CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lee watched Alys as she drew blood from a senior dog for a full blood panel. There had been several appointments that morning, and he and Dr. Carl had done surgery on a cat that had an injured leg. It had taken longer than they’d anticipated, so he’d missed having lunch with Rori.
As soon as this appointment was done, he planned to see how she was doing.
“There we go,” Alys announced as she ruffled the fur around the dog’s ears. “We’re all done. You’re such a good boy.”
Lee talked to the owners about what to watch the dog for, then he walked them out to the reception area, while Alys stayed behind to clean up the exam room. After he’d said goodbye and they’d left, Lee turned his attention to Rori.
Immediately, he could tell that something was wrong. Her brow was furrowed as she sat at the reception desk, staring at her phone.
“Everything okay?” Lee asked.
She looked up at him as she set her phone to the side. “I’m… not sure.”
He crossed his arms on the raised ledge in front of her. “What’s happened?”
She didn’t reply right away, as if she was debating telling him. Lee tried to ignore how that made him feel.
“I took my car in for an oil change this morning.”
“Was there an issue?”
“I don’t know. I just got a call from the garage telling me there’s a bunch of work that needs to be done on it.”
Lee frowned. “What garage did you take it to?”
When she told him, he shook his head. “I wish I’d known you needed to take your car in. Blake is a mechanic at a garage here in town, but not that one.”
Rori’s shoulders slumped. “I chose it because it was the closest one for me to walk to work after I dropped my car off. The reviews online weren’t bad.”
“Apparently they have a history of taking advantage of women.” Lee pulled out his cell phone. “What did you tell them?”
“They just left a message because I was on the phone with someone wanting an appointment. I need to call them back.”
“Okay. Hold off for a minute.” He brought up Blake’s contact information and tapped the screen to call him. When Blake answered, Lee greeted him, then said, “Do you think you could spare an hour or so this afternoon?”
“Probably,” Blake said. “Why?”
“Rori took her car to your competition for an oil change, and now they’re telling her there’s a bunch of other stuff wrong with the vehicle.”
Blake groaned. “That’s likely not true. Let me talk to Stan, and I’ll call you back. I assume you’re wanting me to go to the garage to pick up her car?”
“Yes. I think that might be better than her going.”
“Ask her if that’s what she wants,” Blake told him. “I don’t want to force her to do something she isn’t comfortable with.”
“Will do.” After he hung up, Lee turned back to Rori. “Blake is willing to go get your car, if you’d like. He’ll get them to tell him what’s wrong with it.”
“I hate to inconvenience him.” Rori wrapped her arms across her waist.
Frustration filled Lee. When would she come to understand that helping her wasn’t an inconvenience for him or anyone else?
She hadn’t even asked for a recommendation for a mechanic. The thirty seconds it would have taken for them to tell her to take the car to Blake would have been nothing.
At the same time, he had to admire her for doing things for herself.
He’d had a girlfriend during college who’d thought that once they started dating, he’d do all the “guy” stuff for her. Which he hadn’t minded at first. But eventually it had gotten to where he was doing far more for her than he had time for, what with his classes, homework, and a part-time job. He’d wished that she would at least have taken care of a couple of the things she’d heaped on him. Like taking out her own garbage.
But now he was falling in love with a woman who he wanted to rely on him for things, and she kept doing everything for herself. He didn’t know if this independence that Rori exhibited was her personality or if she’d been forced by life situations to develop it.
From little things she’d revealed, Lee suspected it was that she’d never had anyone to rely on, to turn to for help, so she’d learned to just do it all herself.
It was admirable, to be sure, but Lee also wanted her to know that she was now surrounded by people who were happy to help her. Who wanted to help her.
When his phone rang, Lee answered it, hoping Blake would be able to help Rori out.
“Stan gave me the green light to go pick up Rori’s car and, if she’d like, to bring it here and look it over to see if there’s any truth to what the other garage is telling her about its condition.”
“Hang on a second.” Lee looked at Rori. “What time were you going to pick up your car?”
“They said they were open until six, so I was going to go as soon as I finished work.”
After a brief back and forth, Rori accepted Blake’s offer, but she wanted to go too. Lee planned to tag along as well. He really wanted to give the mechanic a piece of his mind, but he had a feeling Blake could get the message across better.
“We’ll meet Blake at the garage,” Lee said after he hung up.
“Thank you for helping me with this.”
“We’re happy to,” Lee assured her.
