“Hi!” Kayla said belatedly, brightly and as if she were thrilled to have this second encounter with the man.
Dax Traub paused to aim a just-as-thrilled-to-see-her smile at the child, winked at her and answered her greeting with a warm, “Hey, Kayla Jane Solomon.”
“Hey, Dax-like-Max-the-dog,” Kayla responded then, giggling with delight.
“The car’s not doing anything,” Shandie said when the two of them were finished with their playful exchange. “When I turn the key there’s a little clicking noise and that’s it.”
“How old is your battery?”
Shandie shrugged. “As old as the car—seven years.”
“That’s probably the problem. Are you parked somewhere I can get to it to give you a jump?”
Shandie hadn’t thought of the battery. “No, I’m nose-first in that little space on the side of the shop that’s big enough for only one car.”
He nodded. “I know that spot. But I’ll tell you what—the temperature’s dropping, it’s dark, and it’ll be tough to get to the battery at all in that cubbyhole of a parking place. So how about if I give you two a ride home, and tomorrow when it’s warmer and we have some daylight, I’ll take a look? Chances are I’ll be able to hook up your battery to my charger and that’ll take care of it. Otherwise, we’re going to have to tow you out of there and that’s more complicated and also something better done when I can see.”
Jump her…
Hook up his charger to her battery…
He hadn’t said any of that with any sort of undertone or innuendo, and yet sexy undertones and innuendos were flitting through her brain anyway.
Such thoughts were hardly typical of her, and she didn’t know why it was happening to her now.
“I’m sure it’s just the battery,” she muttered to conceal what was going through her head. Then, forcing herself to focus on more mundane matters, she said, “I’ll have to get back here tomorrow, but I guess I can ask one of the other girls to bring me in.”
“Can we ride home on a big bike?” Kayla asked, excited by the idea.
Shandie hadn’t considered that possibility, and before Dax had answered her daughter she said, “Are you taking us home on the back of a motorcycle?”
He laughed wryly at her alarm. “No, I own a truck, too.” He nodded toward the utility room door behind her then. “Do you have to go back?”
“No, everything is locked up and turned off. This is the only unlocked door,” she said, poking a thumb over her shoulder at the panel she’d come through.
“That lock was broken when I set up here. I’ve never fixed it.”
“You probably should. It would keep little girls out,” Shandie said.
“Yeah, but the problem with that is that it would keep big girls out, too,” he countered pointedly and with the kind of smooth, easy-to-come-by charm Shandie was sure had earned him his bad-boy reputation.
She pretended not to catch the flirtatious undertone even as something tingly erupted just beneath the surface of her skin. “I do need Kayla’s car seat out of my car,” she said. “I could go get it and bring it over here or you could pull your truck around and meet us—”
“Why don’t I just drive us all around the block? Kayla’ll be okay riding in your lap that long, won’t she?”
“Sure,” Shandie agreed.
“Le’s go!” Kayla said, apparently equally as excited by the idea of riding in Dax’s truck as she had been by the thought of riding one of his motorcycles.
“You’re the boss,” Dax decreed, leading the way through his showroom, locking his own shop after them and pointing out his truck parked in front.
It was a black behemoth big enough to cart two motorcycles in the bed and to haul a trailer with four more if need be, he explained as they got in and went the short distance to Shandie’s car.
Once they arrived there, Shandie left Kayla with Dax and got the safety seat, but when she returned with it to the truck, Dax was waiting on the passenger side to put it in for her.
Shandie appreciated the courtesy, but he didn’t know what he was doing and after a few failed attempts to figure it out she took over. As she did he went around to stand by while Kayla stood behind the truck’s steering wheel, bouncing wildly in her mimicry of driving.
Shandie had to smile to herself when he began to teach her daughter to make engine noises, but she didn’t comment on how funny it sounded.
Then the car seat was strapped in tightly to the center of the truck’s bench seat.
“Okay, climb in,” Shandie told the little girl.
After some reluctance to leave the wheel, Kayla did get into the carrier, wiggling until her heavy quilted coat wasn’t bunched up around her, then settling and promptly taking off her knitted hat and mittens.
It was something she inevitably did the minute Shandie got her in the car seat, and Shandie had given up fighting to stop it because she never won anyway—as soon as she wasn’t looking, off went hat and gloves every time.
As Shandie buckled her daughter in, Dax got behind the wheel once more. “Where to?” he asked.
Shandie recited her address in the course of situating herself again in the passenger seat and closing the side door so they could get going once more.
“Huh?”
“It isn’t far,” she said as if his huh had indicated that he thought it was.
“No, I know.”
“Is it a bad neighborhood or something?”
“I live on the same street—so maybe,” he joked.
“Which house?” Shandie asked, surprised to learn they lived near each other.
“The big gray one on the corner closest to New Town.”
“That is a big house. But I thought a family lived there with a teenager.”
“I rent out the main floor and live in the apartment on the second level. The income from the renters helps tide things over during the slow winter months. What house are you in?”
“The small yellow one, second from the other end.”
“So we’ve been within walking distance of each other there, too? I really must have been in a fog lately.”
“Well, at least you won’t have to go far out of your way,” Shandie said.
“Wouldn’t have mattered if I had needed to,” he assured her with a sideways glance that seemed along the same lines as his comment about
