Top Priority (The Game 1)

One auto shop was still open. One. I could cry. From relief or exhaustion, I wasn’t sure.

A man who, coincidentally, shared my name took the keys from me and said I’d gotten lucky with a broken windshield. Then he went on to tell me about the time his daughter had driven home from Virginia Beach and… I couldn’t focus. He was chuckling. There was lightning, both in the story of his and outside the garage bay. Either way, his daughter had survived getting wrapped around a tree.

I looked out at where the rain kept gushing down.

“Do you think I’ll get out of here today?” I asked, full of doubt. Yet, I hoped desperately.

Luke chuckled again, and he wiped his hands on a dirty rag. “Won’t take long, but you shouldn’t drive for twenty-four hours. Gotta give the adhesive time to dry, you see. Plus—” he pointed outside “—in this weather? You ain’t goin’ nowhere tonight, son.”

I definitely wanted to cry, but I wasn’t going to. I was a grown man. I was turning thirty next year. I’d accomplished approximately nothing of what I’d written down as my goals before college, but fuck it, right? Fuck it all. Fuck it all! I didn’t own a home yet. I wasn’t running my own company or climbing the ladder at a nice agency, I hadn’t met the love of my life, I didn’t have a dog, and now this. Stuck in goddamn Richmond. Stuck in a storm.

I was hot and cold. The sticky humidity made me uncomfortably sweaty, at the same time as the harsh winds blasted my wet clothes with icy cold.

Luke recommended a cab to a hotel up the road, and I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?

“Thank you, sir,” I said politely. Wasn’t his fault my week sucked royally.

Standing in the opening of the bay, I pulled out my phone to call a cab, but I paused. Across the street, there was a bar. Best ribs in Richmond, they promised. That was probably setting the bar low, but I was positively famished. Oh, and alcohol. I really wanted a drink or fourteen.

“Is the food over there any good?” I asked my mechanic.

“Huh?” Luke looked across the street. “Oh—yeah.” He nodded. “Definitely. Just stay away from the artichoke dip. It’ll give you—hell.” He shuddered, possibly at a memory. No artichoke dip, copy that. “I love the cornbread, though. Get that.”

No need to mention to him I wasn’t very fond of cornbread. Instead, I nodded in thanks, and I made sure he had my number and that he could call whenever. Then I left the garage bay and stepped out into the storm, quickly picking up the pace to dart across the empty road.

Surely, this week couldn’t get any worse.

I yanked the door open and…fucking tripped. I tripped, okay? I tripped. Because why not? Why wouldn’t I trip? I cursed and steadied myself by grabbing on to the nearest—

“Ow!”

“I’m sorry!” Appalled and shocked, I stumbled back to gain my bearings. I hadn’t been close enough to grab on to a barstool. I saw high tables and chairs scattered about, and in an attempt to steady myself, I’d sent a poor young woman to the floor instead.

Holy shit, I couldn’t believe myself. My day had crossed over to bizarre at this point.

I swallowed hard and scrubbed at my face, wiping away raindrops and wishing the floor could swallow me whole. The smell of grilled food and old wood hit me and caused my stomach to snarl with want, though I had to do some damage control first. I cleared my throat and extended a hand to help the girl up, and I knew I was dead the second I saw four men approaching. Oh, they were mad. So very mad.

“I’m sorry, miss,” I told the girl.

“It’s okay, but you should go,” she muttered and dusted off her knees. “My brothers get protective.”

“Heh.” I gave the exit behind me a quick glance. The place wasn’t big. The dozen or so people filled up the bar fairly well, with most of them gathered in the back where I spotted a dart board. My gaze flicked to the bar and the three men seated there.

“Hey—don’t.” The girl stepped into the line of fire as the first guy reached us. “It was a mistake.”

I had to man up. Fast. “Apologies, sir. I’d be happy to buy a round of drinks for—”

“Oh, you think you can buy our silence, huh?” He glared, this mountain of a redneck. “You’re a long way from the city, pretty boy.”

Well, okay. I actually had limits. “What on earth are you talking about? Since when are an apology and a drink a way to buy someone’s silence? And for the fucking record—”

“Whoa, okay there, pretty boy.” Someone else came over quickly and obstructed my view. Rather than glaring at the mountain man, I was giving a lethal look—or so I hoped—to the back of a man’s neck. He was a couple inches taller than my six-one, and he was a lot more sculpted than me, too. The fabric of his tee stretched across his defined shoulder blades, and he folded his arms over his chest. I suddenly wanted to see that as well. “We’re not lookin’ for trouble here, are we? We’re all just waitin’ out the storm.”