Southern Shifters: Stick Shifter (Kindle Worlds Novella) (3 page)

D
elaney Jane Owens
thoroughly enjoyed staring up at the tall drink of water that was in front of her. He was gorgeous, not just good-looking, but like ridiculously handsome gorgeous. He was tall, of course, everyone was tall to her. She was just a smidge over five-foot-four, and her head had to tilt back to look at the man. She was wearing her safety goggles, and no way was she taking them off and showing the horrible imprinted ring on her face that was a byproduct of hours of wear.

She could only guess that his eyes were beautiful, maybe brown or hazel. She could tell his hair was light and a little on the long side. He was wearing a nice t-shirt that was not the type you bought in a three-pack at the store. No, this was the kind of t-shirt you bought in a department store where they actually hung each individual shirt up. It clung to a broad chest with his toned biceps stretching the edges of the sleeves. He wore a pair of dark blue jeans that probably came from the same kind of store. His feet sported a pair of Piloti racing shoes. She’d have to give him respect on that. They were small narrow shoes that were good for shifting and meant he liked to drive and took it seriously.

D.J. also liked how big his hand was wrapped around hers. She hesitated for a minute when she realized that the fancy man in front of her had soft hands. Hers were dirty and calloused from too many years under the hood of cars.

She’d built up a pretty thick skin over the years and pushed aside the worry about what this man would think about her. D.J. had fought too hard to get the men in her small community to trust her skills with cars. At first, no one wanted her near their precious vehicles. Then when push came to shove, and she could often fix things faster and better than her dad, they reluctantly started asking for her.

Her pride in her work was what kept her from letting her chin drop to Mr. Gucci in front of her. He’d find out fast enough that there was no better pair of hands to touch his car in all of Tennessee or North Carolina.

D.J. was staring; she knew it and couldn’t make herself stop. Managing to let go of his hand was a big accomplishment. She couldn’t help but notice he resisted slightly when she started to pull away. His brow was also furrowed like he was still struggling with the fact she was a woman.

Finally, the man seemed to gather himself. “You’re D.J.?”

“Around here I am. Dad got in the habit of doing that years ago when the men in town, and especially the tourists, didn’t want me touching their cars. He used D.J., and they assumed I was a man. Much like I’m assuming you did.”

Will couldn’t deny that. “Sorry, but yeah. It was a wrong assumption, I apologize. What does D.J. stand for?”

“Oh, well that’s not important. D.J. works just fine for me. I’m used to it.”

“I didn’t mean any offense. Was just curious,” he assured her.

“No skin off my nose. So you came to check on your girl?”

“Excuse me?” Will had no idea why he was having such a hard time focusing on the petite woman in front of him. There was a scent that was masked by the smells of the garage, and his cat was distracted trying to sniff it out. It was soft, like vanilla, or cookies. Maybe it was her perfume. Not that he could imagine a mechanic spritzing on her favorite perfume before she spent the day getting covered in oil and gasoline.

“Your girl? Your car? You seem like the kind of guy that would name his car. So what’s hers?” she asked, gesturing to the car.

Clearing his throat, Will answered her, “Cordelia, Cordy.” He never told anyone that he named his car. They would think, well, he wasn’t sure what they would think. Lots of people in the club named their cars, but it was more along the lines of Flash or Bumblebee, and those were usually from the under thirty crowd.

He watched her look over to the car, then turn back to him. “I can see that. Any special reason for the name?”

Will thought about lying to her, but for some reason he trusted she wouldn’t make fun of him.

“Actually, I really like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The TV show, not the movie. I tend to name things after it. My RX is Drusilla.” Will could feel a slight blush hit his cheeks at his admission.

“Cool, I love that show. I name things too, makes it feel like more than just an object.”

Getting frustrated that he couldn’t see who he was talking to, he asked, “Uh, sorry, but could you take off your glasses? It’s like talking to a welder or something.”

“Sorry, I never take them off during the day. You ever go to the dentist, and they give you nitrous oxide? You know that funny little elephant mask they put on you?”

Will nodded that yes, he understood her reference, but wasn’t sure where she was going with it.

“Well, you sit there for however long sucking in the happy gas, and then you get up when they are all done to wander home. Nobody bothers to tell you that you have this horrible imprint of the mask etched into your puffy numb face. You walk around thinking you look all normal when instead, you look like you’ve had bad plastic surgery. Same thing with the goggles. I keep them on tight to keep the dust out since I wear contacts. If I take them off, I will be
dental girl
.”

