Even in her own head, it all sounded feeble, and Mr. Capelli was so good at that tolerant yet reproachful look of his. The Cherry family had been bringing their vehicles to him for service and repair for as long as she could remember.
The garage, an old-fashioned and very reassuring place, was on a quiet backstreet. Art Capelli was the kind of mechanic who told you the truth and never overcharged. He didn’t deserve Mary Jane’s embarrassingly neglectful attitude toward her car. Dad was always so scrupulous about maintenance, but she…
She was the worst of sinners in that department, and she knew it.
Right now, she felt as remorseful about the noise in the engine as she would have felt about bringing the vet a mangy and half-starved kitten with a splinter in its infected paw.
She parked out front of the repair shop with its brightly painted Capelli Auto sign, leaving the car windows down and the key in the ignition. There was no one in the office but she could hear sounds coming from the workshop so she went through, needing to pause for a moment or two so her eyes could adjust to the light because it was dimmer in here.
A pair of legs clad in oil-stained dark blue overalls stuck out from beneath a red pickup truck. She addressed them tentatively. “Mr. Capelli?”
There came a grunt and an inarticulate noise that probably meant, “Give me a second.”
She awaited her moment of shame. Really, the noise had only gotten so bad these past few days, although it had been sounding on and off since… Oh, shoot, since her three-day spa vacation in Vermont, and that was back in mid-March, three months ago.
Problem was, when the noise occasionally stopped for a few days, she thought the car had—well—healed itself.
What? Cars didn’t do that?
There was another grunt, and the overall-clad legs suddenly shot toward her. A pair of sturdy tan work boots fetched up inches from her shins.
“Hi, Mr—” She stopped. It wasn’t Art Capelli, with his tanned and lined sixtysomething face, his wiry gray hair and fatherly brown eyes. It was Joe, his son.
Joe, whom she hadn’t seen in probably fourteen years. Longer.
Joe, with the sinfully gorgeous looks that began with his thick dark hair and ended with his perfect olive-skinned body, and encompassed pretty much every other desirable male attribute in between.
Cocky, egotistical Joe, who’d always known all too well how irresistible he was and had played on it for everything he was worth.
Possibly, she was blushing already.
“Hi,” he said. They looked at each other. He lifted his head from the wheeled roller-thingy that allowed him to slide easily beneath a vehicle. “Mary Jane, right?”
“Yes.”
“I saw your name in the book.” And probably wouldn’t have recognized her in a police lineup if he hadn’t.
“Where’s your dad?” she asked, and it sounded abrupt and clumsy.
He didn’t answer right away, occupied with levering his strong body up off the roller-thingy so he could stand. “I’m helping him now. Taking over, really. His health isn’t that great.”
Once he was standing, she could see him a lot more clearly. He hadn’t changed, she quickly concluded. He was every bit as good-looking as he’d been in high school. Better-looking, in fact. Her own eye for a man’s looks had matured with the years, and she liked the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, and the fine, scattered threads of silver in the short but still thick hair that framed the top half of his face.
“Right. I’m sorry to hear that,” she answered him. “I mean, that he’s not well. Not sorry you’re helping out. Obviously.”
Smooth, Mary Jane. Real smooth.
There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask. What happened to the Hollywood plan? Was Joe back here for good, or just as an interim arrangement because his dad wasn’t well? Wasn’t there someone else who could take over the garage? What had gone wrong?
It was ridiculous how shocked she felt at seeing him, and how instinctively she’d gone back in time about eighteen years to when they were in high school together and she’d loathed him more than any other guy in school.
Yes, loathed him.
Insist on that a little more, Mary Jane. Protesting too much? Never!
She’d loathed her own reaction to him even more. He’d been so cocky back then, so magnetic and sure of himself, wearing his sense of his own sparkling future like an Armani suit. No, wait a minute. Not a suit. He was rougher than that. Make it a biker jacket, b
lack Italian leather.