Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Excerpt: Never Say No to Love
About the Author
Never Say Never
Sonoma Summers Series (Book 1)
Jesse Devyn Crowe
PHOENIX PUBLICATIONS
ARDENVOIR, WA
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, and persons, living or deceased, is coincidental.
© Sandy D'Entremont. Published in the United States of America
Cover Images: Adobe Stock ©elnariz and © Bjorn Bakstad
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems without written permission of the publisher or author except where permitted by law.
Electronic publication: October 2019
In recognition of the endless wheel of births and deaths,
and the love shared along the way...
Chapter One
When I first met Jay Green I thought he was an absolute ass. An arrogant, red-neck, chauvinistic ass, no less, whose Texas accent offended my liberal California ears. My boss, the amply-bearded Earl Wyse, Sonoma Diesel's Service Manager, introduced us on a Monday morning, the two men leaning their bony elbows on my clean Formica counter in the front lobby and sipping coffee out of cups that probably hadn't been washed since the New York Jets won the Super Bowl.
Not that I cared about what bacterium colonies were shacking up in those stained coffee cups, it was more that the guys were oblivious to the scrunge — either that or they simply didn't do dishes and expected me to do them. Since I wasn't a maid or a waitress (anymore), I pretty much avoided any tasks that reeked too much of female servitude, which meant I didn't do dishes either and left the dirty coffee cups for people to clean up after themselves. Except no one ever did.
Despite my views on equality in the kitchen, I couldn't quite escape the irritating "office girl" label. In the heavy equipment industry, the men called you a girl, no matter how old you were. Granted, I was only twenty-one, more girlish than the 40-somethings who worked in the main Accounting office two buildings away. But it still rankled me every time I heard Earl say "my office girl will take care of you" to our predominantly male clientele. Of course the men who brought their trucks in for repair always seemed to enjoy talking it up with me when settling their accounts, but I was smart enough to recognize their jovial camaraderie had more to do with the fact I was a slim woman with legs nice enough to wear short skirts, rather than a magna cum laude college student working to make ends meet.
Anyway, Jay Green, the new shop foreman Earl introduced that October Monday, was unquestionably handsome. And the cocky ass knew it. He had wavy chocolate brown hair and light sky blue eyes that reminded me of dawn in the Sierra Nevada. His thick mustache was blondish brown and curved slightly around his lips which somehow seemed to draw my wandering attention. Dressed like all the men in worn blue jeans, a button down chambray shirt, and steel-toed boots, Jay's tan face showed he was a guy who worked outdoors a lot. The weathered clothing almost, but not quite, hid a wide-shouldered physique, a muscular build his six-foot frame carried with confident ease.
"Nice to meet you, ma'am," Jay said, shaking my small hand with the end of his calloused fingers. I could tell by the way he looked through me he'd undoubtedly already forgotten my name.
"Nice to meet you too, Mr. Green," I smiled, performing the polite ritual as expected. Duty done, I waited for the men to wander back into the shop before calling my friend Rita Garcia who worked in the Parts Department across the parking lot.
"He's an ass," I announced.
"He's definitely got a damn fine ass," Rita observed, her New York accent punctuated by a heavy sigh, "I saw him getting out of his truck this morning when I drove in, so I stopped by and introduced my feisty self."
"Leave it to you, Ms. Garcia," I smothered a laugh. My friend appreciated men in all shapes and colors and never hesitated to let them know it.
"When I handed him my phone number, he acted all 'aw shucks ma'am', but I cut to the chase and told him his wedding ring wouldn't bother me none."
"Reets! You didn't!" Rita did not know the meaning of shy and she'd undoubtedly left demure in her rear view mirror in junior high.
"Worth a try," she said. "Ooops, gotta go Jess. Dave Higgins just walked in, and I swear the Viking looks better than he did last week."
Yes, I had to work with Jay Green, but I didn't have to like him. For the first month, he and I were all smiling politeness. Jay, treating me like I had the intelligence of a nine year-old by giving excruciatingly long and detailed explanations for tasks I knew like the back of my hand, ending the transaction with his patent smiling "Thank you, ma'am." Me, biting my tongue while he treated me as if I were painstakingly stupid in front of customers and coworkers, making no effort to hide my irritated "Really?" expression after he turned away. In my book, men who treated women like children and talked all sweet to their face typically said rude shit about them behind their backs.
Not that I cared what Jay said about me. Really, I didn't. But, well, I take that back. Actually I did care about whether he thought I was a brainless ditz, because clearly I wasn't, no matter how he might try to make me look like one. I'd grown up an only child with a dad who insisted on calling me his little Dum-Dum, which he swore was a term of endearment based on the lollipops I loved as a child, but became a name I considered a demeaning insult by the time I was twelve and had hated enough to prove him quite wrong. Jay Green, on the other hand, had probably barely finished high school, and if he did, he'd managed it on the coattails of some soft-hearted brainy girl who'd swooned when he looked her way. I wasn't a swooner and Jay's dum-dum treatment was getting under my skin big time.
