And that fancy coffee machine.
Something told her there was more to this sudden mutual desire to acquire Dean’s Garage than she knew.
Chapter Two
Delilah was lost in thought as she walked out of the quaint boutique hotel and toward her car for dinner. So lost that for a moment she didn’t see that the hood of her Mustang was up, or the man with a sweet ass encased in tight jeans bent over her engine.
Asa had found her.
She took a deep breath and forced her feet to continue moving toward him. “You know it’s rude to look under someone’s hood without their permission.”
And she knew he wouldn’t have been able to lift the hood if he hadn’t broken into her l
ocked car.
He tilted his head, seemingly unsurprised by her presence. “If I always waited for permission, Del-icious, we never would have met. But hey, I didn’t hotwire your girl. I was patiently waiting for you to bring me the keys. Start her up for me?”
She wasn’t sure what possessed her to automatically obey him, unlocking her car door and slipping into the driver’s seat to start the engine.
“Delilah,” she corrected, ashamed of her strong reaction to the private nickname he used to tease her with. “And I thought you’d put your criminal past behind you when you took over the repair shop.”
“Wild Man” Wilder had done a few years in a juvenile detention center before they’d met. With his love of classic cars and motorcycles—and his penchant for taking them for joyrides without the owner’s permission—he was on his way to becoming a professional convict.
If it hadn’t been for Dallas Dean’s friendship with Officer Mendez, Asa would have been arrested again and tried as an adult. Her father had quickly grown attached to the brilliant eighteen year old. For two years Delilah had seen Asa every day, watching him resist, and then finally revel in, using his talents to help put things back together for other people.
Asa was a natural with a true gift. He could name an engine—any engine—by the sound it made. He was an instinctive genius with machines. And women. Both always came easily to him. For him.
At fifteen she’d idolized him. By seventeen she’d thought she was in love, but he’d fixed that too.
He still had his head under her hood, but she could hear him speaking over her engine’s throaty purr. “I was wondering why you’d drive all the way up here instead of flying, but now I can see how attached you are to this sexy thing.”
She wasn’t attached. Much. “Maybe it’s a rental.”
His chuckle held that familiar husky rasp. He’d always had it—that sexual scratch in his voice that heated her blood and made her ache. “A ‘66 Mustang with a V8 that purrs like a well-fed kitten? This is no rental. This is a love affair. And the only woman I’ve ever known who could hold her own with a car like this was a seventeen-year-old Dean girl…one with a vicious right hook, if our last meeting was any indication.”
“You deserved it,” she muttered.
With that he straightened and raised his arms to lower the hood until it latched with a solid thunk. “I remember.” He smiled down at her through the windshield. “Hey there, Delilah.”
Damn, he was gorgeous. In jeans and a sleeveless blue shirt that matched his eyes, he was sexy as hell. She turned off the car and got out, allowing herself to get a better look at him.
Both his arms were sleeved with tattoos now, colorful Asian designs surrounding the black and grey work he’d had done when he was younger. Inside his left arm, unless he’d had it covered, would be a small quiver filled with arrows. The black heart. His adolescent conquest-count that she’d come to hate—a new arrow for each new notch in his bedpost. But still, at the sight of him, his wicked grin and lean mouthwatering body, something in her melted. A little.
“Hi, Asa,” she finally responded. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “We just missed each other at the garage, and since you’ve had a chance to meet our illustrious new neighbor, I thought I could make up some time with you over dinner.”
She was dubious. “You want to have dinner with me?”
His lips twitched and he held out his arms. “Yes. No hidden agendas, I swear. No shop talk. No business. Just two old friends catching up.” When she hesitated his expression turned cajoling. “Come on. I was never included in the Dean newsletter’s mailing list and I’ve missed a whole decade. Other than what I read in the papers or hear secondhand, I don’t know what you and your sisters have been up to. Or your dad. He stopped answering my emails around four years ago, you know.”
She knew. She’d been the one dealing with Asa’s rent checks and the paperwork since then. At the time, she’d thought her father was moving on with his life. Now she knew better. “That wasn’t about you.”
Asa crossed his arms. “Prove it by letting me take you to dinner.”
“Fine.” Oh God. Dinner alone with Asa. How was that fine? “Should I change?”
He studied her from her calf high boots up her jeans to the turquoise-colored peasant blouse which was partially covered by her jacket and shook his head. “You’ll do. Besides, you already changed once today right? The Del I knew would have called that a week’s wardrobe.”