Page 11 of Pumpkin Spice Promises

It was the irritation burning beneath her exhaustion.

She looked miserable, half frozen, and furious about being either one.

“My truck broke down,” she managed, the words trembling between chattering teeth. “And my phone died.”

I stepped close enough to settle my jacket around her shoulders. She stiffened at first, her gaze snapping to mine, but she didn’t fight me when I pulled the front closed around her.

“How far did you walk?”

Her mouth tightened. That was enough to tell me I wasn’t going to like it.

“We’ll worry about that in a minute. Come inside.”

“I’m getting water everywhere.”

“It’s a garage,” Jax called from behind me. “Water’s probably the cleanest thing that’s hit the floor all week.”

She glanced past me, and the faintest hint of a smile touched her lips before disappearing.

I placed a hand against the middle of her back, careful not to push, and guided her up the two steps into the office. The space was small and perpetually cluttered, with a battered leather couch pressed against one wall, an old metal desk against the other, and enough paperwork stacked between them to prove neither Jax nor I had inherited Mom’s organizational skills.

I switched on the space heater beneath the desk and dragged it closer to the couch. “Sit.”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“Please,” I added.

That seemed to satisfy her. She lowered herself carefully onto the couch and leaned forward, extending her hands toward the heat. My jacket swallowed her, the sleeves hanging several inches beyond her fingertips.

Jax closed the office door behind us, muting the storm and music outside.

For several minutes, neither of us asked her anything. She needed warmth more than questions, and there was no point forcing her to talk while she was still in danger of biting her tongue in half.

I studied her, despite knowing I shouldn’t.

She was familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to her face, which bothered me. Willow Creek wasn’t so small that I knew every person within county limits, but between growing up here and spending most of my adult life behind the counter of the town’s busiest garage, I recognized almost everyone eventually.

There was also the matter of her finding us.

Jones Automotive sat beyond the main stretch of town on an old service road where Dad had been able to buy enough property for multiple garage bays and a tow lot. People rarely stumbled upon us by accident. So how did she?

“Better?” I asked when the color began returning to her lips.

“A little.”

Her voice surprised me. Lower than I expected, with a faint rasp that made it sound as if she’d spent the morning yelling rather than walking through a storm.

“Where’s your truck, sweetheart?”

Her gaze lifted slowly to mine.

I had called women sweetheart for as long as I could remember. Mom blamed Dad. Dad blamed growing up in Georgia. Nobody had ever looked particularly offended by it before.

But this woman looked like she was deciding whether throwing the space heater at my head would be worth losing the warmth.

“Highway Ninety.”

Jax straightened from where he’d been leaning against the desk. “Where on Highway Ninety?”