Not wanting to debate her logic, he just offered her a, “Gotcha.”

“So, Cordy here... Somebody FUBAR’d this up good. Did you do it?”

Will didn’t like someone saying his car wasn’t running top notch, but he wasn’t about to get mad at the sweetly scented lady in front of him.

“Normally I work on my own cars but not before this trip. My mechanic gave her a once over for me.”

“Hmm, did said mechanic tell you that he put a pulley on your engine?” She cocked her head to the side with the question looking ridiculously cute with the big goggles stuck to her face.

Watching the head tilt distracted him for a moment before he answered. “Sure, we talked about it, but he didn’t tell me he had done it.”

“Just my opinion, but on a car like yours, a sixteen percent pulley is more than enough to get you the additional horsepower without any, shall we say, negative side effects.”

That didn’t sound good. “Negative side effects?”

“See, your guy put a twenty-one percent pulley on trying to squeeze more power out. It does give you a few more horsepower but taxes the hell out of the water pump. Your belt was ratcheted down so tight it broke, but not before your water pump seized up. So you need a new belt and a new pump. I can fix those easy. I keep the pulley tool for the Mini’s here in the garage. But if I were you, I’d go back down to a sixteen percent, so you don’t have any more issues. If you want that, I can get her back to you by morning. You don’t, I’ll just fix what’s here, and you can pick her up tonight before we close.”

D.J. really didn’t want him to say just fix it. She hated doing repairs that weren’t in the best interest of the cars. She knew they weren’t sentient beings, but she still assigned feelings to them. Too many years of talking to herself over busted motors she figured.

Will was fascinated listening to the woman talk about his car. There was something incredibly sexy about it. She was speaking like his car was a person. And the sound of her voice... it was feminine and self-assured and incredibly attractive. He really wanted to see her eyes. His cougar was pushing him in his mind to find out what she looked like. Her nose under the goggles was pert and straight. She had a beautiful smile with plump pink lips. Her features, that he could see, hit all of his pleasure points.

He wanted to see her again. Will knew that much. His cougar was happy when he finally figured that part of the equation out. Now he had to figure out how many times he could reasonably see her without freaking her out. Maybe there was a chance she’d accept the offer of a date, assuming she was single. Will’s cougar gave his full approval to the idea.

“I’d hate to do anything to Cordy that wasn’t the best for her. Why don’t you make the repairs to the water pump and then adjust the pulley down? I’ll be back to pick her up in the morning. Unless you could use my help tonight? I could bring dinner, hand you wrenches, dab your brow if you need it.”

The pretty woman laughed. “It’s not surgery, Mr. Klein.”

His name on her lips did strange things to him. His cat was purring in his head; he liked it too.

“You know my name?”

D.J. smirked at him, “Uh yeah, I have your paperwork.”

Of course she did: he wasn’t firing on all cylinders in the brain department at the moment.

“Please, it’s Will.” He wanted to hear his first name from her too. It was suddenly very important.

“Will, short for William I assume? Are you a junior? Or a third?”

“William, yes. No juniors. So yes or no on me visiting you tonight?” He wasn’t going to let her avoid the question.

He watched her purse her lips from side to side in serious contemplation of his request. He was holding his breath waiting for a response. Why it mattered so much to see her again, he wasn’t sure, he just knew the need was riding him hard.

“If you’ve got a hankering to watch me work, knock yourself out. I had big plans for a cup o’ soup for dinner so anything else would be great. Ray usually goes home early to rest up for any late night calls. Which would make sense if he got a lot of late night calls, but he doesn’t. Once a month is busy for us around here, so he really just wants to watch Jeopardy.”

Will was thrilled that she said yes. Now he had to come up with not only a meal but conversation. Normally, he was an excellent talker. He did it for a living most of the time. Knowing how to put people at ease and get them comfortable enough to spend a ton of money in his casino was one of his top skills. He spoke three languages and was studying a fourth. He knew some of the biggest movers and shakers in the world. This mechanic was making him tongue-tied.

“Yeah, I’ve got a hankering to watch you work tonight. Might be nice to talk to someone that doesn’t want to talk about Jell-O shots or swap car accident stories.”