“I hope that I’m not overreacting. I suppose it’s possible there really is a bunch of stuff wrong with my car. Maybe putting so many miles on it when I moved here caused problems to develop.”
“Have you noticed it running any differently?”
She shook her head. “It’s been fine. I mean, I haven’t used it a lot. But when I have, no warning lights have come on or anything like that.”
“Blake will get to the bottom of it. If the work really needs to be done, it’s better if he does it. He won’t do anything unnecessary. You can trust him one hundred percent.”
Rori sighed, her shoulders slumping. “It was stupid of me not to ask for a recommendation.”
“Not stupid,” Lee said, keeping his tone gentle, even though he had been frustrated by her not doing just that. “I realize you are still getting to know us, so it’s probably not your first instinct to ask us for help. I hope that will change.”
Rori’s eyes closed for a moment, then she said, “I’ll try.”
Lee’s heart ached at the emotion he saw on her face. Would she ever be able to trust him enough for them to become something more than friends? Love required trust, and she’d need to trust that he would be true to his word. That she could trust him to do what he said he would. Especially for her.
He had thought he was showing her that she could trust him. What more could he do?
Lee needed to figure that out because he really wanted something more with her. But that would only happen if she trusted him enough to want that, too.
For now, he’d keep showing her that he was there for her. And that there was no one else he’d rather be helping.
When the workday ended, he and Rori left the clinic and got into his car. He could tell that Rori was nervous, and he was a little as well. Confrontations were never fun, and he suspected that Rori avoided them whenever possible.
He parked on the street across from the garage. Before he got out of the car, he turned to Rori. “It’s going to be okay.”
She gave him a small smile. “I hope so.”
“You’re not alone.”
Rori exhaled heavily, and her eyelids fluttered closed for a moment. Lee reached out and rested his fingers on her hand. She looked down at their hands, and for a moment, he wondered if she’d pull away. But she didn’t.
“Let’s do this. Once it’s dealt with, you can relax.”
She nodded, then they got out of the car. Lee glanced around to see if Blake was there yet. He spotted his truck just as the man was getting out.
Blake joined them, greeting Lee with a squeeze of his shoulder and shaking Rori’s hand. “How do you want to handle this?”
Lee looked at Rori, letting her voice her opinion first.
“I guess I want to see what they have to say,” Rori said. “Then go from there.”
“Sounds good,” Blake replied. “It’s possible there really is work that needs to be done, but just in case there’s not… I’ll be there to point that out.”
Maybe it was a bit of overkill for him to go in with Rori too, but Lee wanted to be there for her.
The three of them crossed the street and approached the door leading to the office side of the garage. A bell over the door chimed as they walked in.
A man around Lee’s age came in from a side door, eyeing them as he wiped his hands on a rag. His gaze stayed on Rori.
“What can I do for ya?”
“I’m here about my car,” Rori said. “I brought it in for an oil change, then I got a message from someone here saying it needed other work as well.”
The guy looked at Blake and then at Lee. “And who are you?”
“Friends,” Lee said.
“Who know a little bit about vehicles,” Blake added. “Rori asked me to come along and help her understand what you’ve found.”
“Can you tell me specifically what’s wrong with my car?” Rori asked.
The man hesitated, tucking the rag he held in the back pocket of his coveralls. “Maybe you should just pay for the oil change and take your car.”
“But you said there was some serious stuff wrong with it,” Rori protested. “Why would you let me drive the car out of your garage if that’s the case?”
The man’s gaze shifted to Blake, but he didn’t respond to Rori’s question.
“Perhaps it’s because you’re unscrupulous,” Blake stated, his voice hard. “Do you know how many people end up at the garage where I work after they’ve brought their vehicles here?”
“Your garage?”
When Blake gave the name of Stan’s garage, the other man glared at him. “Was this a trap?”
“A trap? No. Rori is new to town and didn’t know that I was a mechanic, so she brought her car here because it was closest to where she worked. Strangely enough, she trusts people to do their job with integrity. If she’d brought her vehicle to me, that would have been the case. But she brought it to you, so now we’re stepping in to make sure you don’t take advantage of her.”
“Are you telling me now that there really wasn’t anything wrong with my car?” Rori asked.
The man walked over to a board behind a desk in the corner and swiped a set of keys from it. He tossed them toward their group, and since Blake was closest, he snatched them out of the air.
