seat of her car and slammed the door. She reversed with a spin of her wheels. He took a ground-swallowing hop backward as if he was in danger of being hit. If she’d wanted to run over him, she would have. One thing her brother had taught her was how to handle a car, even if she hadn’t legally been old enough to drive.
She left Abbott Brothers Garage in her rearview mirror never wanting to see it, or its owner, again.
Chapter Four
Ella poured another glass of wine. The ticking of the antique grandfather clock was like a hammer on her brain. She’d bought it because of a children’s book she’d read when she was eight about a little girl in a mansion. A grandfather clock had been in an illustration. Something about a clock taller than her had stuck in her imagination for two decades.
By the time she had the money and wherewithal to buy one, it had lost its magic and only represented the inevitable march of time. If she had an ax handy, she might smash it to splinters and cogs.
The ring of the doorbell echoed through the two-story entryway. She could count on one hand the number of times someone had rung it since she’d moved in, and at least twice had been a Girl Scout selling cookies.
While Cottonbloom, Mississippi, was small and friendly enough, it was also insular and standoffish with new inhabitants. Especially one with a reputation as a gold digger. Even though it was dead wrong.
Barefoot, she padded to the front door and checked out the side window. Her heart stuttered. It was her ex-husband, Trevor.
She took a gulp of wine for courage, put her game face on—a hitched eyebrow and an eat-shit smile—and cracked the door open.
“Oh. I thought you were a vacuum salesman.” She didn’t even know if people went door-to-door selling vacuums anymore, but her slight jab had its desired effect. “A shame since I’m in the market for a new one. What do you want?”
Trevor’s eyes narrowed and his hundred-watt smile dimmed to a sputtering twenty-five. “I’ve heard rumors.”
“Regarding?”
“You bought a stake in a local car garage?”
“Garage and restoration. Glad to know the rumor mill occasionally gets close.”
“What are you doing, Ella?” His sigh was one of a disappointed parent.
Her knee-jerk reaction was to tell him about Magnolia Investments and detail her successes without him. She slapped the clamoring need to please back into its dank hole like a whack-a-mole. Another weakness would pop up. Trevor was an expert in teasing out her insecurities.
“I have signed documents that explicitly state it’s none of your business.”
“It’s my business when it’s still my name that gets dragged through the muck. Can I come in?” He ran a hand through his silky dark hair. Hair she knew was thinning on top. Enough to send him running to the doctor for medicine to combat the loss of his perceived manhood.
She hesitated. Something was off with him. He looked worn down, his tie pulled askew from his collar. For a man who fought the creep of time with more effort than he’d put into their marriage, it was telling.
“Come on in.” She swung the door wide, turned around, and walked into the kitchen, her favorite room in the house. The memories of cooking for her brother in their childhood home before he left were some of her most cherished ones.
Trevor dropped onto a swivel barstool, his shoulders slumped. “Can I have a drink?”
She hesitated. “All I have is wine or beer.”
It was a lie, but not the first one she’d told to him. Giving him hard liquor was like spinning the roulette wheel. If her number came up, then hell would ensue.
“Wine, please.” He tugged at his tie, loosening it further.
From this angle, she could see his hair loss had accelerated in the year and half since she’d sat across from him at the divorce lawyers’ table. She pushed a glass of red wine over to him, keeping the island between them. How quickly her self-preservation instincts resurfaced.
“You’re not here to talk about the garage, are you?” she asked.
“Not entirely.” He turned the glass in his hand.
She could only think of one reason Trevor was sitting in her kitchen. “How’s Megan?”
A look like tasting something bitter flashed on his face. “She’s fine. I guess. I don’t know.”
“You’re separated?”
“You could say that.”
Trevor’s affair with Megan had been the deepest fissure in their marriage, setting off cataclysmic aftershocks. She was several years younger than Ella—of course—but moved in the same social circles in Jackson. Unlike Ella’s humble beginnings, Megan’s family had old money.
The irony was that Ella had liked Megan. She was Ella’s inverse—a model-thin blonde, with brown eyes. Cheery and optimistic, if not a little naïve. Apple pie personified. The girl hadn’t stood a chance when Trevor turned on his charms.
Even though Trevor was fifteen years Ella’s senior—and twenty years older than Megan—he possessed a suaveness that reminded Ella of a movie star. Eighteen when they’d met, she hadn’t been smart or sophisticated enough to see through the polish to the rotten core.
