Lean Mean Loving Machine

by Sandra Chastain

  “Really?”

  “Really!”

  “Then you’re wasting your time on penny-ante stuff. Let’s buy some lottery tickets, go to the dog track. Or, I know, Atlantic City. We’ll give Donald Trump some real losses.”

  Gavin had only been kidding, until he saw the stricken look on her face.

  “No. I never bet more than ten dollars,” she said slowly. “Only for fun. Only with the guys. Only here, on little things that don’t matter. I’m not a gambler, not really.”

  “But, Stacy, everybody’s a gambler. Even life’s a gamble. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Then he thought of her garage and added, “If you intend to succeed.”

  “Depends on your definition of success, I guess. I believe that if a person finds his niche in life and doesn’t try to be greedy, he’ll survive.”

  “In other words, if you don’t risk anything, you’re safe.”

  “Something like that. You find your own fish pond and stay in it. Then you’re okay. Nobody can hurt you if you don’t let them.”

  The Dodgers starting pitcher didn’t play it safe. He threw three straight strikes, hard and fast, right across the plate, and retired the side. Stacy let out a sigh of dismay and handed Gavin his soft drink. She gave a clucking sound, and the two dogs bounded into the room and collapsed on the floor beside her, laying their heads on their paws as if they were watching Gavin instead of the ball game.

  “Do you like baseball, Magadan?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not much of a fan.”

  “Somehow I could tell that. Tennis rackets, Cadillac convertibles, and white shoes don’t go to the ball game. They go to the country club and to lawn parties, don’t they? Where do you live?”

  “I live with my mother and my aunt in an old section of Atlanta.”

  “With your mother? Now that’s a kick in the pants. Sorry, bad pun, considering you aren’t wearing any.”

  “I was beginning to think you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Oh, I noticed all right. Now I understand why it’s white—your underwear, I mean. I’ll bet your mother bought it.”

  Gavin blanched. His mother had bought it. Not because he was some kind of mama’s boy, as the smart-mouthed pixie watching the ball game implied, but because it gave her something to do with her time other than get involved in Aunt Jane’s wild escapades. Though he didn’t have enough clothes or money to totally prevent that.

  “She did,” he admitted with a grin. “Serviceable, white. I keep the black ones hidden under my mattress, with my Playboy magazines. What do you think?”

  I think that I might be in big trouble. She’d tried to focus her attention on the game, but the thrumming of blood coursing through her veins had warmed her body to a heated pitch. She was beginning to have a fuzzy sensation, and she hadn’t been hit on the head.

  “I think, Magadan, that I’d better check on your clothes.” She got to her feet. What she meant was that she’d better put some distance between herself and the man who looked better in Lucky’s robe than Lucky ever had. But she stood rooted to the floor, her eyes glued to his casual stance.

  The robe hit him about mid-thigh. His legs, crossed carelessly at the ankles, were as tan as his face. He might not run the bases, but he worked out, boy did he work out. She could see the muscles in his upper thigh pulsating as if they were answering her pulse rate with an SOS of their own.

  “Unless you have the fastest washing machine on record, I don’t think it’s finished.”

  “Oh, I do. I mean, I put it on short cycle.” Embarrassed at being mesmerized by his legs, she lifted her gaze to his face, taking in his amused smile.

  “I like your legs, too, Anastasia Lanham. I like them very much. Don’t worry. I would never want to be responsible for your losing a bet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, whenever you’re ready, I say, let the vamping begin.” He gave her a solemn wink and patted the floor beside him.

  Her eyes flashed. The crowd noise on the television blared forth, and Gavin thought he’d been caught in a short circuit. Even he was amazed by the currents set off when their eyes met and stayed focused on each other. His head didn’t pound, that was the wrong description of what was happening. He felt as if it were being invaded.

  He watched Stacy’s mouth fly open as she took in a deep breath of air, then let it out and gasp again. Her eyes were the color of hot brandy, and her face seemed to blush hotter, like a ripening peach in the summer heat. Then her eyes closed for a moment. When she opened them, they seemed to be begging him to stop, to release her from his hold. He blinked.

