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Her eyes flick between me and her car, and I wait for her to give me an opportunity to prove my worth.
“You don’t mind?”
“No. I’m doing it.” I’ve already started walking us towards her poor, off-balanced beauty.
With Paige pulling out all the necessary tools, it doesn’t take long for me to have the Chevy jacked up, so I can start unscrewing lug nuts. Paige stands at my side, holding out her hand to accept each of the bolts as I remove them.
“Does your car have a name? The white Saturn?” She asks.
“I call it Jack,” I grunt as I loosen another lug nut.
“Hmm. I thought most people named their cars after women. Why’d you go with ‘Jack’?”
“He was my cellmate.”
“Oh.”
I glance up to find Paige sucking on her bottom lip. From this angle she towers over me, looking like my dream girl as she stands there in her silky green dress, cupping the lug nuts in her palms. At some point, maybe when I accidentally brushed against her, a little smear of grease appeared on her shin.
I imagine what she’d look like naked, covered in smears of motor oil left by my hands roaming over her pale skin. In the fantasy, I’m working at a mechanic shop, my own garage, and she wandered in at the end of the day, let me strip her down and lift her onto my workbench where I can easily slide between her legs.
“Did you like your cellmate?” Her question is a cold bucket of water on my brain.
I would rather be thinking about her gasping my name than some prick I used to know.
“No. He was an untrustworthy piece of shit. Just like the Saturn.”
Paige frowns. “I’m sorry. That must’ve sucked. I mean, I’m sure all of it sucked, in a big way. But to have to share what little space you had with someone you didn’t like must’ve just been a rotten cherry on top of a shit sundae.”
She’s not wrong. Prison was hell. Every day locked in a cage, surrounded by violent psychopaths. Stress and fear were constant companions. And I didn’t even have the worst of it compared to some guys. You want to stay alive and relatively whole in there, you need to have connections. Protection. I got that, but at a high cost I’m not done paying.
Paige doesn’t need to know any of that.
“Got through it. And I met Cole. We watched out for each other.” I have the flat off and set it to the side before rolling and lifting the spare into place. The tire slides easily onto the screws, and Paige hands me back each of the individual bolts when I ask for them. After a little extra pressure applied, I’ve got the tire on as tight as it’ll go, and she’s set to drive at least as far as that beautiful garage set up her Mom has.
Paige follows me around to her trunk where I stow the ruined tire. “Thank you. I mean, I could’ve done it, but then I’d be all sweaty like you.” She grins up at me as she plucks at my now-damp T-shirt.
I’m tempted to pull her against me for another deep kiss, but I don’t want to ruin her new dress with my sweat. “I don’t mind. I like working on cars.” That’s been the truth since I was fifteen and my uncle finally let me help in the shop. Right around the time he recruited me to start bringing him cars.
Seems like today, I’m giving in to a lot of my baser urges. But when Paige hooks a finger through one of my belt loops, just fiddling with the material, I can’t think of a good reason to stop myself.
“I want to thank you for helping me out. A fair exchange for your services.”
Fuck. The idea of Paige giving me money makes me feel dirtier than my now grimy T-shirt. I don’t want to be her employee. On the walk to her car, I’d already decided that I wouldn’t accept any more payment for helping her with Pumpkin. Not when I’m planning on having her straddling me soon.
“I think dinner would suffice. Do you have a free night this week? I’ll come to your place and cook.”
For a moment, I just blink down at her.
Come to my place? And cook?
“You know I still live in the same house.” The same shit hole is what I mean to say. Who would want to spend any time there when they don’t have to?
“Well that makes getting there easy, seeing as how I know where it is.” She perks up one eyebrow. “So, dinner? Are you around Tuesday?”
“Yeah. I’m around.” I sound like a douche, but I’m still having trouble processing the fact that she wants to voluntarily come to my place.
“And do you have a working stove?”
