girls do not like rodents,” Garner said cheerfully. He consulted his watch. One hour and fifty-one more minutes to go.
Garner sank down at his desk, took a sip of coffee and winced. As ungrateful as Clive would be for it, he felt responsible for Clive’s child, or at least for the livelihood of that child’s father. He had not missed the veiled threat in Jake King’s voice during that last phone call. But if she left on her own, gave up, tossed in the towel…
He sighed. He had his own lawyers researching documents now, but it didn’t look promising.
“You want what?” his lawyer had said. “Garner, those documents were likely signed two or three decades ago. I don’t think this firm handled it.”
So why was Jake King digging up decades-old dirt? Garner had known, of course, that Jake owned half the building. Years ago, as soon as he’d cleared up the wreckage of his father’s mismanagement, he’d offered to buy Jake out. The offer had been rejected without explanation. Now this. Did Jake really have a say-so in how Garner ran his business? Did Jake own more than half the building?
Thinking of the legal tangle that could cause made Garner’s head hurt.
What was that old devil, Jake King, up to?
And why on earth would he send his daughter here, straight into the camp of the enemy?
Maybe he doesn’t like her, Garner mused, but Jessica King did not have the look—or the attitude—of a child not liked. He suspected she had been adored.
With relief, he remembered he had to look at her damaged car. If she was only going to be here another hour and forty-nine minutes, there needed to be no hitches to her leaving. He abandoned the coffee happily and began to whistle the moment he got behind the wheel.
Chapter Two
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.
