I thumb the wetness from under my eyes and wipe my hands on the side of my coat. “My car,” I mumble as I turn to face the truck driver from earlier. I clear my throat. “It won’t start.”
He flashes me a smug grin then shakes his head. “Women and cars. Not a good combination.”
I laugh, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking that if Ella were here she’d know what to do. That woman is wicked with a wrench.
He strolls to the front of the car. “Did you pop the hood?”
“Um…kind of.”
“Kind of?” There’s a questioning tone to his deep voice. Then he laughs a pleasant, jovial kind of laugh that makes me smile. “How do you kind of pop the hood to your car?”
I shrug. In a lot of ways I regret not watching my Dad repair things when I was a kid. He’d repair the vehicles when things went wrong. Repair all the household appliances. He even single-handedly shingled the roof on our house himself. I always blame it on the fact that I’m a woman and there are things that women do and things that men do. Now that I’m adult, I wish that stigma would vanish. And more than anything I wish I would have paid more attention to my Dad when he’d tell me that I should watch him when he was fixing something.
I lift an eyebrow. “Well?”
All I see is a torso. His head is hidden beneath the hood. “Easy, little miss impatient.”
“Psh.” I roll my eyes and fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not being impatient.” Okay, so maybe I am. A little bit. Okay more than a little bit. The thought of traffic moving while my car is dead in the middle of the road looms in the back of my mind and it’s making me uncomfortable and antsy.
“Can you turn your lights on?” His voice is level.
The calming tone of it makes me relax a little bit. “Sure.” Taking a few steps backward, I reach for the door handle, open the door, and turn on my lights. I leave the door open and step outside, propping myself up against the side of my car. “You know I didn’t catch your name.”
“That’s because I didn’t give it you,” he says with a hint of amusement.
“Ohhh. Somebody’s sassy.” I shift against my car, my bicep against the strip of black lining my window. “You don’t have to get all snappy about it.”
“Chill, Duchess, I’m messing with you. It’s Ray.”
“I am chilled.” Literally. To the bone. My nose is starting to tingle. I’m betting there will be icicles hanging from the tip soon. “And Duchess? Why Duchess?”
He peaks out from around the hood, a dimple rising in left cheek. His eyes sweep over me and I wrap my coat around me tighter. He’s looking at me like he knows what I look like in my underwear. Roses bloom on my cheeks and I break eye contact, feeling a little bashful. “You dress like a stiff,” he says casually before disappearing under the hood. I hear him fumbling with something. Then a pop. “With an attitude to match.”
My eyes snap to his elongated torso stretched over my engine. “That was bold,” I scoff. “How would you like if I told you that you look like a Ray?”
“I’d be cool with that,” he chuckles, “because my name is Ray.”
“Well my name isn’t Duchess,” I retort. “It’s Sadie.”
He backs away from the front of the car. “I like Duchess better.”
I don’t. It makes me feel like he thinks I’m stuck up. Which I’m not. At all. I open up eventually. It just usually takes a while. Months. Sometimes years depending on the person. “And a stiff, really?”
“You’re dressed like a Librarian.”
I lower my gaze to examine my attire. Black slacks. A red wrap blouse. My eyes meet his then narrow. “So what. I like the way I’m dressed.” First off, I work in book-world where dressing a professional manner is necessary. Secondly, it’s January and mini-skirts aren’t a fashion must this time of the year.
“Good for you then.” He wipes his hands on coveralls. “Do you have jumper cables?”
“I don’t know.”
He raises a thick eyebrow. “You don’t know?” He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels. “Wow. Who doesn’t know if they have jumper cables or not? Seems like it would be a smart idea to keep those handy.” A smile pulls on his lips and I think about sneering at him. Then I remind myself that he’s being a good Samaritan. He’s helping me. He doesn’t have to, but he is anyway and it would be rude of me if I didn’t remember that.
“I’ve gotta pop my trunk.”
“You think you can handle that?”
My eyes flash to his for a nanosecond, narrowed into slits. “Yes.” I open my mouth then close it. I have a snippy comeback lodged in the back of my throat, but decide against using it. “I can manage, thank you.”