Chapter 6
MASON
We got her truck into the shade by nine, which was generous considering the thing deserved a shallow grave and a prayer.
The Airbnb had a detached carport off the side, more decorative than useful, built with smooth wooden beams and a clay-tile roof that looked like it belonged in a resort brochure.
Still, it cut the sun enough to keep the engine from cooking while I worked.
The desert was already heating up, the kind of dry heat that didn’t sweat on you at first. It just waited.
Got under your clothes. Pulled water out of your skin by inches.
Sienna stood beside the truck with a mug of coffee in one hand and suspicion in every line of her body.
She had changed into jeans and a thin white T-shirt that had probably been harmless when she put it on.
Then she’d helped me push her truck out of the open yard and under the carport, because of course she had.
Didn’t matter that I told her to steer and let me do the rest. She’d planted both hands against the driver’s side pillar and shoved like the truck had personally insulted women in STEM.
Now her shirt stuck to her chest from the effort, clinging in places I had no business noticing before breakfast had even settled. The cotton was damp between her breasts, molded to the curve of her ribs, and when she lifted her coffee, the fabric pulled tight across her nipples.
I looked at the engine.
Hard.
Metal was safer.
Metal didn’t smirk when it caught you looking.
“You always glare at machinery like it owes you money?” she asked.
I grabbed the hood prop and locked it in place. “This one does.”
“She has a name.”
“Of course she does.”
Sienna came closer, boots crunching over the packed dirt. “Her name is Dolores.”
I stopped moving and looked at her over the engine. “You named your dying truck Dolores?”
“She’s resilient, underappreciated, and occasionally dramatic.”
“She’s overheating, leaking coolant, and knocking like there’s a tiny man with a hammer trapped inside the block.”
“Dolores contains multitudes.”
I should’ve hated that.
I almost smiled instead, which pissed me off, so I reached for the socket set and made my face do nothing. “Stay out of the way.”
She took one slow sip of coffee. “There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The charming customer service experience.”
“I’m not customer service.”
“No. Clearly you’re more of a roadside intimidation specialist.”
I glanced at her. She was watching me over the rim of her mug, hair pulled up messy on top of her head, a few dark pieces loose around her face.
No makeup except whatever was left from last night, and that somehow made her harder to ignore.
Road dust still clung faintly at her neck.
The scratch from that demon cat was wrapped in clean gauze.
Her mouth looked soft and mean at the same time.
Bad combination.
I bent over the engine. “You always talk this much when you’re nervous?”
Silence.
Good hit.
Too good, maybe.
When she answered, her voice had lost the teasing edge. “You always act like a jackass when you’re uncomfortable?”
I turned a wrench harder than I needed to. “I’m comfortable.”
“Sure.”
The word came out dry enough to start a brush fire.
I looked back at her. “You want my help or not?”
“I want my truck fixed. I’m still undecided on whether that requires you as a person.”
“Truck’s not gonna fix itself because you insult it with affection.”
“I don’t insult Dolores. I encourage her.”
“You drove her across half the country with a coolant leak.”
“I didn’t know it was a coolant leak.”
“You knew the gauge was climbing.”
She shifted her weight, and her chin went up. “I knew I had five and a half hours left, a job waiting, an apartment I haven’t seen in person, a cat who hates me, and exactly not enough money for another disaster. So yes, I made a calculated decision.”
“That wasn’t calculated.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Excuse me?”
“That was desperate.”
The air changed.
Not big. Not loud. Just enough that even the desert seemed to shut up and listen.
Sienna set her coffee on the fender with too much care. “Careful, Mason.”
My name in her mouth should not have done anything to me.
It did.
I straightened, wiping grease off my fingers with a rag. “You want me to lie?”
“I want you to remember you don’t know me well enough to diagnose my choices.”
“I know a bad risk when I see one.”
Her smile came quick and bitter. “Of course you do. You’ve been calling me one since last night.”
That landed where I deserved it.
I looked away first.
Mistake.
Her gaze dropped to my hands, then my arms, then the tattoos disappearing under the sleeves of my Henley. Not shy. Not coy. Clinical, almost. Like she could pretend she was observing instead of looking.
I knew the difference.
So did she.
The corner of her mouth lifted.
“Something funny?” I asked.
“No.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
“My face is processing data.”
