Читать книгу Chasing Dreams - Cara Colter - Страница 11

Jessie glanced at the clock and tried not to moan out loud. It was only ten-thirty. She was exhausted. So far she had made more coffee than Starbucks on a busy morning, and despite the fact she knew darn well it was not particularly good coffee, it kept disappearing.

She had driven two clients, who were leaving their vehicles at K & B for the day, back to their homes. It had given her an intriguing look at a lovely small town, which she might have enjoyed more if the shop truck, a big and finicky Dodge Diesel, didn’t stall on a hair. Upon delivery to his home, one of the customers had glared at her, slammed the door and limped away holding his neck. Rattled from that, she had gotten lost on a back road of Farewell.

She’d finally returned to find a description of her job on her desk. As she was frowning over that page-long list of duties, a mechanic, Pete, had come in and wanted a part ordered. Another, Clive, arrived with a work order for a brake job for which she was supposed to figure out the charge. Clive had helpfully showed her an ugly and nearly indecipherable book called the labor book.

She had not made any headway on the mess, on a pile marked “urgent” apparently by one of her predecessors or on any of the leaning stacks of paper. The phone rang without letting up. To complicate matters more, every time the door opened from the work area, some traitorous part of her clenched in anticipation. It might be him.

Jessie considered her mind exceedingly disciplined, but this morning it was playing the traitor. It was conjuring visions of Garner Blake’s dark, sardonic eyes, the line of his lip, the broadness of his shoulder. It was hard enough learning a new job without the distraction of a man like that. And even allowing herself to think of him made her feel guilty, as if she was being unfaithful to lovely, sweet, intelligent Mitch.

So she invented a little game. When Garner Blake’s rather formidable male form crowded into her mind, she would call it a name.

“Insensitive boor.”

“Neanderthal.”

“Self-centered lunkhead.”

“Poster boy for Mechanics R Us.”

Of course, she really didn’t know very much about him, but men like that were so easy to read. Self-assured, self-centered, self, self, self, selfish.

As entertaining as her little game was, the sheer amount of chaos she was trying to dig out from under was making her feel overwhelmed and utterly defeated. She was in way over her head and even felt disturbingly close to tears.

On the other hand, when she snuck another look at the clock she realized she had only twenty-three minutes to go before she’d won the bet! Though the heat made it unlikely, she was beginning to hope Garner Blake wore long johns, not boxers. After she’d seen him keep his part of the bargain, she could phone her father and tell him she wasn’t staying.

She had just stripped off her suit jacket, found the Impala in the labor book and figured out how many hours a brake job was slated to take, when the outer door to the shop swung open.

An elderly gentleman, looking very dapper in his hat and matching sports jacket, came in. He had a dog on a leash. He smiled shyly at her, helped himself to coffee and pulled a stool up to the counter. “I’m Ernie,” he said after a moment, “and this is my dog, Bert. I did that on purpose. Ernie and Bert.”

“Nice to meet you.” She wasn’t quite sure that it was. He had let go of Bert’s leash and the dog was on her side of the counter, pressing his wet snout under her skirt.

“Er, can I help you with something?” She tried to push the dog away.

“Yes. Is there any cream?” Ernie asked shyly, apparently unaware his dog was being exceedingly rude.

Was there any cream? Was it part of her job to fetch cream in an auto shop? It wasn’t a café, after all. A fridge, nearly lost among the other debris, gurgled helpfully. Sure enough there was cream in it. The dog, which looked like a basset crossed with a poodle, trailed her every step.

When she brought the cream that was all the encouragement Ernie needed. He began to talk, and he didn’t stop. When he was partway through his eighth birthday party celebrated in the Great Depression, the dog pressed his nose right up her skirt and moaned plaintively. She looked at her watch, excused herself and fled into the back.

“Where’s Mr. Blake?”

Clive lifted his head and looked at her, astonished. “Mr. Blake? Oh, you mean Garner?”

She nodded.

“Through there. Problem?”

Yes, there was a problem. She was done. She could not be a taxi driver, switchboard operator, brake biller, coffee-shop waitress, professional listener. She was not going to have rude dogs sniffing her skirt and moaning. It was too much to expect of one person.

