His dark blues choked me as they bore into mine for a second. “S-sure.”
Even though I wanted to still be pissed about how he’d acted the night before, I couldn’t help but feel flattered. Sure I had liked guys in the past, found some attractive, but I was always the take ’em and leave ’em type of girl, never sticking around long enough to get hurt or form real feelings. This felt different. It felt real. There was a spark that had been lit the day I walked into the Unacceptables’ bar and it was smoldering into a wildfire that I felt the control of slipping out of mygrasp.
I dove into the driver’s seat and turned thekey.
Click.
That’s all shewrote.
“Again!” He shouted from around the poppedhood.
Click.
“Allright.”
Abel came around to the open door and leaned on it. “I’m pretty sure you’re gonna need a new starter. We can try to push start it since it’s a stick, but I really don’t think that’s the answer to yourproblems.”
“Fuck,” I whispered to myself. “That’s going cost a lot more than I can afford rightnow.”
“It doesn’t have to.” His lips turned up at the corners before he continued, “I can take care of it foryou.”
I jumped up from my moping in the driver’s seat. “Yeah?Really?”
He nodded, his smile growing, showing off his perfectly chiseled facialfeatures.
Damn, he’s hotter than a swamp in Mississippi inAugust.
“You don’t think that bar is the only thing I take care of doyou?”
I shrugged. “You’ve never mentioned anythingbefore.”
“Well, sugar, I run a garage a few miles from here. How about you let me take you to breakfast while one of my guys comes and tows this to thegarage?”
My original reaction was to run, thinking this guy was too good to be true. He surely had to be a freaking serial killer or something, but damn those eyes, his smile, the muscles that his grey flannel shirt clung to so perfectly under hiscut.
Even though he had been my boss for almost a week, I barely knew him. His time at the bar was fleeting, and in that moment I found myself doing something I had never done before: taking help from a stranger—a beautiful stranger, and my boss, but a fucking strangernevertheless.
“Ok.”
“Let me make a call. Leave the keys in it. My guys will be here quick to get it foryou.”
“That’s really nice of you,Abel.”
“Don’t mention it, Crickett.” He laughed after he said my name, which was more common than I would have liked toadmit.
“Don’t be mean,” I called over while he paced as he spoke to someone from his garage, lighting acigarette.
“No. I am telling you what you’re going to do.” Smoke escaped through his flared nostrils as he growled into the phone. “Get your ass down here with Lou and pick up her car now. Not after you eat your damn breakfast or take your morning shit. Right the fuck now. Do you forget who you workfor?”
Abel’s voice was so gruff and stern while he was talking to whoever it was on the phone; I was kind of takenaback.
Once the call was over, I walked over to Abel. “You know if this is any trouble, I can figure somethingout.”
“Really, could you?” His voice was still stern as he shoved his cell into his pocket, throwing the half gone cigarette into the gravel and mashing it with his boot. He cleared his throat before he continued, cooling his tone quite a bit. “This is no trouble at all, Holt was just being a little prick. Sometimes you have to put the young guys in theirplace.”
“Holt? He works at your garagetoo?”
“Yeah, he works with you and is apprenticing at my garage. Good kid, just needsdirection.”