  “Don’t do that again,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Whatever it is you’re doing to make me feel so strange.”

  “I don’t quite know how to say this Stacy but whatever you’re feeling, I’m feeling it too. Maybe you’re doing a better job at vamping than either of us expected. Maybe I don’t know how to turn it off.”

  The washing machine let out a beep and went silent.

  The announcer on the commercial proclaimed that all a man had to do was use a certain deodorant, and women would swoon.

  The dogs whined.

  Stacy’s eyes revealed her panic. Her mouth curved into a soft pleading shape, and she shook her head. “No.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Yes, Stacy.”

  The doorbell rang again, more urgently.

  “Shall I answer the door?”

  “No.” She glanced from Gavin to the door and back again. “I mean, yes. I’ll see about the clothes.” She whirled around and disappeared before Gavin could come to his feet.

  Gavin tightened the sash of the robe and went to the door.

  Stacy pulled Gavin’s shirt and trousers from the machine and groaned. She’d added bleach in a vain attempt to remove the grease. It had worked well, too well. The trousers hung in shreds. The bleach had removed the grease, and the battery acid had removed the fabric around the grease. The shirt was in slightly better shape. Now there was no question that she was in deep trouble. Tossing the tattered garments into the dryer, she forced herself to go back and confront the man who held her bank account, and therefore her future, in his hands.

  She was wrong. It wasn’t her future he was holding, it was Lonnie’s. And he was whaling away at Gavin like a hummingbird attacking a chicken hawk.

  “You sorry, no-good, womanizing—” Lonnie, being held just out of reach, wasn’t making contact with Gavin’s bare chest. But that didn’t stop him from trying.

  “Lonnie! Stop! What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to tar and feather him. Then I’m going to take him down to see Dr. Wingate, and we’re going to alter his future life-style, without anesthesia.”

  “Mr. Short, if you’ll stop, I’ll try to explain.”

  “I’ll bet you will, you lying son of a—you didn’t come to buy Stacy’s garage. You came to seduce Stacy. I’ll see you in hell—”

  “No!” Gavin shouted.

  “No!” Stacy cried out at the same time.

  Too late.

  Frankenstein and Dracula caught Lonnie from the side, shoving him back out the door. They slurped him off the porch and into the yard.

  “Stop it, you heathens!” Lonnie snapped. “Sit! I said, sit, or you’ll be taking that trip to Dr. Wingate’s along with us. He already said the next time you came for a bath that he’s going to dip you in gasoline and strike a match.”

  The dogs sat. Apparently they were as accepting as their mistress, Gavin observed. They obeyed anybody who gave them a command. Some protection they would be if Stacy ever needed it. Lonnie came to his feet, his expression still murderous, his hands made into fists, and his arms extended in a challenge.

  Gavin couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. “I take it Dr. Wingate is the local veterinarian?”

  “Yes, and he raises and trains rottweilers.” Stacy was having a hard time keeping her own lips from curling into a smil
e.

  “If he trained these two specimens, I don’t want him within ten feet of me. I trust his sense of humor even less than I trust his scalpel.”

  “Lonnie, stop scowling, and put down your hands. Mr. Magadan hasn’t touched me.”

  “He hasn’t?” Lonnie studied Gavin, taking in the silk robe, his disbelief slow to recede.

  “He hasn’t. I’m simply washing his clothes to get the grease out.”

  This time Lonnie’s chortle was not for the robe, but for Stacy. He lowered his arms and relaxed his fingers. “You’re washing clothes? The last time you washed clothes everything in the house turned pink. We never did get the stain out.”

  “Well, I got the grease out, Lonnie. I really did.”

  “And?”

  “Do we still have that department store charge card?”

  “Nope. You made me cut it up and put it in the garbage. Why?”

  Stacy turned and walked back to the laundry, followed by Lonnie and Gavin. She opened the dryer door and took the pants out, holding them up by the only section of the trousers still in one piece, the band.

