Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 13

“Cletus? You in here?”

I walked clean through the lobby of the Winston Brothers Auto Shop, through the door to the main garage. It was easy to get the sense that the place was empty. Every once in a while, machines were going or the radio was on. On days like this, it had its own zen.

“Cletus!” I hollered louder, aware that he might not be in the garage proper, but somewhere else in his vast complex. A storage locker held parts and supplies, and outer garages housed cars that weren’t actively being worked on in the three main bays.

Cletus Winston and I had a business arrangement. Maintaining cover in a small town gave me a need to drive cars that weren’t mine. For a monthly retainer, I had access to his fleet—loaner cars he kept for people who were having their own cars worked on, and another few he’d bought to restore. He’d even told me confidentially, for reasons all his own, he’d souped up a couple of getaway cars.

“That you, Loretta?”

Just as I was ready to walk out the door, Cletus’s voice rang out from beneath. The wheels of a creeper rattled, telling me where to seek him out. Blue coveralls, then a long, chestnut beard, then the aloof face and olive-green eyes of the man himself slowly emerged from underneath a blue sedan.

“Oh, hey there.”

He sat upright in his creeper and pushed himself up to standing with great agility, never once losing his grip on the tool in his hand. It was attached to an orange cord with a bit of a coil and a spring. It stretched from a much larger machine that was parked against the wall.

“Sorry I’m late,” I apologized. “I know it’s closing time.”

“Did the afternoon donut buffet down at the station keep you?”

I smirked. One of my favorite things about Cletus was, he gave me shit. He was one of the few people in town who hadn’t treated me with pity after word got out about Floyd. Cop jokes were his favorite. He’d been ribbing me over my association with the department for years.

“Next time, I’ll ask the chief to buy extra, just for you.”

Cletus gave a smirk of his own, then got down to what I was there to discuss. I’d given him a head’s up in the form of a coded text.

The only other people who knew about our arrangement were Duane, who’d helped me once or twice in Cletus’s absence and—upon my insistence—Cletus’s wife, Jenn.

“Need anything particular?”

“Anything with a nice tint on the windows will do. And I’ll need something with good leg room this time.”

Cletus raised an amused eyebrow. “You planning to grow an inch or ten overnight?”

I gave a little eye roll. “I’ll be working with a partner on this one.”

Some of the humor faded from his face. He looked mildly offended. “I thought you worked alone.”

Cletus had begged me to take him on stakeouts no fewer than a dozen times. But the way he talked about what he thought private investigators did was proof he watched too many movies. High expectations were why I’d never brought him along.

“A client wants in on the action,” I explained as he wiped his hands and started us toward the lobby. A key cabinet was hung on the garage side of the door, the kind that contained rows of rings that hung on pegs.

“And you think it’s a good idea for someone to be there in real time to see their partner with someone else?”

“My client’s not the one who’s being cheated on.”

“Huh,” Cletus tutted, his brow furrowed as he seemed to try to work out what those circumstances might be.

“It’s complicated.”

“Sure sounds like it,” he agreed.

He unpocketed his own keys and opened up his pegboard, scanning his selection, as if surveying an actual catalog rather than an array of fobs. I couldn’t ever fathom how he told one from the other given how many held the emblem of Chevy, or Dodge, or Ford. Such was Cletus Winston’s brain.

“I’ve got a Silverado that hauls ass. Good for keeping up with someone over long range. Perfect for one of the construction personas, if that fits. When you gonna use it?”

“Tomorrow.”

Ordering magnetic decals for the cars had been Cletus’s idea. Not only that, creating the fake businesses that went along with them had been a little too much fun. We put on the “Next to Godliness” decals when my cover was a Christian housecleaning service; the “Nailed It! Builders” decals when my cover was construction; and the “School of Hard Stops” decals when my cover was a driving academy.

“You in a hurry?” Cletus wanted to know.

I shook my head. “Not particularly.”

“We haven’t done the glass one in a while.” Then, he smiled the conspiratorial smile he gave whenever he helped me on my missions. “Gimme half an hour to jack it up.”

