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“There is no one more stubborn than me and if you’re talking about those buddies of yours from last night, I handled them once and I’ll handle them again if you don’t stay off my lawn and keep the noise to a reasonable level. Now, stop calling me sweetheart.”
She stepped around him again, intent on dismissing him from her mind as well as she was able as soon as she made it inside. The sound of his laughter followed her and she had nearly made it to the front door when he was able to breathe well enough to answer her.
“What about ‘darling’?”
She slammed the door again, but she could still hear him laughing from the other side.
Three
The flat, empty sound of a car engine not starting was not the way Eloise wanted to start her morning. She sat in the driver’s seat and glared across the front lawns at Ethan’s empty front porch. Her car issues weren’t his fault, but surely she would have been less stressed by the problem if she hadn’t nearly been late once already this week because of him.
She tried the key again, wincing at the grinding sound that accompanied her fruitless attempt. “Damn it!” Her voice echoed in the small space as she hit the steering wheel hard enough to make her palm ache.
There was no way around it. She was going to have to call an Uber and wait for someone to show up. She was definitely going to be late this time. Her whole lunch break would likely be wasted trying to set up an appointment with a mechanic so they could tell her what the hell the problem was with her car. Then she’d have to take another Uber home or ask one of her friends to drop her off.
Damn it.
She dropped her head to the steering wheel—deciding to take a moment to curse the internal workings of every combustion engine ever made by man since she was going to be late anyway—and jumped at a soft knock on her window.
“Need a hand?”
Ethan.
Of course, it was Ethan. It couldn’t have been one of her other neighbors. Of course not. It would have been too easy if it had been any of the ones that were nicer and less obnoxious. They were definitely less attractive—even the most stubborn part of her mind couldn’t deny the low swoop and flutter of her stomach when she’d realized he was standing just outside the car—but that was another point against him. She didn’t have time to waste on fluttering stomachs and clenching thighs.
Not that her thighs were clenching, of course.
She made a conscious effort to relax her legs as he bent down to peer at her through the passenger side window, waiting patiently for her to answer his very simple question. She sighed, embarrassed and frustrated and slightly aroused despite her best efforts to pretend otherwise.
His hair was tousled from sleep and the shirt he was wearing did not do enough to hide the muscles of his arms from her gaze. She was nearly certain she could feel the heat of his body through the window, but surely that was her imagination. Maybe it was just the blood rushing to the surface of her skin in a horrible flush she hoped he couldn’t see in the dim interior of her car.
“Do you know how to fix it?” She had to raise her voice so he could hear her through the glass, but she wasn’t going to roll down the window and encourage him unless he actually knew what he was doing.
“Maybe,” he said, tapping a finger where his hand rested on the car door. “Won’t know till I get inside to take a look at the engine. I can’t see what the problem is from out here.”
“Right.” She huffed, eyes wandering over the car’s interior as she muttered to herself. “I just need to open the front part of the car. How hard can that be?”
“Can you pop the hood for me? Do you know how to do that, sweetheart?”
Her face was painfully hot as she shook her head. It was miserable having to admit that she had no clue what she was doing. If it was more complicated than putting gas in the damn thing she was useless, and somehow this, too, felt like his fault. Maybe he wasn’t directly responsible, but he didn’t have to stand there all smug and knowing while he witnessed her shame.
“That’s fine.” He walked around the front of the car and gently opened her door. “Let’s just get you out of there and I’ll find the lever for it.”
“Fine.” She swung her legs out—glaring as she had to stand up far too close to him—and crossed her arms over her chest as he pulled the small lever inside that released the hood of the car with a small pop.
He came up with a small case in his hand from under her seat. An emergency kit, she remembered. She’d stuffed under the seat when she bought the car and then promptly forgotten about it. It had a few small tools—the essentials according to the box—and she congratulated herself for her excellent foresight in purchasing it.
He ignored her petulance as he wandered back around the front and opened the car up to stare intently at the engine. “Let’s see what we have here,” he muttered.
It was tempting to wander closer and try to see what he was touching under there, but it would mean voluntarily putting herself closer to him and taking a risk of getting engine grease on her delicate pink blouse. She stayed where she was but stretched uselessly up on tiptoe to try and get a closer look before settling back down to wait and tap her foot impatiently.
“Well?”
“It’s a car.”
If he’d told her he could hear the noise her teeth made as she ground them together, she would have believed him. “I know it’s a car. What’s wrong with it?”
“Don’t know yet.” He leaned around the hood and smiled, easy and relaxed as a Sunday morning. There was a smear of grease on the bridge of his nose but it didn’t make him any less charming … or any less infuriating. “It takes a minute.”