  In silence the two men stared at the shredded white fabric.

  “Well, no problem,” Gavin said finally, “you already said you’d replace them.”

  “And I will, but it will take me a few days.”

  “Or months,” Lonnie added.

  Gavin took the trousers and dropped them in the wastebasket beside the door. “Not necessary, gambling lady. I have a solution.”

  Stacy lifted her gaze. In the background she heard that another Braves runner had scored in the bottom of the ninth. The Braves had won. Therefore she’d won her bet. She never lost. That confident in-control feeling she’d lost earlier came back for a moment, then disappeared again as her gaze met Gavin’s.

  They were standing in a vacuum. The air was being squeezed out of the room, and the temperature was rising. Her pulse accelerated, and little spots of bright color floated across her vision. He was doing it to her again.

  “What’s your solution, Gatsby?”

  “Come home with me and meet my mother and Aunt Jane, and we’ll talk about a solution.”

  “Stacy,” Lonnie interrupted, “the bet is over. Forget the vamping.”

  “Does Aunt Jane do the cooking?”

  “I’ll never try to find you another man,” Lonnie promised, knowing that neither of them was listening.

  “I never know what Mother and Aunt Jane will do, but I think you’ll be pleased.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “I’d better not. I don’t trust you. You make me feel very uncertain, and I don’t like not being in control. And it’s all your fault. You’ve done something to me.”

  Gavin had taken a step closer. “I think you’re right. And maybe we’d better find out what.”

  “Ah, Stacy,” Lonnie said in a worried voice. “Think about this. What would Lucky say?”

  A long, strained moment passed.

  Then Stacy smiled. Not a smile of pleasure, but of resignation. All the times she’d argued with her father, she’d always known when she’d reached the point where she had to give in. Whatever was happening between her and the long, lean man before her had to be resolved.

  “You know what Lucky would say. He’d say, ‘Go for it, Stacy.’ ”

  Three

  “You actually intend to drive home practically naked?”

  “I do. That’s why you’re with me, so that if I’m stopped by the police, you can explain.”

  “They’d never believe the explanation.”

  “You take care of the Hiram Police, and I’ll handle the City of Atlanta. I figure you owe me, after what you did to my clothes.”

  Stacy knew there were at least two dozen reasons why she shouldn’t be in the Cadillac convertible with Gavin Magadan. At the top of the list was that she seldom went out to dinner with a man.

  Not a man she’d just met.

  Not a man who’d charmed her into wearing a dress for one of the few times in recent years.

  Not a man wearing nothing but bikini underwear and a black satin robe.

  She still wasn’t sure how it happened. But here she was, with her hair flying in the breeze, her eyes squinting in the sun, and her lips chanting half-forgotten Hail Marys as Gavin drove. She refused to look at him. Looking at him just sent her into aftershock and made her do unnatural things, like agreeing to accompany him to meet his mother and his aunt Jane.

  Gavin drove the Caddy with a sure but gentle touch. He got into the outside lane on the freeway and stayed there, refusing to look in his rearview mirror unless he couldn’t avoid it. Seeing the two rottweilers sitting in the backseat as if they were the passengers and he was the chauffeur was more than he could abide.

  Claw marks on vintage leather seats.

  Dog hair on reproduced silver-threaded floor carpet.

  Gavin shuddered. She’d put a spell on him. Somewhere between the vamping bet and the Braves’ win, he’d taken a turn into The Twilight Zone.

  But he couldn’t keep his vow to keep his head facing straight ahead and get his mind together. The pull was too strong. He gave in and turned toward the woman who was hugging the passenger door handle as if she were drowning and the handle were a life raft. He still wasn’t sure how he’d gotten involved with her.

  Gavin Magadan, ladies’ man extraordinaire, business tycoon, and entrepreneur had just gone to the garage to take an option to buy the property. The site was perfect, close enough to Atlanta to be identified with the city and far enough away to make the land affordable. The Lanham garage was the last piece he needed to fill in the sixty-acre site for the Magadan Classic Automotive Restoration Center—Magadan Classics.

