Chapter Two
Stellan glanced at the clock, and positioned a tire onto the old Acura, then eased it on and leaned back so he could check the parking lot. Laramie still wasn’t here.
“Hurry up, man,” Craig said as he bolted the front tire on.
“Piss off,” Stellan gritted out. Sometimes he fantasized about setting Craig on fire.
“You’ve been distracted all day.”
“And yet I’ve gotten twice as much work done as you,” Stellan told him, straightening to his full height and squaring up to him. “And what are you going to say to that, Craig? You know it’s true. Murph doesn’t go to you to get something done the right way. Guess who he goes to?”
Craig looked pissed and shook his head. “Whatever.”
“Clock in, shut up, clock out, go home with all your teeth still left in your mouth. Best advice I can give you.”
Craig didn’t say anything. Good.
The sound of a car touched Stellan’s sensitive eardrums, and he leaned back again to look out the two open garage hangars to the parking lot.
A little silver Eclipse parked in one of the customer spots, and out stepped Laramie.
Stellan froze. She’d changed her clothes and had pulled her dark brunette hair out of her ponytail.
It was longer than he’d realized. She was wearing jeans and some close-toed boots, and a fitted blue button-down shirt.
She looked nervous. Quickly, she checked herself in the window reflection and then turned for the building.
Stellan flinched back to avoid being seen.
She looked…nice. Nice? No, she looked better than nice. She looked pretty, and hot, and gorgeous. Even fully clothed in a modest outfit, she looked entirely fuckable.
Stellan blinked hard and went back to putting the last two tires on the Acura. Focus. He was behaving like this because he hadn’t had sex in a while and he was wanting it bad lately. That’s all.
It was hard to concentrate when Laramie was just inside talking to Murph.
He loaded a tire on the machine wrong, and it wasn’t lined up to break the beads to pull the tire from the rim.
He had to turn it off and restart. What if Murph didn’t give her the job?
Sure, Stellan had asked him for a favor, but Murph was Murph. He did whatever he wanted.
Not fifteen minutes later though, the door to the shop opened and out came Murph. He nodded at Stellan, and then turned to say something to Laramie, who stopped in her tracks the second she locked eyes with Stellan.
He couldn’t tell if she had brown or green eyes. They were a color right between in the sunlight that was filtering through the open hangar doors.
Murph said something to her and touched her elbow, and that pulled her out of whatever charged moment they had just shared.
She gave Stellan a little wave and then smiled politely at Murph as he led her around a car to finish his tour of the service side of the shop.
“Is that the new receptionist?” Craig asked Brant from the next lift down.
“I guess so. Murph doesn’t let anyone in here unless it’s serious,” Brant said from where he was patching a nail in a tire.
“She’s hot,” Craig said, full on staring at Laramie as she walked behind Murph.
Stellan hated the hungry look in his eyes. “Work,” Stellan barked out.
“Chhh, what crawled up your ass this morning?” Craig asked, turning to get back to the F150 they were working on.
Honestly, Stellan didn’t know what was wrong with him. Of course the guys would notice Laramie. She was pretty. She probably got attention everywhere she went.
The damn growl was in his throat, and he had to swallow it down and close his eyes before he took three steady breaths. Maybe he needed to Change soon. His tiger had been off lately. Well, his tiger was always off, but lately he’d been a handful.
It was probably the Ledger Ambush reunion hanging over his head like a freaking guillotine blade.
This was his least favorite week of the year.
Mars and Dame had both been calling and texting him non-stop. He was this close to blocking both of them and moving to Mexico.
As it stood, and unbeknownst to his brothers, he was in Salt Lake City now. He’d moved back here months ago. He couldn’t stay away from the damn cemetery where his mom was buried.
Why? Because his inner tiger only felt at peace when he was suffering.
He shook his head hard against another growl and dared a glance up at Laramie. She was watching him pull the tires off the rims with the machine and nodding her head slightly at whatever Murph was telling her.
