01

What does a girl have to do in order to get a little attention around here ? Elizabeth pushed her bangs back off of her face where perspiration was already beading up generously on her brow. It had to be every bit of 90° outside today, and coupled with the July southern humidity, the temperature gauge was pushing near the 100° mark.

Hot and ornery, Elizabeth dug around her purse and pulled out an elastic hair band that she had tossed in there earlier this morning. Grabbing a handful of her unruly chestnut brown hair, she wrapped the hair band around it and pulled it up into a messy bun. The loose ends that framed her face were saturated with sweat, and after the awful day she was having, all Elizabeth wanted to do was go home and take herself a nice long, cool shower.

That really wasn’t too much to ask, was it ?

She found herself standing in the middle of the garage, tapping her foot irritably and looking around for any signs of life. To her dismay, there wasn’t a single soul around. It couldn’t possibly take this long to replace a flat tire she thought to herself. She’d been sitting in this dingy little box of a room for over an hour and no one had even bothered to pull her car into the bay yet. When she glanced out the window it was still parked in the exact same place that Bobby had towed it when they first arrived.

Stepping back, Elizabeth continued her inspection of the garage and noticed several cars sitting up on lifts waiting to be worked on. Several of the guys stood congregated around the center vehicle which looked like some expensive fancy sports car. From where she stood she could tell that it was blue and she even admitted that it looked nice, but right now that car was preventing the guys from fixing her flat tire.

Elizabeth drummed her fingers against the counter contemplating the best way to handle the situation. She hadn’t driven far after getting off her 12 hour shift from the hospital when Elizabeth had her flat tire. She had pulled off to the side of the road and, of course, with her wonderful luck there hadn’t been a spare in the trunk of her car.

All that was left for her to do was to call Bobby’s Towing. She had known Bobby Miller since high school, and when he picked her up he had promised her that he would have a new tire on her car in no time. She figured that she would have been on her way by now.

But no, she was still here and the guys were still standing out there in the bay area ogling the fancy car as if it was a naked woman.

Elizabeth slammed her palm against the counter. She’d had enough. Eying the bell near the edge of the counter she made her way towards it and began to bang her fist on it. She took out every ounce of frustration that she was feeling on that poor silver bell.

Needless to say her angry pounding got the job done, because when she glanced back in the bay area four pairs of ping-pong ball shaped eyes were staring back at her as if she had lost her ever loving mind.

At this point she really didn’t care what they thought about her as long as they just put a damn tire on her car so she could finally go home.

Bobby warily walked into the lobby and came to a stop at the edge of the counter, making sure to keep the barrier of the counter in between them. If he had any of the sense that God gave him he would apologize for her long wait and immediately remedy the problem by pulling the car into the bay and fixing it.

“Look Liz, I’m sorry that it’s taking longer than I told ya.” He dug his hands deep in his grease stained jeans and looked sheepishly at her. “Zeb dropped off his car while I was picking you up and it sure is a beauty. We don’t get to see many cars like that down here in Macon. Hell Lizzie, you know how guys can get around cars like that with big engines. Those types of cars are the things that give men like us wet dreams.”

Bobby shot her a conspiratorial wink and grinned. “You understand how it is, right ?”

Elizabeth tamped down her growing frustration. Yeah, she understood alright. She understood that if Bobby didn’t do what she was paying him to do then somebody was going to have hell to pay.

“Look,” Elizabeth demanded, slamming her hands down on the counter again. “I’m hot, I’m tired and all I want to do is to go home. My last shift lasted 12 hours and before my tire blew out I had been looking forward to a nice, long shower. Will you please,” she drawled out the word for emphasis, “just fix my damn tire so that I can go home.”

Surprised by the force of Elizabeth’s anger Bobby took two steps back and quickly promised that he would have Rex get on it right away. He told her that she would be out of there in 20 minutes, tops.

“Good. That’s all fine and dandy. I don’t care who handles it as long as it gets done.”

Spinning around, she went over to the row of beat up plastic chairs that looked a little worse for wear and collapsed into one of them. Looking through the window, some of the tension instantly drained out of her as she watched Rex head outside to get her car.

It was about freaking time.

Satisfied that her car was now being dealt with, Elizabeth lay her head back against the wall and let her eyes close for just a second. She was so exhausted that she wasn’t sure she would even be able to make that shower she had been hoping for when she finally got home. She’d be lucky if she made it upstairs to her own bed.

What felt like maybe five minutes of total peace and quiet was interrupted when the bell over the door jingled, signaling a new customer had arrived. Elizabeth was too tired at the current moment to open her eyes and see who it was. She heard the door from the bay squeak open and knew that it had to be Bobby coming out to greet the newcomer.

It wasn’t until she heard the deep, melodic voice that was both strange and oddly familiar that she stiffened in her seat.

“Hey man, is my car ready ? I wanted to get out to the parent’s house before dark. It’s been a while and I’m not sure what kind of state I’m going to find things in.”

Bobby had answered him but Elizabeth’s mind slurred the rest of the conversation. My God ! Bobby had mentioned that the flashy car belonged to a Zeb. But it couldn’t be that Zeb. There is no way that he could have been referring to the one and only Zeb Crooker, could it ? He hadn’t been home in almost six years. The last time that Elizabeth had seen Zeb was after that one night of shared innocent passion right before he left for his stint with the Marines.