the keys that the fancy man had tossed onto her workbench—tossed with more than a bit of temper, which made her lips curl up into a grin.
She was laid-back by nature, so her sisters always said, but when someone threatened her notions of right and wrong, she did tend to lose her grip on control. And even the fact that the offender was jaw-droppingly gorgeous didn’t ease the weight of his offenses, at least not in her eyes.
“Of course.” Lizzie huffed out a breath when she noted the Porsche logo on the key chain. The breath turned to a whistle when she trotted around the corner and saw the sleek silver Turbo parked on the side of the quiet, tree-lined road.
The fancy man was not only sexy...he was loaded. She’d just known it—everything about him had screamed north side. What the hell was he doing out here in the South End?
Actually, what was he doing with a ten-year-old Porsche? She was pretty sure he could afford a new one. Still, a Turbo was a Turbo, and she couldn’t quite suppress the thrill when she opened the car door. She was halfway in when she realized that while she’d cleaned off her skin, her coveralls were still soaked with grease. And she’d just bet that Mr. Tight Ass would have something to say if she dirtied up his buttery leather seats.
Shucking her dirty coveralls, she rolled them into a ball and tossed them onto the passenger’s seat. Clad in the ribbed white tank top and bright pink yoga shorts that she wore beneath, she finally slid behind the wheel.
She couldn’t quite hold back the moan as she ran her hands over the steering wheel. Her joy at being behind the wheel of something like this was almost sexual, it felt so damn good.
She grinned as she briefly considered giving herself a handsy little ride on the seat, picturing the man’s face if she told him about it after.
Tempting, but not professional. So instead she eased the vehicle forward, wincing as she heard the death rattle.
“Transmission.” She didn’t have to look—she was a damn good mechanic, and she’d heard that sound before. But she wanted to give the Turbo a full diagnosis, so after pulling it into the garage, she popped the hood, sighing only a little at the whisper-soft swish of the automated lift.
Without bothering to put her coveralls back on, she started to poke at the guts of the beautiful machine.
She was more than a little disgusted with what she saw.
The main problem was, as she’d known, the transmission. The filtration system was clogged, the seals were hardened and the fluid had been neglected. The Turbo was going to need an entirely new part.
Wear and tear was part of owning a car. But this combined with the sludge that passed for oil, the corrosion in the cooling system, the clogged fuel injectors...
She’d bet that the man...what was his name? She grabbed for the form, leaving fresh smudges on the white paper.
Ford Lassiter. Of course. Fancy name for a fancy man. And all those fancy college degrees listed after his name. Anyway, she’d bet that Ford Lassiter had only serviced his car a dozen or so times in the ten years he’d had it, assuming he was the original owner, and she assumed he was.
Irresponsible.
“Is it fixed?”
Beth turned and found the man in question standing in the entrance of her garage, silhouetted by the late-afternoon sun. He was tall, probably a good eight or so inches taller than her own five feet six. His hair was the tawny kind of color that made her think of a lion, and it offset the surprising chocolate brown of his piercing eyes.
He was lean, but his body looked hard, like he did more with it than just hit a gym. The suit he’d been wearing earlier was well cut and clearly expensive and showed off that body quite nicely.
In the hours since she’d sent him away, he’d removed the suit jacket, loosened the tie and unbuttoned the top few buttons of his white shirt. And in sharp contrast to the sleekness of the outfit, he now had an open can of Coke in his hand. Beth highly preferred this look. In fact, as she met his stare and leaned back against the sleek door of the Turbo, she found herself wanting to purr a bit as she took in the view.
Not that he was her type. At all.
“It is most certainly not fixed.” Even through her annoyance, she felt a little quiver in her belly when she looked at him—really looked at him. She’d have to have been dead not to.
“What do you mean, it’s not fixed?” That handsome face schooled itself into a disapproving frown, and Beth arched an eyebrow.
Sexy or not, he’d best keep some respect in his tone when she broke the news to him.
“When’s the last time you had a maintenance check done on this car?” Pushing off from where she lounged, she beckoned for Ford to come look under the hood with her. He hesitated, and she didn’t miss the way those dark eyes meandered down her body, which was far more exposed than it had been earlier in the coveralls.
Interesting. Beth had always had a knack for reading people, probably since she preferred to hang back and study them rather than dive right in. That knack was telling her that Ford Lassiter was a man who kept everything in his world under rigid control.
She would have bet money—if she’d had any—that he wasn’t that deliberate in checking out a woman unless some part of him wanted the woman to know.
He hadn’t moved but was instead regarding her intently.
Well, well, well. The rich man wanted to go slumming, did he? Smirking, Beth crooked her finger again and deliberately swayed her hips as she bent over the open hood.
That leonine power, that tightly coiled control—he would be fun to tease. And, she noted when he finally deigned to saunter over, not bothering at all to bank the combination of curiosity and attraction in his eyes, she couldn’t deny that little click that she felt in her gut when their eyes met.
Chemistry. Couldn’t make it, couldn’t fake it. It was either present with another person or it wasn’t...and it seemed that she and Mr. Ford Lassiter had it on the most elemental of levels.
Beside her, he leaned a hip against the Turbo and regarded her with an amused smirk on his own face. Oh, yes, he felt it, too...and unless she missed her guess, he was entertained by the notion of being attracted to a woman like her.
Beth had made it a point to live her life without worrying about what others thought of her, but it still stung when someone, even a stranger, looked at her like she was one of those wild Marchande girls from the wrong side of town. Well, fuck that. She was going to make him want her so badly his head would spin...and then she’d send him packing.
“Can’t remember? Even with all those fancy letters after your name?” She tilted her head, looked up at him, waited while he thought back to her question.
“I don’t recall.” He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed about it, though she noted that his spine stiffened a bit in defense. “I’m a busy man.”
“Seems to me that a busy man like you would have people who could take care of little details like car maintenance for him.” Though Beth’s lips curved in a smile, inside she went from irritation to anger. “This fancy machine here? Most people in this neighborhood have to work for five
