Best Erotic Romance 2014 (5 page)

Annabeth Leong

“Tamara, can you come out to the front?”

Tamara Owens sighed and worked her head a little closer to the engine she was currently examining. “It's the '97 Civic, right? I knew that guy would be upset.”

Her service consultant's heels clicked against the garage's concrete floor. Pacing. Never a good sign. “I think you should come out here. He keeps insisting he just had the timing belt serviced six months ago, and he doesn't trust anything I say.”

She couldn't avoid this. Tamara emerged from the engine reluctantly, wiping grease from her fingers with a soiled rag. “Hell, Lucy, you could practically fix the damn thing yourself if you didn't have better things to do. What am I going to tell him that you can't?” Tamara hated talking to customers, who tended to question her and ask for the boss (sometimes even refusing to believe that she was the boss). She trained her service consultants exhaustively in customer service, parts and mechanics to avoid exactly this situation.

Lucy shrugged helplessly, her blonde ringlets bobbing around
her ears. “Would you please just come?”

Tamara resisted the urge to growl and throw a tool to the ground. Childish behavior like that wasn't exactly uncommon in the business—separate people worked the front desk for a very good reason—but as with all things, Tamara felt she had to hold herself to a higher standard in order to maintain respect. Not for the first time, she considered hiring a man to wear overalls and talk to customers for her. “I'll be there in a second,” she said. Casting a longing glance over her shoulder, where the engine gleamed dully with its straightforward problems, Tamara headed to the sink to clean up and collect herself.

The sight of the tall, sharply dressed man waiting beside the counter did nothing to improve Tamara's mood. Everything about him spoke of precision, from his tailored suit to his obviously gym-perfected musculature to his smooth shave and gleamingly polished shoes. He was way too handsome, way too expensive and Tamara could just tell how miserable he was about to make her.

Most of the time she could accept being halfway presentable, along with all her other halfways—halfway strong, halfway slim, halfway respected, halfway making a living with her business, halfway between her white Mississippi mother and black Massachusetts father. A man like this, who seemed to know exactly who to be and where to stand, made Tamara feel she had gotten halfway to nowhere.

She cleared her throat and summoned her most professional voice. “Sir? My service consultant tells me you asked to speak to the mechanic who'd be working on the car.” Tamara braced for condescension—maybe he'd ask to speak to the actual mechanic, or request a different mechanic take over the job. Instead, he surprised her.

He shook her hand with a firm grip—his palm was softer than hers—and introduced himself. “Randal Dean. Look, I'm sorry to make you leave your work. I just don't understand this thing about the timing belt. I had service done on that six months ago, and now you guys are telling me I need to do it again. Did my other mechanic screw me over? Are you guys looking to take advantage of a guy who doesn't know a timing belt from a…um…from a steering wheel? What's going on here?”

Tamara blinked. His sheepish smile revealed gorgeous dimples in his cheeks that gave boyish appeal to what might otherwise have been a clipped, businesslike tone. A very slight accent tipped her off to his Chinese heritage, making her reinterpret her initial read of his light-skinned features. He met her eyes directly, with respect, neither slipping in incredulous glances at her tool belt nor straying down to her breasts to check her out. For once, a little part of her wished he would show some awareness of her curves. She certainly noticed his refined good looks and the masculine perfection of his body's lines.

Pushing down her unexpected arousal, Tamara attempted to focus on the problem at hand. “Lucy should have explained the situation to you. You've got oil leaking from your cam seals. If that gets onto your timing belt, it doesn't matter if it's new. The fluid could degrade the belt—either by eating it, or just by saturating it and causing it to slip.” She stopped talking when Randal shook his head vigorously.

“I need you to slow way, way down,” he said. “Explain it to me like I'm a three-year-old. Tell me why I need to pay hundreds of dollars for timing belt service twice in a very short time.” He paused and raked a hand through his hair, flashing a grin. “It wouldn't hurt if you could also explain what the hell a timing belt is.”

Tamara took a deep breath and tried again. “A timing belt
helps coordinate your crank and cam shafts,” she began.

“You lost me already.”

Now Tamara could understand Lucy's problem. Randal Dean might not be the kind of sexist jerk she'd been expecting, but he was a piece of work in his own right. “With all due respect, Randal, it took me a long time to learn how a car works. I want to answer your questions and make sure you feel comfortable about how you're spending your money with us, but at a certain point, you do have to trust my professional opinion. I've got a lot of other cars to fix. I can't give you a long lesson right now.” She sighed, summoning a phrase from the customer service training she'd attended herself. “What can I do to help resolve this issue?”

“Can I come back later?” he asked, and something about his tone heated Tamara's cheeks. “When you're less busy and you can spend a little time?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. Her day was booked solid, and this wouldn't be quick. To accommodate his request, she'd definitely have to stay late. Still, something inside her hesitated to tell him no.

“Five o'clock,” she said. “Lucy will be closing up. The car will be ready by then, and I'll walk you through everything I did, show you the parts I replaced, the works. We can just hang out in the garage until you're satisfied.” She stumbled over the last word of her sentence. It conjured an image of a different sort of satisfaction, sweaty and messy and delicious. Tamara envisioned straddling Randal and running a grease-stained finger across his smooth, high cheekbone, leaving a smear behind. She wondered what it would be like to get him dirty. Coughing a little, Tamara tried to clear the fantasy from her mind.

A faint smile spreading across his face suggested his mind had traveled to a similar place. He remained professional, however,
promising to be prompt and pay for the demand on her time.

She watched Lucy lead Randal to her car, preparing to drop him off wherever he needed to be between now and five. Tamara's sense of foreboding hadn't diminished in the slightest—it had only changed. That man was still much too handsome, much too expensive and much too tempting.

