Suddenly, Luke turned and walked purposefully in her direction. It felt as though all the noise and music and people receded into the background. Grace was as acutely aware of him as she would have been if he were following her down a dark alley with a ski mask on.
Before she could turn away and pretend she hadn’t seen him, he raised a hand in greeting, and she had no choice but to do the same.
“The usual,” he called.
“Sorry?” Grace said, at the same time hearing a voice behind her say, “You got it, Luke,” over the din of the band and the crowd around them.
Oh, God, he wasn’t even talking to her. He’d been waving at someone behind her, and she’d waved right on back at him, like a fool. Would this day never end?
He walked right past her without acknowledgment. Then he stopped and stood behind her at the bar, apparently oblivious to her presence. He wasn’t more than two feet away from her back. She could feel the heat of him, penetrating the thin fabric of her shirt.
She slipped some money out of her purse and whispered to Jenna, “Pay the bill and meet me outside.” She had to get away before he did notice her.
“Grace?” Too late. It was Luke’s voice. He’d spotted her.
She turned with as much cool as she could muster. “Oh. Hey, Luke. Did you hire someone for that job from the hundreds of people I saw lined up by the garage when I was leaving?”
He didn’t play along. “I left a message on your answering machine.” His voice was clipped. The bartender handed him a bottle of beer with no glass. He took a gulp of it, then let out a short breath. “You get it?”
“A message?” Grace was mystified.
His eyes, which had seemed such a warm shade of brown earlier, were hard. “You got the job.” His mouth turned up in the smallest ironic smile. “Surprise.”
Grace caught her breath. She was employed? Really? This was too good to be true—or was it? “I don’t understand. The other day you told me I didn’t.”
He took another draw off his drink and set it down, hard, on the bar. Foam bubbled out of the top and ran over onto the gleaming wood bar. “I’ve been outvoted.”
Her excitement turned to apprehension. He was angry about something. Had Mr. Bailey said something to him after all? “What do you mean you’ve been outvoted?” she asked cautiously.
He lowered his chin fractionally and gave her a look that could, under the right circumstances, have been extremely sexy, but which was, instead, downright accusatory.
Something cold slithered down her spine.
“I mean,” he said, with too much patience, “that starting in three short weeks, it’ll be your job to sit on a seat covered with chewed gum, in a vehicle equipped with a Bodily Fluid Clean-up Kit, surrounded by screaming kids. Just like you wanted.” One side of his mouth cocked into a smile. “This must be a dream come true for you.”
His iciness left little doubt that Fred Bailey had indeed leaned on him.
“I applied for that job without help from anyone,” she said defensively.
“And I turned you down without help from anyone.” He drank, then leveled his eyes on Grace. “If it had stopped there, we’d have no problem.”
“What happened?”
“Fred Bailey happened,” he said, confirming her fears. “He strongly ‘suggested’ that I reconsider you for the position, no matter how unqualified you are. What did you do, call him from your cell phone as soon as you got outside?”
“No!” Grace was hurt by the accusation. “I saw him in the parking lot when I left, and he asked what I was doing there. When I told him what happened, he offered to talk to you, but I declined. I had no idea he’d done it anyway, and I’m sorry he did.”
“This is the way things have always worked for you, Grace.” Luke shook his head and took an angry slug of his beer, hammering it back down on the countertop.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“That means it’s always been easy for you. You’ve always known just what you wanted and gotten it.” He lowered his voice slightly and added, “No matter what the cost.”
She railed in anger. “That’s not true. Number one, if you think this is my dream job and I went after it pulling all the powerful strings I could because I wanted it so badly, you’re crazy. And number two, I would hardly say my life is easy. You have a lot of nerve making presumptions of any sort about me.” She caught her breath. “And what do you mean ‘no matter what the cost’?”
He looked as though he was about to fire back at her, then stopped. “That’s none of my business. It’s between you and whoever you make your deals with. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“That’s right, you shouldn’t. You have no right to judge me, Luke Stewart. No right at all.”
“I’ll keep my thoughts to myself from now on.”
“Right,” she said. “Like you always have, huh? Like you even can. You may not say anything, but you have a way of getting your disapproval across.”
“I don’t think you want to have that conversation,” Luke said, in a voice that assured her that she did not.
“I don’t want to have any conversation with you!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then you’re going to find it particularly tedious to work for me, don’t you think?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “So what do you want me to do? You want me to say I won’t take the job?” she asked, fighting the urge to do just that. “You want me to quit before I even start?”
He gave a quick shake of the head. “Oh, no, I don’t want you to quit. I want you to come in tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. and start learning the parts of the engine.” He gave a quick, humorless smile. “You had your chance to decline. Now you have to go through with this. We need a driver and, like it or not, you’re it.”
Three weeks later, Grace knew more about school buses than she’d ever dreamed she would. It was Wednesday, two days before she was set to take the test for her commercial driver’s license and five days before the first day of summer school—when she was supposed to begin driving.
Assuming she passed the test, that was.
It apparently had a first-time failure rate of 49 percent. Grace would have accepted those odds more comfortably if she hadn’t already come out on the short end of the 47-percent failure rate of first marriages.
She and Luke stood before the bus in the early-morning heat. It was not yet nine o’clock. Luke had insisted that Grace meet him on campus every day at 7:00 a.m. so they could get their work done before it got too hot and humid outside. Or so he said. She suspected the early hour was really because he wanted to make this whole experience as miserable as possible for her.
“All right,” Luke said, taking a sip of steaming coffee from a paper gas-station cup. “The test official is going to ask you to go through an outside sight inspection first, identifying all the major parts of the engine and frame.”
“How can you drink steamy coffee on a hot morning like this?” Grace asked. “You know, they make whipped frozen coffees that are really good.”
He gave her a look. “Is it necessary to discuss