Page 109 of The Woman in the Garage

“Sorry. I was dealing with a… staffing issue.”

“What kind of staffing issue?” I asked, body tensing. We’d worked hard vetting the new mechanics.

“Apparently, we have two full-grown men who both need to attend an adult Easter egg hunt on the same day. Yes, really,” she said with a smile before I could ask if I’d heard her right. “So I was trying to figure out who to move around. In the end, I decided we are just going to have a paid day off that day.”

I loved her compassion and generosity.

Aside from a new car, repairs at the shop, and a few new clothing items, her money had been funneled toward great healthcare plans for her employees and charities for elders. She hadn’t solved the scheduling issue by just telling someone ‘too bad, you have to work’ or by closing the shop and making everyone lose a day of income.

She was a great boss.

And the shop was in the black again.

Though, if you looked at the books, they were cooked enough to make it seem like it was doing even better than that.

Dasha had made plans on how to slowly invest her money. It was going to be a long time before most of that money was ‘clean,’ but with David dead and the other mechanic dealers now working for someone else, there was really no worry about anyone finding out where her money came from.

Even if someone came in and accused the shop of being a drug front, all evidence pointed to things changing almost as soon as the business came into Dasha’s hands.

“I’m not ready for this,” Dasha admitted as I led her out to the car.

“Not ready for what?”

“Meeting your family.”

“Baby, you’ve already met my family,” I reminded her. All my brothers and my mother, at least. And several of the cousins.

“I know. But this is theofficialmeeting.”

That was true.

We were heading over for dinner at my mother’s house.

Normally, my mother never would have let a full month pass without demanding I be at her table. Especially if she knew I had a woman in my life.

That said, given the craziness of the situation, my mother had been surprisingly gracious, giving us time to just be together and recover from the whole thing.

Plus, I mean, she’d gotten a chance to meet Dasha when she’d come to her rescue, swinging a skillet.

“You remembered to grab my pie, right?” Dasha asked, tensing in the passenger seat.

“Of course,” I said. I reached over to give her thigh a squeeze.

“And you’re sure that was the best version of the recipe?”

As soon as she’d heard we were going to my mom’s for dinner, she’d been working on perfecting her apple pie recipe. Quite frankly, I was pretty sick of apples at that point. But even I had to admit that she had perfected the recipe.

“It’s perfect. Everyone is going to love it. And you. You have nothing to worry about. Besides, it’s too late to go back,” I told her as we pulled up my mother’s driveway.

“Oh, wow, she really does love to garden,” Dasha said. She was leaning forward to look out the windshield at my mother’s sprawling gardens. “I think we need more flowers,” she decided as we climbed out of the car. “We have mostly shrubs.”

We.

She used that word a lot.

And each and every time, it made a warm sensation move across my chest.

“Trip to the garden center this weekend?” I asked.

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