She righted the saw, which was still plugged in, and turned it on. It ka-clunked a bunch of times and began smoking. She shut it off and stared at it, unable to move.
“That doesn’t sound good.” Vince approached her, carrying a bulky black tool bag. His eyes narrowed. “I wondered what all that racket was when he left.”
“Dan... He smashed it.” The same way he’d sort of smashed her.
“There are two things a man needs,” Vince said. “Pride and honor. This Dan has too much of one and none of the other.”
Harley nodded miserably.
Vince peered at the saw. “This is totaled. You sure you don’t want to press charges against your boyfriend?”
A weight dropped on Harley’s shoulders so hard and heavy she didn’t correct his presumption about Dan. “I... Can’t you fix it?” By tomorrow when she had to tile the outdoor kitchen? Vince was always fixing something for Jerry, their boss.
Vince set down his tool bag and examined her saw. “See those dents in the casing? When it collapses like that, parts inside get damaged.”
“I can’t afford a new one.” She’d gone from a starting architect’s salary to a tiler’s paycheck. And she’d just put a new truck transmission on her credit card.
“You can take it to that shop on Polk. They’ll give you money for whatever parts they can salvage and apply it toward the purchase of a new one.”
She couldn’t afford that, either, not without a second job. Until then, she’d be cutting tile with a low-tech manual saw and nippers. “Thanks for the advice.”
Demoralized, Harley released the base from the table and carried the dead saw to her truck, returning for her tool bucket and the worktable.
If only she could figure out how to make playhouse balconies float on air.
Vince was still loading his stuff into his truck’s lockbox when Harley opened the creaky door to her hot cab and climbed in. She missed her Lexus. She missed auto-start and powerful air-conditioning. She turned the key in the ignition.
Nothing. Not so much as a tick of the starter.
She missed reliability.
“Not today,” she muttered. The truck was finicky. It didn’t like to run when the temperature dropped to the thirties or in thunderstorms, but the day had been hot, the skies clear. “Come on, baby,” she chided the old vehicle.
Don’t leave me stranded with Mr. Carrots and that grin.
Vince locked up his tools and leaned on his truck, staring at hers.
Still nothing. Her backside was growing damp with sweat.
Vince came forward. He walked with the swagger of a man who knew what his purpose was in life. And, right now, that purpose was to rescue a damsel in distress.
“Pop the hood.”
She did, hopping out and joining him at the grille. Not that she knew anything about engines. Her mechanical ability stopped at turning power tools off and on.
Vince tsked and gave Harley a look that disapproved and teased at the same time.
“Hey, don’t judge,” she said. “It runs.”
“It’s not running now.” He drew a blue rag from his back pocket. It was the kind of scrap mechanics used to wipe their hands and touch hot engines. “You might want to spray your engine off every once in a while.” He used the rag to check battery connections, hose connections and to prod the engine compartment as if he knew what he was doing.
“I barely clean my apartment. Why would I clean my engine?”
“So a mechanic can see if you’ve got leaks anywhere, for one thing,” Vince said straight-faced. “Why don’t you try it again?”
She hurried back behind the wheel. The truck started right up.
“Traitor,” she accused under her breath.
Vince shut the hood and came around to her window, wiping his hands.
“Thanks.” Harley gave him her polite smile, the one she reserved for helpful salesclerks and the receptionist who squeezed her in at the doctor’s office. “I owe you.”
“Yeeeaah.” He wound out the word and ran his fingers through that thatch of midnight hair. “About that. I need a favor.” Those kind black eyes lifted to her face.
Don’t believe in fairy tales... Don’t believe in fairy tales...
Despite their history, despite knowing better, silly fantasies about princely rescues and Mr. Right fluttered about her chest like happy butterflies on a warm spring day.
She should go. Instead she lingered and asked, “So what’s the favor?”
The devilish grin returned, making the butterflies ecstatic. “I need a date to my brother’s wedding.”
WHEN HAD A man ever asked Harley to be his wedding date?
When was the last time she’d felt like going to a wedding?
She couldn’t remember on either count.
Harley had turned Vince down, of course. The wedding was in California the weekend after next, but he’d wanted her to fly out with him this Saturday.
Take to the skies with Vince?
Thunderclouds lined the southern horizon.
There was a time when Harley O’Hannigan thought the sky was the limit. A time when everything she’d touched had turned to gold.
Daughter of a couple who owned a tile and granite outlet in Birmingham, she’d been the girl most likely to succeed in high school, valedictorian of her college class, the young architect hired to design beautiful structures for a boutique agency in Houston.
And then reality struck. The balconies she’d dreamed up for a uniquely modern theater couldn’t be built with today’s construction techniques. She’d only shared the drawing with Dan because unbuildable designs could be entered in architectural theory competitions. Winning those awards brought agencies and architects prestige. But Dan had done the unthinkable. He’d presented her design to a client as doable. And they’d bought it.
She’d begged Dan to back out of the deal. But the press he’d received from the sale was amazing, and had led to more architectural business and more requests for impossible, pie-in-the-sky ideas. Instead of admitting the balconies couldn’t be done, Dan had found a contractor willing to begin construction with the interior still up in the air. Literally.
Backed into a corner where all she could do was put Fail on her résumé, Harley had quit, only to be told
