“So what if she did?” I wanted to know. “If you’re going to act like you’ve got secrets, then your girlfriend is going to think you’re going behind her back to do things you don’t want her to know about.”
“Sure.” Nick’s jaw tightened. “Look, I don’t know what she told you, but there’s nothing going on here. I’m not cheating on her. I’m working. That’s it.”
“I didn’t say you were cheating,” I pointed out.
“You didn’t have to.” He shook his head, disgusted. “Tell Jacquie if she wants to know where I am, she can ask me herself instead of sending her dead boyfriend’s wife to spy on me.”
“Ex-wife,” I corrected, because apparently that was the hill I wanted to die on. “And I’m just here for an oil change.”
“Sure you are.” He turned away, then stopped and looked back. “You know what? Fine. Bay three is empty. Pull your car in and I’ll change your oil myself. That way you can watch me do it and report back that I didn’t meet up with anyone or make any suspicious phone calls.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it again. There wasn’t much point. He’d made me, as they say in the detective novels. The only question now was whether I could salvage something from this disaster or I should cut my losses and leave.
Pride warred with practicality. Pride lost.
“Bay three,” I said. “Got it.”
I moved the Lexus out of the line for the oil changes, and drove it over to the indicated bay. Nick was waiting by the time I got there, his expression somewhere between annoyed and amused. Maybe he thought that my thirty-two point turn to get out of the line was funny. I ignored it as I put the car in park and cut the engine.
“I’m supposed to make you wait in the office,” Nick informed me, after instructing me to pop the hood, “but that’d defeat the purpose. I suppose you’re just gonna have to stay where you are until I’m done. It’ll take about fifteen minutes.”
“That’s fine,” I said, even though I would have liked an opportunity to go to the office to look for Megan.
He nodded and got busy. I leaned back against the seat and pinched the bridge of my nose.
This was stupid. I should have known better than to actually visit the Body Shop. Of course Nick would recognize me, and of course he’d guess what I was doing there. For all I knew, Jacquie had thrown a screaming hissy-fit about his supposed cheating, and now he was on alert for anything out of the ordinary. And of course the nitwit had told him I was a PI. Of course she had.
And I couldn’t even see anything from where I was sitting. The hood of the car was raised—of course it was—and I was on one side of it while Nick was on the other. All I saw was the movement of his hands and muscular lower arms through the gap between the bottom of the hood and the engine, and the occasional glimpse of the top of his head on the other end when he straightened.
I should have stayed on the other side of the street with a pair of binoculars. That way, at least I could have actually seen him while he worked. And I wouldn’t have tipped him off that Jacquie was suspicious, either.
Something moved in my peripheral vision, and I turned my head, to see that a woman had emerged from the office two bays away. She was a dirty blonde (in the sense of hair-color, not in any other way) with a ponytail and hoop earrings big enough to fit my hand through. She looked to be thirty or so, so a few years older than Nick, and she was wearing tight jeans and a Body Shop polo that looked mostly clean.
I tried to watch surreptitiously, but as with Nick, that was apparently beyond my abilities. She had caught the initial turn of my head, and now she was looking back at me, cooly.
I turned my head away again, casually, as if I hadn’t actually been interested in her in the first place. It didn’t seem to fool her. Or perhaps she was just as possessive of Nick as Jacquie was, and any female whose car he took care of got the same treatment.
She watched me for a moment before gesturing to him.
It was actually helpful, although I’m sure that wasn’t what she intended. She wanted Nick away from my car, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I’m sure.
But now I could see him—see them both—which I hadn’t been able to do before. So she actually did me a favor.
When she beckoned, Nick didn’t hesitate. He abandoned the underside of my hood and sauntered over, wiping his hands on that grody rag. She said something—much too soft and too far away for me to hear—and he responded, and then they both turned to look at me again.
The look was assessing, maybe even calculating. On her part, anyway. Nick mostly looked nervous.
I gave them a little finger wave. Might as well.
She said something else, and Nick shrugged. She touched his arm—briefly, casually, the kind of touch that could mean anything or nothing—and turned on her heel. She headed back to the office while he made his way to the front of the Lexus.
I watched her walk away, as I mentally catalogued details. Blond hair, check. Pretty, check. Friendly with Nick, check. This had to be Megan. She was the only female I had seen since I arrived here, and she ticked all the boxes.
The touch had been familiar, but not necessarily intimate. They could be friends. They could be colleagues. They could be casual at work and having wild monkey sex in their spare time, although that wasn’t the impression I had gotten. Nick hadn’t looked at her like he wanted to jump her bones. More like she worried him.
Nick finished the oil change and lowered the hood with a slam. “You’re all set.”
“Thanks.” I dug out my wallet. “What do I owe you?”
