Infatuation

It was, however, when she turned over the card and read the name embossed on the front that truth became stranger than fiction. The white rectangle fluttered to the carpet. Natalie bent and picked it up while Milla stared at her fingers that had grown useless and cold.

“‘Bergen Motors,’” Natalie read. “‘Serving the Bay Area for FortyYears. Rennie Bergen, Sales.’” She tapped her finger along the edge of the card, then stopped as suddenly as she’d started. “You don’t think—”

“No. I don’t think. I know.” Rennie Bergen had been her boyfriend Derek’s college roommate during his freshman year, and as much a part of Milla’s life during that one and the three that had followed as had been research papers and labs.

He’d also been her indiscretion. Her one and only.

Over and over and over again.

“Didn’t you say he disappeared after graduation?”

So much had happened after graduation, she didn’t even know where to begin. “He left the city, yeah. He said he wouldn’t be back until he’d made his first million.”

“Unless he’s selling Lamborghinis, it doesn’t look like he met his goal.” Natalie started to drop the card back into the glass boot.

Milla snatched it away. Her girlfriend had no way of knowing the full extent of what had gone on with Rennie Bergen. No one knew. Things left unsettled when he vanished without a word. Things for which Milla had never forgiven herself. Things over which she still carried guilt.

Not that she wore those feelings on her sleeve, or brought them out like voodoo dolls to stick with pins. They were just there, the same way as were the feelings from her past for any of her friends. Only not the same.

Because more than anyone else in her life, she had hurt Rennie Bergen, and she’d never had a chance to make amends.

Well, now she did, and she had to seize the opportunity that had been dropped into her lap. If she continued to leave the past unsettled, she would never forgive herself. She could only hope that after all this time Rennie would be able to forgive her.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to call him,” Natalie said as Milla got to her feet.

She picked up her purse, tucked her phone down inside, dug for her car keys and sunglasses—and she did it all without giving herself time to examine the emotions that were driving her. She was afraid if she looked at them too closely, she’d stop.

“No. I’m going to see him. Tell Joan I’ll be back when I’m back,” she said, leaving the restroom, heading for the elevator, and praying she wasn’t making the second biggest mistake of her life.

“YO, REN. JIN’S ON THE phone. He says the frame’s got a nickel-sized rust hole on the cross panel support. He wants to know if he should haggle the Captain on the price since it ain’t so pristine as he said.”

Son of a barking dog. Rennie Bergen planted the rubber of his heels on the garage’s slick concrete floor and rolled the creeper out from beneath the panel van that had once been an ice cream truck. The water pump was pissing like a baby kangaroo. Story of his life.

He got to his feet and looked for Hector who was halfway across the hangar-size building and heading Rennie’s way with the phone. If he didn’t find a workable frame and soon…aw, hell, who was he kidding?

It wasn’t the frame that was the problem. It was the entire concept. Turning a VW bus into a submersible had seemed like such a good idea when he’d been six beers under the table and scrambling for new show ideas.

He grabbed the phone from Hector’s hand and yelled at Jin. “You tell the Captain thanks, but no thanks. And if he keeps hitting me with this crap, he can forget seeing another dime of my business, I don’t care how long he’s known my father.”

His voice still echoing, Rennie disconnected before Jin could respond, tossed the phone back to Hector, and headed for the huge stainless-steel sink on the wall outside the office and the john. From the exterior, the garage looked like nothing, a big metal building like any other warehouse or shop. Except it wasn’t.

The garage was home to the cable TV phenomenon “Hell on Wheels.” The show had made Rennie Bergen a star with a cult following few car buffs could claim. That was because few, if any, managed what he and his crew accomplished, turning passenger vehicles into mechanical wonders such as low-rider school buses and rolling techno clubs.

The best part of his success was that he wasn’t a household name. He could still walk down an average city street and never turn a head. He stood a better chance of being recognized in blue-collar neighborhoods where a man’s vehicle of choice was less a reflection of his portfolio or family status and more an extension of his personality.

Rennie had grown up in such a neighborhood. Good people, living and loving paycheck to paycheck, hoping the life they were able to provide their kids would be enough. It had been for Rennie. The summer vacations, the balancing of school and athletics and work, the nightly dinners at seven. The holiday celebrations that included his father’s employees and their families—from salesmen to secretaries to grease monkeys—along with the extended Bergen clan.

