Chapter Six
Meredith
Iknew Luke had a shitty childhood. It seemed like everyone who worked for Road Ready Mechanics had.
He hadn’t told me the details but he didn’t need to.
It was painted all over his face. What wasn’t clear was why he was so put off by the idea of a flash tattoo day.
I understood artists being loyal to their work, but we were here to do damage control.
The thing about him that wasn’t hard to understand was that he was a total flirt and I couldn’t help but flirt back. We needed to be focusing on the task at hand and instead, we seemed to talk about sex every other sentence.
By the time five o’clock rolled around, I was desperate for air that Luke wasn’t breathing. Luckily, Rosalind had invited her sister, Violetta, her sister-in-law, Charlotte, and I over for a girls’ night while her husband, Derek, was working late.
A girls’ night was exactly what I needed to either forget about my problems or dump them all at my friends’ feet and ask them to fix them.
I pulled up in front of Rosalind’s house, a cute little rancher that had chrysanthemums and pumpkins on the front porch. Rosalind opened the door before I even knocked. “You’re here!” She pulled me into a hug. “Come on in, dinner’s ready.”
I greeted the other two women and sat down at the table.
I had known Violetta and Rosalind both for years but had only met Charlotte during my last visit.
She was Derek’s sister and it was clear height ran in the family.
Derek was a towering six foot five, but Charlotte wasn’t exactly small at five foot ten.
Someone put a wine glass, full to the top with red, in front of me, and my plate was filled with pasta.
I took a bite of the creamy pasta and my eyes rolled back in my head.
“I so needed carbs, wine and girls’ night. ”
Rosalind and Violetta shared a look. “How has the first week at the shop been?”
I leaned my elbows on the table and eyed the pair. “You two knew that Luke worked there, didn’t you?”
Violetta shrugged and blushed. “So what if he does?”
“You know darn well that we slept together the last time I was in town.” I hadn’t actually admitted it, but we hadn’t been subtle either.
“You didn’t confirm or deny, plus you didn’t tell us where you got the job until you were already on your way here. Since it is only a month, I figured it wasn’t worth worrying you about,” Vi said diplomatically.
I frowned. “A heads-up would have been helpful.”
Rosalind took a sip from her glass. “Was it awful?”
I sighed and slumped in my chair. “No, he’s still amazing and hot.”
“If you’re expecting pity, you’re doing a shit job,” Charlotte said, taking the plates to the kitchen.
“Just tell us what happened,” Rosalind demanded, bouncing in her chair.
I filled them in on the flirting, my desire not to have my career tank again and the fact that I can’t get him out of my head.
“Well, fuck him,” Charlotte said, pouring more wine into my glass.
“What? He didn’t do anything wrong,” I said defensively.
She shook her head. “Not fuck him, like fuck that guy is a jerk. I mean fuck him as in, fuck the awkward right out of the situation, you know? Have a pants-off dance-off. Do the horizontal macarena or whatever the saying is.”
I looked to Rosalind and Violetta and they both nodded their agreement.
I threw up my hands. “Your judgment is all impaired by too many orgasms with your Canadian hunks. I can’t sleep with him. We work together.”
“Technically, you already slept with him, so what does it matter?” Violetta pointed out. Even three glasses of wine in, she was still the poised one of the bunch.
“It matters because I can’t risk this job. This is a really good opportunity to get some experience outside of the realm of Huxley influence. How could I jeopardize that for great sex?”
“Ah ha, so the sex was great,” Charlotte said. “You wouldn’t even admit you two had been together before. Now, we’re getting the details. Dish, girl! Dish!”
I thunked my head back to rest against the back of the chair. “Fuck, it was so good. The man has artist hands and manual labor hands. Not to mention a really great di—”
“This is too much info,” Violetta said. “The man works for my boyfriend. I see him all the time. I don’t need to know about anything below the belt.”
“Oh, that is awkward. You don’t really need a detailed map of every cock vein,” Charlotte said to Violetta. “You can tell me the good stuff later.” She winked at me.
I slapped my hand over my mouth and stifled a giggle.
“Maybe it would be smart to get him out of your system. Just a one and done thing,” Rosalind said.
I frowned. “Did that work out for any of you?”
They all looked at each other and burst out laughing. “It’s hard to limit it to once a day, let alone once a lifetime,” Violetta said, a blush coloring her cheeks.
Charlotte nodded her agreement. “I hear you. Nick may be over forty, but if I put on the right lingerie, he’s good for a few rounds.”
“I really didn’t need to know that. Thank you, Charlotte.” I said.
She shrugged. “When you have an amazing man, you brag about him.”
“The difference is, I don’t have him and we work together. That is a complication I can’t get past.” My voice had taken on a whine.
“You’re right, our situations were different, just don’t dismiss the idea completely. Luke’s a good guy and you deserve a little stress relief,” Violetta said.
Their words stuck with me as I arrived at the shop the next day.
The project for today was to hang all the frames on the wall.
When I walked in, I was surprised to find Luke already hard at work.
Not just hard at work, but he had a tape measure hanging from the pocket of his jeans.
It was pulling them lower on his hips, revealing a little tease of flesh below the hem of his shirt.
He had a screw gun in one hand and a pencil behind his ear.
There was a bit of drywall dust in his hair, and my brain short-circuited.
He was hot on the mechanic calendar, flexing and covered in grease. He was hot when he was tattooing, intently focused on his art, but handyman Luke was giving me ideas. Ideas that involved him in nothing but a tool belt.
“Morning.” He smiled brightly, then his brows fell. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, no, just too much wine at girls’ night. The frames look great already.”
He looked back at his handiwork. He already had the first row in place and was just starting the second.
“I didn’t realize you were starting so early.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, better if the noisy, dirty stuff is done before the customers arrive. Plus I felt like an ass about going off on you at the store yesterday.” He stepped closer. “I know your job is to get us out of this mess.”
My brain had stuck on the phrase noisy, dirty stuff but caught up to the present when I realized he was apologizing to me. “It’s all good… I get it. You have a history with this place. I don’t have that yet.”
He licked his lips and nodded. “Why don’t you finish your coffee, then you can give me a hand getting this finished.”