“Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to startle you. Are you having problems?” Mountain Man rested his forearms over the top of her door. His wrists were thick, his hands huge. The black under his fingernails was a workingman’s polish, and fresh red scratches zagged over the back of his hands. As he repositioned the frayed blue and white baseball cap shadowing his eyes, the muscles along his forearm jumped. Dark brown hair flipped into almost curls around the edges.
The sunlight emphasized the thinness of his cotton shirt, one shoulder seam pulling apart across the broad expanse of his torso. His masculinity wove around her, at once disconcerting, yet easing her illogical, escalating panic.
“My car won’t start.” God, she hated the little-girl, tinny sound of her voice. She cleared her throat and tried again, forcing a practiced steel into her words. “It’s been acting funny since I hit Birmingham.”
Mountain Man assessed the parking space she’d pulled out of and pushed the brim of his hat up a couple of inches with his forefinger. He squatted, and she slid out of the car to watch. He swiped his fingers through a puddle on the blacktop and rubbed. Then he smelled his fingers. He turned toward her, still in a squat. “Looks like a coolant leak. Your AC been working?”
“Not well. And, my temperature gauge flashed red just before the engine died.”
“Pop the hood, and let me take a gander.”
She pulled the lever on the dashboard and joined him at the front of the car “Are you a mechanic?”
“I’m a handyman, remember?” Again, he graced her with a panty-melting grin before leaning over the engine compartment to jiggle hoses.
His scent filtered through the humidity to her. Not the stench of unwashed male she expected. Underlying the clean sweat and grease was a mystery that hooked her closer, until she was leaning over the hood too, close to his shoulder. The one with the ripping seam. She swallowed, her throat stiff as if a noose had tightened. Usually, panic accompanied the feeling, but not this time. This time a covey of birds beat their wings in her stomach.
He turned toward her, one hand on the edge of her raised hood. His eyes were brown, but not a plain brown or even a deep, intensive one, but an electric brown with sparks of gold. They danced over her face. His voice came out gruff, almost a whisper. “I understand your problem.”
She massaged the taut cords of her neck. For a heartbeat, she wondered if he referred to her or her car. Hope lilted her question. “You do?”
“Yep. One of your hoses is cracked. Probably due to the heat.”
She swayed on her heels and dropped her face, pretending to study the hulk of metal and plastic under her hood. No matter her degrees and successes, sometimes she was a complete and total idiot. Like now. This redneck mountain man could never understand her. Her hair swished forward, strands sticking to her cheeks, hiding her face. “Can you fix it?”
He left her standing over the puzzle of her engine. He hadn’t even offered to call a tow truck. She felt oddly abandoned.
He stopped at an old blue and white Ford pickup parked in the shadow of a huge oak tree. Instead of climbing in and driving off with a grin and a wave, he flipped open a white, metal utility box in the truck bed. Clanging metal accompanied his search. He made a satisfied exclamation before trotting back toward her. “Duct tape. I always keep a roll handy. You mind hanging on to my hat?”
Without giving her a chance to answer, he pushed the ball cap into her hands, dropped to lay on the ground, and scooched under her car. With his knees bent, his legs stuck out from under the bumper.
An embroidered flying falcon on the side of his cap had lost half of its thread, and she picked at the fraying brim. She shuffled her feet apart and flapped her blouse to catch the slight breeze ruffling her hair. The occasional rip of tape punctuated the unidentifiable song he hummed.
His shimmy reversed itself, and he emerged with new brown stains on the front of his shirt and a glossy smear along his cheekbone. He rubbed his fingers along the edge of his shirt dirtying it further, and ran the back of his wrist over his forehead, wiping away a rivulet of sweat.
“You’ve got some grease on your cheek.” She pointed like a three-year-old.
He brought the edge of his T-shirt to his face and scrubbed it clean. At least she assumed that’s what he was doing, because she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his torso.
Michael, the boyfriend she’d broken up with six months earlier, had kept his chest waxed to show off the contours he worked hard for in the gym. Mountain Man did not wax. Curly brownish hair trailed from his partially revealed pecs straight into the waistband of the gray boxer briefs peeking out of his jeans. And, for all the time her ex-boyfriend had put in at the gym, he had never built the solid, thick muscles of the man standing close enough to touch.