Besides, things had been left undone for too long in this office. The work was mountainous. There wasn’t enough instruction. How could she do any work with that man babbling away out there? The phone ringing? The dog…well, never mind the dog.

To add to that, there was no air-conditioning, and she was sweating through her lovely silk shell.

She burst into the bay where Garner was bent over her damaged Cadillac.

It looked different than the other bays. Spotlessly clean, for one.

He came out from under the hood, regarded her mildly, his gaze lingering just a little too long on where the sweat pooled between her breasts and made her silk top stick to her. Then he looked at his watch. He had the audacity to smile.

“Yes?” he said hopefully.

It was the hopefulness that made her forget the mountains of work, the interruptions, the extra duties, the dog and the sweat.

“There is a man out there I don’t quite know what to do with,” she said.

Disappointment crossed his features. “Oh, 10:31. Ernie, right?”

“And Bert!”

“I keep some cookies just under the counter. Give one to Bert.”

That’s why the stupid dog had been accosting her. He wanted his cookie.

He ducked back under the hood, dismissing her. “Oh, and Ernie likes cream in his coffee. It’s in the fridge.”

“Are you running a coffee shop or a garage?” she asked, aware of the snip in her voice.

“Some days I guess it’s a little of both,” he said.

“He wants my undivided attention,” she said and heard the frustrated wail in her voice. “I need to figure out a bill for Clive and order a part for Pete, and the phone doesn’t stop ringing. I don’t have time to listen to him!”

“He’s lonely.” Garner came back out from under the hood, wiped his hands on a towel, regarded her cynically, his eyes branding her as superficial.

“Can’t he go be lonely somewhere else?” Jessie said, and was appalled at how callous she sounded. “I’m not much of a multitasker,” she added defensively.

His lips twitched suspiciously and even though Garner’s expression didn’t change, she could hear the smug smile in his voice. “Then, lady, you took a wrong turn at Main Street. This isn’t the place for you.”

“I’ve made it two hours,” she said.

“Not quite.” He ducked back under the hood.

“I think we can call it two hours. We’re only ten minutes short of it.”

“Nope. I have to consider what’s at stake. Are you leaving the minute those two hours are up?”

She contemplated that. Certainly when she’d marched in here that had been her intention. No one could blame her, not even her father. Now she wasn’t so sure she would give the insensitive, self-centered boorish Neanderthal the satisfaction.

“I’m not leaving,” she shocked herself by saying. “I just need to know the official office policy on Ernie.”

“Okay. Official—Give the dog a cookie. Give Ernie some cream for his coffee. Listen to a story or two, if that’s not too big a chore for a princess.”

She felt the insult of it. Had he been under the hood of this car conjuring up names for her in the same fashion she’d been doing to him? But that would mean he’d been thinking about her, and men like him simply didn’t think about girls like her.

Did they?

“That hardly seems professional,” she said after a moment.

He came back up, looked at her long and steady. He did not, she decided, look anything like a Neanderthal, those features so cleanly cut. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t one in his every attitude. Princess, indeed.

“You have to figure out what’s important and what isn’t,” he said quietly.

It felt, ridiculously, like the Neanderthal was giving her instructions for her life. What was important in her life? And what wasn’t? And why was it that in six years of obtaining a higher education, she had never asked herself that? Two hours on the front line, and it felt like everything, including her hard-won self-confidence, was disintegrating.

“Have you ever heard this Vietnamese proverb?” Garner asked, and his eyes were locked on hers, deep, dark and challenging. “When you eat fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.”

She stared at him, nonplussed. That was the last thing she had expected to come out of his mouth. Poetry, for God’s sake. Philosophy. Foreign philosophy at that!

He was supposed to be hiding a Neanderthal under that glorious exterior. What if he wasn’t?

She felt, and hid, a little ripple of shock. Garner Blake was not what she thought a typical mechanic was. He was not what she needed him to be if she was going to tame this horrible guilt-inducing awareness of him.

“I may not have a master’s degree,” Garner said, “or a trillion-dollar trust fund, but I know that man, who has lived through a depression and served in a war. He’s the one who planted the tree you and I are enjoying the fruit from today.”

Her mouth fell open.