“How much do I owe you for the oil change?” Rori asked as she opened her purse.
The man stared at her for a long moment, then said, “Nothing. Just get out of here.”
They didn’t need to be told twice. Lee rested a hand on Rori’s back as they headed for the door, Blake leading the way.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at your car just to make sure everything is okay,” Blake said as Rori pointed out her car in the parking lot. “Can you bring it in tomorrow morning?”
“Are you open at eight?” Rori asked.
“Yep. I’ll be there.”
“I’ll swing by and pick you up,” Lee said. “So you don’t have to worry about walking to the clinic.”
Lee could see that she was about to decline his offer. Though it went against everything inside him, he didn’t try to convince her to accept his offer.
Finally, she nodded. “That would be helpful. Thank you.”
Lee smiled, happy she’d agreed. “You’re welcome.”
He wished they could spend more time together, but hopefully, she’d agree to come for pizza the next night so they could hang out more. And maybe it was time for him to share how he felt about her. To see if she’d be interested in moving their friendship forward.
Would it make things awkward if she didn’t want that?
Perhaps for a while, but he couldn’t go on not knowing if he was just setting himself up for heartache. It would hurt if she wasn’t interested, but it would hurt even more if he continued to build their friendship up to something in his mind that could never be.
Later that evening, after eating dinner and helping clean up, Lee retreated to his bedroom with Elsa. Checking his email for the first time that day, he was happy to finally see an email from the DNA company indicating that his results were available.
Sitting down at his desk, he opened his laptop and pulled up the website. He’d chosen a company that included medical information, in addition to ancestry details. It was possible that there would be no one related to him who had used the site, so he hoped the medical info would at least be helpful in giving him a glimpse of his genetic makeup.
Once he was signed in, Lee saw right away that he had some relatives. Nerves flared to life, and he hesitated to click the link that would show him who those people were.
This was what he’d wanted, but now that he was so close to getting the information, it was scary. What might he find out?
He’d given some thought to what his birth family might be like. He’d been told he was Hispanic, but he’d wondered if there was more.
Now, that information was within his reach. It felt fortuitous to receive it right when he was wanting to get into a relationship once again. Was it God’s way of letting him know that the timing was right?
Lee took a deep breath, then blew it out. Then, with a slightly trembling hand, he tapped the touch pad to see his relatives. His biological relatives.
The page showed him that he had a lot of relatives. However, only four were close ones. Cousins, by the look of it. He clicked on their names and saw that he shared grandparents with each of them. It looked like three were on one parent’s side and one on the other. So his biological parents had had siblings.
There was an option to message them, but he chose not to.
Instead, he went to the page that revealed the breakdown of his ancestry. It showed that he was forty-three percent Indigenous American from East Central Mexico and forty-six percent British, with a high likely match coming from Northern and Central Scotland. The final eleven percent came from Spain, Portugal, and somewhere unknown.
So while he’d been told he had Hispanic blood, Lee now knew that he had European blood as well. He hadn’t thought a whole lot about how his appearance could be broken down into ethnic groups, but it seemed he carried more than just one in his genes.
Lee decided to look over the medical stuff later, choosing instead to go back to the information about his cousins. He opened a blank email and entered the email address for the private investigator he’d hired.
After typing a few lines about the information he was sending him, Lee cut and pasted the names and locations of the four people listed as the closest of relatives. He could email the people himself, but something told him he should get some background information first.
He knew that sometimes there were shocking reasons why someone’s past might have been kept from others. His thoughts went to his sister-in-law Aria, Gareth’s wife. She hadn’t known anything about her father and had also used a DNA site to see if she had any family out there once her mom had passed away.
In her case, she’d discovered a half brother who was able to tell her the story of how she’d come to be. While that had ended up being a positive experience once she’d met her brother, Lee suspected that wouldn’t be the same for him. His parents’ evasiveness the last time they’d discussed the subject of his biological family had given him a hint at what was to come.
But how bad could it possibly be?
He hoped that whatever he learned didn’t impact his relationship with his parents. If he came to understand why they had been evasive, he might never let them know he knew. Although, if the information he gleaned was that bad, he might not be able to keep his knowledge of it from showing.
Staring at the screen, Lee decided he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. And somehow, he didn’t feel in a hurry to figure everything out. He was closer than ever to getting the information he wanted, and knowing that answers were likely at hand, his impatience had disappeared.
Or was it just that he had other things dominating his thoughts these days?