4

CHAPTER

Four

Carmella was grateful she had work to dive into after the nightmare weekend she’d had. Her mother had been kicked out of one of her favorite urgent care clinics. The police had called Carmella to pick her up instead of arresting her.

So Carmella’d been over at her mother’s, keeping her fed and entertained long enough to finally sleep her way out of the manic state she’d worked herself into.

Which meant Carmella had finally fallen into her own bed somewhere after one in the morning and had gotten very little rest.

Normally she’d go in later than seven, but despite her exhaustion, she’d woken up at six. So, she accepted it, showered, ate some breakfast, and headed to her new job.

The office was now hers. Carmella would need to make her own way there. Figure out what she liked where. She’d need to find a way to handle all the people who worked at Twisted Steel as well.

She cast her gaze over the shop floor below. She’d worked in garages her entire adult life. When her father had been around, he’d been a mechanic at her uncle’s shop.

Those guys down there worked hard and played harder. They were all of a type. Asa with his taciturn super-amped-up alpha male energy. Duke, the laid-back guy, good with his hands. There were shop guys, long beards, backward-baseball-hat guys, big, quiet beefy dudes of indeterminate purpose, and yet they knew more than most anyone when it came to machines.

Carmella took her attention away from the shop floor and went back to setting up her office. The Friday before, Lottie had taken home a big box of shiny things, pictures, dolls, buttons, and all manner of busy, sparkly crap that people tend to gather over years at a place.

That had all been picked clean so the slate was totally blank. Carmella wasn’t one for sparkly little bits of crap. It wasn’t as if she would have been able to keep anything anyway as a kid, so she never developed that habit.

But she liked pictures, so she’d brought some of them from home and had begun to set things up the way she liked them best.

Carmella wasn’t a Nobel prizewinner or anything, but she knew numbers and shops and that world. It had taken a while to get there, but Carmella liked what she did. And she had zero problem being proud of it.

Duke had wanted to go next door all weekend long to visit with Carmella. He told himself it was about making a new employee feel comfortable but really, he just dug her.

But he’d been out late working at the shop, and it wasn’t until she walked in Monday morning looking ridiculously adorable that he was able to be around her.

Of course, he got sucked into a crotchety engine and swept up in making it right again so he lost track of time until Asa spoke.

“You can stop looking at the door. She came in a few minutes ago,” Asa said as he walked over carrying a fender.

“I know when she got here.” Duke liked the earliest hours at Twisted Steel, when it was just him and his machines. There were a few others who liked it when it was quiet and Duke wondered if Carmella was one of them.

“Before you go moon at her, let’s see if this fits.”

“I don’t moon at anyone.” Nevertheless he pulled his head out of the engine he’d been elbow deep in and helped Asa get the fender into place.

They machined it at the shop, which took longer than ordering one, but that was far more expensive. This client was happy to wait for something that met her exact specifications and Asa, the weirdo, seemed to love that sort of excruciatingly boring work.

“She’s our employee. It’d be stupid to moon at her.” Duke wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.

Asa raised one brow and went back to sliding the fender into place.

After a little bit of to and fro, they managed to get it lined up so Asa could then secure it.

“I’m not going to lie. After the last two times I was beginning to wonder if this fender was cursed.”

“I love how you’d chalk it up to a curse instead of owning your shit,” Duke teased his perfectionist partner.

Asa flipped Duke off as he examined his work.

Duke kept on, cleaning up a little. “If I can get her running by the end of today, I think we should be able to deliver at the end of the week probably. For now, I’m breaking for some coffee.”

He not only grabbed a cup for himself, but one for Carmella too, bringing it up to the deck where her workspace was.

“Morning.”

Carmella wore her hair in some sort of braid wrapped around her head. It should have looked ridiculous, but it didn’t. It exposed the beauty of her face. Big blue eyes, those damned freckles he couldn’t stop thinking about, her lips, glossy with a little makeup but not too much.

The blouse she wore was nearly the same color as her eyes and it skimmed over her curves lovingly but was entirely appropriate for work.

