He laughed. It was as if he liked to irritate me.
“His daughter got engaged. Rose, I think,” Sean said, lighting the end of his cigarette.
My eyes slammed shut.Damn woman.She would never give me a break.
“Again?” I asked.
He laughed. “Surely, this is her last one.” He said it as if he believed it. He was either naïve or stupid. I’d say he was both.
“Doubtful,” I muttered, the word thick with cynicism, a familiar coating on my tongue. It left a bitter aftertaste, but then again, most things associated with Rosalie did.
“You seem confident,” he said, raising an eyebrow in amusement.
Confident? No. I was certain. In the same way I was certain the sun would rise tomorrow.
“I’d bet on it,” I challenged. Why not? I was out fifty bucks—might as well try to win it back.
“Your confidence is intimidating,” he said with a grin. “Let’s say a grand then?”
Sean’s interest in Rosalie’s love life irritated me, but I couldn’t help but bargain.
“Sure.”
The bet was a win-win. Easy money, and maybe a little payback for the constant chaos the woman stirred up in my life. I dreaded my breaking point, and I knew it was near.
“Excuse me,” I muttered as I stepped out of the office. My fingers instinctively reached for my phone, swiping for her contact. I held the phone up to my ear.
It rang once.
Twice.
Voice mail.
It was going to take something stronger than my own will if I wanted to stay away from Rosalie. I needed something more to keep me in check, but I had nothing—not even the threat of death.
I spent the rest of the day fixing everything Sean had done to the cars. He’d messed everything up. He might as well have come into the garage with a sledgehammer—the end result would have been about the same. Every bolt he’d loosened, every wire he’d mismatched, just turned into more work for me.
My hands were coated in grease—a thick, black grime that seemed to seep into every nook and cranny despite my repeated attempts to wipe them clean with a rag—when the door creaked open, a flash of red creeping through the crack.
Rosalie.
“Oh,” she said with disappointment. “You’re not Sean.”
Sean was officially starting to grind on my patience.
Rosalie stood in the doorway for a moment and then hesitantly stepped inside. Her short skirt rode up her thigh when she took a step closer. Her figure-hugging shirt strained against her arms as she crossed them.
“I called.”
“I know,” she admitted with a smile. “I watched it ring.”
“You are a nightmare of a woman—do you know that?”
She laughed as she stepped closer to me, holding her weight on my shoulder as she leaned against the hood of the car. “Darn.” She pouted, her voice dripping with mock sincerity. “Just when I thought I was someone’s dream woman.”
She couldn’t help but dangle the ring in front of me as if she had something to prove.
I threw the rag down on the car. “Ah,” I drawled, the irritation morphing into something I couldn’t place. “I heard you ran through another. Since when?”
