Chapter Twenty
Brandee
I ’ve never seen a hotter man elbow deep in an engine in my entire life. And I’m not just saying that. He’s one sexy mechanic.
Brew’s bent over the hood of a vintage race car, sleeves rolled up, grease smudged across his forearms and across his cheek like war paint.
He looks like a Dior Sauvage ad that took a detour through an auto body shop.
The air in the garage smells like motor oil and steel and something else I can’t quite place—sweat, testosterone?
He doesn’t see me at first. His ball cap’s turned backward, hair curling at the edges. Sweat beads on the back of his neck. His T-shirt is clinging to his back in a way that makes my stomach flip.
I walk into the open garage bay, holding up the paper sack clutched in my fingers, and clear my throat. “So, this is your natural habitat?” I tease.
He looks up, startled, and then grins—a slow, lazy grin that turns my knees to Jell-O. “Well, well, look who brought lunch to the grease monkey.”
I walk toward him, glancing around as I weave through toolboxes and stacked tires. “Um, you’re not gonna make me eat on the hood of a greasy car, are you?”
He wipes his hands on a rag that was tucked into his back pocket. “Nah, there’s a picnic table out back by the pond.”
An old man with a lean frame and wiry gray hair and a matching beard, wearing worn-out coveralls, appears with a box in his oil-stained hands. “What the hell is this? You ordered the wrong parts,” he snaps as he walks into the bay. He startles when he looks up to see me standing with Brew.
“I ordered the parts you wrote down, old man,” Brew says.
His eyes narrow at Brew. “Bullshit. I didn’t tell you to buy this crap. I knew I should have called it in myself.”
Brew walks over and takes the box from his hands. “Now, Willis, is that any way to speak in front of a lady?”
The man reluctantly releases the mistaken parts and turns to me. His scowl transforms into a gap-toothed grin. “I apologize. It’s hard for an old man to mind his manners when dealing with these incompetent young’ns.”
“Who you call’n a young’n?” Brew quips.
The old man pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes sweat from his brow. “You.” His eyes come back to me. “He thinks he’s grown, but he’s still got a lot to learn.”
Brew comes up behind him and clasps his shoulders. “I sure do. And you’re just the smart-ass to teach me. That’s why I’m here.”
The old man scoffs. “I just made a pot of shit coffee. Would you like a cup?” he asks me.
“I’d love one,” I say, and he scoots off to a beat-up wooden door that leads to a small office.
“So, how was Bald Head?” Brew asks, leaning against the car, arms crossed.
I can’t decide if he looks better slinging drinks or covered in grease.
“We had a good time,” I say, trying not to stare at the way the sweat makes his shirt cling to his collarbone.
“We?”
“Yeah, um, Amiya came along—she’s a girl I met through my neighbor,” I say, suddenly nervous. “We rode bikes.”
He grins. “Bikes, huh? That does sound like fun.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “More fun than you’re having.”
“I’ll have you know, I just rebuilt a carburetor from scratch, and it was a blast,” he says.
“Wow. Using big words now to impress the lady?”
I glance over my shoulder to see Willis returning with two Styrofoam cups. He hands one to me and takes a huge gulp from the other.
“None for me?” Brew asks.
The old man frowns. “Something wrong with your legs?”
He shrugs, smiling. “Nope. I’ll be right back. I’m gonna wash up and grab a cup.”
I shake the bag in Willis’s direction. “I brought sandwiches from Sandcastle Cove Deli. I wasn’t sure what Brew liked, so I picked up extras if you’d like to join us for lunch,” I offer.
“Nah, I appreciate it, but lunchtime was a couple of hours ago,” he says. “I’ve gotta get back to it or that crew of mine will slack off.”
“Oh, yes, of course. I’m sorry I showed up late. I don’t mean to distract Brew from his job. I can leave and come back another day,” I say.
The old man’s brow furrows. “Why would you do that?”
I shrug. “I don’t want to get him into any trouble.”
He opens his mouth to say something just as Brew returns.
“You ready, Brandee? We can go this way.”
He gestures to a door at the back of the bay and starts in that direction. I smile as I pass Willis to follow him.
“You kids enjoy your food.”
I set the bag down on a wooden table and take a seat on the bench. I begin to pull out its contents—chicken salad, ham and cheese, tuna salad, Italian and cheesesteak sandwiches, fruit cups, barbeque and plain potato chips, and two Saran-wrapped brownies.
Brew lets out a laugh, and it’s the kind that dances along my skin. “You must be starving.”
“I didn’t know what you liked, so I got one of everything. I figured if you had a refrigerator here, you could save the rest for later, or the other mechanics could take them home.”
He grabs a chicken salad sandwich and takes a bite. “Mmm. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me with food.”
