Page 50 of Coffee Shop Girl
Watching a total stranger circle Dad’s bike with an assessing eye made me want to snap at him.Stop touching it!
Instead, I stood back, arms tight at my side. Dad might not have taken care of the coffee shop, but he sure took care of his bike. A detailed binder of every oil change, repair, and update lay on the table outside the Frolicking Moose.
Lizbeth, with a stack of new romance novels we’d gleaned from the library the previous evening, hunkered in her chair in the shop, a fan blowing on her. Ellie ran in and out the back door, searching the weeds near the reservoir. Every now and then her head would pop up, watching the back of the hair salon where Devin often appeared. She was scrounging for something, but kept her search a mystery.
Maverick worked inside, standing in my postage stamp of an office while he spoke with someone on a teleconference call. Every now and then, his deep, rolling voice would laugh. I could only pick up a few words here and there.
Templates. Indicators. Rate of return. Mallory.
My head, unfortunately, focused on the wordMallory. Who was Mallory? Why did he sound so amused when he spoke about her?
Why onearthdid I care?
“Looks good,” the man said with a grunt, pulling me out of my thoughts. Blinking, I shook my head and adjusted my aviator sunglasses. Today, I’d worn a shade of bright-pink lipstick. The one I broke out when I meant business but didn’t want to dive too deep. More of a caution sign. Uncertainty mixed with poise. Or so I liked to think. I imagined I looked more like a fractured wall ready to crumble.
I waved a hand at the binder, my throat tight. “Everything is in there, if you want to look through it. Any repair work was done in town by Kareem, just down the road. My father bought it new in December. It has a long clutch, but you’ll get used to it.”
The guy looked up through bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. “You ride it?”
My nostrils flared. “All the time.”
He grunted.
“If you want to try it, just leave me with a driver’s license and you can take it up and down the road here.”
A few minutes later, he drove off. I watched him go, grateful for a trial run that forced me to watch it leave. The engine puttered beautifully. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them back. Now wasn’t the time. Later, I’d call Jada. Or I’d stop by her house and dissolve into a hot mess.
Wait. No, I wouldn’t. Because Lizbeth and Ellie would see, and ask why, and have one more thing to feel bad about.
One day, I’d feel all this.
Just not today.
“Did your Prince Charming just ride off into the sunset?”
Maverick stood in the shade of the porch just behind me. He leaned against the doorjamb, entirely too at ease for my comfort. If he had to be business savvy, did he have to be so rugged? Whowashe, anyway, to stand on my stoop like that?
“He’s seventy-one, has assless chaps, and is ready to marry me in Vegas,” I said with forced levity. “As soon as he fills up with gas, he’s going to swing by and pick me up to drive me into the sunset.”
“Huh.”
“What? Didn’t see me as the eloping type?”
“No, didn’t see you as a ride-on-the-back type.”
At Maverick’s feet lay theFor Salesign that I’d removed when the guy had climbed on. I stared at it, then let out the thought that kept circling in my head. Maverick would understand. He’d been there, in the room with Steven. He drove motorcycles. He listened.
“I guess it seems fitting that Dad should have to pay for the mess he landed me in,” I said, not without some emotion.
“Fitting,” he murmured, “but not fair.”
Tears filled my eyes again. An unexpected, warm hand on my shoulder made me suck in a sharp breath. I could feel him behind me. The long planes of his chest. The strength of his hand weighing on me. He exuded heat, and not an unwelcome heat, either.
Would he think me totally crazy if I tucked myself against him and curled into a ball? Because that sounded like the best idea.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
The roar of the engine coming back down the road cut off my response. I shook my head and croaked, “Not yet.”
