“I hope it is.” He barely missed a beat. “Did Keller bring his ’64-1/2 in yesterday like he said he would?”
She smiled. “Yes, Dad. He did.”
He nodded, pleased. “That’s good.”
He didn’t interfere in the business, but she didn’t begrudge his interest in the garage despite no longer being an active part of the daily business of running it. Hell, he’d founded the garage. Wallace Customs had a good reputation mostly because of the years it’d been run by her father, a reputation she did her damnedest to not tarnish. She still asked him questions, called him for suggestions, even if she didn’t really need his advice. Just to keep him from feeling left out.
He was also still good friends with Bob and Carl, her two part-timers. He’d known both men for years and talked with them several times a week.
“Took in an extra job last night out of the blue,” she said. She fished an elastic band out of her pocket and pulled her hair back into a messy bun. She’d been running a couple of minutes late that morning and hadn’t taken the time to brush or braid it yet. She’d do that after she got to work.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” She told him the basics about going out to dinner with “friends” and ending up with the ’69 Ranchero parked in bay six.
It hadn’t hurt that she’d dreamed about Cody and Justin the night before and she hadn’t been in a hurry to get out of bed that morning. There was something about the two men that had drilled right into her brain.
Not that anything would ever come of it, of course. She could tell the guys were gay, but it was nice to know her libido wasn’t totally dead in the water the way the rest of her personal life was.
“Sounds like a good thing you went out to dinner with them last night,” her dad said, smiling. “See? Getting out is good for business. Let Eliza and Rusty take you out more often. Did you give them some business cards?”
“Yes, Dad. I did.” One thing she let her father handle was their promotional material. He’d taken a few classes and designed stuff via a website that sold business cards, postcards, and all sorts of items like that.
Their cards looked slick, professional—she’d give him that. He’d also created separate appointment cards in addition to the regular business cards and postcards. And the magnetic signs that hung on the front doors of her Cherokee.
So her dad always had several dozen of the business cards on him when he was out and about.
She patiently listened to him run through a litany of what might be the Fairlane’s problem. It was nice hearing him sound energetic, and she wasn’t about to piss on his parade, even though she suspected the Fairlane’s problem would be an easy fix. Likely a loose cable connection somewhere, which hadn’t been visible in the dark parking lot last night.
The frittata tasted wonderful, and she enjoyed the breakfast discussion with her dad. With the Fairlane to look at now, she’d be pulling Keller’s carb later that day and going through it. From what the man had said, she suspected there was a problem with the carb’s body, maybe a hairline crack in the metal somewhere no one had noticed before.
It had been rebuilt several times by different people, who’d each given different reasons why it had been running crappy, with no better performance long-term. It would run great for a little while, then lapse into choppy idles and rough revs that couldn’t be adjusted out.
She suspected the lack of miles the car was usually driven didn’t help anyone with the diagnosis problem, either. Keller rarely ran it, rarely drove it. She’d have to leave it sitting at idle in her shop for a while to listen to it run before pulling the carb. She could take it out for a test drive, considering the shop lay on a quiet back road, but the forecast called for rain that afternoon and no way in hell would she drive it in less than perfect conditions.
As usual, her father refused to let her help him with the clean-up. “I’ve got it. You need to get to work. That shop won’t run itself.”
“Thanks, Dad.” She hugged him, kissed his cheek. “Love you.”
“Love you, too, sweetie. Now get to work.”
With her refilled travel mug in hand, she headed out.
No, she’d never expected she’d end up literally walking in her father’s footsteps. As Mary and Eugene Wallace’s only child, Brooke had gravitated toward hanging out with her dad.
Her mom had been a high school teacher in Venice, and since they didn’t live in Venice, they’d had her school bus stop set at the shop. Brooke rode into work with her dad every morning, caught the school bus there, and the bus dropped her off there every day.
She’d done her homework in the office and quickly grew up learning how to look up parts, work on cars, fill out work orders, and talk to customers. Then, in junior high, her dad had officially put her on the payroll when she hit sixteen.
She’d originally planned to go to college to be an engineer, which was why she’d joined the military after high school. She’d wanted the tuition assistance, and knew her mechanical skills would likely mean an easy stateside assignment.
Unfortunately, her unit had been shipped overseas to an in-country assignment. Even though she was in a support unit and not a combat soldier, she’d worked alongside her mostly male counterparts just the same, keeping vehicles and equipment running in harsh and dangerous conditions.
The tragic irony that she’d had to take over her dad’s shop—as well as care for her father—wasn’t lost on her. She could have flown home to Florida from Walter Reed, but her PTSD lingering from her injuries made flying nearly intolerable. Instead, her mom had insisted they’d drive up and get her.
That she hadn’t sucked it up and flown home to them still heavily weighed on Brooke’s conscience, even though her father had repeatedly told her to not feel guilty about it.
They’d traveled up to visit her twice a month during her recuperation, had been there for every surgery once she was at Walter Reed. Her mom had even flown up and stayed for a couple of weeks during the summer, at a facility for families of injured servicemen.