“I use all my best moves on the first date,” I say. “Gotta make it count.”
He lowers himself down beside me, knee brushing mine, and raises an eyebrow. “First date, huh?”
“Well, we’ve already seen each other naked. If this isn’t a lunch date, it’s the weirdest non-date I’ve ever had.”
He chuckles and grabs a bag of chips. “So, what you’re saying is … we’re past the small-talk stage.”
“No. We skipped it. Now I can ask you the hard-hitting questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like … when was the last time you washed those jeans?”
He looks down at his grease-slicked pants. “Honestly? I think they were new when I put them on yesterday.”
“Your back pocket is stapled on,” I point out, immediately regretting saying anything.
Nice, Brandee. Embarrass the man, why don’t you?
He lifts his hips from the bench and glances at his backside. “Oh, damn, this must be the pair I wore in the bar the other night. Some rowdy kid I helped kick out grabbed my pocket and yanked. It ripped a large hole and exposed my ass cheek, so I had Leonard staple it shut.”
I lean back on my hands, gazing at him. “So, what’s the deal with the car? It looks expensive. Are you guys restoring it for a client?” I ask, changing the subject.
He pauses for half a second—just long enough for me to catch it. Then he shrugs. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“Oh wow. That’s cool. Do you guys do engines and body work?”
“Kind of.” Brew picks at a grape from one of the fruit cups, like it’s suddenly fascinating.
“Have you worked here long?” I ask.
And he clears his throat. “I’ve known Willis since I was a kid. He and my grandfather are old friends. They used to run a little racing team together back in the day.”
I narrow my eyes. “You mean, like … NASCAR?”
“Not that big, just a dirt track team,” he says.
“Oh, that sounds fun. I don’t know much about racing. But I do know a cool car when I see one. My best friend’s husband, Langford, and his brother Graham are into old cars. They buy them and restore them all the time.”
“Langford and Graham?” he repeats.
“Yeah, Langford and Graham Tuttle. They live in Balsam Ridge. That’s where I’m from.”
Something passes on his expression.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, I’m just listening,” he says.
It feels like there’s something he’s not telling me. But I don’t push.
“So,” he says, brushing grease off his arm, “sorry about the sweaty mechanic show.”
“Please,” I scoff. “I told you, I like cars. I’m practically a gearhead.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s a carburetor do?” he asks, leaning into me, voice low and teasing.
I blink. “It … carburates.”
He bursts out laughing, head thrown back, and I can’t help but laugh, too, even if I feel like I just flunked a pop quiz.
“No brownie for you,” I say as I snatch the confections from the table.
“I’m sorry,” he says through bouts of laughter.
We sit like that for a while—talking, teasing, stealing bites of each other’s food like we’ve known one another for years instead of days. He tells me about the island’s old dirt racetrack, how it’s overgrown now but used to buzz with engines every summer weekend. I tell him about Balsam Ridge.
“My little home is nestled among the huge trees on the back side of Buck Mountain. It’s a nine-hundred-square-foot house with knotty, tongue-and-groove pine walls.”
He stares at me.
I nudge his shoulder. “Stop it.”
“I can’t help it. You’re fucking beautiful.”
I bring my eyes to his. “I like this,” I say, surprising even myself.
He tilts his head. “What do you like best? The garage? The engine grease? The romantic ambiance of industrial lighting?”
I laugh. “No. I mean … this. You. It’s nice.”
He looks at me then—really looks. “Me too.”
There’s a pregnant pause. Silence stretches between us until he clears his throat.
“So, just to clarify,” he says, “I’m getting a brownie, right?”
I snort. “You can have them both.”
He grabs one and takes a bite and hums in satisfaction.
“Thanks for lunch,” he says finally, voice low. “Like I said, I have to work late the rest of the week, but I’d really like to see you again. If you’re free on Monday, I’d love to take you out on the boat.”
“You have a boat?” I ask.
“It’s just an old fishing boat. Nothing to get excited over. But it floats. And I’ll pack the picnic this time.”
“Sure. That sounds nice.”
He stands and offers me a hand, helping me up. “Awesome. I’ll pick you up at your aunt’s boat dock. I’ll text you the time.”
My heart does a little tap dance in my chest. I tell it to calm down, but it’s not listening.
We walk around the garage together, hands brushing, not quite holding. An engine purrs quietly, then revs in one of the bays.
He stops at my truck. “This yours?” he asks as he looks at the GMC Sierra 2500HD Denali Ultimate.
“It is.”
He lets out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of truck.”
I shrug. “I live on the side of a mountain. I need a lot of truck to get up and down it, especially in the snow.”
He opens my door, and once I’m seated, he leans in for a spine-tingling kiss before stepping back and shutting me in.
I’m in trouble.
Big, greasy, brownie-flavored trouble.