Luke

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Two days after I’d left her standing next to a pile of her luggage on the sidewalk, I stood under Emily Parker’s Tercel, which was up on a hoist at Riggs Auto. One of my mechanics, Ted, had just finished going over it with me. “Transmission’s done for,” Ted said. “Brake pads, oil, no fluids, tires are bald. Bottom line, this car is pretty fucked.”

I scratched my chin. He was right—I could see it myself, since Dad had taught all of us how to fix a car since sometime around first grade. “How did she drive this piece of shit for so long?” I said.

“Chicks, man,” Ted said. “They’re hopeless with this shit. I hear she’s a dumb blonde.”

I turned and looked at him for so long that he finally looked away. “I hope you don’t say that shit in front of customers. No wonder we never get women in here.”

“We get plenty of women,” Ted said. He pointed, grinning. “They’re right over there.”

I followed his point to a stack of magazines piled on an old cabinet in the corner. “Hustler?” I said. “We have fucking Hustler? What is it, 1975?”

Ted shrugged. “Mike liked them. That’s how we did things when Mike was here.”

I’d been hearing that a lot since I’d been back. I’d spent time at my dad’s body shop growing up—we all had. My brothers and I had learned how to fix cars from an early age, and we learned it by coming to Riggs Auto and getting dirty. We knew the guys who worked for Dad, the customers who came and went. Riggs Auto wasn’t exactly a happy place, but it had been normal enough.

Something had changed. The guys working here now hadn’t been here eight years ago. These guys were lazy and pissy, I wouldn’t trust any of them with my wallet, and they seemed to make a game of trying to piss me off. I was the new guy, Mike’s kid, the one they didn’t trust, so I spent half my day looking over everyone’s shoulder and making them even moodier.

We didn’t have any customer service to speak of, which meant we didn’t have all that many customers. I wondered why Dad said I had to come and run the shop so I could keep the profit coming in. What profit?

“Do the repairs,” I said to Ted.

“Yeah?” Ted said. “Is blondie gonna pay?”

“You told a customer to fuck off yesterday,” I said. “Suddenly you care about money?”

He laughed at that. “Sure, I care about money.”

I didn’t like the sound of that laugh. In the last two days I’d stared at invoices and waybills, trying to add up sales tax and payroll. Riggs Auto was run on scraps of paper and wads of cash instead of complicated computer programs. The scraps of paper had Dad’s illegible handwriting on them and the bank account was barely used, yet none of the guys were complaining about missed pay. The whole thing stunk, and even a dumbass like me could see that the IRS would have a heyday in here.

Then there was the house.

Our place on the wrong side of Westlake’s tracks was a mess. It sat on half an acre of overgrown weeds, and once upon a time—a hundred years ago, maybe—it had been a home for a family with money. The house itself was big, with a wraparound porch and four huge bedrooms. There was also a guest house set behind the main house, its own separate little place with a bedroom and bathroom. I’d lived in the guest house growing up, which made it easy for Emily to sneak into my bed every night without anyone seeing. That last summer, the guest house had probably seen more action than a porn theater in 1970s Times Square.

But my brothers and I hadn’t exactly been big on upkeep, and since we all bailed, Dad had let the place fall to pieces. The paint was peeling, the shingles were curling, and the weeds were past my knees in June. When I wasn’t wading through the mess at Riggs Auto during the day, I spent my evenings trying to at least make the main bedroom and the kitchen more habitable so I wasn’t creeped out by my own house. Washing sheets, dishes, curtains, and floors was not what I was used to doing, and both nights I’d fallen into bed exhausted.

But I’d still been thinking about Emily. Because apparently the minute I got within Westlake city limits, she was the main thing on my mind. Even after she treated me like dirt on her shoe.

“Fix it,” I said to Tom again, indicating her screwed-up car.

The car was her problem. I shouldn’t fix it. I’d told her we were done. I should give her the number for a tow truck driver and send her on her way. She should get her car fixed on the right side of the tracks, far away from me, the guy she didn’t want to be seen with. And yet, here I was.

Shit.

I walked back to the front office, which was empty. The phone on the front desk was ringing—for God knew how long, because none of the guys ever answered it—so I picked it up. “Riggs Auto.”

“Jesus, Luke. Dad hire you as the receptionist?”

I felt a headache somewhere in the back of my head. It was my brother Ryan, calling from his place in the Detroit suburbs. “What do you want?” I asked him.

“Checking in on the family business,” he said.

“Not your business,” I said. “Your business is baseball.”

Or it had been. Ryan’s baseball career had been stalled by a bad shoulder, and no one knew if it would ever get back on track. In the meantime Ryan lived in his suburban house with his seven-year-old son and did… I had no idea what he did. Moped, maybe. My brothers’ emotional states weren’t my top priority, and mine wasn’t theirs. We’d grown up in the same house, that was all. Roommates more than brothers. We’d never even liked each other all that much.

“If it turns out I’m a has-been,” Ryan said, “then my business will be Riggs Auto.”

“Yeah? You gonna come out here to Westlake and fix cars?”

“If I do, are you gonna stop me?”