It had been an insular world of tightly woven bonds, but growing up in that atmosphere had given him an appreciation for men willing to get their hands dirty while taking care of their own. His first real exposure to the flip side hadn’t come until his freshman year in college.

While his parents had paid what they could of his fees and tuition, he’d held down a job to pay the rest along with his room and board. Living on campus had been easier than spending valuable study time commuting from home when he worked so close to the school.

But his first-year roommate, Derek Randall, one of the privileged and wealthy big men on campus, had been all about paying other men to do his dirty work while taking care of himself. And Derek’s girlfriend, Milla Page…

Rennie shoved off the water and yanked enough paper towels from the dispenser to dry his arms up to his elbows. Derek hadn’t been a bad guy, just from a world Rennie hadn’t been used to. The fact that they’d butted heads so often had been only the tip of the iceberg Rennie had eventually faced, trying to fit in with that crowd before realizing the futility of the effort.

He’d made his way in the world, and then he’d come home, belonging here, comfortable here, employing men who shared his background and his belief that there was no such thing as a job that was too dirty when a little muscle and degreaser made cleanup a breeze. Still, he had to admit it was a hell of a lot more fun working for the man when he was the man and was rolling in a big fat pile of greenbacks.

“Yo, Ren,” Hector hollered. “Today just ain’t your day, man. Angie called up from the showroom. Some blonde’s here to see you.”

Rennie tossed the towels in the trash and glanced at Hector who stood in the doorway of the office. The long-time Bergen Motors’ employee was Rennie’s right hand man. “This blonde got a name? Better yet. Did she bring me a rust-free frame?”

“She didn’t even bring much in the way of a female frame, Angie’s saying.” Hector frowned as he listened to the other end of the phone conversation. “She’s like a stick figure with white skin and white hair, and eyes like big green double spoke rims. Her name is—”

“Milla,” Rennie said, swallowing hard as his gut drew up into the knot of fiery emotions he hadn’t felt in years. “Her name is Milla Page.”

2

SHE LOOKED exactly as he remembered. She’d always been slender; it had been an ongoing source of inside jokes, fearing she would snap in a strong wind, be whipped about on the bay’s waves like driftwood, float on a bank of misty fog. That she would break in two if he wasn’t gentle when they made love.

She’d disabused him of that notion quite forcefully and quite often—often enough that those memories were the first to come to mind when he should have remembered that everything between them had been a lie. Instead, all he could think about was the sex.

She didn’t say anything, just stood in front of him, her feet primly together in shoes he knew cost what was a month’s rent for Hector, Angie and Jin. He didn’t hold it against her. Milla Page was who she was.

He could tell by the way she clenched and unclenched her fingers around the handle of her funky purple purse that he’d been standing and staring way too long.

She was uncomfortable; he gave her the benefit of the doubt, deciding it wasn’t the fault of the neighborhood as much as it was seeing him again.

It probably didn’t help that Angie sat behind the receptionist station punching buttons on the switchboard console, transferring calls and paging salesmen, glancing back and forth between them while neither one said a word.

So Rennie forced a smile and motioned Milla forward, leading the way across the sales floor to the customer lounge, listening for her soft steps to fall behind him. He grabbed a foam cup from the corner table’s stack and poured himself a coffee from the pot on the warmer. Milla shook her head when he offered to pour one for her.

“Still prefer lattes?” he asked, now a fan himself though in a pinch of nerves sludge would do.

“Yes, but right now I don’t think I could swallow anything,” she replied in that voice that still slid over him like the honey she’d loved…so sticky, so sweet, so warm on her tongue.

He nearly choked as he knocked back a slug of the caffeine. He was already wired to the gills and hardly in need of the jolt, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do. And he wouldn’t be able to figure that out until he knew what she was doing here.

Why it had taken her six years to look him up.

Why she appeared ready to bolt.

Why he cared when he’d sworn to wipe her from his mind.

Curiosity got the better of his self-made promise. He gestured toward the row of chairs on her right. “Sit. Please.”

She did as he’d asked, or rather as he’d ordered her, choosing the seat closest to where she stood and settling onto the edge. She held her purse tightly in her lap.

Her knuckles stood out like bleached bones beneath translucent skin. Her smile seemed forced and fragile, and that made him groan.