“You hear a lot of those?” she asked, her lips curving up. Will could swear her eyebrow rose under her goggles.

“I’m sure you could imagine. So are you going to tell me what D.J. stands for?”

“Tell you what; I’ll tell you depending on how good dinner is. Some stale fast food burgers? You might get a middle name. Something better? You could get my first name. It’s all up to you, hotshot.” Delaney grinned at him. She wasn’t used to flirting with guys. Around her town there wasn’t anyone she was willing to even practice on. Outside of that, it was all tourists. Nobody was in town long enough to give any attention to. This handsome well-off man was the latter. He might look like a prince, but that prince would be riding away in his coach in a few days without her. But dinner and conversation would be a welcome change.

“Challenge accepted. What time does Ray head home?”

“He says five, but it’s more like four-thirty, sometimes earlier. So how about six?” she offered.

Will’s cougar didn’t like the idea of this seductive smelling woman alone in the shop as it got dark outside. Sure, she probably did it all the time, but that didn’t mean man or cat had to like it.

“I’ll be here at five, food in hand,” he promised. He was telling himself that there was a good chance he would be waiting down the street to see when Ray left so he could show up right after. Not that he was going to tell her that. That would be weird for sure.

“See you then,” she said, giving him a cute little wave.

Will couldn’t help but smile at her. Her wave was adorable; she was adorable, and he wanted to leave so he could come back and see her smile again. He gave her a head nod and reluctantly turned away from her to walk outside. He was about to call Artie when he decided he needed a little more reliable transportation.

Making a quick call to his assistant, he had her contact a rental car agency and with a little convincing, they brought him a car to the corner down the street from the garage. He tipped the man what he had in his wallet for having to cab it back to the agency. Will looked up the closest restaurant and found a Mexican place less than an hour away. He headed out of town and stopped at a local brewery and picked up a growler of IPA. He was going to get a bottle of wine but decided car repairs and fajitas called for beer. Not just a bottle of beer, a large jug of it.

With the time it took him to head out of town and back, it was almost four o’clock. He parked down the street and scoped out the garage. The tow truck was still out in front of the shop. There was movement inside the open bay door, and he knew it was D.J. moving around his car. Now he just had to wait.

D
elaney knew
he was out there. She could feel it. Her skin was tingling like it had when he had been in earlier. She had no idea what came over her. Flirting with a customer? Even with a cute customer like him, that had never happened.

She never considered herself the type of girl that guys wanted to flirt with. She liked how she looked, had boyfriends in high school, and always had a date to the dances. But she never found one that she wanted to spend more than a few months with. She did miss the few chances she had to get dressed up, which to be honest, was only in high school.

Delaney loved being a girly-girl when she got the chance. She wasn’t very good at it since her mom passed away when she was eight. She and her dad had been left to fend for themselves. Ray wasn’t overly concerned about hair bows and makeup. He also forgot about explaining a woman’s menstrual cycle to her. Lucky for her, she wasn’t feeling well and went to the school nurse who was a kindly woman that helped her out. After that, Delaney went out of her way to try and figure out the girl stuff on her own. She joined several sports teams so she would have some automatic girlfriends. They taught her how to braid hair and pick out lip-gloss.

That was over seven years ago now. Now at twenty-five, she spent ninety-percent of her time in greasy coveralls and backward baseball caps. There was also her stunning social life that included calling bingo at the Elks Lodge when Gladys was sick or the rare trip of driving an hour into a town big enough to have a movie theater.

After fancy-jeans had left, Delaney couldn’t stop herself from wondering who this guy was. William Klein was too easy to look up on the internet. Her encounter with him hadn’t been difficult because she’d just thought he was a rich city boy visiting their little town for the week. It turned out he wasn’t just a random tourist with enough vacation time saved up to spend a week driving a car around. He was a millionaire that ran a casino. He practically owned it. Well, his family did. And he had plenty of time and money to drive a car around for a week.

There were photos of him all over the world, standing with celebrities on yachts and shaking hands with politicians. There were even paparazzi pictures of him out on dates with beautiful women.

Now Delaney was worried about him coming back. She’d been all casual and cocky inviting him back to watch her work. She felt like she should change or get dressed up now. But then she wouldn’t be able to work on his car. She’d just get dirty again and look like an idiot at the same time.

