But to his surprise, she went to the driver’s side, and in the next moment, the hood latch released with a pop. Like she’d done it a thousand times before, she opened the hood with ease and propped it against the stand, gazing into the depths of the engine.
She was reaching in to fiddle with something when he finally reached her. Remembering how easily she startled, he thought of ways to announce his presence without scaring her, but he was coming up blank.
Walking to the side so she could see him, he waited until her eyes moved from the engine and looked around before he spoke.
“Hey, Olivia. Having engine trouble?”
Her eyes widened when she saw him with his hands on the sliver of exposed hood, smiling easily at her. Her throat worked in a swallow as a tremor skated through her fingers, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t from fear this time.
No, this was a different kind of reaction, one he was confident was reserved for him and him alone. And it confirmed what he’d already suspected.
He wasn’t the only one feeling the pull, the sparks, between them.
“Hey,” she replied with a slight smile. Raising her hand to push her hair back, she paused as she took in her grimy fingers from where she’d fiddled with the engine, and used her other hand instead. “How are you?”
“Pretty good. I emailed and tried to call a little bit ago, but I see you’ve had othe
r things to worry about,” he said, nodding his head to the truck.
“You did?” Frowning, she used her clean hand to dig her phone out of her back pocket. “Oh, I had my phone on silent. I thought I changed that when I came into town. Sorry about that.”
“No worries. Having engine issues?”
He nodded to her truck, and she looked down in surprise, like she’d forgotten what she’d been doing for a moment. Combined with her other quirks, some might think she lived up to the stereotype about blondes, but he knew better.
He’d seen the intelligence in her light green eyes every time he spoke to her. He suspected that her mind was so full of different thoughts all the time, that she was always so busy flipping through them, that she sometimes lost track of what was happening in the moment.
And he wouldn’t be lying if he said he hoped at least some of her distraction was because of him. Lord knew, she’d been distracting him from the moment they met, even when she was nowhere around.
She nodded, her intense gaze turned back toward the engine. “Yeah. It started running rough on the way to town. I came to get some water, but decided to stop at the bookstore first. I figured I could just check it out once I got home. But when I left to come here, it was even worse.”
He wasn’t a fan of anything that caused her stress, but he had to be honest, at least with himself. He couldn’t bring himself to be mad about it this time, either. If she hadn’t been having engine trouble, he would have missed the chance to talk to her face to face.
“You want me to take a look?”
Head rearing back, she frowned at him. “No, thanks. I got this. You know, not all women need a man to run in and save them. We’re not all helpless. I’m perfectly capable of figuring out what’s wrong with my truck and fixing it.”
The corner of his mouth tugged up as he raised his hands in surrender. “You’re absolutely right. It’s just…” he trailed off, and her glare intensified. Despite the look that clearly said watch what you say or I’ll fuck you up as only a woman can, he forged on. “A lot of women—most, really—don’t have any interest in learning how to work on vehicles. I’m not saying they don’t have the ability,” he added quickly, tempted to take a step back from the look she was leveling on him, “but they just don’t have the interest. You have to admit that.”
Her eyes turned grudging as she pursed her lips. “Well, I have the interest and the ability. Maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t mean you should assume all women lack those things.”
“You’re absolutely right,” he replied simply. “Do you mind telling me what your truck started doing? Not because I don’t think you can fix it, but just because I’m curious.”
She eyed him with suspicion—a different kind than the look she usually wore, he was happy to say—for a moment before answering. “The engine started running rough on the way in. When I left the bookstore, it was missing out, and it felt sluggish, like it was barely pulling its weight. I’m thinking it’s the spark plugs, but it hasn’t been long since I gave it a tune up.”
Eyebrows raising, he nodded, impressed despite himself. That would have been his first guess, too. Despite her assertation that it hadn’t been long since she replaced them, she started pulling out the plugs one by one and checking them before replacing them. Finally, a noise of satisfaction sounded low in her throat as she looked at one of the plugs.
And fuck if that noise—even though it had nothing to do with him, attraction, or anything close to those—didn’t shoot straight through him, lighting up every inch of his body before curling heavily in his gut.
Whatever it was she was doing to him still felt like a mystery, something he couldn’t explain, but he was here for it. He had no desire to deny it or fight it. Instead, he relished it.
And even the beast inside of him was quiet in the face of Olivia and what she did to him.
Holding the spark plug up, she showed it to him. “It’s a foul plug. See the carbon? That’s what’s wrong.”
He could tell at a glance that she was right, and despite agreeing with her that women could know their way around cars, he was still impressed. Call him a sexist, but it was his experience that most women wouldn’t have even thought to check the plugs.
Hell, most he knew would have freaked out at their car suddenly acting as Olivia’s had, then they would have called a guy they knew or a garage. He meant no disrespect to women, in any way, shape or form—it was just the way it was. He even knew some men who would have done the same thing.