His jaw flexed, and the air between us suddenly felt heavy with something I didn’t have the energy or the emotional bandwidth to name. I’d never had a man look at me like I was a puzzle he needed to solve, and certainly not with heat in their eyes. But now wasn’t the time to explore whatever this was, no matter how many butterflies were swirling in my belly.
“Ryot McCoy,” he murmured. “I run this place.”
His introduction earned him a few odd looks that I didn’t understand.
“Riley Mercer.”
Ryot wiped his hands one more time, then tossed the rag onto a nearby workbench without breaking eye contact. Then he said the last thing I expected.
“I’m not gonna quote you a repair bill right now. I have a better idea. We’re short a good tech. You clearly know your shit. Come work here. I’ll give you a bay, tools, and the parts to fix your Mustang. You work off what you need, and we’ll go from there.”
My mouth opened, closed, then opened again. I swallowed hard, searching his face for the catch, but all I found was an intense gleam in his eyes and a faint trace of grease on his strong jaw.
“You’re serious,” I finally managed, my voice barely above a whisper.
His lips quirked into the smallest hint of a smile. “Dead serious.”
I stood there, every instinct screaming at me to run while the exhausted part of me wondered if I’d just stumbled into the first good thing to happen since Shawn destroyed my life.
3
GAUGE
Riley lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “I’m just passing through.”
Maybe she really had meant to roll through Crossbend, get her Mustang fixed, and disappear before anyone remembered her face. But the second the sentence left her mouth, my instincts dug in hard.
I’d spent most of my life listening for the thing beneath the noise—the shift in pressure before something blew apart. Riley had a wrong vibration running under all that sass and talent, and I didn’t like it. Whatever had put that tightness in her eyes had already gotten too close to something my gut had decided was mine.
The Pit raged around us with its usual afternoon chaos. A grinder screamed from the fabrication bay, throwing sparks in bright orange arcs against scarred concrete. Somewhere near the dyno room, a bike barked hard enough to rattle the glass in my office window.
I could usually track every piece of my shop without needing to look. I knew which mechanic had a bad habit of leaving a torque wrench two inches off its marked spot, which apprenticewas about to strip a bolt because he rushed when watched, and which customer was going to argue over a bill before they opened their mouth. Today, I was tracking all of that and still watching Riley, as if my attention had been welded to her.
She looked worn down in a way that pissed me off for reasons I hadn’t earned the right to feel yet. Dust clung to the knees of her jeans and the worn leather of her boots. Her black hair fell loose around her shoulders, a little tangled. A faint smear of grease marked the side of her hand from when she’d checked the Mustang herself, and there was something about seeing it there that hit me harder than it should have.
Most women who walked into The Pit avoided touching anything dirty unless they had to. Riley had cut me off before I could finish diagnosing her car because she already knew exactly what was wrong with it.
That was the part I couldn’t shake. Her looks were enough to make any man with a pulse take notice, and I wasn’t going to pretend my cock hadn’t noticed the way her fitted tank clung to the soft weight of her tits or how those worn jeans hugged the curve of her hips when she shifted her stance.
She was probably around five-six, toned from real work, with a small scar through her left eyebrow over deep brown eyes. Pretty wasn’t a strong enough word for her, not when there was nothing delicate about the way she stood in my shop with grease under her nails, a duffel strap digging into one shoulder, and enough attitude to make me want to see exactly how much of that mouth she’d keep once I had her pinned under me.
The thought hit hard, tightening my body until my jeans felt too tight. I wanted to know if she’d argue when I put her where I wanted her or if all that sassiness would melt into something sweet when I got my hands on her.
I wanted to strip away the road weariness, set her on the edge of my workbench, spread those thighs, and find out if shetasted as good as she looked. The image came fast enough that I had to drag my attention back to the conversation before I did something idiotic, but even that didn’t cool me down much because the attraction wasn’t only physical. The thing that really had its hooks in me was the way she knew machines. She hadn’t memorized terms to sound impressive, and she sure as fuck hadn’t guessed. There weren’t many things in this world hotter than a woman who could look at a broken engine and diagnose the problem before most people knew there was an issue.
Riley glanced toward her Mustang sitting in bay two, and the slight tension that moved through her face told me plenty. She was considering the job.
I could see it in the way her gaze moved from the car to the shop floor and then back to me, measuring what staying would cost her. The way her eyes tracked the lifts, tool chests, bikes, the half-stripped race car in the next bay, and the organized mess of a shop that ran on pressure and precision told me she liked what she saw more than she wanted to admit.
Her hesitation came from somewhere else. Taking the job meant stopping, and that clearly hadn’t been part of her plan.
The woman needed work if she couldn’t afford to fix her ride. Any mechanic with half a brain would have jumped at an offer from a place like The Pit if they were stranded and broke. Riley looked like she wanted to say yes but couldn’t quite bring herself to.
I didn’t think it was pride, though. More like fear. She was good at hiding it, but I still saw the pressure building behind those pretty eyes.
She finally blew out a slow breath, tightened her fingers around the strap of her bag, and nodded. “Okay.”
The satisfaction that rolled through me was strong enough that I had to lock down my expression. I’d made deals worth more money than most men saw in a lifetime, handled enginesthat cost more than houses, and watched racers win because of work I’d done with my own hands. But a half-broke woman agreeing to temporary work in my garage made me feel like I’d just won something more important.