“In a business like this,” he said, “caring about people has to be part of it. They can go get their cars fixed way cheaper in a bigger place. And you can’t pretend you care about them, either. It has to be the real deal.”

She hated that. That this big brooding ignoramus in front of her seemed to think he knew more about what was important than she did. And that he was so obviously the real deal.

What did that make her?

“You know what’s important?” she snapped at him.

He raised a dark eyebrow.

“I made it two hours!”

He nodded, glanced again at his watch. “Jumping the gun again. According to my watch you have six minutes left.”

She marched out of there. Ernie was still nursing his coffee, the dog gave her a betrayed look, which she fixed by finding the jar of enormous dog cookies behind the counter.

Six minutes left. She took the stool beside Ernie. “Okay,” she said. “You were talking about the Depression. Your birthday, I believe.”

He stared at her, stunned. A light went on in his faded eyes, and his hand covered hers. “Thank you for listening to me.”

She felt ashamed of her own impatience. He was probably the same age as her father. How was it her father seemed so much younger and more vital? So driven and purposeful?

The door to the back bays opened and the two mechanics, Clive and Peter, came out. Garner followed a few minutes later.

She didn’t miss his glance at the clock. She tamed an impulse to stick out her tongue at him. She watched as he strode across the office, bent over and rummaged under her desk. He came back across the room and tossed something down in front of her.

She met the challenging look in his eyes, before looking down.

There was a mouse in a trap.

“The building’s old,” he said with fake apology. “No matter what we do, we can’t seem to get rid of the mice. Infested.”

She knew exactly what he wanted, and she was inordinately pleased that she was not going to be giving it to him.

Garner Blake glanced at the clock. One minute to go. She was going to take one look at that mouse and probably faint dead away.

Hysterics would be fun.

Ah, yes, the little princess meets real life in rural America. And runs from it. Hopefully, at top speed.

He moved a little closer to her so he could grab her if she went pale and started to slide from her chair. He hoped he wouldn’t have to. She’d removed her jacket, and the top she was wearing molded curves delectable enough to make a man’s mouth go dry—without any kind of touching.

Oh, yeah, it was perfect. She had the deer-in-the-headlights look as she gazed at his offering.

Then she lifted her eyes to his.

They were green and clear, and there wasn’t even a trace of hysteria in them.

“That isn’t a mouse,” she said, “it’s a vole. See how sharp its nose is?”

She picked up the trap and held it toward him. Garner, before he could catch himself, took a hasty step away. A grin split her face and it changed everything about her. In an instant she went from being far too sober, too refined, too rich, to looking like a girl who was brimming with mischief and life.

He felt a ripple of shock.

It was now very apparent to him that Jessica King was not even close to being what he thought she was.

That was too bad. Because what he had thought was not the least appealing.

And this girl in front of him, inspecting the dead mouse—vole—with grave interest was appealing in a way he didn’t even want to think about.

The guys all laughed at her reaction, knowing damn well he’d hoped for quite a different one. Clive gave him a very unsubtle be nice look.

“It’s not even a deer mouse,” she said with a touch of disdain. “I might have been afraid of that. Hanta virus carrier.”

What the hell was she studying at university? Obviously not what he had thought: Mansion Decorating 101 and Social Climbing 303.

After that, it was guy talk over morning coffee. Cars. Baseball. Fishing. The princess, unfortunately, didn’t look the least bit bored. In fact, she rather looked as though she was enjoying rubbing shoulders with the common folk.

And the mischievous light burning in her eye deepened when there was finally a break in the conversation. “Garner and I had a small bet this morning.”

She had their full attention, and she enjoyed every minute of it.

“He seemed to think I was the wrong person for this job.”

“Hey, two hours doesn’t make you employee of the year!” he said.

“The bet wasn’t whether I was going to be employee of the year. The bet was whether I would make it two hours or not. And gentlemen, I have!”

There was hooting and loud applause. He saw the pleasure flash across her face at the rowdy male approval, and he realized that probably sealed it. Miss Jessica King wasn’t going anywhere.

“What was the bet?”

“Clive, I’m so glad you asked,” she said sweetly. “The bet was if I made it working here for two hours, Garner was going to eat his shorts.”

This announcement was followed by great guffaws and knee-slapping.