Page 17 of Too Close To Call

He stuffs the rag in his back pocket and starts for the hallway. “Come with me and I’ll show you upstairs. You can start in the morning if you like.”

CHAPTER 7

CASE

After a frustrating trip to land a part for the Torino I’m in the middle of restoring, I walk into work and stop just inside the door. I step back out and check the sign overhead to make sure I didn’t come in the wrong entrance. Yep, it’s the right door, but the inside isn’t the way I left it.

I know I was gone for four days, but that wasn’t long enough for the guys to transform the place. I mean, we now have kid furniture in the waiting area. Hell, we never even had a real waiting area. But we do now.

I look to the left and see a new piece of furniture sporting a coffee bar and a basket of what looks like snacks and fresh fruit. Not just a regular old coffee pot either. This is one of those pod type machines. The pods are in some fancy rack thing. My eyes bulge. Is that an under-cabinet refrigerator with canned drinks and bottled water? My jaw drops at a familiar pink bakery box on the counter. Fresh pastries in my garage?

“Paul! What the hell!” I yell.

A head sticks out of the office. A small, blonde, curly, familiar female head. I have to blink because it looks like… “Daisy?” I ask, sure that my eyes are playing tricks on me.

The little girl’s heart-shaped lips pull into a disgruntled frown. “It’s not polite to raise your voice inside and that was a bad word.”

I grin at being reprimanded. “Sorry. What are you doing here?”

She skips into the room in another poofy pink dress and sandals. “My mom works here and we live up there.”

She points to the apartment above us and continues, “She’s on the phone with Mr. Brockton. He wants to take us to dinner.”

I gloss right over the works-and-lives-here part and zero right in on the dinner date.

“Like hel…heck Homer Brockton will date Tori,” I mutter under my breath, making the PG correction. I have no idea what’s going on. I need answers and I know just where to get them. I step to the door that leads to the garage bays and yell for Paul…with an inside voice.

He comes running, obviously knowing I’m not happy at finding not only my business unrecognizable, but also because Tori has evidently moved in while I was gone.

“Yeah, boss,” Paul says cautiously as he eyes Daisy.

“Daisy, how about going with Paul to get an ice cream? He has a problem deciding which flavor to get. Would you go help him?”

A smile lights up her face, but reason and rules bring the brilliance down a few degrees. “I need to ask my mommy.”

Normally I wouldn’t override a parent’s rules, but in this one instance, I am. “I’ll let her know where you are, okay?”

Daisy looks doubtfully up to Paul, someone she’s known for longer than the minute she’s known me. He gives her a nod and she puts her tiny hand in Paul’s big, greasy paw. The glance he sends my way is filled with fright at being in charge of Daisy and that makes me happy. Serves him right because I know that whatever is going on, he played a big part in it.

I walk into the manager’s office, close and lock the door behind me, and take the phone from Tori’s hand, dropping it back into the phone cradle. Her stunned look of surprise is quickly masked.

“Case… You’re back,” she says and her eyes shift around the room.

“Daisy is with Paul getting ice cream. What are you doing here, Tori?”

Tori nervously reaches for her hair, forgetting it’s secured in a ponytail. I notice her hand shakes slightly as she lowers it to her lap. I don’t like seeing her so insecure and apprehensive, but then again, she brought it on herself by invading my space.

Her eyes meet mine and she replies, “I didn’t like the way you left.”

I scoff and my lips pull into a snide grin. “Which time?”

She flinches and looks down. “I deserve that. Both times, I suppose. The first time I shouldn’t have said those things to you. I didn’t mean them. I was hurting and needed someone or something to blame. Can you understand that, Case?”

What hurts is that she could take it out on me instead of letting me help her through it. “I can agree that it was an emotional time. But how could you say the things you did to someone you claimed to love? Those weren’t just words of grief fueling your rant. You heaved some serious accusations my way. I didn’t deserve that, Tori. I was hurting too. Both physically and mentally. Where was your concern for the man you loved? Didn’t you notice the cast on my leg and the fact that it took two men to hold me up?”

The entire time I’m speaking, I watch Tori’s eyes begin to water and then fill with tears, but they don’t stop me from pursuing the closure I need to hopefully start healing and get over her.

Her lower lip trembles and all I want to do is take her in my arms. I squeeze my fists tighter, focusing on the nails digging into the palms of my hands.

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