Tiger Lily Page 4

  He laughed at that. “I had to keep her humble.”

  “She’s not been starting?” I demanded. “How do you get to the doctor’s and grocery shopping—”

  “Someone takes me, Lily,” he said patiently. “I’m not as young as I used to be. I don’t see very well driving at night. I actually drive under the speed limit now. It’s no good.”

  I sighed at that. I couldn’t tell what was real and therefore sad, and what was a ploy to make me stay home with him forever.

  “I sure do miss riding in my car with the wind in my hairs,” he said.

  I quirked an eyebrow at the plural, right before he adds, “All eighteen of them.”

  “I’m going to go see if the car will start,” I said. “It’s better than being stuck here with your bad puns and your magazine collection from the nineties.”

  “You never know when you’ll want to re-read the TV Guides from a special year,” he told me.

  A few minutes later, I slid into the white leather driver’s seat. My grandfather’s car was as spotless as ever, the wooden dash polished, and I ran my fingers over the steering wheel to say hello. Then, crossing the fingers of my left hand for luck, I stuck the key in the ignition and twisted.

  “Please please please,” I said to Roberta, hoping for the engine to start and the radio to blare to life.

  Sputter sputter die, Roberta said back.

  As I waited to try again so I wouldn’t flood the engine, nostalgia rolled over me. I remember sitting in the passenger seat, my strawberry-blond curls flying in the breeze, wearing oversized aviator sunglasses.

  When I was a gawky kid, I still always felt special and beautiful with my grandfather. I thought I was cool when we drove around in his car with the music cranked. He always had a gift for making me feel worthy. No matter how much we trade barbs, he’s only ever said words that built me up when it mattered.

  And that’s amazing, because I could be pretty weird and annoying as a kid.

  Maybe not just when I was a kid, to be honest.

  I was still sitting in the car, reminiscing, when a black SUV pulled in the driveway. I get out of the driver’s seat.

  When Dylan Frost unfolded his tall, powerful body out of the car, I said, “Really?” to the universe for what felt like the twenty-eighth time in two days.

  6

  Dylan wrapped me up in a big hug. I was not a hugger, but I couldn’t tell him that, because my face was pressed against his hard chest. Oh, he smells good. I couldn’t help being struck by his woodsy scent, and I was torn between trying to pull away to get some air and wanting to bury my face in his shirt and sniff.

  As my toes lifted off the ground, I made a small horrified noise, but my arms closed around his lean waist.

  Was I hugging him back or just surviving?

  Dylan was like a giant teddy bear brought to life.

  He laughed as he set me down, ruffling my hair. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Paws off,” I said, but I couldn’t help but smile, stepping back and trying to smooth my hair back into place. “You know how cats are.”

  “Anti-hug?”

  Actually, now that Dylan had retreated, I missed that hug. “I’m not anti-hug but I don’t really like touching strangers.”

  “We’re not strangers. We went to kindergarten together. We survived high school together.”

  “And you didn’t learn anything there, apparently.” When we were in kindergarten, he hugged me on the playground when I was in a bad mood because Annalie Barker had swiped my cookie at lunch. I’d laid him out with my right hook under the monkey bars.

  “I think you didn’t learn anything in kindergarten,” he returned. He ruffled my hair with one hand, which I didn’t like either, and I scowled at him. His forearms were corded, a nice match with his wide, tattooed biceps as he finally stuck his hands in his pockets. “What were the rules? Be nice—”

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” I interrupted.

  He flashed me the same undisturbed grin he’s given me during every silly fight since kindergarten.

  He had a really nice grin, one that crinkled the corner of his green eyes and brought out dimples under his chiseled cheekbones. Even back in elementary school, other girls always had crushes on him. In high school, he was Mr. Popular.

  It wasn’t just his good looks. He’d always been so nice.

  My friends in high school used to jostle my elbow and nod at him after he grinned at me, encouraging me to ask him out. “He’s too nice for me,” I’d say dismissively. They thought I was too cool for the guy who wrote earnest little songs for his girlfriends that he sang as he played the guitar.

