Page 2 of Hard to Love
“Nope, I’m Prophecy Boot Company’s bookkeeper.” Her laughter waved over the phone, making Alex’s ear tingle with awareness. “Are you always suspicious of people willing to help you?”
In short, yes. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. “I’m about twenty miles out on Highway 29.”
“Stay there and I’ll see you in less than half an hour.”
“Hey, wait. What’s your na—”
But Ms. Dulce de Leche had already hung up. Alex glanced down at himself and spotted a black smear on theright sleeve of his white long-sleeved shirt. Shit. Why hadn’t he stripped down to his T-shirt to dig around under his hood?
Because…that…that was something he never did in public.
He opened the back door and scrounged around in his bag. The only other clean shirt he had was one he wore when he worked out. With a ripped collar and arms, that sure as hell wouldn’t work for a business meeting.
Not if he wanted the tooling contract.
So he scrubbed at the arm of his shirt with a napkin and a piece of melting ice from a fast-food drink. And yeah, they were pretty much useless.
Possibly even worse, he was sitting here on the side of the road waiting for the boot company’s bookkeeper to come to his rescue, feeling like a cross between a pet dog, a teenager who’d run out of gas, and a charity case. Once more, he poked at the stain, embarrassment threading through him.
He set his teeth against the feeling. Screw it. The new owner of Prophecy Boot Company wasn’t looking for a model. She was looking for someone who could turn a plain piece of leather into a work of art. And that, he could do.
But only if Ms. Dulce de Leche didn’t drive up, take one look at him, and decide to leave him on the side of the road.
As soon asGreer hung up the phone, she snatched her purse from the old teacher’s desk where her dad once designed boots, not allowing her fingers to linger over the scarred wood. Because it was a poor substitute for what she really wanted, the chance to hold his gnarled hand onemore time.
Instead of mulling over things she couldn’t change, she rushed out Prophecy Boot Company’s front door, the strap of harness bells clanging against the glass. Delaney had been dancing a jig for the past week at the prospect of meeting this final leather tooler, so Greer wouldn’t let a little thing like car trouble derail the meeting.
One quick stop a couple doors down Guadalupe Street at Shorty’s Auto Parts, and she had a fan belt in her possession.
With a heavy foot on her classic Datsun 240Z’s gas pedal, she was good to her word, pulling nose to nose with a sad-looking sedan in twenty-seven minutes. But the man leaning against the car, with his tan skin and shaved head, could never be called sad-looking.
Disgruntled, sorta.
Intimidating, uh-huh.
Sexy, oh Lord have mercy.
She’d imagined Alex Villanueva as a forty-something guy with a wife, a few kids, and a dad bod. Hands down, she’d been wrong about the bod.
It doesn’t matter if you were wrong about the rest of it too because this is business. Prophecy Boot Company business.
Regardless, she grabbed the fan belt from her passenger seat and got out of her car, her heartbeat thumping faster and her legs moving slower than normal. She waved the fan belt in greeting and weaved around a bright orange patch of Indian paintbrush in the ditch. “Hi, I’m Greer Maddox. We spoke on the phone a few minutes ago.”
He eased away from the front quarter panel and stood spread legged in front of the car but didn’t greet her with the welcoming smile she’d expected. Instead, his dark eyescataloged her as if he suspected she’d pulled over to rip off his hubcaps.
All three of them.
“I figured as much,” he said, his tone as dry as the hay Henry McCormick fed his goats. “Since there’s no such thing as a fan belt fairy.”
Remembering something her dad had often said, she throttled her initial impulse to whack the man with the fan belt.Never kick a man in his family jewels or his pride, because they’re both easily bruised.
So she kept her smile in place and joined him under the shade of his car’s hood. Sure enough, when she handed over the car part, she noticed a pink undertone around his cheekbones. This was a man who didn’t like being caught at a disadvantage. “It could’ve happened to anyone.”
“And I could’ve handled it myself.”
“I passed the nearest gas station about three miles back,” she said, keeping her tone light. “And not one of those full-service ones. I doubt they would’ve had your part.”
He blew out a breath and turned toward her, his expression a pained attempt at appearing pleasant. “Maybe we should start over here. Hi, I’m Alex Villanueva.”