When she realized she was caught staring at Stellan, she jerked her gaze away and started looking around awkwardly, then turned her back to him completely.
The growl had vanished, and to his surprise, a smile stretched his lips. It felt good.
“Do you know her?” Craig asked as he passed.
“No, why?”
“I don’t know. She keeps looking at you.”
“You sure are paying a lot of attention to her,” Stellan pointed out.
“So are you. So is everyone in here.”
When Murph led Laramie back into the waiting area and office portion of the shop, the strangest sensation washed through Stellan. He felt at war with himself. Part of him was relieved that she was gone so the other guys would stop staring at her, and part of him hated that she was out of his sight.
Shit. It wasn’t Rabbit stuff. Couldn’t be. It wasn’t.
He shook his head hard and pulled a new tire onto the machine to load it onto the old rim.
She wasn’t a Rabbit. He wanted to fuck her, not kill her.
She wasn’t a Rabbit. She just wasn’t.
Right? Right.
He blew out a long breath and tried to ignore the flashbacks of hunting Misty that assaulted his mind.
Being back in Salt Lake City dredged up so much bad.
He had to move back here though. He had to figure himself out.
“Hey, you?” came a soft voice.
Stellan startled and jerked his attention to the open hangar doors. Laramie stood there, backlit by afternoon sunlight. She offered him a little wave. “I don’t mean to interrupt. I know you’re very busy. I just wanted to say thank you. I got the job.”
“Oh,” he said gruffly. He frowned. “You’re welcome.”
“Ummm. I’m Laramie. Wait, I already told you that earlier.” Her shoulders lifted to her ears with her deep inhalation, and she let off a nervous laugh. “Okay, I’m going to go now.”
She talked weird for a hot girl.
Craig and Brant did these stupid catcall whistles at him as Laramie disappeared around the side of the building, and Stellan turned off his machine and followed her out, flipping the guys off as he left.
“When do you start?” he asked her.
Laramie jumped and let off a little squeak as she turned around. “You’re fast,” she said with a breathless giggle.
Shit. He did try to control that when he was around humans. She was messing with his head. Distracting him. Making him forget where he was.
“I ran track,” he lied.
She let off an uncertain laugh. “I start on Wednesday. Mister Reynolds is bringing in someone special to teach me the computer systems.”
“You can call him Murph. Everyone calls him Murph.”
“Yeah, he told me that.” She rocked up onto her toes and back down. “Sooo, it was nice to meet you.”
“I shouldn’t tell you my name.”
“You shouldn’t?”
No, because he was bad news. “But you’re going to find it out.”
“Right. Because we are going to work together.” She let off another shy laugh. She didn’t have the confidence he expected from someone who looked like her.
“You’re weird,” he said.
Her face fell and she ducked her gaze. “Yeah. See you on Wednesday. I mean if you’re working.” She gave him another tiny wave and made her way to her car.
Shit. He didn’t like the churning of his insides as she got into her Eclipse.
He followed her and knocked on her window. She looked startled again and rolled it down.
“Why do your eyes look like that?” he asked, studying the moisture in them.
“It’s just been a long day,” she said thickly.
“I started a job, I panicked at a job, I quit the job, I had to mentally prepare myself for another interview, I got the job, and now some hot guy is calling me weird, and I get it. Really, I do. You aren’t the first person whose called me that, or even the tenth.
It’s just been an overwhelming day I guess. ”
“Okay.” Stellan was genuinely scared that the water in her eyes was going to make it to her cheeks. “Bring a lunch on Wednesday. The vending machines only work half the time.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Okay.” He clapped his hand on the open window. “Bye.”
“Bye,” she murmured.
And he walked away before she could cry because girl tears were the worst and he couldn’t tell between the happy kind or the not-happy kind.
And now he stood here confused watching her car pull out onto the main road, wondering why the hell he had this overwhelming urge to talk to her more.