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He remembered her laughter and her smile. He remembered touching her, holding her, and he had to restrain the need to remember sharing dreams with her. Once, they had had such dreams. Simple dreams. A dog and a kid. Maybe a pool in the backyard.
And now here he was, hidden from view, watching as his wife’s too somber face lifted to the dawn, and he swore he felt her whisper his name.
A few more hours, he thought. He would check in with Jordan, shower, and change clothes before heading to the garage.
When he had first gone back to Texas with the other members of the Elite Operational Unit he had joined, Noah had told himself he would do the job and leave. That simple. As he stood staring at his wife, he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that simple at all.
Today,
he would step back into her life as another man. A man whose hungers were so dark, ran so deep, that sometimes they made him pause. A renegade. A wild card. He would come to her, not as Nathan Malone, but as Noah Blake. And he would come into her life as nothing she could ever imagine.
CHAPTER THREE
“Hey, Belle, Mike Conrad just called about his car and that damned motor hasn’t come in yet. He’s on his way here and he sounds drunk again. There’s some badass waiting in your office for Rory, who called in drunk this morning, and you’re making me crazy having to talk to your legs. Get the hell out from under that car.”
This wasn’t good. Her receptionist/gopher was sounding less than pleased and more irritated and harried than first thing in the morning should be calling for. She stared up at the innards of the vehicle she was working on: grease and grime and years of neglect met her inspection. It almost reminded her of her own life, she thought with a grimace.
“Answer me sometime today, Belle.” Toby was sounding more harried by the minute. “Look, this dude is a major badass. He’s going to crush my head and shove it in my pocket like a damned baseball if you don’t talk to him.”
Her lips almost twitched. Toby, with his gangly, too tall body and intensity sometimes reminded her of Nathan’s brother Rory when she had first met him. And he could be just as melodramatic as Rory had once been.
Sabella pushed tiredly against the underside of the motor, sending the creeper rolling across the cement until her head was free, leaving her to stare up at Toby, the young man she had hired to take care of the office.
His shoulder-length light brown hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, his brown eyes filled with anxiousness as his forehead creased into a frown.
Dammit, she didn’t have time for this.
“I told Mike the motor would be ready tomorrow, not today.” She heaved herself upright, sitting with her jean-clad legs spread over the narrow hard plastic device used to maneuver beneath the vehicles as she lay back to work beneath them. She propped her arms on her knees, staring up at him in exasperation.
She wiped her grimy fingers negligently against the side of her jeans before brushing the loose strands of her dark brown and blond-streaked hair back from her face.
“We’re not hiring, and Rory will be here when he gets here. That’s all I know. Now take care of it.” She moved to lie back down, determined to finish the final tuneup of the sedan that the mechanics had neglected to inform her was sitting out back. Mike Conrad wasn’t the only one waiting on his vehicle.
“Oh, no you don’t.” He shook his head fiercely as she moved to push herself back under the car. “I can’t handle this dude, Belle. He’s like the Grim Reaper’s cousin or something. He’s not part of my job description, ya know? You deal with him.”
Sabella pushed back the anger, drawn more from her own impatience than Toby’s attitude. The boy was normally pretty stable and dealt with aggravated customers with a flair she envied.
“Just tell him to come back in the morning. Rory will be here . . .” She hung her head as he began shaking his head violently. “Fine.”
She struggled to her feet, picking up the creeper and propping it against the side of the garage wall as she grabbed a stained towel and began trying to rub the oil from her hands. After a few seconds, she tossed the rag back to the bench and stalked through the four-car holding bay to the office beyond.
They couldn’t afford a new mechanic, no matter how much she needed one to keep the garage profitable. She was going to lose her ass here, and she knew it. If she didn’t manage to straighten up the mess she had allowed to develop in those first horrific three years after her husband’s death, she was going to lose the garage, and her home. The benefits she had received just weren’t enough to save it all.
She couldn’t lose the home she and Nathan had shared. She’d worked three years to rebuild it. She couldn’t lose it.
God, she couldn’t lose that last connection to him. It was all she had left.
“Tell Danny I want that car finished and out of here this afternoon,” she ordered Toby as they neared the office. “Tell him we can finish the Carltons’ truck later this evening, but Jennie needs her car to get to work and it took too long to get those parts as it is. I have everything ready, it just needs going over and testing.”
“On my way.” Toby nodded before turning and loping over to the far side of the garage.
“And don’t run,” she muttered, knowing he wouldn’t pay attention to that order if he did hear her. He was like a puppy. All gangly legs and nervous energy.
And she hadn’t even asked him the employee wannabe’s name. She shook her head, pushing her fingers through her hair before jerking the office door open and coming to a hard, cold stop.
Arrogance shimmered off him. Dark blue eyes seared into her brain, glowing from a face that was sun bronzed and savagely hard. Flat cheekbones, a nose that was just a little off center, lips that were sensual but just a tad thin. A dark, short black beard covered his face, closely cropped and giving him a dangerous appearance. Long black hair was pulled back from his face and secured at his nape.
A shiver raced over her skin, a primal warning of danger, as she stared at him. He was lean and tall, but she bet the muscles beneath that black leather jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and riding chaps were like steel. Heavy boots covered big feet, and he stood staring her from beneath thick, too thick, silky black lashes.
