“Pretty much.” He looked thoughtful. “They’re mostly women, you know, so it’s always interesting for a new man to enter in to the mix.”
“I’d think you’d enjoy the attention.”
His grin returned. “Oh, I do. I certainly do.”
He managed to eat most of the large pizza, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him that I could see. I’d confined myself to two pieces and hoped all that cheese wouldn’t translate itself into an extra inch on my hips by Friday.
It was almost nine o’clock by the time Jeff drove me home. I sat against the passenger door, staring out at the dark streets and thought of all the times some boy had driven me home from a date in high school. I had the same feeling now, that sort of jittery, sick-to-my-stomach sensation, anticipating whether or not he would kiss me, and what I would do if he tried. You’d think, at my age, I’d be over that kind of nervousness, but apparently it had come back to haunt me, like post-adolescent acne.
I had my door open seconds after the truck turned into my drive, but Jeff was almost as quick. “I’ll walk you to your door,” he said.
He came around the truck and tried to take my arm, but I shied away. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I fumbled in my purse, looking for my keys.
“You’ve been jumpy all evening. What’s your problem? What is it about me that you especially don’t like?”
“It’s not you in particular,” I said, and headed up the walk. “It’s just…I haven’t had the best of luck with men lately.”
“Not all men are jerks like your husband.”
I thought of Dr. Patterson and the man who groped me in the elevator. “Just most of the ones I know.”
I started to unlock the door, but he covered my hand with his own. “I’m not like them.”
I sighed. “You say that, but your mind works like theirs.”
“How can you say that? You don’t even know me that well.”
He was leaning very close, and his eyes were dark with a desire that both frightened and thrilled me. “I know you’re probably going to try to kiss me right now,” I whispered, any intention I’d ever had of refusing him vanished from my mind.
He took a step back and shook his head. “I don’t think so. The mood you’re in, you’d probably bite my lips off.”
He turned away and I sagged against the door. “Good night, Phoebe,” he called when he reached his truck.
When he was gone, I let myself inside. I told myself I’d talked my way out of a tight spot. After all, I really didn’t want to start anything with Jeff.
But the part of me that never lied wished I’d let him kiss me.
5
THE NEXT MORNING, I was waiting at Easy Motors when they opened the doors. A teenage receptionist with allergies greeted me with a smile that soon faltered when I told her I’d bought a car there a few days before and now it needed a repair.
“You’ll have to talk to Frank,” she said, reaching for the phone. “He’s in charge of that.”
In charge of what? I wondered.
“Mr. A-dams,” the receptionist whined into the phone. “We have a customer out here with a prob-lem.”
A few moments later, a man in a rumpled brown suit came into the room, hand extended. His grin was too large for his face, wrapping around his cheeks toward his ears. “You’re the owner of that little Mustang they towed in last night, aren’t you?” he gushed. “Darling car. I can tell by looking it suits you to a tee. Come into my office and we’ll fix you right up.”
He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and steered me toward a glass-fronted cubicle that reeked of stale cigars and onions. Sweeping aside a stack of dog-eared repair manuals, he pushed me into a folding chair and took his own seat behind a green metal desk. “Now, how can we help you?”
I tried a smile of my own. “It’s simple, really. I bought my car here two days ago and last night it broke down. A friend told me it looked like a broken motor mount. So I had it towed here to be fixed.”
Friendly Frank nodded and plucked a multipart form from a stack on his desk. “We can do that. We can do that. Fix you right up.” He began writing furiously on the form, pausing twice to punch numbers into an ancient adding machine at his side. The machine whirred and clacked and unreeled a stream of yellowed paper. Frank added a final figure and pushed the form toward me. “Sign at the bottom and we’ll get right to work.”
Numbers danced down the page in cramped script. My gaze fixed on the figure at the bottom. “Four hundred and seventy-two dollars!” I shoved the paper back toward him, gasping for breath. “I’m sorry. I must not have made myself clear. This repair should be covered under the dealer’s warranty.”
Frank’s smile vanished. “Your car is seven years old, and there’s no such thing as a warranty on a car that old.”
“But I’ve only had it two days.”
He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t make the rules, lady. I just enforce them. Now, do you want the repair or not?”
“Not!” I stood. “I’ll take the car somewhere else.”
“Fine.” He handed me a second form. “That’ll be eighty-nine, ninety-seven.”
“For what? You haven’t done anything.”
“Storage fees.”
“This is outrageous.”
“Don’t blame me because you bought an older car. You should have opted for one of our premium models.”
“This is not my fault,” I protested.
“What do you know about cars, Mrs. Frame?”
I glared at him, but didn’t answer.
He rose and patted me on the shoulder. “Do yourself a favor. Next time you go shopping for a car, bring a man along.”
I jerked open the door and stormed into the lobby once more. “I want to see the manager,” I told the receptionist.
Her eyes widened. “Mr. Adams is the manager.”
I turned and saw Frank smiling at me. Not the cheery grin with which he’d greeted me, but the look of a sly fox.
I wanted to rip that smile right off his face. I wanted to scream, to throw punches, to do something to make him quit looking at me as if I were a bug and he was about to squash me.
I didn’t have the strength to beat him up or the clout to make him afraid of me, so I did the only thing I knew to do. I gave him the haughtiest look I could manage. “This isn’t the end of this,” I announced, and stomped out the door.
I stalked down the sidewalk, my shoes slapping against the concrete, sending tremors up my legs. My stomach churned and my heart raced. I hated this feeling of helplessness. No matter what Frank said, Easy Motors had cheated me. But there was nothing I could do. They had my car. They had the six thousand dollars I had paid for the car. And unless I gave them more money, I wasn’t going to have the money or the car again.
“Aaaargh!” I yelled in frustration. A man on a bicycle stared at me and swerved across the street to avoid me. I didn’t care.
I took a deep breath and deliberately slowed my steps. “Don’t fall apart, Phoebe,” I muttered. “Think this through. There has to be something you can do.”
I started to feel a little better. I wasn’t going