Randal returned at precisely five o'clock. Tamara told Lucy to send him back to the garage, and to stick around for at least another hour in case he turned out to be a creep.

He greeted Tamara with a businesslike handshake, though she thought his palm might have lingered in hers a beat longer than necessary. For the next hour, she described a timing belt's function at length, detailing how its failure could cause valves and pistons inside the engine to interfere with each other to disastrous effect. She explained that even a new timing belt could be destroyed by an oil leak. Then she showed him the dried cam seals she'd removed from his car's engine.

To be honest, the worn rubber rings she'd discovered had shocked her. She held them up for his inspection. “See how cracked, brittle and hard those things are?” Tamara asked. “Whoever replaced your timing belt should really have noticed that. It takes a lot of labor for me to get down to that part of the engine, and those parts don't cost that much. If you're already in there and you see these things look old, you might as well replace them to be safe.” She tossed him a new cam seal. “See the difference? How it springs back when you pinch it? Feel it.”

She picked one up herself and squeezed to demonstrate.

“It is hard,” he said, imitating her movements. Her gaze snapped to him, ready to call him out for innuendo, but he met her challenging gaze with apparent innocence. He smelled great, too—his clean, spiced apple scent stood out brightly against the
greasy engine smells all around them. Even without intentional provocation from Randal, Tamara's nipples stood at attention. Again, she imagined what it would be like to touch him. Would his black eyes widen with surprise when she pressed her lips to his? Would he use those muscles to grab her ass with ferocious intensity?

She rushed to cover her reaction to him. “I didn't actually replace the timing belt because the oil hadn't gotten to it yet. If you compare your bill to your estimate, you'll see we removed that charge.”

As if on cue, Lucy poked her head in to check on them. Tamara smiled, glad to be free of Randal before she had to think any more about her heart's unbidden pounding. While Lucy took care of his bill, she could close up his engine and concentrate on getting him out of her life. The last thing she needed was to embarrass herself with a client.

She'd almost caught her breath when his approaching footsteps quickened it again. “Mind if I use your sink?” he asked. “I picked up some grease from that seal you showed me.”

Tamara agreed, then realized she'd have to lead him to the back corner of the garage. She'd started a reorganization project there that had left the area littered with car parts and tools. The cramped space forced her to stand much closer to him than she otherwise would have. “I'm not sure how much good that will do you,” she muttered, indicating the gray sliver of soap resting on the lip of the sink.

“You must have guys hitting on you all the time,” Randal said suddenly as he rubbed his hands together under the fitful stream of water from the metal faucet.

Tamara blinked at the non sequitur. “What makes you think so?”

“Your confidence,” Randal said. “Your skill. It's hot as hell.
And a lot of men get turned on when a woman can do a job they think of as a man's.” He cleared his throat and dried his hands on the rag she kept beside the sink. “Combined with your looks, it's deadly. People must bother you pretty often.” He glanced at her, desire clear in his eyes for the first time. Her body responded with a wet ache, right in her center. Tamara caught herself wondering why she didn't take him. What harm could it do to get laid?

A smile played over Tamara's lips. For once, she felt more amused than bitter. “Usually, they bother me by acting like I don't even know how to drive a car, much less repair one. I don't really have a lot of problems with being asked on dates.”

Randal curled his lip, just slightly. “Stupid men.”

She smirked. “Is this an elaborate way of asking me out?”

He hesitated for so long that she wondered if he would take the opportunity she'd given him. “I really shouldn't. I don't want to—”

“Bother me,” Tamara finished for him.

He shrugged and spread his hands, and she saw he'd stained them again on the rag he'd used to wipe them. Tamara didn't want to resist anymore. She touched the oil streak that crossed his palm. “Are you sure you know what you're getting into? This is a pretty dirty place.” To emphasize her point, she did what she'd fantasized about only hours before, tracing his cheekbone with one greasy finger. A sense of primal victory filled her chest when she stepped back and stared at the mark she'd made on his perfect, chiseled face.

For a second, Randal didn't react and Tamara worried she'd miscalculated. Then he reached for her, crushing her body to his with exactly the strength she'd hoped to feel.

“What about your suit?”

“I'll owe the dry cleaner a lot of money. It will be worth it.”

He bent to kiss her, but Tamara stopped him before he could reach her lips. She felt greedy, and wanted to take him her way. “Hold on,” she said. “Since you don't mind ruining your suit…stay right there.”

Tamara ran to retrieve the unused timing belt from the kit she'd opened for his car. She returned and showed him the rubber belt, ridged on one side with a corrugated pattern. “As I was trying to explain,” she said, “this thing synchronizes the engine valves to make sure they run smoothly.”

She approached Randal and wound the belt around his hips, using it to tug him toward her. Grinning, he let her pull his body tightly against hers. His erection rubbed plainly against her pelvis. He reached between them to undo Tamara's work shirt, while she continued her feigned lecture. “We wouldn't want to disturb the rhythm between us, so it's very important to make sure this belt is tight and properly installed.”

She did let Randal kiss her the next time he tried. He tasted clean and crisp and male. Tamara moaned when he pressed his tongue between her lips, then lifted her chest to grant him access.

Randal pushed up her sports bra and cupped her breasts. Despite his claims about the supposed sexiness of her job, Tamara so often felt her femininity wound up hidden or overlooked. Not so when Randal touched her. The gentle brush of his fingertips against her nipples made her feel curvy and desirable.

For the next little while, she forgot her game and gave herself over to his kisses, her grip on the timing belt loosening. Randal kissed his way down her neck and shoulder, sweeping aside the coiled hair she let run wild to reach bare skin. He dropped to his knees on the dirty concrete floor, apparently unconcerned about his suit, and kissed her stomach while undoing the fly of her worn jeans.