Page 2 of Working for the Runaway Bride

“And she’ll eventually leave work.”

“Not if her car won’t start.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You said it needs work. You didn’t say it was dead.”

“It’s not dead. I don’t think.”

“You don’t think?”

“It’s making a noise.”

I close my eyes. People have been describing car trouble to me as a noise since I opened this place. The noise could be a loose heat shield, a dying alternator, a failing wheel bearing, or a family of squirrels building a condominium under the hood.

“What kind of noise?”

“A bad one.”

“That narrows it down.”

A woman laughs in the background. The sound is soft and breathy, followed by a hurried shush. It pulls my attention away from the grease beneath my fingernails and every repair waiting to be finished.

I lower the phone slightly, then bring it back to my ear. “Who’s that?”

There’s a pause.

“Who’s who?” Carter asks.

“The woman laughing.”

Another silence follows, longer this time.

“It’s none of your business.”

Every muscle in my body tightens. I turn away from the open garage doors and walk into the small office at the back of the shop. The space is cramped, barely large enough for a desk, two metal filing cabinets, and the coffee machine that has been threatening to die for the last six years. I kick the door shut behind me.

“Is it Molly?”

“None of your business.”

His answer lands like a wrench dropped on concrete. Carter has always been quick with an excuse, but he’s a terrible liar. When he was eight, he tried to convince me that our dog had colored on the living room wall with a blue marker. At fourteen, he swore the cigarettes in his backpack belonged to a friend. At nineteen, he claimed he didn’t know how my truck had ended up with a dent in the tailgate.

He’s twenty-eight now. Apparently, he still thinks silence counts as innocence.

“It becomes my business when you call me asking for help with your fiancée’s car while some other woman is laughing beside you.”

“You don’t know what you heard.”

“I know exactly what I heard.”

“You always do this.”

“Do what?”

“Assume the worst.”

“I asked a question. You refused to answer it.”

“Because I don’t have to explain every detail of my life to you.”