Page 3 of Thief of my Heart

But I wasn’t going to brag about the fact that I’d disassembled and rebuilt engines like that one in half the time it’d taken his top mechanic. Just like he wasn’t going to ask me how I learned those particular skills in a chop shop ten blocks from here, and I wasn’t going to tell him. I was here for a fresh start and then to move on.

“Good work,” Zola said as he took my time card and went to lock up.

I fished the green rabbit’s foot out of my pocket and turned toward the stairs leading to the breakroom. “Thanks.”

Each step seemed like climbing a mountain. After ten straight hours working, I was ready to get the hell out of these clothes, go to the bodega for a slice, then collapse on the ratty plaid couch in the corner.

Then I opened the door and found myself face-to-face with an honest-to-God angel.

All the aches in my limbs disappeared along with pretty much any other feeling.

Which was fine with me, since the moment I saw her, I couldn’t move at all.

TWO

SHE’S DEFINITELY NO ANGEL

Michael

I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. And blinked again.

No, I wasn’t hallucinating from hunger or from being too fuckin’ tired to see straight. She was still standing there, as real as I was, but a hell of a lot better looking.

Then she gave the cutest little cough I’d ever heard, and I realized that it wasn’t a heavenly being that was looking around the breakroom like it belonged to her. Just a really beautiful girl, dressed like every other girl in Belmont, holding a pie pan covered with foil.

She was a little on the shorter side, with dark hair that fell like a waterfall almost to her hips and pointed to the Promised Land, to a perfectly shaped ass. She was wearing a black tank top, an open purple sweater that slid off one of her narrow shoulders, and a pair of tight jeans that hugged her ass so perfectly that I would have sworn God Himself designed them.

She was nice to look at, sure. Okay, better than fuckin’ nice.

Which only made her grimy surroundings stand out that much more.

She didn’t belong here. Not in this room and sure as shit not with me. Not now. Not ever.

It was funny—while I was in Rikers, I would have killed for a pretty girl like this to be dropped in my lap. But since getting out three weeks ago, I barely knew who I was. How was I supposed to offer that to anyone else?

The door fell shut behind me. The girl startled, then swung around with a glare painted across a face copied straight out of my dreams. High cheekbones, a long nose that gave her what my ma would have called “character,” and sharp green eyes the same color as the Barracuda downstairs. They pierced the room like arrows.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

Her tone and words weren’t nearly as pretty as the lips that formed them, and just like that, the halo slipped the rest of the way off and shattered.

I wandered to the fridge in search of the PBR I’d bought during my lunch hour with one of the three twenties Father Deflorio shoved into my pocket this morning. Apparently, that was what the collection fund was for.

“Name’s Mike,” I said over my shoulder. “Who the hell are you?”

Normally, I was the cool one in the room. The one with all the control, the one who was never ruffled.

But this girl had me rattled, standing there with her little pan, hip popped out, surveying me like she was the queen of fuckin’ France. Her frown formed an eleven-shaped crease between her brows as she watched me flop onto the couch, crack open my beer, and toss back at least half of it in one go.

She didn’t even try to hide her disgust.

So, I tossed out every manner my ma taught me and gave the biggest, loudest burp I could muster.

She didn’t disappoint.

“What, not even an ‘excuse me’?”

Her voice was unexpectedly husky, like the croon of a tenor sax in a windstorm. It gave the impression that she was almost out of breath. I found myself wondering what that voice would sound like screaming my name. Preferably while I grabbed her hair and took her from behind. Slapped that perfect ass and taught her a lesson in manners.

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