Chapter 7
seven
ISABELLE
“Marcus, I told you, I can’t write that in the column.
It’s not allowed and it would never get past my editor.
” I drove with one hand as I leafed through the notebook I had on the passenger seat beside me.
I was driving a back road into Hade Harbor, having just visited a library a few towns over to do research for a paper.
Yes, I was a library nerd who loved visiting different libraries.
A coffee stop and a few hours in a library was pretty much my dream day out. Exciting, I know.
I turned the wheel this way and that, following the bendy road that hugged the coast. Out here it was just sea crashing into rocks, a hell of a fall, and towering pines. It would be creepy if it weren’t so beautiful.
“I’m telling you, it’s the scoop of the century, but whatever, blow your big break,” Marcus sighed.
I opened my mouth to argue with him, just as my car gave a little shudder. What was that? I lost speed, despite pressing on the accelerator. Panic shot through me.
“Fuck,” I murmured, still connected to Marcus over Bluetooth.
“What’s wrong?”
“My car is being weird. I think I have to pull over. Is it overheating? I don’t smell smoke or see, like, flames or anything.”
“If you could see flames inside the car, I’d say nice knowing you. Pull over before you actually end up broken down in the middle of the road. It’s safer,” Marcus instructed.
“Yeah, ok, I’m doing it,” I told him. I guided the car over to the side. “Now that I think about it, I might have missed my last service.”
“When were you supposed to have it?”
“Last month, maybe,” I muttered, and shut the engine off. The sound it made when I did wasn’t good at all.
“Great. Well, you’re reaping the rewards of that smart decision right now. Luckily for you, I know someone who can help. I’ll make a call.”
“Shouldn’t I call roadside assistance or something?”
“I said I know someone. I’ll call. You sit tight. If you call a regular place without any connections, they’ll make you wait for hours.”
I looked out the windows at the deep, dark woods alongside the car. I didn’t want to wait here for hours. Nope. No, thank you.
Twenty minutes later, I was rethinking my decision to take Marcus’ word for sending help, when a car appeared on the road. I watched it in my rearview as it slowed. I breathed a sigh of relief when it drove past, but my anxiety came roaring back when it pulled over in front of me.
A man got out. Nondescript, middle-aged. He ambled over to my car. I rolled my window down a crack.
“You got car trouble, Miss?”
“Looks like it.”
He watched me through the glass, then circled his finger, like he wanted me to roll the window down more. I ignored him.
“Need a hand? I could look under your hood.”
The leer in his eyes didn’t fill me with confidence that this guy was any kind of expert.
“Thanks, but I already called someone,” I told him.
He sighed, looking around. I knew what he was going to see. There was no one here.
We were alone.
“Who’d you call? They’re going to take ages. Step out of the car and let me have a look.”
“It’s fine, I don’t mind waiting,” I insisted.
The guy’s smile dropped. “Look, quit yanking me around—”
Then it floated to us, breaking the tension building inside my chest.
The rumble of a powerful motorcycle.
The lone rider topped the hill beyond us, and then dipped out of view again.
“That’s him. The one I’m waiting for,” I heard myself say. I wasn’t sure why I was so confident that this was Marcus’ guy, but I was. And deep down, I knew it wasn’t just some rando from the auto shop. It was the man himself. Minutes later, I was proven right.
Cole pulled off the road onto the shoulder beside me. He shut off the engine and stood, swinging his leg over the bike with practiced ease, and approaching. Good God, the man was fine. A piece of brutal, intense art.
“What’s going on?” His voice was a low rasp.
I unlocked my car door and got out.
The man who had been lingering outside stepped back. His body language immediately shifted from confident to nervous.
He looked over at me. “I was just seeing if she needed a hand.”
Cole looked at me, waiting for me to confirm or deny that statement.
I had a sudden, heady feeling of power. Cole was like a lethal weapon, and right now, it felt like I had the power to point it wherever I wanted.
If I told him that this man had been making inappropriate comments…
a shiver worked through me at the thought of Cole bursting into action with all the swagger and skill of the other night.
“Yeah, he offered to help, but I told him that I’d called someone.”
Cole watched me a little longer, inviting me to elaborate. When I didn’t, he looked back at the guy. He gave him a lengthy inspection, from the toes of his shoes up to his thinning hair.
“That’s very neighborly of you,” he said at last, and flashed a smile that didn’t look impressed at all. “But I’m here now. You can go about your day.”
