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Lily stifled a giggle. “Did you miss dinner?”
“Apparently,” I said wryly.
“Do you want to eat?”
“I’ll need to order something. Are you hungry too?” I asked as I picked up the phone I left on the counter earlier. There were several missed calls. Probably clients forwarded from the main number. I’d get to it later tonight after Lily went home.
I looked up to find Lily fingering the strap of the bag she’d hung across her body, drawing my attention to her breasts. Finally, she said, “I could eat.”
“What do you feel like? Chinese, pizza, sushi?”
She smiled wide and stepped farther inside the garage. “You eat sushi?”
“You think I don’t? You must have some kind of impression of me.”
She laughed, the sound pleasant. “You don’t strike me as a man who’d like sushi.”
“Well, clearly, you don’t know me at all. Sushi it is,” I said, pulling the menu out from the stack we always kept on the countertop. I tossed it to her. “Tell me what you’d like, and I’ll order it.”
Lily shook her head as she looked down at the options. “I still can’t picture you and Ryan eating sushi.”
“Corey loves it too.”
I grabbed a water bottle from the fridge we kept under the counter.
“Ryan wants to hire another mechanic, but I think we’ll be fine,” I said, more to myself than her.
Lily moved closer, her floral scent permeating my space. The difference between her and the other women I’d dated is that the scent was natural since she worked with flowers all day. I liked it more than I should.
“Is it too much to add Berta into the mix right now? We can do it later if it’s better for you. I don’t want to cause more work for you.”
The thought of her alone on a highway again tore at my insides. “Getting Berta operational is a priority. You need her for your business. Heck, she’s your sole source of transportation.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, that’s right. You were hoping that fixing up Berta would be good for business. It makes sense you’d want to get started right away.”
Her thinking I was doing this just for business didn’t sit right with me. “It’s not just about the publicity for me. When Ryan first brought it up, I resisted.”
I didn’t bother mentioning that I resisted every new idea Ryan or Hailey came up with.
Lily tipped her head to the side, studying me. “Why?”
The muscles along my jaw tightened. I didn’t want to reveal anything about me, but it might help in this circumstance to give her a glimpse. “I don’t like change. New things. It takes me a while to adjust.”
The smile spread over her face slowly. “That makes sense with what I know about you.”
“What do you think you know about me?” Unfortunately, my question came out without any forethought. If I’d taken a second, I wouldn’t have risen to the bait. I shouldn’t care what this woman thinks of me. She was just a client.
But the flash of her vulnerable expression when I arrived last night popped into my head. I didn’t want her to feel scared or uncertain. I wanted to reassure her that I’d take care of her.
She handed me the menu and sat on the cracked leather couch that we’d moved from the waiting room to the side of the garage when we’d renovated. The idea is that we’d use it for a break, but it was rare for any of us to take one.
Before I could warn her about possible dust and grease, she crossed her legs, arranging her long skirt over them so nothing more than a sliver of her ankle showed.
The smile on her face was knowing. “Just that you’re grouchy when you’re interrupted or thrown off course.”
“Grouchy?” I wasn’t sure I liked that characterization.
“Yes, grouchy. That first time I met you, you were barking orders at us. Telling me what I should do and what I should care about. I got the impression we’d interrupted something.”