It’d been a long nine months before her injuries from the blast, shrapnel, and burns on her legs had healed enough for the doctors to finally allow her to go home. Brooke was damned lucky they’d been able to save her legs in the first place.
Another reason she ran three days a week. She’d been lucky enough to keep her life, much less her legs.
She damn sure wouldn’t let them or herself laze around.
Bob was talking to a customer in the office when she arrived at a quarter till nine. “There she is,” Bob said. “This gentleman has some questions…”
An hour later, the customer left with an appointment card to bring his Falcon in the next week for a free estimate about some electrical work, and Brooke was now way behind on her daily to-do list.
Including Cody’s Fairlane.
Before she started on that, she ordered the hood latch kit and got it coming next day air.
Bob had opened the bay door, but left the truck parked inside. She grabbed the keys and tried starting it again, just in case.
Click-click.
Bob looked up from a Barracuda he was working on. “Battery?”
“Don’t know. We tried jumping it last night at the restaurant.” She fetched the jump pack, hooked it up, and tried it. No-go.
The next step was to test the battery, which was fine.
Okay…
It took her nearly thirty minutes, but she traced the problem to a combination of a bad alternator and a loose cable at the engine block. After getting prices from the local parts house, she called Cody’s cell.
She was a little surprised at the pleasant thump her pulse made when she heard his smooth, professional-sounding voice answer. “Cody Walker.”
“Hey, it’s Brooke.”
His tone immediately changed, playful and warm. “Hey! So how many years of slavery will I be indebted to you for?”
It felt good to laugh with him. “Not too many.” She went over th
e prices with him. “So the next step is to ask what you want to do. Some customers, when they’ve done work themselves, they prefer to do the core swap if they still have the receipts.”
“Naw, it was a standard alternator. I’d thought about putting one of those chromed ones on it, then decided not to. Whatever you have to do is fine.”
“Okay. The hood kit will be here tomorrow. Depending on how busy we are, it might be done tomorrow night. By Monday, for sure.”
“Awesome.”
They chatted for a few minutes before she heard what sounded like a desk phone ring on his end. “Sorry, I have to run.”
After saying good-bye, she sat back in her office chair and closed her eyes, conjuring Cody’s face.
And Justin’s.
She was no prude. She was also no stranger to Internet porn, on occasion.
She might or might not have a couple of popular gay male sex clip sites hidden in a bookmark file on her iPad at home.
Kinky or not, they were two good-looking men. Friendly, nice, and why not reach out to them?
Eliza was right, she had closed herself off to the world.
Yet the world still spun on without her.
Mom wouldn’t want me to do that.
No, her mom had been proud of her achievements, of her ability to make friends, even of her mechanical skills.
Brooke wasn’t exactly interested in the BDSM stuff the way Eliza and Rusty were, but she also knew that, in general, the kinky population tended to be a little more open and honest in terms of dating.
Maybe I should ask Eliza to introduce me to some of her kinky friends.
Hell, maybe she should even ask Eliza and Rusty to take her to that club they sometimes went to.
For a change of pace, if nothing else.
I’ll call her at lunch and ask her.
* * * *
Brooke had forgotten about making that call by the time lunch rolled around. They’d had several scheduled quick jobs come in that morning, but then a severe summer thunderstorm line rolled in off the Gulf, and she, Bob, and Carl were left scrambling to juggle vehicles around in the bays to get them all inside and the bay doors shut before the bottom dropped out of the sky.
“Dammit,” Carl said. “I still have a good two hours left on that Maverick’s brakes.” The Maverick, which was up on a lift, was also closely wedged in by the Fairlane on one side, and an old Pontiac on the other.
Yes, technically, he could still work on the Maverick, except they had an ironclad rule left over from her father’s era about not working on vehicles in such tight quarters. Not these kinds of vehicles, at least. Not when some of the owners easily had five grand or more invested in their paint jobs.
She had insurance, but as her father always said, it was better to call a customer and tell them their car would be a day late because of a rainstorm, rather than have to call them and tell them she owed them a new paint job. She rarely had more than a disconcerted grumble over delays, a result of careful scheduling on her part to make sure a customer wasn’t planning on trying to make a car show that weekend and needing their car ready by then.
So all work on the Maverick was halted until they could move the cars on either side of it.
She turned on the TV in the waiting room, which was hooked into basic cable, and put it on the weather radar channel. A severe thunderstorm warning for Sarasota flashed on an orange banner scrolling beneath the temperatures.
“It’ll be a while,” she said to Carl. “Call the owners and tell them we’re behind, then you two be my backseat drivers while I pull that carb apart.”
“You’re good with carbs,” Bob said.
“Yeah, but you’ve both got a lot more experience than I do. Be a second and third set of eyes for me.”
Sure enough, the three of them finally found a hairline crack in the upper body that had been missed by everyone else because of its position along a metal seam from the manufacturing process. It was probably expanding when warm, allowing more air than it was supposed to seep through, which is why others had missed it. It wasn’t causing gasoline to seep out along the crack, which would have made it more visible.