The guy hesitated. “But—”
“I said go now, while I’m in a good mood.” Cole’s voice wasn’t quite so light now, and the man heard it.
He nodded and made for his car.
We both watched him drive off.
“I don’t have to let him go, if he was a dickhead,” Cole remarked, still watching the car as it moved away.
I shook my head. “He wasn’t convincing me to get out of the car for anything. I’m not that naive.”
“I wasn’t asking about what you had to do to feel safe. I was asking about what he did that made you feel unsafe.”
I turned and looked at him. His blue eyes were on me now, and I recalled the backroom at The Clutch and the way he had smelled up close, as I’d bandaged his hands.
“Thanks for the offer, but I can’t really go around having creeps’ arms broken, or something, just for being suggestive and inappropriate.”
“Why not?” Cole asked, turning to look at my car. He moved past me toward the hood.
“Well, for one, you have to work, I suppose. You can’t be doing that all day,” I rambled.
Cole’s mouth pulled up at one corner at my lame joke.
Then he got down to work on the car. With the hood open, he poked around inside with reassuring ease.
The man knew cars. He took his leather jacket off, his black T-shirt hugging his muscled back as he leaned over the engine.
I was staring. I couldn’t help it. There was something absolutely, devastatingly sexy about a man who knew his way around the inside of a car, and wasn’t scared to get grease on his hands. Someone who solved problems.
I walked away a little, aware that I was just staring and imagining all kinds of things, which was just as gross as the guy who’d been trying to get me out of the car.
“Ok. She’s good to go just now, but you need to bring her in for service as soon as you can,” Cole called.
I turned back to the irresistible sight of him working on the car. Oh. My God. He’d taken his T-shirt off. My brain short-circuited.
He had streaks of grease against his skin, and the tattoos, holy hell, the tattoos were something else. His entire upper body was a tapestry. I wished I could know what had gone through his head when he got every single one. Where had it been? Who had he been with?
“Yeah, I missed my last service,” I told him.
He nodded. “I can see that.” To my disappointment, he pulled his T-shirt back on.
“So, I can drive from here? It’s ok?”
“It’s fine, but like I said, as soon as you can, get a full service.”
“Ok, good. What’s your bank info? I’ll send you a bank transfer.”
Cole shook his head.
I hurried to my car and reached inside for my purse.
“Cash?”
“No charge.”
I scoffed. “I can hardly call the owner of the shop out to fix my car for free.”
“You know Marcus. Marcus’ friends don’t pay.”
“Oh, well. Ok, then. Thanks.”
He nodded and shrugged his jacket back on, wiping his greasy hands on a bandanna from his pocket.
“So, I guess I’ll be going,” I said, suddenly feeling awkward.
This wasn’t the man I’d thought he’d be, from my research into his business.
After the shocking shoot-out the other night, I’d half convinced myself that Cole Bailey had to be a hardened criminal, following in his convict father’s footsteps.
But he didn’t feel like that today, coming to the aid of his younger brother’s friend, at no charge.
He hadn’t felt like that the other night either, protecting me, patching me up.
I didn’t know what to feel.
“I’ll follow,” he said, getting onto his bike.
I paused with my hand on my car door. “Follow what?”
“You.”
“Why? Is the car likely to break down again already?”
He shook his head. Nope. It wasn’t that, then…
“Because of that creep?”
Cole just shrugged. “You never know. Let’s go.”
I could see that arguing with him wasn’t going to get me anywhere, and besides, I was officially late for a class.
I got into my car and started up. It started smoothly, no hint of it having had a problem only half an hour before.
I pulled out, passing Cole on his bike. He had his head turned, watching me.
For some reason, the steadiness of his gaze made me flush.
Being the center of attention for a man like that was no easy thing, especially for someone who mostly flew under the radar.
I wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous like some of my friends, or incredibly smart like others. I wasn’t particularly funny, or brave or insightful. I was just me. A people-pleasing good girl who had spent her life doing whatever her parents had decided was best for her.
I was a rule follower with a big mouth, who was all bark and no bite, and had been described in the newsroom as pushy and annoying more than once.
But when my eyes connected with Cole’s, I forgot those things about myself.
I drove past, being overly careful to follow the rules, self-conscious that he was right on my tail.
We drove through town, and toward the HHU campus. At the gates, I slowed slightly, before pulling down the road that led to my dorm. Cole pulled to a stop at the edge of the road there, watching my car until it turned a corner.