“No,” I said. “We need someone to clean the bathrooms. And you’re right, we could use a receptionist.”

“Dad goes to prison and suddenly you’re a CEO,” Ryan said. “It’s like your IQ jumped overnight. From zero to thirty.”

If you can believe it, Ryan was actually one of my nicer brothers. “Did you call for a reason, or just to bust my balls?”

“I called for a reason.” In the background, I heard Dylan’s voice. “Hold on,” Ryan said to his son. “I’ll be done in a sec.”

It was the middle of a weekday. “Shouldn’t he be in school?” I asked Ryan.

“Yeah. He told me he was sick this morning, but now I think he was full of shit.”

“You just said shit in front of a seven-year-old,” I pointed out.

“I did,” Ryan said, “and here it is in another sentence: You don’t know shit about parenting.”

“You know what?” I said. “I just decided I’m glad you called. Maybe you can tell me what the hell Dad is up to.”

“Right now?” Ryan said. “Let’s see. He probably just finished a terrible prison meal and is going back to his cell to watch TV.”

“You know what I mean, dipshit. I mean Riggs Auto. These guys Dad hired. The fact that there’s no money in the bank and no customers, yet everyone is paid. The fact that there are no records and the safe is empty, yet there are no creditors calling.”

Ryan was quiet.

“I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb,” I said. “If you have something to tell me, say it.”

“Okay, well,” Ryan said. “That’s the reason I’m calling. It’s sort of possible that there are a few illegal things going on at the body shop.”

Possible? A few? I felt my stomach sink. “I’m waiting for you to say more,” I prompted.

“I’m not involved,” Ryan said. “None of us are. We barely talk to Dad anyway, but he’s been extra cagey the last few years. He cleaned out his employees and brought in a bunch of dirtbags. And the place has no customers, but he’s suddenly had a bunch of money to throw around.”

I ran a hand through my hair. It all clicked together. Jesus, how fucking dumb could Dad be? “Stolen cars,” I said. “He’s been doing chop shop work. It must be.”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I’m serious. But I got a phone call from Dad’s lawyer today. We’ve been summoned to the bank.”

“Summoned to the bank?” I said.

“Apparently there’s a safe deposit box at the bank that we’re supposed to go open. Dad’s instructions. The lawyer doesn’t know anything else. We’re supposed to be there Friday at two.”

The front door of the shop opened, and Emily Parker walked in. She paused, looking around—probably for me.

“This makes no sense,” I said to Ryan, my eyes on Emily. “Dad has never had a safe deposit box in his life. What the hell is in it?”

“We probably don’t want to know, but we have no choice.”

Damn. Emily stood out like a sore thumb in the body shop, and some of Dad’s dirtbags had noticed her. “Friday at two,” I said to Ryan. “I’ll be there. Call the others. I gotta go.” I hung up and left the front desk, heading toward Emily as she turned and saw me.

She was wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and a pair of flip-flops. She had a little bit of makeup on her face and her blonde hair was down over her shoulders. And even though I was mad at her, she was the sexiest fucking woman I had ever seen.

Maybe it was because I knew what her body looked like under the clothes—or at least I used to know. She was all curves, planes, and flawless skin, her nipples dark pink against white, and I’d had my hands over every inch of it. My tongue, too. It didn’t matter what Emily wore, or how many years had gone by—to me, she always looked naked. Even when she was looking down her privileged nose at me.

Her gaze flicked down over me and back up again as I walked toward her. It was quick, but she had just checked me out. I tried not to grin as her expression grew annoyed. “Hey,” she said as I approached. “You said you’d get my car. Where is it?”

I pulled a cloth from my back pocket and wiped my hands with it, slower than I needed to, rubbing at the caked-in grease. “It’s in the back,” I told her.

“Okay,” she said. “Can I have it back?”

“No, because it doesn’t run.”

She looked stricken. “At all?”

“Was it running when I picked you up from the side of the road the other day?”

She blew out a breath. “Are you being difficult because of what happened in front of my house?”

“You mean when you were a dick to me?”

“Women can’t be dicks.”

“You proved otherwise.”

She looked mad and guilty at the same time. No one could whip up a soup of emotion like Emily Parker. “I may have been out of line,” she said.

I put the rag back in my pocket. “Looks like I got some spare Tercel parts. Have a nice day.”

“Okay, okay.” She bit her lip, ran a hand through her hair. Always a drama queen. “I apologize, Luke,” she said, the words slow. “You helped me out and gave me a ride, and I was rude to you. In fact, I was a bit of a bitch.” She emphasized that last word and glared at me.

Only Emily would imply that I was supposed to call her a bitch. “I suppose I accept,” I said, “but your car is in bad shape. That’s the truth.”

“Can I see it?”

I shrugged. “Sure,” I said. “Though you won’t know what you’re looking at.”

She put her hands on her hips, which made her breasts look even nicer under the T-shirt. “Maybe I will know. Maybe I learned about cars.”

I just stared at her, my eyebrows raised. She broke first.

“Shit,” she said. “Fine. But I still want to see it.”

“All right, Emily,” I said. “Let’s go.”