“Ha!” she said, feeling triumphant. She used a yellow tire crayon to mark the crack so it would show up in a picture.
“Yeah, you say that now,” Carl said, “but replacements for those are a bitch to find.”
“At least now I know what I’m looking for.”
“You could try drilling and pinning it,” Bob suggested.
“Maybe as a last resort, but I doubt that would work.” She stripped off her disposable gloves and grabbed her cell phone, taking multiple pictures of the carb, the carb’s tag, everything she needed to try to find a replacement. “At least the owner will be happy to know what the problem is and that he wasn’t just getting ripped off.”
Carl scratched his chin. “Sucks people didn’t take the time to look close. I hate seeing people get taken.”
“Take comfort. We probably just landed ourselves a customer for life and another source of word-of-mouth advertising.”
She washed her hands and returned to the office to phone the customer and start the search.
Chapter Seven
Bob and Carl had already left when Brooke was preparing to close up for the day. She groaned when she saw a car drive through the gate and park in front of the office until she realized it was Eliza.
I can only guess what this is about.
She knew damn well what it was about, and Eliza didn’t disappoint. She was already glancing around as she walked into the waiting room.
“We’re alone,” Brooke said.
Eliza practically danced over to the counter. “Well?”
“They’re gay, honey. But yes, we’re going down to Venice on Saturday morning so I can teach them archery. Then they want to buy me lunch. And Cody loaned me his collection of The Walking Dead graphic novels to read.”
“Yeah, well, your kink is not my kink, and all that. I—”
Brooke held up a hand, silencing Eliza before she could launch into whatever argument she wanted to shower Brooke with about going out and living life. “You guys go to that club thing, right? That BDSM place? You and Rusty, I mean.”
Eliza’s mouth snapped shut. Finally, she slowly nodded.
“You going this Saturday?”
“We caaannn,” Eliza slowly said. “Whyyy?”
“You’re right that I need to meet people. You know a lot of people in that…community, right?”
Eliza nodded. “This is a surprise. I didn’t know you were kinky.”
“Maybe I’m vanilla with sprinkles,” Brooke said. “My point is, I do need to get out. I’m having conversations—two-sided conversations, mind you—with Dixon. I need a life, and who knows? Maybe I’ll discover something about myself in the process.”
Eliza leaned over the counter and looked down at her. “You’ll see nekkid people and boobies and all sorts of dirty and shocking things.” She waggled her eyebrows at Brooke.
Brooke snorted. “Can’t be worse than drunken Ren Fair after-parties.”
“Yeah, well, there is that.” Eliza seemed to still be considering Brooke’s request. Her voice gentled, all snark disappearing. “When I was trying to get you out in the world, I didn’t mean you had to get into kinky stuff if you didn’t want to.”
“I’m not saying I’m going to get into kinky stuff. I just want to spend an evening out, meeting and talking to people who I can feel safe meeting and talking to because you either know them or can check their references really fast through your friends. You know me, I’m not an Internet dating girl. If I try to date among the usual core group of people I interact with, I’m going to end up with some seventy-year-old widower with a classic car. No, thank you.”
“Okay, then. Deal. We’ll pick you up on Saturday at six to go to dinner first.”
“Dinner?”
“Sort of like last night, only a far smaller group of people. Some of them wer
e there last night. Tilly and her guys, Mike and Jenny—”
“Called that one right.”
“What?”
“I was wondering if they were kinky, too.”
“They’re adorable, is what they are. Married twenty-five years, they get into this because of those books, and boom. Second honeymoon without the passports.”
“What do I wear?” Brooke knew she didn’t need to explain herself to Eliza.
“You don’t have to show skin if you don’t want to. Dress for a fun funeral.”
“Seriously?”
Eliza shrugged. “Jeans and a nice blouse is okay. Or those black leggings and that peacock tunic you have that I swear to the Goddess I am going to steal from you if you leave me alone in your closet for like thirty seconds. You don’t need to fetish up. Just don’t look like you’re going to the beach or Walmart. Hell, wear one of your wench outfits, if you want. But if you do that, change into it at the club and wear street clothes to dinner.”
“Peacock tunic it is.”
“See? You just want to torture me. You might have a little bit of sadist in you yet.”
Brooke stuck her tongue out at Eliza before she stood and rounded the counter to get a hug. “Let me get finished. I want to go home and grab a shower and see what kind of porn Dixon’s hunted up on the cable box while I was at work.”
“Heh. Pussy porn.”
Brooke rolled her eyes and pointed at the door. “Out.”
“Six on Saturday night,” Eliza said as she headed for the door. “Even if the barbarian doesn’t feel like going, you and me will grab Noel and Rebecca and make it a girls’ night out.”
“I thought Rebecca was out of town?”
“No, they got back yesterday from a show up in Pennsylvania.”
“Ah.” Rebecca was another Ren Fair friend that had turned out to be kinky. She made gorgeous chainmaille jewelry.
After their good-byes, Brooke locked the door behind Eliza, finished up her paperwork, and did one final patrol of the building and property. She got the alarm set and the building locked up and headed home.