“Sorry,” I mumbled, wiping my other hand across my sweaty forehead. It was only early morning but it was hot already.
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
I was acutely aware of Jake’s gaze on me as I tried to impress him, which was idiotic. How could I, a city-boy academic who barely knew what brand of car I drove, impress a rugged cowboy who could fix a car engine in his sleep?
But the harder I concentrated, the more I screwed up. My sweat-slicked hands lost their grip. The wrench fell between two parts of the engine.
I sighed, exasperated with myself. "Sorry."
I reached for it at the same time Jake did, and our hands brushed in the narrow space. Jake’s head tilted upward, his smile brightening his face, and he snagged the wrench without taking his eyes off me.
Heat flooded my face and it had nothing to do with the desert temperature.
“I told you before, nothing to be sorry for,” Jake drawled. “You’re learning. I don’t know nothing about that local fluoride stuff you were gonna go study out there.”
A laugh burst out of me. “It’sflora.Fluoride is the stuff in toothpaste."
“So they don't got tubes of it growin' on some cactus out there?”
"No, but thatwouldbe an incredible scientific discovery," I teased.
Jake chuckled as he wiped the wrench off with his rag. "I'm learning a lot from you, Professor Frederick."
"I-I'm not a professor. Not yet, anyway."
His eyes were warm as he gazed at me. "Smarter than anyone I ever met before. That makes you an honorary professor to me." His grin was cheeky. "Though I can stop, if ya don't like it."
I blushed. Being calledprofessorwas definitely not good for my ego.
But did I care? No.
"It's okay, I... I like it," I said.
"Then Prof Frederick it is." He handed me back the wrench. "Try again?"
I accepted it with a grimace. “Aren't you worried about me inflicting further damage on my car?”
“Not at all. I'm supervising, remember? And you can’t learn unless you try.”
He was right about that. Being ignorant about something was a terrible feeling. I was used to being good at what I did, and being totally out of my element like this should've made me feel stupid.
But Jake didn't look down on me like Pete or the other alphas in my lab. He wanted me to succeed and he'd hold my hand until I got it right.
Not literally. But I wouldn't say no to that, either.
Jake leaned against the car as I fiddled with the wrench again. “So, you say you work in a lab?”
“That’s right. But that's not all I do. I write a lot of reports, do field research, dig through academic sources and refute bad arguments, writemorereports..."
Jake chuckled. "Sounds like big-brained stuff."
A derisive snort escaped me. "I beg to differ, considering my alpha meathead coworkers."
Jake paused. Was I imagining the way his shoulders stiffened? Oh no. Did he get offended that I'd called them alpha meatheads? The brim of his hat blocked his expression so I couldn't see it.
"I'm not implyingallalphas are meatheads," I said quickly, trying to make amends. "Just the morons I work with."
That split-second of tension disappeared and Jake smiled at me as warmly as ever. "Naw, I didn't assume that. We've all been there, workin' with folks who make it hard to get along. Aside from the meatheads, do you like your job?”
