“Yep.”
“Ew. There’s no accounting for taste, is there? Early-morning sex or late-night romance?” Tollie probed.
That last one made Alana turn to look at Tollie with a frown. “Where do you get these crazy questions from?”
Tollie smiled and as usual it lit up her pretty face. She was tall, plump and curvy with a stunning complexion and thick black hair that was always perfectly styled. “I told you, I get them from Facebook. Answer the question,” she urged.
Alana wasn’t about to go there, but she was curious. “There’s a Q-and-A page on Facebook? I’ve never seen it.”
Tollie took a seat across from Alana’s desk and waved her iPad at her. “It’s from that group I belong to called Building Relationships Around Reading. An amazing woman named Sharon Blount started it and it’s for women who love to read and share their thoughts about books, life, love, everything. Every day there’s something new and interesting, like these questions. I love them,” she murmured as she continued to scan the screen. “You can really get to know people just by how they answer simple questions.”
Alana turned to face Tollie with a noncommittal expression. “I doubt that. It seems like it would take a lot more than that to develop a real understanding of another person.”
“Maybe. And maybe it’s just as simple as it seems. I’m going to ask the group about it on Saturday when we have an open chat. It’s both educational and cathartic.”
Alana was about to disagree when Tollie looked at her with a sheepish expression. “I came in here to let you know that there’s someone here to see you and then I got caught up. Sorry about that.”
“Customer or salesperson?” Without realizing it, Alana had slipped into Tollie’s mode of questioning.
“Customer, definitely, but he could sell me anything. I’d buy old shoes and day-old sandwiches from him, honey,” Tollie answered as her eyes locked on her screen again.
Curious, Alana went to the showroom to find Roland waiting for her with his massive arms crossed over his chest and his jaw clenched. She was surprised to see him, especially wearing an expression like that. Clearly he was upset about something and she approached with caution.
“Good morning, Roland. Can I help you with something?”
He glared down at her before answering in a snarky voice she’d never heard from him before. “Yeah, I’m here on Lucas’s recommendation. I came over in person because I know from personal experience that you don’t know how to answer a phone or return a message,” he said. His voice was so deep that it sounded like he was growling at her.
She blushed a little because it was true; she’d been avoiding him with the skill of a spy hiding from the CIA or something. She had ignored his calls, deleted his messages and stayed away from any place she thought he might be. He’d been back in town since before the New Year and it was the first time she’d seen him and it was a week before Valentine’s Day.
She looked down at his shoes because it was too hard to meet his eyes, but that was childish and she was a professional. She cleared her throat before asking him again how she could help him.
“You fix cars, right? Well, mine needs fixing,” he said.
“Is it here?”
Without answering he put one of his large hands around her upper arm and led her through the showroom, taking her out the main entrance and heading to the service bay doors.
A strange sensation flooded her body as the warmth of his hand encircled the skin left bare by her short-sleeved polo shirt. It was like heat lightning ziggety-zagging all over her body, like a pinball pinging off every sensitive nerve ending she possessed. Ping, left nipple, zing, right nipple, ding-ding-ding, Miss Alana! She had to bite her lower lip to keep from giggling at the random thoughts she was having. She and her sisters always referred to their lady parts as Miss; Miss Alana, Miss Alexis and so on.
Another silly thought occurred to her and she almost choked. Pinball or Xbox? She’d have to spring that on Tollie one day, that is if she could still think straight after this. She was breathless when they reached the doors but she still gasped at what was waiting for her.
“Oh, Roland, I’m so, so sorry about this,” she said softly.
“This” was Roland’s pride and joy, his much-loved and very carefully maintained 1967 Thunderbird that had belonged to his grandfather. Roland had inherited the car from the older man and he loved it as much as, if not more than, the man who’d purchased it brand-new so many years ago. It had looked showroom-new the last time Alana had seen it; now it was all but destroyed.
The front end of the car was smashed in, along with the driver’s side of the car. The glistening black finish was no more, the windshield and driver’s-side window were crushed into thousands of crystal shards and the front and rear tires splayed out, a clear sign that the frame had been warped and buckled. Her heart was heavy as she surveyed the damage. She could only imagine how Roland was feeling. Without thinking about what she was doing, she put her arms around his waist and gave him an awkward hug.
“Were you driving when this happened? No one told me you were in an accident,” she said as her large eyes locked with his.
His bad mood was already apparent but her soft words seemed to trip his anger trigger again. “Why would anybody tell you when it’s obvious that you have no interest in me? That would be a waste of time, wouldn’t it?”
Wow, he was really furious. Alana didn’t react to his harsh words, but he showed a slight regret for his remark as he answered her question. “No, I wasn’t driving when it happened. It was stolen. It was being stored in my dad’s garage in Chicago and somebody decided that they needed it,” he told her in a much calmer voice. “To make a stupid story short, the little jerk was racing it and ended up in a three-way collision. He barely escaped with his life and if he’d been driving anything else he’d have ended up a bloody smear on the road. But all that notwithstanding, I want to know if you can fix it.”
“Of course I can,” she said at once. “I have the best crew in the south and we can get it back to its original condition in no time at all. But how did it get here? It sounds as though the accident was in Chicago.”
Roland was walking around the wreckage, looking lost. He was obviously not listening to a word that Alana was saying. “The insurance company totaled it out. The investigator said it was hopeless. Are you sure you can do something with it?”
He looked so forlorn that Alana went to his side and took his hand, squeezing it to get his attention. “Roland, dear heart, I promise you that this car can and will be restored to all its former beauty. It’ll take a few weeks, but I won’t let you down, truly I won’t.”
She finally penetrated his fog and he gave her a weak smile. “You probably think I’m a big fool for acting like this, but this was my granddad’s ride. I love it almost as much as I loved him. That’s why I had it hauled down here, because I saw what you did to Lucas’s old Range Rover. If you could make that scrap heap look brand-new I figured there might be a chance for Black Beauty.”
“Black Beauty?”
His finely planed cheekbones reddened as he admitted that his car was indeed named as such.
“People who love their cars always name them,” Alana assured him. “My crew will work wonders with your baby, so rid your mind of all concern. I appreciate your trust in me and Custom Classics and we will not let you down. Come inside and let me introduce you to the people who’ll be restoring Beauty. Everything’s going to be fine,” she added in a soothing voice.
Roland had always loved the sound of Alana’s voice and he trusted her skills implicitly. But right now, more than anything else, he loved the feel of her hand in his because she hadn’t let go of him and he saw no