Mountain Man didn’t lift weights for an hour then push papers around a desk for the rest of the day. Maybe he chopped wood or moved bales of hay or broke horses. She’d watched a documentary on real-life working cowboys one sleepless night and had unusually erotic-laced dreams when she’d finally drifted off.
“Do you ride a horse?” Wait a holy-rolling second … had she said that aloud?
His shirt dropped, breaking the trancelike state induced by his abs. “A horse? No, I mostly get around in a truck.” His laughter rumbled through her, but instead of embarrassing her, she choked off a teenaged giggle. What was wrong with her?
He added, “My schedule’s crazy. I’d love a dog, but I’m gone too much.”
Did that mean no wife or live-in girlfriend? What did it matter? She was about to drive off and probably never see him again. “Thanks for fixing my car, I guess I’ll be—”
“Hold up, now.” His ringless left hand came up between them. Relief shot through her body. “It ain’t fixed. It’s patched. Where’re you staying?”
“I’ve got reservations at a hotel in Tuscaloosa. It’s the…” She grabbed her phone from the front seat to pull up the details from her email. She muttered a curse and tossed the phone back in her purse.
“No service? Only one carrier operates in Falcon.” He bared his teeth and shook his head. “I can’t, in good conscience, let you drive to Tuscaloosa, especially with no phone service.”
“I wouldn’t make it?”
“You might. Then again, you might overheat and damage your entire engine block. It’s all two-lane roads and not much but fields between here and there. How long is your business in Falcon going to take?”
She ran her fingertips under her bangs to press at the center of her forehead. The throb had roared back with a vengeance. “I was counting on at least a week.”
Mountain Man scrubbed at the patch of hair sprouting below his bottom lip. His mouth was pinched tight, and he seemed to be assessing her anew.
“A friend of mine is opening a bed and breakfast soon. There’s no reason to be driving back and forth between Falcon and Tuscaloosa. You can be her first customer, have the place to yourself. It’s walking distance to downtown. Shopping, food, entertainment.” His lips quirked. “Well, entertainment might be overstating things a bit, but the first football game is only a couple of weeks away. It’s quite the spectacle. Not to be missed. What do you say?”
“I doubt I’ll be around that long,” she said vaguely, buying time. “What about my car?”
“I’ll get it towed to Jeb Harrison’s shop. He’s a good, honest mechanic.”
The promise of a cool shower before the hour was up was tempting. Her hair stuck to her neck, and she’d be shocked if sweat stains hadn’t ruined her blouse. The man had done nothing to warrant distrust on her part. In fact, he’d gone above and beyond to help her, and if she had to meet with Logan Wilde more than twice, it made sense to stay close. If things appeared at all shady, she would hightail it away, coolant leak or not.
She nodded. “All right. Can I get a loaner car from your mechanic friend?”
“I’ll have my buddy Dixon drop one off for you. He owns a dealership.”
“Do you know everyone in this town?”
“Pretty much. I grew up here, and I suppose I’ll die here. Someday they’ll bury me next to ancestors who settled this land, fought in the Civil War and both World Wars.”
A sense of melancholy tightened her chest. She forced a tight laugh. “Geez, that’s morbid.”
His mouth drew into a frown and deepened the crinkles at the edges of his eyes. “I suppose it is, yet deep down, it gives me comfort, a sense of belonging somewhere.”
Mountain Man had turned into a philosopher, and she had no idea how to respond. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. What did he see in her face? A heartless barracuda of a businesswoman, or could he see the girl underneath, the one who’d desperately wanted to belong somewhere, who’d sought acceptance at every turn?
He turned away and dropped the hood closed. The bang reverberated like a gunshot, and an annoyed blue jay flew over them, squawking.
His voice rumbled, low and throaty. “Why don’t you grab your stuff, and I’ll give you a lift?”
She blew out a slow breath, needing to regain a sense of control. “Will my car make it to the B&B?”
“Probably.”
“Then I’ll drive myself.” She slid behind the wheel but left the door open.
“Fair enough.” A teasing amusement was back in his face as if he suspected she didn’t trust him. Mountain Man rapped his hand on the roof and retreated to his truck. His gait was relaxed, assured, confident. The man had probably never suffered an anxious moment.
