You didn’t jump off a bridge, break your legs, and then blame the friend who dared you to do it for why you were in the hospital.
Taking responsibility for my actions and not blaming other people for things I brought upon myself was one of the few positive lessons I’d learned from my family, even if it was something they hadn’t tried to teach me on purpose.
I cut that train of thought off real quick. Some things and people were so acidic, even thinking about them could destroy. I was going to choose to be happy, and that meant not thinking about old crap. Today was going to be a good day, and so was tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.
It was with that thought that I kept the smile on my face and let it linger on the man staring at me. It took a lot more than Rip in a white shirt to make me frown or hurt my feelings. It took a lot more than thinking of certain people for all of a second to do it either.
The point was: I was tired. I’d closed my eyes. He’d called me out on it. There was nothing to get upset about.
“Luna,” Rip said my name in that ridiculously low voice that had caught me totally off-guard the first time I’d heard it. “We understand each other? No fucking naps during the meeting. It’s not that hard to get, is it?”
From a couple chairs down, someone snorted, but I knew from the sound of it who it was, so I didn’t bother wasting my time even looking in that direction, much less letting his amusement at me getting put on the spot bother me.
I still kept the corners of my mouth up high on my face as I nodded just once at my boss. I understood him loud and clear. I also understood the look that Mr. Cooper was giving him from his spot on Ripley’s left. He wasn’t supposed to be cussing at me, or any of us at the shop. That was something else the two owners of one of the most successful auto body shops in Houston, Texas had spent a lot of time talking about in the office when they didn’t know I was eavesdropping….
Which was all the time.
Not that they knew that.
At least I hoped they didn’t, but it wasn’t like they were subtle or secretive about it either.
* * *
It all startedthree years ago.
Cooper’s Collision and Customs had been a family-owned business that had been started by Mr. Cooper’s father in the 1940s. The shop had been successful for a lifetime by the time I got my job almost six years before that day that set everything into motion. Every employee at CCC got paid fairly, got paid every other week, and Mr. Cooper had been—and still was—just about the best boss in the world. In my opinion, he was one of the best men in the entire world period, and I doubted anyone I worked with would argue that.
One day, everything had been normal. We’d had one boss. There had been ten of us. Everything had been fine. And the next day, I got to work, ignored the classic Ford pickup parked in the tiny customer lot upfront, and then overheard Mr. Cooper’s familiar voice and a much deeper one in the office at seven in the morning, talking about how they were going to split profits and where the business would move to.
It had shocked the hell out of me. Then again, I wasn’t sure how it couldn’t have shocked the hell out of me. Splitting profits? Moving a business that had been in the same place for the last eighty-ish years? The shop had always been busy. Things had seemed to be fine.
Honestly, even now, I still didn’t get why Mr. Cooper had decided to take someone else on to handle his business.
I had listened to them talking as long as I could before I’d taken off to pretend like nothing had happened, even though part of me was freaking out big-time at the implications of what their conversation meant. It wasn’t until a couple months later, months where I’d kept my mouth closed in case I hadn’t eavesdropped correctly when Mr. Cooper had dropped the bomb on everyone during a Friday morning meeting.
“I have some big news,” the angel of a man had told all of us. I was probably the only person who had noticed how badly his hands had been shaking then because no one else had ever brought it up afterward. “We’re moving the shop.“
Everyone had started talking at once, but Mr. Cooper ignored them and kept on talking.
“We’ve needed more space for years now. We’re too cramped. You’re all aware of that. We’re moving to a forty-thousand-square-foot facility….” He’d said some other things I couldn’t remember as he sat there, hands tucked into the pockets of his worn jeans. Then, and only then, had he taken a great big breath and dropped therealbomb on everyone—everyone except me, at least. “That’s not the only thing growing either. With more room, we can handle more business.”
Everyone had stopped talking at that point, and I’d just sat there with my hands between my thighs, pressing my lips together as my stomach flip-flopped at the knowledge that I hadn’t imagined that conversation months ago.
“Lucas Ripley will be joining the team,” Mr. Cooper, a man we all loved, had breathed out, almost like he wasn’t sure about the news either. Or maybe I’d just been imagining it. “He’ll be a co-owner for Cooper’s and will be growing and handling the restoration part of the business from here on out.” He had swallowed hard, crossed his arms over his chest, and asked, “Any questions?”
Luckily for me, everyone had been too busy freaking out by the mention of the shop moving, expanding, and the new owner to notice that I hadn’t asked a single question.
None of us had wondered who Lucas Ripley was or why he was joining the business.
And the next day, when I got to work and found a semi-familiar truck parked right next to Mr. Cooper’s beautifully restored Mustang, I had figured out real quick who the car belonged to. Because in the years I’d worked for Mr. Cooper, no one else but he and I showed up so early.
No one.
And when I had gone into the building and walked by the office to head to the space where I spent most of my time painting, doing bodywork, or detailing, I hadn’t been totally surprised to find Mr. Cooper behind his desk, talking to a man sitting on the other side of it.
The man was huge, and the long-sleeved shirt he had on in the middle of July was basically a second skin. It covered everything from his wrists up over his collarbone, only managing to show off a few inches of tattooed skin on his neck. Maybe, I had thought, it was one of those shirts that kept a person cool.
As I’d stopped right by the doorway, I’d noticed that, even in profile, the man had the grouchiest, meanest face I had ever seen in my life. I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but he did. And he was straight-up gorgeous.