She did check herself in the mirror in the bathroom and saw she had smudges on her face and the imprint of the goggles she’d been wearing when Will came in earlier. She scrubbed her face and kept trying to massage the indents out of her skin. She didn’t want to have a raccoon face when Will showed back up.

The regret was covering her in an uncomfortable feeling that she wished she’d gotten the car done before she decided to spy on him. She had a twisty knot in her stomach that she was worried would expand into sweats or vomiting.

“Delaney Jane, you have this. You are going to fix his car, eat some dinner, and wave goodbye as he drives away never to be seen again. Wow, that’s depressing.”

Okay, pep talks weren’t her thing. She knew better than to imagine this millionaire was there to sweep her off her feet and whisk her away to Hawaii. She’d always wanted to go there, it was at the top of her bucket list. But a townie like her saw lots of tourists come and go. No one ever stayed, and nobody that lived there ever got to leave. It wasn’t so bad. Although, Delaney promised herself one day she’d see both oceans. She’d seen some pretty big lakes, but dipping her toes in an actual ocean was a dream of hers.

William Klein was not her Prince Charming. At best, he was a nicer looking delivery guy. Not that Kenny the pizza kid wasn’t totally unattractive; his skin was clearing up since he graduated high school. William was so far out of her league it wasn’t funny. She really needed to stop watching rom-coms that gave her false hope.

Taking a last look in the mirror, she decided leaving her hat on was really her only option. She sighed and flicked off the bathroom light.

She’d actually procrastinated a little because the repairs for his Mini weren’t that hard, but she didn’t want to be done before he got there. Thinking about it made her sound pathetic. Still, how many chances did she get to hang around with someone that didn’t spit chew when they talked? Assuming he didn’t chew tobacco, that was.

Glancing down at her hands, she saw her nails were dirty, but there was no point cleaning those when they were going to get dirty again. The day had warmed up, and the garage was stuffy. Deciding smelly sweat was worse than what she was about to do, she unzipped her coverall and pulled it down to her waist. Tying the arms around her waist left her black Harley Davidson tank top exposed.

Delaney decided to pull the water pump and at least have that out and not be grunting on it when he showed up.

A half hour later, Delaney heard a car pull up. She didn’t want to look eager, so she kept her head under the hood. She heard footsteps approach and peered sideways to squint at the light coming from outside. A shadow blocked the sun, and she stared at the knees of those nice jeans, traveled up and decided she wasn’t ready to see him. She turned back to the motor.

“I see you are working hard on my car. I appreciate the attention.” That smooth voice belonging to William Klein tingled over her exposed skin raising bumps on her arms.

“We strive for customer satisfaction here at Ray’s,” Delaney said with a chuckle. She kept her eyes firmly on the motor.

“I hope you like Mexican food. I bought super burritos. Not sure what that was, but hey it had super in the name. Besides, cheese, sauce, and meat, it’s kinda hard to go wrong. Where should I put this stuff?”

“Over on the bench is good. Give me a second, and I’ll join you.” Delaney tried to sound casual. Sure, she had dinner with hot rich guys all the time. Just your typical Tuesday for Delaney Jane.

“So D.J., I tried to think of ways to bribe you to tell me your name. I decided to go with the traditional items women always swoon for, beer and chocolate. I didn’t think deep fried ice cream would make the trip, so I stopped at a bakery and grabbed some double fudge cookies. A woman named Sienna assured me you would love them. I think they’ll pair nicely with the hoppy finish of the beer.”

Will was trying to keep his eyes off the curvy rear bent over his car again. But his eyes couldn’t help but roam from her ass up to her bare arms and the stretch of her tank top over a pair of full breasts. He wanted to see her; it was killing his cat to be patient.

He heard D.J. giggle under the hood.

“Chocolate from Sweet Retreat and beer is an excellent bribe for me. You have no idea. I would say that just about earns you my name,” she said, standing and taking a deep breath before turning towards him.

Delaney took him in. He hadn’t changed clothes, and he was just as handsome as she remembered. Without her goggles, she could see yellow gold eyes that were staring at her with an intensity that caused her to suck in her breath.

His expression did not match the casual humor she’d heard from him a minute ago. In its place was a man that was standing rigid, his hands fisted at his sides and with tawny eyes flashing over her head to toe, always landing back at her eyes with a fierce intensity.

“Mr. Klein?”