  Space had been allotted to handle every portion of automotive restoration from stock and reproductive parts, through the rebuilding of the engines, upholstering, and final painting of classic cars and trucks. One small shop would even specialize in bicycles and another in wheeled toys and vehicles. Gavin was giving some thought to a buggy shop to work with antique hansom cabs and stagecoaches. If it was manufactured before the seventies and moved people or goods, the Magadan Center would restore it.

  The old expression that the only difference between men and boys was the price of their toys was the basis on which Gavin would make his fortune. Magadan Center, the most complete antique car restoration facility in the country, would be his. His million-dollar project was almost complete.

  The site of Lanham’s Garage would be the entrance to the center. Dealing with farmers and small businessmen was a long, drawn-out process, and he’d been certain that somebody would have warned Stacy before he got to her. Nobody had. He hadn’t really worried about convincing her to sell. Her business was practically nonexistent, and she wouldn’t be able to afford to turn down his offer.

  But he’d spent the afternoon with her, more or less, and he hadn’t even made an offer. Not only that, but he’d gotten lessons in baseball and dog training and a tongue-lashing from a crusty old mechanic who was as much in awe of Ms. Anastasia Lanham as Gavin had become.

  Now he was taking her home to meet his mother and his aunt Jane, and he wasn’t quite sure how that happened.

  “Gavin?”

  Her voice barely carried above the street noises outside the open convertible.

  He turned to face her, and in that one split second he stopped wondering about the why and how of the situation. She’d called him Gavin. Not Magadan. Not Gatsby. He smiled, caught her hand, and drew her across the seat beside him. “Yes?”

  “Back there, you said …” But she totally lost the thread of her conversation as he pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and turned moss-green eyes on her. Such a green. Like jewels, the kind kings conquered countries to claim. The worried expression on her face vanished, melting like ice in the sunlight.

  “You can’t talk in a convertible when the top is down,” he yelled, “unless you sit close.”

&nb
sp; And if I sit close, I can’t talk at all. Stacy chewed on her fingernail, looked down at its ragged edge and the permanent grease stain beneath it, and swallowed hard. She was twenty-six years old and acting as if she were fourteen. Still, there was something incredibly happy about the open car, the wind caressing her face, the man sitting beside her. He made her forget bills and dwindling customers and a future that grew more uncertain daily. He seemed to have the world in his grasp and the confidence to claim it.

  There was something reckless about him that reminded her of the way her father came up with some far-out scheme to recoup his gambling losses. And, as she’d done a hundred times before, she automatically responded to that confidence. But even caught up in the wonder of the moment, Stacy had the presence of mind to question whether or not she could handle so much stress again. She was on a merry-go-round, and she didn’t seem to be able to get off.

  Before she had time to think, they were pulling off the expressway and driving past the Governor’s Mansion, then down Valley Road. Stacy’s eyes widened. When Gavin said he lived with his mother in an old section of the city, Stacy never expected the wealthy northside, or a house which looked like a castle on the cover of a Gothic novel. When he pulled around to the back and parked the convertible inside a carriage house, she knew that she’d made a big mistake.

  The blue linen shirtwaist dress and sandals she was wearing were pure Hiram, Georgia, and there she was mere blocks from the Governor’s Mansion.

  “Gavin, I don’t think this is a good idea.” From between her breasts, she fished her lucky coin, the silver dollar that Lucky had given her so she could always call him, and planted it outside her blouse like a shield.

  “You’re wrong. This is a very good idea. And in about two minutes you’re going to understand just how good an idea it is.”

  Before she could argue, the back door burst open and a tall, red-haired woman wearing a pair of cutoff blue jeans and a baseball cap dashed across the yard. “Gavin! Gavin! Lordy, she’s perfect. Where did you find her? What’s her name. Oh, my Lord, look Alice. She’s wearing a talisman.”

  “Aunt Jane,” he said, when she came to a pause, “this is Anastasia Lanham. She’s come to dinner.”