Know Me Well (Wishful 3)

“I will. Thanks.” She waved on her way out the door.

Riley wished she had some lavender oil in the diffuser at the register. She needed something to take her heart rate down a notch as Liam ambled over, hands tucked in the front pockets of his jeans. His sandy hair, grown out some from the military buzz, was rumpled, making him look younger, if no less a badass. The rumpled, boyish thing worked on him. Hell, everything worked on him. She couldn’t read his face to gauge whether the news about Jo was good or bad.

Riley shoved her own hands into the pockets of her lab coat. “Well? Out with it. What’s the final prognosis on my baby? I assume that’s why you’re here.”

“It is.”

He crossed his arms, which made his impressive biceps flex, straining the sleeves of his polo shirt in a way that had Riley’s mouth watering. “Frankly, your baby is a stubborn bitch.”

Riley winced, her attention dragged back to the matter at hand. “Your dad used to say she was a special snowflake.”

“She’s a special something. I just spent the last week tearing her almost completely apart and putting her back together. Rebuilt the engine, put in all new seals and fluids from front to back, a new battery, new spark plugs.”

She reached out and grabbed hold of the edge of the counter, praying he hadn’t done all that only to have the car stay dead. “And?”

He pulled her keys from his front pocket. “She’s had the tires rotated, the front end aligned, and a bath. You’ll need new tires by winter, but I doubt she’s run this good for you since you got out of college.”

“Oh, thank God.” But her relief dimmed almost immediately as her mind tried to tally up the cost of everything he’d done. “What’s the damage?”

He pulled out his wallet and fished a folded paper from inside. “Just the cost of parts and fluids.”

She couldn’t read most of the items scrawled on the receipt he handed her from Wishful Auto Parts, but the total at the bottom had her looking back at him in suspicion. “You did not just do all that to my car for $293.74.”

“New fluids and seals cover a multitude of sins,” Liam said easily, his gray eyes level on hers.

Jesus, the man had a helluva poker face.

“Cost of parts aside, your time is worth something.”

He shrugged that off. “Consider it the cost of my therapy. Wrenching is good thinking time, and I had a problem to work out.”

“Did you figure it out?”

“Think so.”

“Well, that’s great, but I still can’t let you just do all that work for free.” Not that she could really afford to pay him more than the bill he’d handed her. But it was the principle of the thing.

His brows angled down. “I don’t expect my friends to pay me for a favor.”

He kept saying that. Friends. But they’d never been friends. Not like that. Not even after he’d slipped into the role of her own personal hero. She’d only ever been in his orbit at all because of Wynne. Now they were both grown, Wynne was gone, and what he’d done for her had become the stuff of Things Best Left In The Past. Which made them…well, nothing at all.

“Besides,” he continued, “being in the garage all week was the closest I’ve felt to Dad since I got back. I needed that.”

He hadn’t even been able to go into the garage in the months after Uncle John’s death. And he’d gone there for her? Riley’s heart softened. Anything else she could’ve argued about but not that. Of all of them, Liam had taken his father’s death the hardest. During the final eleven months of his last tour, Riley and Molly had both been worried sick that the unresolved grief would dull his edge and land him in harm’s way.

“How did it go?” she asked softly.

He gave a nostalgic half smile that was still a little pained around the edges. “I kept expecting him to come in to help, start bossing me about what he’d do different.”

Riley ached to step out from behind the counter and slip her arms around him. But after what close contact with him had done to her last time, she didn’t dare give in to the impulse. “I miss him, too.” Uncle John had been on her incredibly short list of men who could be counted on.

Liam flipped her keys around his pointer finger and didn’t quite look at her. “This is the first time I’ve been able to really talk about him without wanting to hit somebody or blow something up.”

Riley did move around the counter then to lay a light hand on his arm. All that smooth, hard muscle was bunched with tension. “Healing takes time, Liam. Your daddy was a good man, and there are a whole lot of great memories of him. You’re really lucky to have them.”

He did look at her then, covering her hand with his. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Do you remember your dad?”

Those big, strong fingers were warm and gave her a comfort she hadn’t even realized she wanted. “Some. I was only five when he died. Some of what I think I remember is probably more my mom telling me stories over and over. Showing me pictures. And some I know are really my memories.” She smiled. “I have a lot more of your dad. All good. Eventually, you’ll get to where that’s what comes to mind when you think of him, instead of the hurt.”