Page 29 of Working for the Runaway Bride

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?”

I look at the windshield. My reflection stares back at me. Gray at my temples. Lines around my eyes. A face harder than the one I had when I first stood in front of this car.

“It was the first car I learned to work on after I got out of prison.”

Molly goes still.

I almost never say the word aloud. Prison. It carries too much weight. People hear it and see steel bars before they see me. But she already knows. I’m tired of pretending she doesn’t. Molly looks at me again.

“I couldn’t change where I’d been,” I tell her. “Couldn’t change what people saw when they looked at me. But machines don’t care about a man’s past. An engine doesn’t care whether you’re a felon. If you understand what it needs and you’re willing to do the work, it responds.”

“You rebuilt your life with this car.”

“I learned how to make a living because of it. By the time I got the Chevelle running, I knew enough for Hank to put me on payroll. A few years later, he helped me open this place.”

“So it taught you everything.”

“Almost.”

I press the release beneath the hood and lift it. The restored engine gleams beneath us.

Molly moves closer. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

“You’re looking at the reason I have a roof over my head.”

She leans over slightly. The neckline of her blouse falls away from her body. I see soft skin. A glimpse of pale lace. Every thought in my head vanishes. I turn sharply toward the tool bench.

“Is that part the engine?” she asks.

“All of it is the engine.”

“This entire thing?”

“Yes.”

“What does that do?”

I glance back.

She points to the air cleaner.

“Helps filter dirt from the air before it enters the engine.”

“And that?”

“Alternator.”

“What does it do?”

“Charges the battery and powers the electrical system while the engine runs.”

Molly straightens, and the blouse shifts back into place. It doesn’t help. Now that I’ve seen what it hides, my imagination supplies the rest.

“You need to leave.” I blurt out.