One Wednesday in early November, Jay brought me a service order for Nowalk Transport, a strictly cash job for a company 90 days behind on their account. A sour Edgar Nowalk leaned on my service counter tapping his foot with his checkbook open as Jay detailed the billing instructions — as usual, stuff we'd gone over umpteen times. It didn't matter that I'd told the man just the week before I'd been preparing invoices efficiently since my second day on the job over a year ago, but he insisted on repeating the steps, looking at me with those smiling sky blue eyes. After Jay returned to the shop, I nodded to Nowalk and began quickly preparing the invoice until I noticed the hours didn't look quite right. I pulled the timesheet for the job and saw the error; Jay had charged Nowalk for two hours instead of the ten charged against the job.
"My apologies for the delay, Mr. Nowalk. I need to verify something here." I smiled my prettiest office girl smile. "I'll be just a moment." Leaving the grizzled man steaming at the counter, I pushed through the swinging double doors into the shop and strolled down the center aisle between the truck bays. Catcalls and whistles tracked my clicking high heels to the welding station, where I found Jay discussing an oddly shaped piece of metal with Jim Cairnes, my ex-boyfriend Kevin's wing man. Jimmy nodded at my approach, smothering a knowing grin when he saw my determined expression, but Jay frowned — obviously unhappy to see my slender self.
&nb
sp; "This isn't right," I said, loud enough to be heard over the chattering power tools and rumbling truck motors. I waved a handful of dirt-stained papers.
"Whadda ya mean, it isn't right?' Jay stomped over to look at the documents in my hand. His face held an I-can't-believe-this-chick expression, one that made him look even more like an ass than usual.
"Jim here had two hours on the job fixing the undercarriage, but Kenny and Terry also booked time to repair the damage to the transmission ," I pointed at the timesheet. "It's ten hours, not two, which is kind of a big difference..."
"Lemme see that." Jay plucked the timesheet out of my hand and quickly scanned the figures.
I braced myself for an argument. I knew my records were accurate and was determined to prove it, but then he said the most remarkable thing: "You're right, Jess. I got interrupted as I was finalizing the bill. I saw Jim's two hours and marched on without double-checking. Sorry about that. I'll talk to Nowalk."
Touching me gently on the elbow, his calloused hand nudged me toward the office. A tingling sensation traveled up my arm, through, my shoulder, and straight down to my toes. I stumbled as I turned to stare at him, my eyes wide. He quickly steadied me by the arm. Funny thing was, I let him.
"I don't know how women walk in those things," he said, his lips smiling beneath the mustache.
"Me either," I mumbled, catching my balance and striding purposefully away. Stunned nearly speechless, my mind was busy trying to process the fact that Jay Green, the unequivocal pompous ass, had just admitted he was wrong and apologized. Nicely. To me. The office girl.
When we reached the office, I even let him open the swinging door for me — the whole southern gentleman thing. I was too distracted to protest, my body tingling with the memory of his touch, my mind recalling how the man had remembered my name and used it in a sentence. For goodness sakes. Would wonders never cease?
As it turned out, they sort of didn't.
Chapter Two
Thursday morning I arrived at the office at 8:05 am — right on time for me, five minutes late for Earl Wyse, who made a pretense of striding through the shop office right about that time and looking at his watch. Ignoring Earl, I yanked my rolling chair out from beneath my desk. To my surprise, the seat held a slim blue envelope. Ripping open the seal, I found an invitation to lunch with none other than Jay Green. His scrawling script was a mess as usual, but I'd cracked his handwriting code weeks back, so I had no problem reading it. The note said lunch was a 'thank you' for helping him with the Nowalk bill.
"He asked me to lunch," I whispered to Rita on the phone thirty seconds later.
"Afternoon delight, Jess? Way to go." Rita's low steamy chuckle reminded me of Mae West inviting gentlemen callers to her apartment for a little something more than conversation.
"Stop!" I blushed uncontrollably, my stomach fluttering at the memory of his touch. An image of strong tanned arms and long bare legs sprang to mind. "I'm not interested in him. He's an ass, remember? A married ass who thinks I'm dumber than a doornail."
"Maybe. Maybe not."
"Could you be any more obscure? I've only had one cup of coffee."
Rita sighed in mock frustration. "Jess, for God sakes! Yes, he may be just a regular everyday ass. But, then again, he may be a man acting like an ass because he doesn't know any other way to act. And although he IS technically a married ass, sometimes things are not as they appear."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I took a sip of coffee and shook my head. Rita's pragmatic philosophy on men was often convoluted, but some days she was downright insightful, and if today was one of those days, I wanted to hear more. I needed all the help I could get.
"OK. Number one: Jess even you have to admit he's a downright fox."
"Well... yes. OK. He's just about the best looking man this side of the Mississippi, but—"
"Number two," Rita interrupted. "Do you even get how much it took for him to admit his mistake to you? In front of other people no less? A lot of men would have blown you off without a second thought, but he didn't. And he apologized. Think about that."
"But, Reets..."
