he might have once had—he’d made a reference or two about working at a family business—but he didn’t have any money now, which was why he’d offered to change her oil instead of Gwen going to the quick oil-change place she usually did.
“So is the car finished?” she asked.
“At last.” He looked skyward.
Hiding her smile, Gwen dug in her shoulder bag. “I am not going to pay you extra.”
“What? No tip?”
“Sure, I’ll give you a tip.” She nodded to his outfit. “Wear warmer clothes when you go outside to play.” She handed him a ten-dollar bill.
“I’m not cold. Besides, they’re all dirty.” He snapped the bill, held it up the light, then kissed it. “Laundry money!”
As they laughed, Gwen glanced at Laurie. Her expression, formerly interested and encouraging, had done a complete one-eighty. Gwen followed her gaze back to Alec and she understood. Instead of an eligible potential boyfriend, Laurie was now seeing him as a good-looking, but broke, mechanic with no ambition and no prospects.
Gwen smiled faintly. Like most women her age, she had one of those in her background and while they were fun, once was enough.
Alec wasn’t anything of the sort and if Laurie asked, Gwen would tell her. Could she help it if Laurie wouldn’t ask?
“Time for me to get going,” Laurie said. “Great meeting you.” She gave a tight nod to Alec. To Gwen, she said, “I’ll call you.”
Gwen noticed that Alec stopped making love to his ten-dollar bill long enough to watch Laurie walk off.
“Nice,” he said, and Laurie hadn’t even put anything extra in her walk.
“Yes.”
“But out of my price range.”
“What do you mean by that?”
At her sharp tone, he turned to her. A second later, realization dawned. “No! Hey—I just meant that a woman like that is high-maintenance and expensive. To stay in the running you’ve got to take her to clubs and restaurants and the bill runs up real quick…and I’m just digging myself deeper into a hole, aren’t I?” He gave her a charmingly rueful grin. Alec had charm to spare and knew it.
“Any deeper and there’ll be an echo.”
He held up both hands, black-creased palms outward. “I meant nothing against your friend.”
“I know. It’s okay.” Gwen agreed with him, anyway, but wouldn’t betray the sisterhood by admitting it.
“And, ah, I didn’t mean that you weren’t worth running up the tab for, either.”
She wished he hadn’t said that. They both knew she wasn’t a Laurie type and honestly, Gwen was all for the Lauries of this world. Why shouldn’t they value themselves enough to require men to make an effort? For all the effort Gwen required, she was a bigger bargain than a Christmas sweater in January. She needed to stop that.
But she didn’t want to have that kind of discussion with Alec, who was still standing there, searching her face for a sign of whether she was mad at him or not. He was a decent, if typically male, sort.
“I’m in a good position to guilt you into a really expensive evening, aren’t I?”
He didn’t smile and Gwen felt a twinge of that same guilt for making him suffer. But just a twinge. “Let me have a moment to savor the feeling….” She drew a deep breath. “I’m done. You’re off the hook.”
He grinned and his whole stance relaxed. “You’re okay, Gwen.” He made a movement and for a second, she thought he was going to give her a punch on the arm, but at the last minute, he swung his hand upward and raked his fingers through his hair. “Hey, you should give your car a spin around the block to make sure it’s running okay. Or I could do it for you,” he added casually.
He probably had errands to run. She really didn’t mind, though she was succumbing to his charm more than she should.
“Would you?” Gwen asked, as though he’d be doing her a huge favor.
“Sure!” He patted his shorts for her keys and dug them out. “I might stop off at the grocery store and get some quarters. Need anything?”
Gwen shook her head.
“Uh—do I look okay? I don’t have a grease moustache, or anything?”
“Just…” She hesitated, then reached up and rubbed at the faint streak on his brow bone. She could feel him watching her and hoped she wouldn’t do anything horridly juvenile like blush.
He had warm brown hair and warm—friendly warm—brown eyes to go with his warm brown body. Okay, so the warm body part was a wild guess based solely on his forehead, but the rest was true. Gwen also had brown hair and eyes, but her hair wasn’t as rich as his since she’d quit streaking it. What was the point? She’d given up men.
Funny how she had to keep reminding herself.
Especially when she was around Alec.
2
MAYBE IT WAS being around Chelsea and Kate and the wedding, or maybe it was the skirt—or more likely Alec and his stupid cutoffs—but Gwen decided she needed to do something active to remind her of her goals.
Or at least fine-tune them a bit. As she unpacked her suitcase, Gwen reflected on what Laurie had said about the intrinsic value of playing caffeine fairy to the office workers in the greater Houston area. In the mornings when people arrived at their jobs after fighting the rush-hour traffic and were absolutely dying for that first cup of coffee, the Kwik Koffee machines were mighty important. And didn’t those cardiologists and astronauts and scientists drink coffee, coffee that her company made sure was fresh, hot and available? Didn’t it put them in the right frame of mind to begin their days of important discoveries and saving lives? Therefore, wasn’t Gwen actually helping the world?
Okay, so that was a stretch, but she’d file it away for the next time Laurie downplayed their importance in the grand scheme of things.
But she’d also realized that climbing up the ladder at her company was really only a means to her true goal: she, Gwen Kempner, wanted to live the life of a man. Not be a man, just get the same advantages.
From where she stood—currently on a chair so she could shove her suitcase onto the top shelf of her closet—men had it pretty good and that was because they had conned women into helping them. They didn’t even have to be married—Gwen had noticed that the single men always seemed to have a girlfriend or even a spare mother to take care of them or wait for various delivery people. Men could even negotiate the after-five delivery times, whereas Gwen always got the, “Don’t you have a neighbor who’s home during the day?” question. Once, and she wasn’t proud of this, she’d taken half a personal day to wait for the cable guy for Eric.
Never again.
She needed somebody to help her, someone
