Miss Mechanic

Chapter One – Jamie

“He was the length of the Amazon river and the girth of the Missouri.”

I blinked at my best friend. She could sit there and tell me this about the cock of her latest conquest, but it didn’t change the fact he’d stiffed her and not left his number.

And by stiffed, I don’t mean their dinner bill.

But, I didn’t say that. All I’d get in response would be the reminder that if she was having one-night stands, she didn’t want their number.

“That would mean a lot more to me if I knew anything about the girth of the Missouri,” I replied, wiping my hands on a rag. “There. I filled your oil. I still don’t know how you’ve been driving for eight years and don’t know how to change your oil.”

Haley grinned, her blue eyes twinkling. “I have you, James. I don’t need to know how to change my oil.”

I held back the eye-roll that wanted to escape. “One day, I won’t be here to do it for you.” I unhooked the hood of her Honda and pushed it back down into place with a bang that echoed off the walls.

“You’ll always be here. Stop that.” She tapped her fingers against the hood and it reverberated throughout my garage. “Thanks, by the way. Twenty bucks?”

I waved my hand at her. “I’ve never charged you for an oil change and I’m not about to start.”

“Well, if a pizza shows up here around six tonight, that’s your payment.”

“And as always, I will accept without argument.” I grinned and closed the drawer of my toolbox.

“Damn right you will.” She locked the car, making the lights flash an obnoxious bright-white, and tucked the keys into the pocket of her sweats. “Want a coffee?”

“Need a coffee,” I corrected, finally getting the last remnants of oil off my palm. I threw the cloth on top of my huge-ass toolbox and followed her inside to my kitchen.

Haley had already hit the button on the machine that provided my lifeblood when I stepped inside. I pressed my left toes against my right heel and tugged off the Doc Marten boot that encased it, then did the same with the other foot. Kicking them back into the oil-coated garage, I shut the door and pulled off my socks.

“So,” she started the moment the coffee machine stopped. “Did you see the ad on Facebook?”

I leaned against the kitchen side and folded my arms. “The one for the Chinese-sized sweater or the horrid blackhead facemask?”

She paused. “Well, both, but that wasn’t the one I was hinting at.”

“I don’t do hints, Hales. Spit it out.”

She put her mug under the machine. It spat to life, chugging out the coffee like it was a car running on low power. She stayed perfectly silent until the machine squirted out the last of the coffee for the cycle and she’d pulled her mug onto the marble countertop.

“Haley.”

“The guy who bought your dad’s garage is advertising for a new mechanic.”

I almost dropped my mug.

Instead of making a mess I had no desire to clean up, I set it down on the counter and slowly raised my gaze to meet hers. “For real?”

She nodded. “For real. It was an ad in my feed this morning. He renamed it Ryne Garages or something like that. I bet you can search it on Facebook and find it.”

I got up, grabbed my laptop from the living room, and took it back into the kitchen. I had it open and loading before I’d even set it on the table, and by the time my ass hit the chair, I’d logged into Windows and was bringing up my Chrome browser.

Facebook loaded immediately.

I typed “Ryne Garages” into the search bar and waited for it to load. The very first result pulled it up, so I clicked and waited for the page to populate.

The first result held the address I knew so well.

I hovered only a second before I clicked. The cover photo showed the ever-familiar building that was owned by my family for sixty years. Nothing had changed, not really. There’d been a repaint and a new sign put up, but the long-defunct gas station in the front courtyard had been left as I remembered it.

Old, rusting, peeling. Pure, small-town charm of a bygone era.

“You all right, James?”

I took a deep breath. “It’s weird. Seeing it with someone else’s name on. It’s always been ours, but now…”

“It’s been a year.”

“And now we’re in trouble,” I said to her. “I get that I’m lucky to live in a house on land we own outright, but if this is open…” I paused and ran my fingers through my hair. “Dad set up in the garage here, but he still doesn’t have most of the stuff he needs to keep business smooth. If Ryne Garages is open, people will stop coming to us because that will be easier.”