Page 24 of Ignite

Not her ex.I tried not to show my relief when I saw the picture on her screen.

“Was this your first?” I didn’t need to explain. It was obviously one of the cars that she had repaired and done up since her father had died. To get this sort of reaction, it had to have been special. Although a Triumph Stag was pretty fucking special. I mean, I only recognized the car because of my research. I never hoped to see one in real life and Rylee had actually worked on one.

Rylee nodded.

“Strange color, though. Don’t tell me that you picked it?” I snorted, hoping to snap her out of her funk. “Typical bloody woman,” I said, knowing how to rile her up and get her out of her head. “Thinks every car should be pink.”

“For your information, the client picked the color. He wanted it to be the same color as what his wife had chosen for their bridesmaids.” Rylee’s voice and demeanor had changed, responding to my banter. Instead of anguish, the fiery woman I knew and respected slowly came back to life.

“Really? A dude wanted his car paintedthatcolor just because he got married?“ I scoffed and shook my head. “Remind me never to hand my balls over to a woman.”

“Believe me, if you handed your balls over to a woman, the smartest thing she could do would be to hand them back.”

“Speaking from experience?” Immediately, I realized I’d gone too far when Rylee almost fell back into the chair. “But really, I want to know why any man would spend thousands of dollars to paint his carpink.”

“First, it’s not justpink. It’s the traditionalMagenta Pink.”

“But why would a guy do that?” I could see Rylee wanted to engage with me, wanted to get out of her head and back into reality. All I needed to do was challenge her to a verbal sparring, and give her space to process whatever she was dealing with.

While I held the phone, she flicked through other photos of the same car, before winking conspiratorially, “I could tell you the secret, but how can I trust you?”

“You can’t.” Since we were going to be here a while, I dragged over another chair and sat beside her, our knees almost touching. But I still had her phone. “I’m actually a corporate spy sent here to learn the wicked ways of your workshop. How is it that a sexy temptress can know her way around a car engine as easily as she can hold a paintbrush?” I twirled my imaginary moustache.

Rylee lightly slapped my arm and snatched her phone before I pretended to drop it. “I don’t do all repairs. Cars that need computers go up north. I tinker with real engines or stuff that just needs common sense.”

“If it was common sense, anyone could do it,” I said with full admiration. “Apparently you can pull apart and fix everything from boat engines to fire trucks and even the odd push bike.”

“I do my best.” She humbly shrugged. “But you realize that I use air guns, not paintbrushes, right?”

“See!” I clapped. “Already, I’m learning your secrets.” And I’d just survived another case of foot-in-mouth disease. “But you were going to explain about the pink?” I waited for her reaction before correcting, “I’m sorry. You were going to explain about theMagenta Pink.”

“A reason older than time,” she giggled and brushed away a lone tear before readjusting her ponytail.

“Luuuuuuve?” I didn’t know whether she laughed more at my eye-roll or the way I dragged out the word.

“When his wife started complaining about how much money he was spending on the restoration, he told her that it was a symbol of his ever-lasting love for her.”

“A car? Did they get married in it or create their first baby in it?”

“Neither. By painting it the color of her bridesmaid dresses, she agreed he could spend what he needed to, and he got the car he wanted. Eventually, he’ll come back for a respray—probably Signal Red or one of the other reds—but that isn’t nearly as expensive as restoring the engine and panels.”

“You sly wench.” I shook my head in amazement. “That’s one hell of a story. Where are you going to hang the framed photo?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I started looking through them all, and got …”

“Overwhelmed?” I asked helpfully and she nodded.

“Then we don’t need to decide on the photos today.” Yes, I’d just added myself to her equation. We weren’t dating. We were friendly but not even close friends. But we were going to get her through this. Her work was fantastic and deserved to be shown off. “How about we go out and decide what sort of frames you want.”

“But we always have stained walnut frame with green and black mats.”

“And you need to decide whether you want to stick with tradition or create one of your own.” With an exaggerated groan and clutching my knees, I got to my feet and pulled Rylee to hers. “Come on. Let’s go out the front and pull up some framers online and start looking at your options.”

An hour later, we’d gone down online rabbit holes of looking at performance cars, the calendar of next year’s shows, last year’s winners and eventually started scrolling through framing options.

“Oh, I like that one.” Rylee stopped scrolling at black glossy frame, with three mats sitting behind the photo. Two of the mats were black, with just a thin edge of a silver mat setting off the car. “We could match the silver mat thingy with the car color.”

There was thatweagain. Only this time, Rylee had said it.

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