“I brought you some coffee.” He should have invited her into the break room. There was cream and food and stuff in there. “Or if you wanted sugar or milk, we could have a cup in the other room. Have you had breakfast yet?”

Her smile was patient but amused at the edges. “I have sugar right here.” She pointed at the coffee station she’d placed in her office. “I may be what’s termed a caffeine junkie so I like to make my own half-caf brew so I can drink it all day and not act like a bee in a jar.”

He had to pause to think for just a moment about all her parts jiggling as she bounced around the office. “’Scuse me for saying so, but that might be fun to see.”

Carmella laughed. “I’m glad to hear my hyperactivity would be appreciated.”

Duke leaned his butt against the empty desk, tipping his chin at her. “You’ve done some work in here.” Not a lot, but certainly she’d claimed the office. Some of the furniture had been rearranged and he noted the baskets neatly marked with each employee’s name along with one for invoices and the like.

“How are you settling in today?”

“Not too bad. Moved some stuff, made labels.”

“Your eyes just sparkled when you said you made labels. I’m a little nervous,” Duke said. And sort of turned on. Huh.

“I like things in their place. I like knowing things are where they should be when I have to find them.”

“Right on.”

“Okay, you need to tell me where you’re from with that accent of yours. Before that, though …” Carmella nudged him toward a pink pastry box. “Go on. Cherry popovers. There are more in the break room, but I kept these three back. I’ll share one.”

“I think the better question is what kind of planet you came from bearing all that red hair and pastry too,” Duke said as he leaned over her, taking a deep breath as he grabbed his pastry.

“I might smell like window cleaner,” she murmured.

That might make you even fucking hotter. He managed not to say it out loud, but damn, who knew?

“Was it that bad in here?” he managed to say, like he hadn’t been sniffing her and she didn’t know it.

“Nah. I just figured since I had everything off the desks when I moved them, they may as well get a bit of a wipe down. I hope you don’t mind that I rearranged things.”

“This is your domain. Do whatever you need. But don’t forget there’s a floor full of big-ass burly dudes who would happily move heavy stuff if you asked. Me included.”

“I’ll be keeping that in mind. Mainly it was just desks so it wasn’t a big deal.”

He didn’t like the idea of her moving stuff. Or maybe he liked the idea of doing it for her. Duke wasn’t that alarmed by the wanting to take care of her part. He liked to make things easy for people when he could. But this was … odd. Far more intense than he usually felt about women he dug.

The phone rang and she grabbed it, her voice going soft and sexy. Duke stood, dumbfounded by the way she effortlessly stepped into the job.

Carmella was an adult. A woman in charge of herself. So. Fucking. Sexy.

“I don’t even know what to do with him, Ginger,” Carmella said later that night as they took a walk around Green Lake after work. “He’s really hard to resist.”

Ginger barked and kept walking alongside.

“You like him too. I know.”

Duke flustered her in ways she wouldn’t have allowed in anyone else. It was his rhythm. He took his time. With every word. With every step. And yet he didn’t come off lazy so much as totally enjoying every moment.

He was intense the same way watching a big wave safely from the shore was intense. And right then he looked at her like he wanted to spread her on a cracker and take a bite.

It didn’t matter that she was fully clothed, when Duke looked at her, Carmella felt naked. And it wasn’t predatory. He wasn’t being lecherous. It left her exposed and a little off balance.

She never did find out where he was from with that surfer boy drawl with a hint of Northeasterner flavor to his words because the day was flat-out crazy after that.

Maybe she needed to stop even thinking about this whole thing. The man was her boss. It was such a bad idea to let herself get tingly.

“I need this job. Men are plentiful if I should find a need for one. I can keep all my dirty thoughts to myself. I’m not a toddler. I have self-control.”

The path was full of people out enjoying the warm evening walk around the lake so a few people gave her a look as they passed, but mainly no one seemed to care that she was talking to herself and her dog.

Which was good because by the time she’d made her third go-round, she was ready to head back home, feeling a little more solid in her you can look but not touch plan.

Mostly.