“Mornin’,Loretta.”

Buck’s voice announced his presence when I was deep inside the truck, bent over and leaning far into the back seat. I’d opened my garage door in anticipation of his arrival. Preparation for any job involved hand-selecting tools and tech and placing them at the ready.

My go-bag was a modified camera bag with small compartments sectioned inside. Today’s contents included three different kinds of listening device, a dash cam in case we needed a feed, and a variety of wearable minicameras in case we needed to get out, and get close.

Conscious of my protruding ass and how ridiculous I might look stretching myself to reach the middle, I straightened up. Performing certain tasks when you were short was no elegant thing.

“Oh, hey Buck,” I said casually, smoothing my navy polo shirt, which bore the same insignia as the truck decal. Today, we were masquerading as specialty installers. “Pane in the Glass” had been Cletus’s idea for a cover after he’d come back from a government seizure auction with a truck that had a rack. We’d had this decoy in circulation for two years.

I tried not to look at his arms as I turned around to face Buck. Being near him had given me empathy for a cleavage man’s plight. Just as some men had never been able to keep their eyes from floating down to my ample bosom, I had serious trouble keeping my eyes off of his biceps.

“I brought coffee.” He jutted his chin to the travel mugs in his hands, though, the coffee caught the least of my attention.

“Looks like you also brought the outfit you wear to knock over convenience stores.”

I couldn’t help my amused smirk. Buck looked down at his stylish dark-wash jeans, dark-blue running shoes, and the chest of his black hoodie, the cap of which was already pulled over his hair. There was no telling how well he could even see his own outfit given the dark aviator glasses perched on his nose.

“We’re going on a stakeout. I brought a disguise.”

I crossed my arms at the same time his brows knitted. “There’s no such thing as a disguise—only what people take you for. You look like you just got done with your shift bouncing at the club.”

Buck chuckled and I loved the sound. “So you’re saying I’ve got a future if being a firefighter doesn’t work out?”

Smirking bouncer Buck was sexy as hell.

“We’re trying to blend in—not rouse suspicion—which means hiding in plain sight. A guy who looks like you, dressed like that, will give people pause.”

“A guy who looks like me...” An eyebrow rose over the line of his glasses.

“Yes, a guy who looks like you.” I relieved him of his coffee. “Tall. Good-looking. Expensively dressed. Men will notice you because they’re threatened. Women will notice because they’re interested. This is not the way to blend in.”

I tried to look as dignified as possible leaning into the truck and placing the travel mugs in the cup holders. From there, I plucked up the blue polo I’d staged on the center console for Buck. It matched mine, except this one was a men’s large. Only when I handed him the proffered shirt did he seem to notice my disguise.

“Pane in the Glass?” This time, both his eyebrows were raised.

I was glad he focused on that and not my comment about him being good-looking. I closed the driver’s side door so he could see the decal and take notice of the rack.

“Where the hell did you get all of this?”

“I have a guy,” I said vaguely.

I busied myself in the truck again in order to avoid further questions. My voice faltered half a minute later when I turned around to ask him a question only for my eyes to fall upon pure sin.

Buck’s hoodie was tossed onto the roof of the truck and his shirt was off. No, not just that. His arms stretched gloriously above him and he was pulling the polo down to cover his torso. It made the muscles in his back ripple and move in the most appealing way.

Sweet Jesus.

Based on my extracurricular gardening activities, it felt right that I should pray. But hadn’t I already prayed in a different way for this moment? My peeping activities had given me views of him in all his glory from afar. But Buck was absolutely exquisite close up.

To my great relief, he didn’t seem to notice my shameless ogling. I turned back around, promising myself I wouldn’t look again until he was fully clothed.

“How do I look?”

Like a god descended to earth delivered as my own sweet torture.

But I didn’t say anything remotely close to that. Because I was a professional and couldn’t succumb to his charms. So I ignored the fact that he’d taken off his glasses and was pinning me with his baby blues in a way that stole my breath.

“Yup. You definitely look the part.”