She clenched her jaw and turned the key. The car started, and coolish air blew from the vents. The rumble of his truck grew louder. His window rolled down, and she pressed the button to lower hers.
He raised his voice to be heard over the truck. “We’re going to turn left out of the lot. If you have problems, flash your lights and pull over. I’ll go slow.”
She followed him, prepared for her car to betray her at any moment. The farther down the road they travelled, the less she worried about her car making it and more about where they were headed.
She questioned the thought process that had led her to this point. Without an operational phone, she couldn’t even fall back on 9-1-1. Did a pokey, still-water town like Falcon even have 9-1-1?
She was following a strange man to a strange house. A frenzy of nerves shot from her stomach through her body like electric currents, triggering irrational threads of thought. What was Mountain Man’s real name? She would expect a handyman to be wearing overalls. How about “Buford?” Not likely. “Beau”? Old-fashioned, upper crust. Didn’t fit. “Chester”? That made her jump straight to Chester the Molester. Dear Lord, what if that was actually his name?
They turned down a wide street lined with hundred-year-old oak trees. Houses were set well back from the road, each on at least an acre of land. Most were modern stucco or two-story brick.
Sitting at the end of the street like a queen on her throne, an antebellum-style mansion looked ready for a
Gone with the Wind
remake. Massive magnolias framed the white-columned beauty. Mountain Man pulled into a gravel driveway that lay in a semicircle up to the front steps and tooted his horn.
Jessica pulled in behind and turned her car off, but she was ready to turn the key, her foot hovering above the gas pedal. The front door opened. Jessica held her breath, ready for a grizzled old woman accompanied by a dozen cats to sweep out.
Instead, a petite woman with ebony hair in a swinging ponytail swallowed by an oversized T-shirt marched out, took one look at Mountain Man, and yelled, “You asshole! How could you sic him on me?”
The woman stomped barefoot down the sweeping front staircase, picked up a magnolia pod, and lobbed it at Mountain Man. It hit him on the forehead, knocking his hat back.
“What the fu—heck are you talking about, Lilliana?”
Was this spitfire of a woman his girlfriend? This certainly had the hallmarks of a lover’s spat. The thought was somehow more bothersome than Mountain Man possibly being Chester the Molester.
“Your buddy Alec Grayson came by for an inspection. Unannounced.” Lilliana picked up another magnolia pod and threatened to throw it.
“I didn’t know anything about it, I swear. The city’s hired him part time as a building code inspector. In fact, I come bearing a gift. Your first customer.” Mountain Man opened Jessica’s car door with a flourish.
Jessica didn’t get out. “Look. It sounds like you two have some stuff to work out, and I don’t want to get in the middle of it. I’ll take my chances on the drive to Tuscaloosa.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Come on and meet a first daughter of Falcon. Lilliana Hancock. Her ancestors settled Hancock County.” Mountain Man wrapped a hand around Jessica’s forearm. The calluses of his fingers and palm rasped against her sensitized skin. The air in the car thickened, and when he tugged her hand off the steering wheel, she didn’t fight him but stepped out.
Lilliana Hancock smoothed her hair back. The smile that came to her face seemed like one she’d slapped on for politeness sake, stiff and faked. Jessica was familiar enough with the type, keeping one handy as well.
A breeze snaked through the trees, and the delicate scent of magnolia blossoms wrapped around her. Mountain Man’s hand settled on the hollow of her lower back, a gentle pressure guiding her closer to the steps. The woman had backed up and stood on the second step, putting them all close to equal height.
Jessica stuck her hand out and slipped on an answering smile. “Hello. I’m Jessica Montgomery. If this is going to be too much trouble…”
Mountain Man’s hand dropped from her back, and she found herself missing his touch.
Lilliana shook her hand with a firm grip and gestured toward the front door with the other. “Not a bit. Welcome to Hancock House. I hope you don’t mind being my guinea pig.” At this, Lilliana’s mouth screwed up into an apologetic grimace before a genuine sunny smile lit her face. It made all the difference. Jessica relaxed and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head.
Lilliana came down a step and peered at her face. “My goodness, you have gorgeous eyes. How do you do that with your eyeliner? Can you show me?”