“What do you want?”
“Not a morning person, are we?” Aidan glowered at her. Winnie sighed, trying not to notice how well his paintsmeared, waffle-weave Henley clung to his torso. That his hair was still damp from his shower, all cherub-curly around his anything-but-cherubic features. That apparently her hormones and his pheromones were a perfect match. “My car battery’s dead,” she said, holding her breath. “I need a phone book. Or the number of a mechanic.”
“You don’t belong to an auto club?”
“Since I never go anywhere—up until now, I mean—it didn’t seem worth the expense.”
“Did you leave your lights on?”
“No, I did not leave my lights on,” she said, thinking, What is this, twenty questions? a split second before Aidan said, “So you jumped into your truck and drove all the way here without checking first to make sure everything was in working order?” and Winnie wondered if he had any idea how close she was to smacking him clear into next week.
“Okay, Aidan? This little detour was not on my agenda this morning, so I was already halfway to pissed when you opened the door. Of course I had the truck tuned up before I left. And the battery’s new, I had it replaced before right before the trip, I have no idea why it’s dead. So if you’d just hand me the phone book—”
“You walked all the way up here from the Old House?”
Apparently completely oblivious to her having just read him the riot act, Aidan was now squinting past Winnie’s shoulder. Wondering what sort of fumes he’d been breathing over the years, she muttered, “Short of saddling Annabelle, that was my only option…What are you doing?”
What he was doing was putting on a denim jacket and coming out onto the porch, closing the house door behind him. Then he kept going, turning when he got halfway down the porch steps to spit out, “Well? Are y’coming with me or not?”
She crossed her arms. “Excuse me—did I pass out for a second and miss a chunk of the conversation? Coming with you where?”
That got a put-upon sigh. “Back to your truck, of course.”
“And…why are you taking me back to my truck?”
Another sigh. “So I can have a look myself?” At her continued blank stare, he added, “Before you go and t’row your money at some yahoo who’d be only too glad to take it from you for basically nothing?”
Apparently, the more agitated he became, the heavier his accent got. It was almost cute, in a remarkably irritating kind of way. “Somehow you don’t strike me as the mechanical type.”
“Looks can be deceivin’. Now can we get a move on? I haven’t got all day.”
“Oh, for God’s sake—just give me the damn phone book so I can call a mechanic or somebody—”
“Don’t know where t’is,” Aidan said, continuing to his own truck.
On a sigh, Winnie followed.
Ten minutes later, the verdict was in.
“It’s not your battery,” came Aidan’s half-muffled voice from in the bowels of her truck. “It’s your alternator.”
“Are you kidding me?” Against her better judgment, she got right up beside him to have a look, staring so hard into the netherworld under her truck’s hood she could almost ignore the low, steady hormonal hum thrumming through her veins. Like getting too close to uranium with a Geiger counter. “So that’s what killed my battery?”
“It would seem so.”
Not that Winnie entirely knew what she was looking at, but at least she knew what an alternator was for. Of course, she knew what her kidneys were for, too, but she didn’t know what they looked like, either. With her luck, it would probably be cheaper to get a new kidney.
As though reading her mind, Aidan said, “The good news is, I can change out both and save you a bundle.” Although he didn’t sound like this was exactly good news for him.
“And the bad news?”
He slammed shut her hood, wiping his hands on an old rag he’d had in his own truck. “What makes you think there’s bad news?”
“Could be that dark cloud always hanging over your head.”
He looked at her steadily for a long moment—tick! tick! tickticktickticktick!—then let out the sigh of a man whose patience is being sorely tried. “If we set out for Santa Fe now, we can pick up the parts and I can have you on your way after lunch.”
“I hate to put you to so much trouble—”
“And we can stand here arguing for the rest of the mornin’, or you can stop being so bloody stubborn and we can get goin’.”
“Can Annabelle come, too?”
And yet another sigh. “Yes, Annabelle can come, too.”
“You really can’t wait until I’m gone, can you?” she said, reluctantly trooping around to the passenger side of his truck and climbing in. After Annabelle.
From behind the wheel, Aidan muttered, “Truer words were never spoken.” And yanked the shift into Reverse.
You have no idea, Aidan thought as they pulled out onto the highway leading to Santa Fe, how much I want you gone. How much damage those big blue eyes, that smart mouth, were doing. He had never thought of himself as the protective type when it came to women, not even before he met June, who’d prided herself on her self-sufficiency. At first Aidan had assumed that June’s being so much older than he accounted for her self-confidence, but the longer he knew her the more he realized that’s simply who she was.
And it wasn’t that Winnie was helpless, her obvious inability to pick a decent mechanic notwithstanding. Far from it. In fact, Aidan surmised that any man fool enough to play the Little Woman card with her would find both him and his card reduced to pulp. Still, there was something about the woman—
“You really know how to install a new battery and alternator?” she asked from the other side of the far-too-short bench seat.
—that would drive him completely ‘round the bend before lunch, if he didn’t keep his guard up.
“I really do.” From the seat behind them, her dog groaned. “My mother’s family’s farmed for generations. By the time I was fourteen I was an old hand at fixing tractors and such. And anyway, when you live out in the sticks you learn to take care of your own t’ings, not count on somebody else to do it for you.”
“Oh,” she said, then fell silent, thinking her own thoughts, and Aidan realized with a punch to his gut that the stillness was much, more worse than her blathering.
Desperate to flatten the silence, he said, “So. What will you do when you get back?”
“Please don’t feel obligated to make polite conversation,” she said, wearily. “I know you’re not really interested.”
Her rebuke stung far more than he would have expected. Even if she was dead-on in her assessment. “I’m sorry if I come across as somewhat…gruff. One of the hazards of keeping to myself so much.” When she didn’t reply, he stole a glance at her profile. “And that’s the best I can do for an apology, so if you’re expectin’ more—”
“I’m not expecting anything, Aidan. I never was.” She paused, then added, “I never do.”
“Have you really had it that bad?” he said, and her head snapped around. After a moment, she shook it.
“No, actually,” she said, suddenly guarded. “There’s just…been a lot of disappointments along the way. A broken promise here, a broken heart there…”
A