Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Monday morning arrived with the kind of pristine clarity that made the mountains look like they’d been cut from glass and placed against a painted sky.
Dylan had spent the weekend in self-imposed exile, walking the trails above town where she could think without the weight of watching eyes, turning Marcus Rowan’s offer over in her mind like a restoration project she couldn’t quite figure out how to approach.
Ten thousand dollars. A restoration bay of her own.
The chance to work on cars that belonged in museums—Duesenbergs and Bugattis, the kind of automobiles that were art as much as engineering.
It should have been an easy decision. Would have been, for someone who hadn’t spent five years accidentally growing roots in a place she’d only meant to pass through.
The Pinnacle Garage welcomed her at six with its familiar embrace of motor oil and possibility.
She’d beaten everyone there, as always, needing the quiet hour before the day began its demands.
The Ferrari sat in her bay like a satisfied cat, its fuel injection problem solved, waiting for its owner to remember where he’d left it.
Three days it had been sitting there, three days at five hundred dollars a day in storage fees that the owner would pay without blinking.
Rich people, she’d learned, had different relationships with their possessions—they could afford to forget about things worth more than most people’s houses.
Dylan made coffee in the ancient machine, the ritual as necessary as breathing.
Black, no sugar, no complications—the same way she’d been drinking it since her father had let her have her first cup at fourteen, working beside him in a garage not so different from this one.
Through the windows, she watched Laurel Valley wake up—delivery trucks making their rounds, Rose arranging pastries in the bakery window that would sell out by noon, the town preparing its daily performance of quaint mountain charm for the tourists who’d start arriving by nine.
The morning light had an autumn quality, honey thick and generous, transforming everything it touched into something worth remembering.
It painted the mountains in shades of amber and gold, turned the shop windows into mirrors of flame, made even the practical lines of the garage seem softer, more forgiving.
Her phone sat silent on the workbench. Marcus had texted twice over the weekend, professionally persistent without crossing into pushy. Today he needed an answer. Today she had to choose between the practical decision and the impractical life she’d somehow built here.
She thought about Patrick O’Hara. Aidan’s grandfather had been one of the first people to make her feel welcome in Laurel Valley, stopping by the garage in those early days when she was still learning everyone’s names and their cars’ peculiarities.
He’d had that Irish gift for making you feel like you were the most interesting person in the room, even when you were just a stranger covered in motor oil.
“You’ve got healing hands,” he’d told her once, watching her work on a 1965 Mustang. “Not everyone can bring dead things back to life. That’s a gift, that is. A kind of magic.”
She’d thought he was just being kind, the way old men sometimes were, full of blarney and compliments that cost nothing to give.
But there’d been something in his eyes—a recognition, maybe, of one outsider to another.
He’d been gone three years now, but she still sometimes expected to see him walking through the door with that rolling gait and that smile that made you believe in possibilities.
She was underneath a Bentley, addressing a minor exhaust issue that the owner insisted was “catastrophic,” when she heard the door open.
Not Ralph’s cheerful entrance that always announced itself with off-key humming, or Danny’s exhausted shuffle accompanied by the scent of baby formula.
These footsteps carried purpose, moving through the garage with the determination of someone who’d spent the weekend building up to something.
“Morning, Dylan.”
Aidan’s voice made her grip tighten on the wrench. She’d managed to avoid thinking about him for almost ten whole minutes—a personal record for the weekend.