“She left you?” Ella asked idly.
“Yes.”
“I warned her not to marry you.” Of course, her earnest warning had only gotten her branded a jealous witch, and Jackson had turned its back on her.
“Dammit, Ella. I’m not a monster.” Even though his words came out even, a question was on his face.
“Yes, you are,” Ella whispered. He certainly haunted her nightmares.
He swept the wine glass off the counter. It smashed into her cabinets. She flinched. Bright red rivulets made their way to the floor where broken glass littered the tile. She scrunched her toes and clutched the edge of the counter.
“Get out.” She hated the tremble in her voice.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll clean up.” He grabbed a dish towel and wiped over the cabinet, only managing to smear a wide reddish stain across the white.
“Why are you here, Trevor? We have no connection anymore.”
He straightened and tossed the towel down. “No connection? We were married for eight years.”
Eight years. It had felt like a lifetime while she was in it, but a blink of time she’d like to forget now. “We’re not anymore for reasons I won’t rehash.”
“I’m trying to change. I want Megan back.”
The knowledge he’d never tried to change for her wasn’t a spike through her heart but more like a splinter digging under her fingernail. “I can’t help you change. That’s something that will require dedication on your part.” She paused, but her mouth got the better of her. “And therapy. Lots of therapy.”
Trevor’s temper erupted like Old Faithful, right on cue. He never could countenance her acerbic sarcasm. “You are such a bitch. I’d almost forgotten why I let you go.”
“Let me go? Ha! I left your sorry butt.” She walked halfway to the front door and pointed, unable to control the slight shake. “Time for you to leave.”
He crunched in broken glass and tracked red wine along her tile floor. “I could make things difficult for you.”
“How so?” Ella had made sure he had no hold over her in any way. Instead of alimony, she’d taken half of the stock portfolio she had managed during their marriage. Even though she made a show of throwing money around, most things she’d bought, like her house, were an investment in themselves. She’d finish updating it and then bank a tidy profit on the resell.
“These people don’t know what you’re really like, do they? What if the fine citizens of Cottonbloom discovered that you used me and then cleaned me out in the divorce? A cold-hearted gold digger.”
Given the bare facts of their marriage, she sounded like a gold digger, but she had loved him somewhere in the past. Her shame didn’t originate from how things had ended from
but how gullible and naïve she’d been. At eighteen she’d been like a lamb to the slaughter.
“Spread whatever poison you want. I don’t care.” Her defiance did a poor job hiding her lie. She hated he still held any power over her. “If Megan is smart, she’ll file a restraining order against you and get a good lawyer. You won’t have anything left.”
“That can’t happen. I want you to talk to her.” He grabbed her upper arm in a punishing hold. She closed her eyes and braced herself for his reaction when she denied him what he wanted.
The doorbell chimed. Ella drew in a sharp breath and froze. Trevor did the same, leaving them in a grotesque pose. The doorbell chimed again.
* * *
Mack kicked a pebble off the porch with the toe of his boot. Five minutes. That’s all he’d promised Wyatt and Jackson. A quick apology and he was gone. The fact she had company—a black BMW 5 Series was in her driveway—only made things easier. He probably wouldn’t even be invited inside and could say his peace on the porch and leave.
Except it didn’t seem like she was going to answer the door. A sickening wave passed through his stomach. Did she have a boyfriend? Were they otherwise occupied? He braced a hand on the doorframe as images he couldn’t scrub from his brain scrolled.
Inexplicably, he wanted to punch something. Instead he knocked on the door, harder than was polite. So what if he interrupted her and whatever pretty boy she was entertaining and killed the mood?
Two minutes ago, he’d dreaded the moment he’d have to deliver his apology; now he was pissed she didn’t answer the door. He turned away and had one foot on the brick steps leading away from the dark red door when it opened. He pivoted around, bracing himself to see her half dressed or looking like she’d been making out. Or worse.
“Mack.” His name croaked out of her throat.
She didn’t look like he’d torn her away from a lover. In fact, if he had to name the emotion on her face it was fear tinged with relief at the sight of him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention as he closed the distance between them.
He checked her from head to toe, but nothing raised alarms. She was casual in a short-sleeve button-down and tight ankle-length jeans. The toes of her bare feet were painted a bright pink.
Set the Night on Fire Page 4