Page 28 of Reckless Curves
Marcus stopped. “Sorry. I might be pissed at you, but I’m not trying to be an asshole by tempting you back to drinking. Sometimes I forget.”
Marcus had been a great help when he’d first decided not to drink. He was the buffer between the rest of the gang who always tried to get him to drink. Fast cars and alcohol were like models and bikini’s—they just went together.
“Look we could do with an extra mechanic. We’ve got a waiting list already. Can’t you see that she’s nothing like Jason.”
Marcus sighed and handed him a coke. “I’ll try but—it’s just when I see her, I see Jason and the bad memories rush back. I can feel the car flipping and the pain…”
“Yeah, I know,” Tom said. “but that was Jason not Lexie.”
“I’ll adjust. I always do.” Tom stood up. “Where are you off too,” Marcus asked.
“I have to go get Kendra’s van and bring it back here. She has a new keyboard in it and I don’t want it to melt. She was coming back from picking it up today when the van died. I don’t know why you’re letting her drive that heap of crap.”
Marcus said, “I don’t want her driving it, either. I dropped a nice Jeep off to her one day, but she refused to drive it. It sat over there outside that place she calls a home for two weeks, but she never got in it. I had to take it back before someone stole it.”
Despite being irritated, Tom had to admire Kendra’s tenacity. “Okay, well, I better get going.”
“Fine, but when you get back, we will discuss this Lexie thing. I have a few rules,” Marcus said.
Tom met his gaze. “It won’t do any good to talk to me about it. Talk to the boss.”
Marcus groaned. “When the hell did we lose control?”
“The day we hired Sully,” they said in unison.
Tom snagged the keys for the tow truck off one hook that lined the wall outside of the office, then gave Marcus a last look. “Lexie needs a job, Marcus. That shit of a husb-ex-husband left her high and dry. If you recall, in this industry we help our friends. And Lexie is my friend.”
He noted Marcus’s slight nod. Tom had been by Marcus’s side every minute after his crash. Tom had been there when they’d told him he’d never walk again. He’d also been with him for most of his physical therapy, and he’d definitely been there when he had proven the doctors wrong and walked again.
You did not leave your friends in time of trouble. That is what loyalty was and unlike his traitorous mother and his drunken father, loyalty meant something to Tom.
