The name of the business was displayed across the entire top of the building, pressed tin in a chunky vintage font, then again down the side of each pump in fluorescent bulbs.
This was no small-town garage. It was the kind of place that made reality TV show producers salivate.
She moved in closer. Pale golden light spilled from the only open garage door. Her heart skittered at the sounds of metal on metal. The shuffle of wheels on concrete. The tinny sound of an old radio.
She suddenly felt nauseous. As if the rest of her life was hinged on the next few minutes. Which, in all honesty, it was. For if Rafe said no, she had no back-up plan.
She knew there were other options, of course. That a refusal wasn’t the end of the road.
But from the moment she first had the idea—sitting in a booth in an old diner in Encino, dried tears making her cheeks feel tight, deciding her recent troubles weren’t a loss so much as a gift, giving her a chance to create the life she truly wanted—it had felt right. As if everything she’d done, everything she’d gone through, had always been leading her back here.
Sable took a deep breath and strode into the garage where she found the husk of an old muscle car with a pair of legs poking out from underneath.
And it took her back so hard, so fast, to the times she’d walked in on Rafe in the exact same position—body hidden under a car, left foot flat to the floor, right foot resting on a heel—she was overcome with flutters in her chest, tingles over her skin, the echo of a soul-deep yearning she’d felt every time she’d seen him.
The scrape of the old rubber wheels broke the silence as Rafe rolled himself out from under the car and Sable held her breath as his long, strong body appeared, an inch at a time.
His belt strained at his hips, his now dirty black Henley clung lovingly to the rises and dips of his broad torso. Most of his dark hair was held back off his face with a tie. His jaw hard, rough-hewn, with just enough abrasive shadow to make her fingers curl into her palms so as not to reach out and touch.
Rafe hauled himself to sitting, his shirt lifting to reveal a hint of rigid stomach muscle, clenching as he moved. His eyes, when they met hers, were dark and full.
The air between them rippled with history and tension and things unsaid.
“Sable,” he said, his voice deep. Ragged.
“Rafe,” she managed. Then—because looking at him too long made her feel as if she might combust on the spot—she glanced around. “I can’t believe how much this place has changed. Care to give me the grand tour?”
He wiped his hands on a dirty rag, pulled himself to standing and said, “There’s cars. Tools. Spare parts. Front office. What you see is what you get.”
She wished.
No. No, she didn’t. She didn’t want what she saw. She wanted...other bits, currently not in view. Nothing more.
She searched frantically for something else to draw her focus lest he see the heat flushing her cheeks. “So, what are you working on here?” she asked, motioning to the car.
With a huff of breath he lifted the bonnet to show a sleek, clean engine, light glinting off the gleaming metal.
She leaned in closer. Their shoulders were a few inches apart but the hair on her arms stood on end, as if even they remembered what it felt like to be close to this man. “Tubes, wires, battery. Everything looks to be in the right place.”
His voice was deeper, grudgingly playful, as he said, “You have no idea what you’re looking at.”
“Sure, I do. That’s what those in the know call an engine. How many afternoons did I spend watching you fix cars? Years and years of afternoons before we became...a thing. I could probably strip this thing down and put it back together. If I wanted to.”
She looked up to find him close. Really close. Those dark eyes of his were too shadowed to read, but the shift of his mouth she saw, its edge kicking up, just a notch, hitting her like a thunderclap.
Sable knew she should look away before she did something stupid, like reach up and run a thumb along the new line at the corner of his mouth. Or grab him by the shirt front and haul him in for a kiss. To break the insane tension. Or simply to remember what it felt like to be held.
And then she did something stupid anyway.
“Fine,” she said. “I wasn’t watching you fix cars. I was just watching you.”
Rafe might have laughed it off. Or told her off for playing with fire. Instead—as if he was also done fighting the urge—his gaze dropped to her mouth.
Giving it the okay to run away from her.
“Something I’ve always wondered,” she said, her voice only a mite above a whisper, “did you know I had a crush on you, all those years before I finally did something about it?”
His gaze slid back to hers. “Yeah,” he rumbled, “I knew.”
The heat in his eyes, no longer banked, no longer coiled, had her heartbeat singing, Danger! Danger!
“Even when you kissed me that night? At the playground?”
He breathed in. Breathed out. Nodded.
“And it still took us another two years after that to actually get together. Wow. That was some admirable restraint I showed.”
“You showed?” he muttered.
But before she had the chance to respond, to push, he motioned for her to move back, and then he shut the bonnet with a metallic crack.
And he stalked over
