Page 29 of Love You Always

I skip lunch, feeling good about the groove I’m in. Maybe I can even finish early today and get out for a hike before dark. But that’s when Beatrix calls me with an urgent S.O.S. She’s talking into the phone before I even say hello.

“I know you’re up to your eyeballs, but I can’t reach anyone else with a truck, and it’s sensitive because it’s her.”

“Slow down, Trix. I missed half of that. Who isher?”

She covers the receiver, and I hear a muffled directive to someone else before she starts repeating whatever she said before. “Ella. She was meeting with the florist in St. Helena and got a flat. There’s already paparazzi buzzing around, so sheducked into a shop to buy a hat. She’s been trying to get roadside assistance from Fiat, but they can’t get a tow truck here for two hours. Do you think you can tow her car to a shop on your truck hitch?”

Slapping a hand against my cheek, I look at my pile of papers. So close, yet so far…

“Why’s she need a tow? Doesn’t she have a spare?”

“I don’t know, Archer.” A frustrated sigh tells me Trix doesn’t have the bandwidth for this.

“Fine. I’ll get her. Tell her to text me her location.”

“Perfect. Thank you. I owe you,” she says. I nod, not entirely unhappy about the errand and still willing to collect on whatever Trix thinks she owes me.

Ella greetsme with one tanned leg in the street and a hand in the air like she’s hailing a taxi. Why does it have to be a hundred-degree day so that Ella is out here in a tank top and shorts? I almost swerve into a parked car after staring too long at her leg, bare under a pair of denim cut-offs that make my mouth water like a goddamn pervert.

Jesus. Tow the car and get back to work.

I park behind her little blue powder puff of a car, which has one very flat rear tire. She comes over to the driver’s side of my truck, nearly getting side-swiped by a passing car in the process. I reach for her shoulder through my open window and pull her toward my truck. “Let’s not add a hospital visit today, yeah?” Her bare skin feels so good under my hand, so right, and I pull back from it like a lit match.

“Yeah. Good plan.”

She takes a step back, so I exit my truck and follow her to the sidewalk, where she points at the offending tire. “That’s the one.” In a baseball hat and dark sunglasses, with her hair tamed into aknot, she’s unrecognizable unless someone is really staring. I look around. Nope, just me.

“Yes, I see that. Do you have a spare? Easier to just change it instead of dragging it to a service station.”

A look of confusion pulls her mouth into a frown. She takes a step closer to the car and pats at the tire, as if testing its temperature. “I don’t know how to change it.”

“I can help you with it, darlin’. But do you have a spare?” Music hums from the car speaker, so I open the door and turn off the ignition, but I notice her tank is on empty and shake my head.

She pops the trunk and peers inside, hands on her cheeks with concern. I see a tennis racquet and a yoga mat, but no spare. “Does this lift up?” I point as I lift the floor of the trunk, revealing an unblemished tire and some tools. Ella’s hands drop from her face, and she pats my forearm.

“Oh, that’s a relief.”

I wrestle it out from its harness and retrieve a tire iron she probably never knew she had. “Okay, princess. You’re going to learn to change a tire. I’m fully aware you probably have ‘people’ to do things like this, but I was raised to believe everyone should be able to change a tire.”

“I believe that too. I just didn’t find anyone willing to teach me. Until you.” I feel a strange twinge of pride at being her first—even if just to pop her tire-changing cherry. Her happy, willing face is all the encouragement I need to motion her to sit next to me on the sidewalk as I walk her through the steps.

It takes a few tries to get the jack positioned right under the chassis, but she insists on doing it herself. When I lean in to move it over an inch, she mock-glares at me and slaps my hand away. “Use your words. Let me do the work.”

“Move it over an inch or you’ll crank right through the flimsy plastic this car is made of.”

“Hey, I like this flimsy plastic car. It’s much more me than theBeemer the studio bought me after my last film. I like to fly under the radar.”

Looking at the partial face visible beneath the hat and glasses, I start to appreciate the effort that takes. “Yeah, I’m sure all you mega-stars say that, trying to seem humble and all,” I tease.

“Yup. It’s in the mega-star manual.” Her laugh sounds like fine crystal glasses welcoming everyone within earshot. It lets loose something inside me, the final bit of resistance to admitting to myself that I like her.

And that I’m in deep trouble because of it.

She moves the jack to the proper spot, and I show her how to turn the crank. A big stripe of grease marks one of her legs and her hands are covered in black exhaust residue, but she never complains, never implies she’s too pristine to get a little dirty. I find myself wishing she’d be just a tad less adorable through the process so I’d have a reason not to like her. But she’s giving me no reason not to find her utterly charming.

Despite my fierce insistence that she’s just another client of Buttercup Hill, I feel my resistance slipping. I like her.

Once Ella gets the car cranked off the ground, she admires her handiwork. “Pretty good for a newbie,” she says, standing up. She immediately pitches forward, and I reach out to steady her. She puts a hand on mine like it’s nothing, like we’re in synch now, me knowing when she needs steadying, me reaching out almost without thinking. “Thanks.”

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