“Luna,” Rip drew out my name, any and all ease finally gone from his voice.
“Rip,” I started, closing both my eyes for a moment. “I screwed up.”
There was a pause, and then he asked, slowly, so, so slowly I wasn’t a fool enough to assume he hadn’t heard me. “What’s that?”
He was going to make me do this. Of course he was. “I screwed up,” I repeated. I didn’t deserve to wince. This really was my fault. And Jason’s. “I picked up the wrong work order for the Thunderbird. Instead of the Brittany Blue, I did the Silver Mink that had been on the original form, and I already started before it hit me.” I did it. I had freaking done it. I knew it was pointless and didn’t mean a thing, but I still threw in, “I’m really, really sorry.”
At some point, his elbow stopped moving. Hell, I was pretty sure he even stopped breathing because the two inches of his upper half that weren’t hidden inside the car weren’t moving either. Oh, hell.
“It’s my fault. I just… I spaced. I should have double-checked the system and I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
Still, he said nothing.
Crap.
“I can stay late tonight to start fixing it. Monday I can do the primer, and if I stay late, I can get all caught up again….”
He’d stopped listening. I could tell. So I stopped talking.
His body had started to move as I had blabbed on. First I noticed more of his abs, then his upper chest, followed by his neck, and finally his head came out from inside the car he was gutting. Those intense eyes zeroed in on me from a carefully blank face I had seen before, usually from a distance. Usually as an observer and not the focus of it.
And I knew. I freaking knew…
He was going to ream me.
Lucas Ripley didn’t let me down. His voice was calm and almost cold as he said, “I specifically asked you if you needed to write that shit down. ’Member that?”
Oh, man. It was going to go bad.
What else could I do but nod?
Those almost green-blue eyes didn’t evenflicker. “Iasked youif you needed me to write it down and you said no,” he kept going, staring at me with that furious face that was so roughly handsome, I didn’t want to look at it, not then. His voice got even cooler, if that was even possible, and I swear I could feel the skin on my back prickling. “And I’m gonna have to pay you overtime for work that was already done?” He narrowed those intense eyes. “I have to payyouto fix a mistakeyoudid?”
All I could do was stand there.
Ihad messed up. There was no escaping that. “Rip, I’m sorry. I’ve never made a mistake like this before—”
That giant hand speckled in some kind of oil or grease sliced across the center of his body. “That’s not the fucking point, Luna,” he snapped, looking up at me. “It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of money. It’s a waste of fucking paint.” Rip shook that dark brown head of hair that had just a few lines of silver through it, just in time for his birthday that upcoming Monday.
He was laying it on real thick, and I was taking it all in, feeling worse and worse by the second. He was right. He would have gotten mad at anyone who made the same mistake; that only microscopically made me feel better. “I’m sorry. I’ll stay late, and you don’t have to pay me. I know it’s my fault,” I replied, hoping Owen and Miguel couldn’t hear how pitchy my voice had gotten. I had to clench my fists when the urge to crack my knuckles got bad.
My boss raised his thick, dark eyebrows in a way that confirmed I wasn’t going to get out of anything, and I definitely wasn’t going to get absolved of a freaking thing. “Now you’re gonna try and give me a goddamn guilt trip for telling you shit any boss would?” His eyebrows lowered, and that mouth I thought was pretty sexy on good days stayed in a scowl. “You’re not gonna make me feel bad, Luna. You fucked up and that’s the end of the story.”
I had fucked up. I wasn’t trying to make it seem any other way. I nodded at him, making sure to avoid glancing over at where I had last seen my coworkers standing. “I know, Rip. I’m not trying to. I’m sorry,” I told him.
He shook his head. Shook me off. The man pulled out a clean-ish rag from inside his coveralls and swept it over his face as he muttered, “Sorry doesn’t fix shit.”
Of course it didn’t. I’d learned that lesson long before he’d come into my life.
“I know that. I’ll do everything myself. I’ll get started on it—”
His face was still covered as he breathed out, “Don’t bother.”
What did that mean?
“But I can do it. I know it’s my fault—”
“No.” He moved the cloth away from his face and zeroed in on mine instantly. His jaw was set, and if I’d had any doubts he was pissed, I would have gotten a confirmation then. There were more lines at his forehead than I had ever seen before. “Keep the paint the same goddamn color you already did,” he grumbled, dragging the rag roughly over his hands as his eyes pretty much burned a hateful hole straight into the middle of my features. “For the record, it’s fucking bullshit.”
