Infatuation

Her fingers were trembling when she dug into her purse for a pen and her card. She printed an address on the back. “That’s where I live. The other side is work. Call me at six?” When he nodded, she went on. “My cell, office and home numbers are all there.”

“And where are we going?” He studied the card. “So I’ll know what to wear.”

“Oh, it’s a club in the Presidio. Test Flight. The dress is trendy casual.”

“I’ll see what I’ve got in my closet.” She hesitated, as if wanting to respond to what he’d said. He saved her the hassle of asking what he was going to wear. “Don’t worry, Milla. I know how to clean up.”

“I wasn’t worried about that.” She reached up to push away loose strands of hair. “I just hadn’t thought that I might be putting you out. If you have other plans—”

“If I had other plans, I’d be keeping them,” he said, glad he didn’t have to test that theory. “I’ll call you tomorrow at six.”

She nodded, turned and vanished from his showroom the same way she’d vanished from his life.

He waited for the hurt to return, for numbness to follow. Instead he felt the same adrenaline rush he got when test-driving one of his show’s new rides.

And right then he knew he was in trouble. He wouldn’t know how deeply until tomorrow night, a thought that sent him slamming out of the showroom to bury himself in work.

HECTOR PRIETO STOOD in the doorway of the shop office and watched Rennie drop back to the creeper and shove himself beneath the panel van.

Whatever had happened between the boss and the stick chick couldn’t have gone down too good. Ren might as well have dragged a storm cloud back with him into the shop.

Gloom and doom. That’s what Hector was feeling. And that was no way to be working when they had so much to do.

His own team of mechanics was in pretty good shape, working to tear down Ren’s Studebaker for a show that would run toward the end of the season. But that didn’t mean anyone could slack off.

“Yo, Angie.”

Behind him, Angie Soon straightened from where she’d been digging through the invoices in Ren’s file cabinet. “I am busy here, Hector. I am not at your beck and call.”

Women. Cripes. Thirty years old, and he still didn’t understand them. Hector glanced at her over his shoulder. “I’m not becking or calling. I wanna know what went down with Ren and the woman who came to see him. Did they have a fight or something?”

“What did I just say, Hector? I’ve been working.” Angie straightened, gestured with both hands, her bright pink nails flashing. “That phone up front doesn’t stop ringing just because Rennie decides to get into it with some woman who drops in out of the blue.”

“Humph.” Hector stepped back into the office. “They got into it, huh? What happened?”

Angie bent over to dig through the files again, inadvertently giving Hector an eyeful. Her blouse gaped open as she flipped through the folders, and he didn’t even think about looking away.

Her breasts were tight and small, covered by a plain pink bra, the skin of her stomach smooth and white beneath. He found his palms itching, and he curled his fingers into them, his mouth dry, his blood hot.

He’d never thought about Angie like that before…

“I don’t know exactly,” she finally said, pulling out one file folder and flipping through the contents, strands of black hair falling into her face. “They were quiet, but neither one could sit still.”

He crossed to the corner and pulled a tiny paper cup from the water cooler dispenser. “Where were they?”

“In the customer lounge. I could only see them through the glass. Rennie had that look on his face. That one where you can tell he’s got something on his mind.”

“Right. The one where he’s not going to talk about whatever it is until he figures it out for himself.” Hector downed the water, crumpled the cup and threw it away. “You think she’s an ex or something?”

Angie shrugged, returning the folder and digging into another. “She could have been. Or she could have been a bill collector. Whoever she was, they definitely weren’t having fun reliving old times.”

Hector found himself smiling. Not so much at the idea of Rennie in trouble with a woman, but at Angie. Just at Angie. And just because. “Ren’s back at work, so I guess there’s no need to be worrying about it.”

Clutching to her chest the folder she’d come for, Angie slammed the drawer with the swing of her hip. “I’m not worrying over anything but getting these missing receipts to the accountant. If you’re worrying, then you obviously have too much free time.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, crossed his arms over his chest, arched a brow. “Maybe I do. Maybe you could help me fill it up.”

She stared at him for several long seconds, strands of hair catching on the folder she held. Her dark eyes were narrow and made up in colors of purple and blue to match her blouse. She kept her lips pressed together, and wore no lipstick.

For some reason her lips being bare like that made it easier for him to see when she started to go mad. “What exactly is it you’re saying, Hector? And be very clear so I don’t start thinking you meant something you didn’t.”

Cripes and double cripes. But since he was already in for a pound… “Tomorrow night. You want to grab a burger?”

“A burger?”

A burger and a beer would be better for a night with Rennie and Jin. “We could go for shrimp. Or steaks. Whatever you like.”

“I like lasagna.”

“Italian’s good. You have a favorite place?”

She nodded. “I do. Thank you for asking.”

“Okay, then,” he said, pushing off the door. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

She walked toward him, walked past him, walked out into the shop. “Don’t be late. And don’t honk. Come to the door. If you don’t, you’ll have to explain to my mamma that you are not disrespecting me.”

“You still live with your mamma?”

She stopped and swung around, one hand going to her waist. “I take care of her. I support her. Do you have a problem with that?”

Hector shook his head quickly. He knew more than enough about supporting his own family, the sacrifices it took, how nothing about it was easy. He’d just never thought of Angie that way. Living like he did…

He’d just thought of her as the girl who answered Bergen’s phones. Not as a girl who might understand his life. “No problem. I was just asking, that’s all.”

Her cute little nose came up in the air. “Okay, then. Tomorrow night. Seven-thirty.”

“On the dot,” he assured her, thinking he really needed to stop looking down girls’ blouses before he did something more stupid than inviting one out to eat.

UNBREAKABLE.

She couldn’t believe he’d called her unbreakable. After all they’d shared and all they’d been through, did he really not know her at all?

Milla stood at the window of her office, staring at the afternoon traffic ten stories below, her late lunch spread out on the desk behind her.

She’d left Bergen Motors and driven for an hour before realizing she’d done nothing but go nowhere. She didn’t like that about herself. The way she so easily drifted, searching, unsatisfied. It was a state with which she’d become too emotionally intimate the last few years.

When she’d finally arrived back downtown, she’d stopped at the deli on the corner for a sandwich, realizing she hadn’t eaten since the night before. But thinking of Rennie made it impossible to think of anything else, no matter all the things on her mind.