Speaking over my weak protest, Rita continued. "Number three: a lunch invitation is way above and beyond the call of duty. Men don't go through all that trouble unless there's somethin' else going on. For now, he can hide his interest behind a thanks-for-the-help excuse. And if lunch turns out to be simply lunch, that's where it'll end. But guys like Jay Green don't waste time on lunch unless there's something in it for them. That somethin' is you, silly." Rita took a deep breath and waited patiently for my brain to process her wisdom.
"You think he's interested in me? Like that kind of interested?" I ran my fingers through my long dark hair, wondering how I'd missed the cue.
"Duh. Earth to Jess??? Come in, Jess. Why else would he go so far out of his way to spend so much time with you?" Rita's throaty laugh wafted over the phone line.
"Well... but..." Something inside me felt like the world was tipping sideways. I'd spent over a month convincing myself Jay was a Texas hick who thought I had the brains of a third grader and probably couldn't stand the sight of me — not to mention his manner toward women had stalled in a 1950's time warp. In two short minutes, Rita had summarily painted his behavior in an entirely different light, a scenario where Jay was showing his romantic interest in me the only way he knew how.
Oh my God... I'd been so certain he was simply a chauvinistic red-neck, I never even considered another option. What if Jay actually did like me? What if all his smiling conversation over billing had been an excuse to hang out with me?
"Shitfire, Reets. What if you're right?" I nervously twirled my chair around in a circle, one black high heel dragging lightly across the linoleum floor.
"IF? Think about it. You really think there's an IF here?" Rita hooted the question as if the answer was a foregone conclusion.
"OK... maybe not. But it couldn't possibly ever go anywhere. I'd never sleep with a married man." The 'no married men' rule had always been chiseled in concrete for me. I couldn't ever see myself meddling in another woman's marriage.
"Never say never, honey." Rita's clipped New York accent turned the nevers into 'nevahs.' "Life is too damned short for never."
Although I was a believer in Rita's 'never say never' sentiment, I wasn't ready to consider the possibility my long-held rule around married men could ever topple. I'd been raised to think people who had affairs outside their marriage were simply low- down cheats and if they could lie to their spouse, they'd lie about anything. Firmly ensconced my ivory tower, I thought there was no excuse for it. My mother's Catholic background had enforced this attitude, making me think of marriage as if it were some type of prison without hope of parole, not to mention the fact infidelity was considered a sin — adultery was what they called it which always struck me as kind of an odd term. Explained a lot about why I wasn't married and didn't really plan to be until at least forty. Except if I decided to have kids, because that commitment definitely required two parents. And except when I lost all good sense and for one glorious Sonoma summer convinced myself Kevin McMahon was someone special enough to consider marrying, but that was before I woke up, smelled reality, and broke up with the self-absorbed jerk.
See, I'd always believed love was a veritable force of nature, and you couldn't really put a fence around it or say it's OK to love these folks, but not these. Yet religion painted these lines around who you could and couldn't love. So did families and our prominent Western culture, weird socioeconomic and color lines which I admit I'd outright ignored for most of my life. But the adultery rule had been important to my mother, probably because all the men in her family had been womanizers and all the women in her family had patiently endured their baloney and years of hurt. So, I'd always stayed well away from married men so as not to test my resolve. Better to never have to admit I was someone's "other woman" to my mom; I don't think she'd ever forgive me for that indiscretion.
Yet sometimes, in the light of new information, even the most well-ingrained personal rules can be broken.
Easy to say now. As if I could have made a different choice. But the thing is, I didn't. Jay and I didn't. I don't think we could have.
Chapter Three
The lunch date began at noon sharp. Jay pulled up in front of my office door in his old blue Ford 150 pickup and opened the passenger door. Shouldering my purse, I gave my outfit one last inspection to ensure nothing was amiss. The sleeveless red sheath Rita insisted I borrow for the occasion was almost, but not quite, too short for my taste. ("Fits like a glove," she'd pronounced this morning in the rest room as she'd tugged the scoop neck lower to expose my cleavage. "He'll be squirming in his seat.) Frankly, I didn't know if I wanted Jay squirming in his seat. But I figured looking one's best never hurt, and the shapely red dress guaranteed I'd earn well above a 'C' grade.
The Willie Nelson Band serenaded our drive to Vicente's Bistro, Jay unselfconsciously humming My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys under his breath. Although he hadn't said much to me all day, every time I glanced over at him his eyes were looking at my dress instead of the road.
Once at the restaurant, Jay seemed to shed his uncharacteristically quiet demeanor and began to make conversation.
"I wanted to thank you, Jess. For catching that mistake with the Nowalk billing, of course. But also, you know for all you do there at the shop. You're pretty good at it."
"You sound surprised that I'd be good at it," I smiled, half teasing, and he took it in stride, smiling back, sky blue eyes alight.
"Nah. It's just I've seen some pretty incompetent office staff in my time around the block. You're different. Way different. So, tell me about yourself. What are you taking in night school? Sonoma State, right?"
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