“I never said you didn’t,” he responded, and squatted next to her.
She continued to work on the lug nut, finally loosening the first one. She kept at it until the nut came all the way off and fell to the pavement.
The dude next to her tensed. Audrey wasn’t sure how she could feel the tension in him, but somehow she just knew. Sort of like how the air shifts when someone enters a room. He wanted to correct her. He probably thought she was doing it wrong. He had another think coming if he thought he was going to tell her how to change a tire.
Audrey was a bit of a perfectionist who liked to do things herself. She was independent like that.
“You should loosen all the nuts before you take them all the way off,” he told her.
Audrey’s mouth quirked as she loosened the next lug nut. “I appreciate your help, but—” Holy hell, were all the men in Blanco Valley walking Calvin Klein ads? Audrey had just meant to toss him a dismissive glance, long enough to convey her message that she didn’t need help. But the overwhelming hulk of a man who’d hunkered down next to her had captured her attention. No, not just captured. Commanded. Deep blue eyes, sort of like staring down into the deepest part of the ocean, held her gaze from beneath the bill of a Blanco Valley High baseball cap. The shadow from the hat slashed across his straight nose, which was perched above a mouth so firm and full that Audrey actually felt a flutter somewhere in her belly.
Shit, what had she been saying?
Oh, yeah. She’d been about to tell the guy to take a hike when she’d been rendered speechless by a pair of dreamy blue eyes and a mouth that probably delivered toe-curling grins.
One of his dark brows arched. “But…?” he prompted.
She blinked and tried to regain the composure she had had before he’d shown up and tied her tongue in knots.
“But I know how to change a tire.” Hadn’t she already told him that? To prove her point, Audrey went back to loosening the lug nuts. The second one was proving to be trickier, which was just her luck. She turned the wrench, with no progress.
The guy, who’d yet to give a name, so Audrey had decided to dub him Gorgeous Baseball Cap Guy, reached out to take the wrench from her.
She shot him a look, and he held his hands up.
“May I?” he asked.
Audrey spotted Piper bobbing her head up and down in the window. She probably had to go to the bathroom, in which case she needed the tire fixed stat.
Reluctantly, she passed the wrench over and moved aside for him. Mr. Gorgeous Baseball Cap Guy took her place in front of the tire and worked the lug nuts with ease.
“I take it you’re one of those independent types,” he commented while loosening one nut after the next.
“It’s faster if you take each one off first,” she pointed out instead of confirming his observation.
One side of the full mouth kicked up. “It really isn’t.” He loosened the final nut and slanted her a look. “You have control issues as well?”
Audrey opened her mouth to argue, because that was always her first reaction to everything. Correct. Control. It was sort of a vice for her and one she’d been trying for way too long to fix. And it was also probably why she hadn’t had a relationship that lasted longer than three months. She’d come to learn that men didn’t take well to their girlfriends constantly correcting everything they did. She had a coping mechanism for when she felt her anxiety skyrocketing and the urge to nitpick came clawing to the surface. Unfortunately, reciting designer labels alphabetically tended to annoy people just as much as her control issues. But Evan didn’t seem to mind. Evan was a sweet guy.
“I’m not controlling,” she found herself saying, and ignored the look of disbelief that flashed across Mr. Gorgeous’s blue eyes. “It’s just that when I see something that I feel could be done better, I say something.”
“But you weren’t doing it better,” he pointed out.
“In your opinion,” she argued.
He nodded as though he understood. “Controlling,” he said again, and any forgiveness she had been about to offer him was obliterated.
She reached for the wrench. “I think I can take it from here.”
“Just give me a sec.” He placed the jack under the car and raised the thing as though it were nothing more than a child’s toy.
“Okay then.” Audrey attempted to shoulder him out of the way, but it was like trying to move a cement statue. She had a brief impression of a solid shoulder underneath his hooded sweatshirt before backing away. Her first thought was, why would a man like him hide all that goodness beneath a bulky sweatshirt? But her second thought of Hello, boyfriend immediately smacked away any improper thoughts.
“Impatient little thing, aren’t you?” he asked with a smirk as he removed the lug nuts.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maybe I’m not the only one with control issues.”
His smirk turned into a full-blown grin, and holy Alexander McQueen, the man had some serious wattage. “So you admit you have control issues.”
Was he for real? And in the time he’d been distracting her with his pearly whites, he’d removed the tire and replaced it with the spare, in probably half the time that she could have done it. But still. There had been nothing wrong with the way she’d been removing the lug nuts.
“I could have done that,” she told him.
“Yeah,” he agreed as he replaced the lug nuts and tightened them with little effort. “Except you were doing it wrong.”
His grin widened at the same time that his gaze dropped to her chest. It took a second of heat flaming Audrey’s cheeks for her to realize that he was checking her out. But because it
