The next day during my lunch break, I run a quick errand to the Sunshine Bakery uptown and return to the shop, working hard the rest of the afternoon on a restoration. Tonight is the meeting with David—drinks at Thalia’s to discuss our next steps. I should be able to patch up the Henley situation before then and cruise into business.

Since we start early in the day, once the clock ticks past four, I say good-bye to the guys and take off.

But my feet feel heavy, and a vague sense of dread courses through me as I walk. When a cab with an ad for a hot new action flick cruises by on 11^th Avenue, I contemplate hailing it and heading to the nearest movie theater. As a leathered old woman leaves a bodega with a steaming cup of coffee, I consider ditching my plan and grabbing a French roast at a cafe somewhere else . . . anywhere but where I’m going.

But cafes aren’t my style, and avoidance isn’t either. I pride myself on being upfront and facing problems. Most of all on fixing problems. Ironic, in a way, since I thought I was pretty damn direct with Henley five years ago when I explained the problem with the ’69 Mustang Fastback she’d been working on while I was gone. I’d left the car in her capable hands, but the final work didn’t exactly go as planned.

I told her so when I saw what she’d done—a full-on paint job in champagne gold, but the client didn’t want that color.

The guy wanted lime gold. Subtle difference in shade, but to a Ford loyalist, it’s everything.

Her brown eyes had welled up with tears, and I’d felt like an ogre because she said she’d done what I told her to do. “You said it was champagne. I wrote down the paint code.” Those watery eyes had tugged at my heart, but I knew she didn’t want to be treated any differently because she was a woman, so I couldn’t let her tears sway me. Or her insistence. She grabbed her notebook and shoved it at me, trying to show me her notes for the build. But it didn’t matter that she wrote it down—she wrote it down wrong, and it had threatened my reputation. The client didn’t want his car in a different color, and he sure as hell didn’t want me delivering it late.

“I said lime. This is the kind of stuff you need to get right, because this is going to require a complete redo and that costs time and money,” I’d told her in my best stern voice. My job was to teach her, not take her into my fucking arms and comfort her.

She’d swatted away her tears, raised her chin, and implored me to give her another chance. I gave it to her, fixing the Mustang with her, side by side, stripping the paint and starting over from scratch. Maybe that was my problem—being so damn close to her. It messed with my head, and every day I told myself, “Don’t treat her any differently just because she smells so goddamn sweet.” Every day, I grew more stern with her. Tensions between us were already frayed thin, and they unraveled even further. A little later, when it was time for me to choose which apprentice to move up, I told her it wouldn’t be her.

I stood by the decision at the time. I still stand by it today. She wasn’t ready. Plain and simple. My decision had nothing to do with her talent—she had more raw ability than anyone I’d ever worked with. It was all natural, too. Henley didn’t come from a family of mechanics, and she wasn’t raised by a dad who built cars. She was like me—drawn to cars in a bone-deep way from a young age, and that was why she studied engineering in school, and that was why she sought me out post-graduation so she could learn the trade.

My issue was simply that she needed more discipline to balance her talent. After the lime gold fiasco, I told her she could stay on with her apprenticeship and keep learning. I promoted one of the guys instead. She didn’t like being passed over one bit, and she parked those hands on her hips and stared at me like I was Hannibal Lecter.

“Maybe I should have gotten it right the first time, but I bet if I were one of the guys, you’d forgive the lime gold mistake a lot more easily, wouldn’t you?”

I’d blinked in shock and held up my hands, as if I needed to fend her off. “Whoa. This has nothing to do with you being a woman.”

She’d shot me a pointed stare. “Are you sure it doesn’t?”

I didn’t like the way she was making accusations. I narrowed my eyes. “No. It has to do with you giving me attitude. Like you’re doing right now.”

“I’m not giving you attitude. I’m giving you the truth. I’ve worked my butt off for you, and this is ridiculously unfair.”

“And you’re acting ridiculously out of line.”

“Why can’t you give me another chance to earn the promotion?” Her voice shook as she asked that question, her eyes threatening to fill with tears again. “I told you it was an honest mistake. I showed you that I wrote it down wrong. Are you that cruel that you can’t let this go?”

“Are you this dramatic? I’m keeping you on. I’m just not moving you up yet. You’re not ready. It’s that simple.”

“This dramatic? Would you call a man dramatic?”

“If he was making a scene like you are, you bet I would.”

That was when she’d hurled her insult, like an angry goddess on a mountaintop flinging a ball of fire from her bare hands. “You’re nothing but a cruel bastard.”

That shit was not going to fly.

I drew a deep breath, sucking in all my anger. “Maybe I am. But this cruel bastard just fired you,” I said as calmly as I possibly could.

Her jaw dropped, and her brown eyes flooded with hurt. I couldn’t bear to look at her. I turned away, stalking back to the office. I slammed my door and that was when I fumed—at her, but mostly at myself for letting it get to the point where we both were driven by anger.

I’d dragged a hand roughly through my hair, my jaw clenched tight, a vein pulsing so hard in my neck I could feel it beat. What the fuck was wrong with me? I’d just fired the most talented person I’d ever worked with. How the hell did she get so far under my skin?

I reminded myself again and again that no matter how skilled she was, nobody talked to me that way. I was the boss, and that was how it was going to be. The woman came to me to learn, and she was going to learn an important lesson. She didn’t get to say whatever she wanted, no matter how pissed she was.

I would walk back out there, calmly explain why I was letting her go, wish her well, and encourage her to get a handle on that mile-wide stubborn streak.

I turned the knob to return to the garage and found she was already gone.