“Data.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She leaned one hip against the truck, folding her arms. That made the T-shirt pull tighter. She noticed me notice, because of course she did, and her smirk deepened by half a degree. “You seem tense.”
I stepped closer before I thought better of it. Not touching. Close enough to make her tilt her head back a little to keep my eyes. “You keep pushing.”
“You keep reacting.”
“I’m fixing your truck.”
“You’re trying to.”
“You wanna do it?”
“I’m a scientist, not a mechanic.”
“Then stop poking the mechanic.”
Her gaze flicked down my chest, slow enough to be deliberate, then back up. “Maybe the mechanic is easy to poke.”
Heat moved under my skin.
Not gentle heat. Not soft. The kind that hit behind the ribs and headed straight down. I looked at her mouth for one second too long, and she saw that too.
Damn woman saw everything.
I stepped back and yanked at the hem of my Henley. The fabric was already sticking to my shoulders, and the last thing I needed was grease across one of the few shirts I owned that didn’t have holes, oil stains, or blood on it. “Hold this.”
I tossed the rag at her.
She caught it against her chest. “Hold what?”
“My patience.”
Then I pulled the Henley over my head.
The air hit my skin, cooler under the carport than out in the sun. Not by much. I wadded the shirt and threw it through the open window onto the driver’s seat, then reached for the tool tray again.
Sienna stopped talking.
That was new.
I looked at the engine because looking at her right then would be stupid.
I knew what she was seeing. Tan skin. Ink over my shoulders and down my arms, across my chest, over the ribs where old scars cut pale through the design.
Cut abs, yeah, because club life didn’t make room for soft unless a man worked hard to earn it.
A scar low on my side from a knife fight in Tucson.
Another white line near my collarbone from a wreck that should’ve killed me.
I had been looked at before. Plenty.
Bar women looked hungry. Rylee used to look proud, then later embarrassed, like the same body she’d once crawled over had become something she didn’t want standing too close to her polished new life.
Sienna looked like she was mad at herself for wanting to keep looking.
That was worse.
Better.
Both.
I grabbed a wrench. “Problem?”
“Nope.”
Her voice had gone too smooth.
I glanced over.
She was staring at the engine with violent focus. Her cheeks had a little color in them now, not much, just enough to make me meaner than I needed to be.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“You got quiet.”
“Scientific observation requires silence.”
“Bullshit.”
Her eyes cut to mine. “Fine. You took your shirt off like a stripper with unresolved anger issues. I noticed. Congratulations.”
A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it.
Small. Rough. Rusted from lack of use.
Her expression shifted. Just for a second. Like she hadn’t expected that sound from me and didn’t know where to put it.
I didn’t either.
So I turned back to the engine. “You always say exactly what you’re thinking?”
“No. This is me filtering heavily.”
“Terrifying.”
“You have no idea.”
I did not need to like her.
I really did not need to like her.
I leaned deeper under the hood and went back to work.
The coolant residue had dried in chalky trails near the hose clamp.
Belt was cracked worse than I thought. Battery terminals had corrosion.
Oil smelled wrong. The knock in the engine bothered me most, though.
Deep. Ugly. Expensive. This wasn’t just a truck that had been pushed too hard.
This was a truck that had been dying for a while and had finally found a dramatic place to collapse.
Sienna hovered beside me for another minute before she lost the fight with herself.
“What are you checking now?”
“The belt.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
I pointed. “Cracks.”
She leaned in close, her shoulder brushing mine. Her hair slipped forward, and that green apple scent hit again under coffee and heat. Clean, sharp, stubborn.
I didn’t move.
Neither did she.
For a few seconds, we were both bent over the engine, close enough that her arm grazed mine every time she breathed. Her T-shirt brushed my bare side once, damp cotton against hot skin, and my grip tightened on the wrench hard enough to bite into my palm.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
“Sensitive?” she murmured.
I turned my head.
Bad idea.
Her face was right there. Too close. Sunlight filtered through the carport beams, striping her cheek, catching the gold-brown flecks in her eyes. She smelled like coffee and borrowed soap and bad decisions waiting for permission.
“Careful,” I said.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth. Fast. Almost accidental.
Almost.
“Is that advice or a threat?”
“Depends what you do next.”
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Not a gasp. Not some fragile little thing. More like her brain had run into her body at full speed and both sides were arguing over jurisdiction.
Then Bandit screamed from inside the truck.