  I’ve always had a jaded and aloof side. I am a cat, after all.

  But really, I meant he was too nice for me. Out of my league. I’d never be sweet enough for him. No matter how rugged and sexy he looked, he was a happy, shiny balloon of sweetness, and I had claws.

  So I always made catty remarks to my girlfriends about him being too cute to ruin, while he walked away down the hall with some other girl tucked under his arm.

  And apparently, nothing had changed.

  He walked around my grandfather’s car and his lips pursed in a whistle. “This is a beauty. Haven’t seen Roberta in a while. Does she run?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Can I pop the hood?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  He raised the hood and went to work, checking the engine over. As he was leaning over the engine—and I was trying not to stare at his ass—he said, “So I heard you need a job.”

  “Got to love Silver Springs.”

  “Well, I live with the guy who told me. I’m not sure you can blame small town life for that one.”

  “You and Blake live together?”

  “All three of us. We bought ourselves a house, and we built the garage for Hot Wheels.” He lifted his head from under the hood, a grin across his face and a smear of grease on his cheek. Somehow the grease smear just made him more handsome and endearing, damn it. “This car is old, man.”

  “So’s my grandpa,” I said. Those words were supposed to be a joke, but I thought of his death jokes earlier and my stomach twisted. I didn’t know what I’d do without him. I couldn’t even bear to think about it.

  “I love old cars,” he said easily. He dropped the hood and stepped back, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “I can’t tell what’s wrong now, but I’d like to work on it, Lily.”

  I scoffed. “I’ve got like three hundred bucks in my bank account right now, so…”

  “I don’t need money,” he said. “I’d like to teach you how to fix it.”

  His lips turned up at one corner, as if he could see right through me. “Then you won’t need anyone. You can just fix things yourself.”

  “You want to spend more time with me?” I asked skeptically.

  “Yeah, I do.” He frowned as he crossed his arms over that powerful chest. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Lily. Why are you like this?”

  “A question many people have asked throughout the years,” I said lightly.

  “Well, I like you the way you are,” he said. “I wish you did.”

  “Even though I shouldn’t have passed kindergarten?” I asked, ignoring his I like you, even though it made my heart flip-flop. He’d always liked me as a friend. If he meant he liked me some other way than that, well… I didn’t want to make any assumptions. My heart felt about as fragile as a tea cup abandoned on a speedway. “Why did you stop by, anyway?”

  “Oh!” he said. “I wanted to give you an update on your car.”

  “You didn’t want to just call me?”

  He shook his head, his eyes bright. “Nope.”

  “Okay.” Lord help me, I’d never understood Dylan. “Well, I personally don’t like talking on the phone, so that works.”

  I prefer texting, because then I didn’t have to talk to anyone at all.

  “We need one more day with your car,” he said.
“Then someone can drop it off tomorrow. Unless!”

  I waited patiently for whatever follows that exclamation point, but he let me wait until finally I asked, “Unless what?”

  “Unless I show up tomorrow and tow this car to the shop,” he said, stroking the car absently, as if it were a pet, “and you ride with me! First day at work!”

  “I can’t,” I said, but I kept thinking about the breeze fluttering my hair when I was a kid, about how much my grandfather loved this car, and how satisfying it would be to fix it myself.

  “You can’t or you don’t want to?” he asked me.

  “Neither,” I said, suddenly making an impetuous decision.

  Impulsive decisions weren’t usually my style. But I spent a lot of time finding that job, that apartment, that boyfriend, and look where I landed.

  Maybe my impulses couldn’t steer me too much more badly.

  So I tried to smile, even though the butterflies in my stomach turned into a swarm, and said, “I’ll take the job.”

  Dylan lunged to hug me, and I was laughing even before he swept me off my feet.

  I’d never met such an enthusiastic HR manager before in my life.

  7

  The next day, the tow truck showed up in the morning as I was drinking my coffee and finishing another chapter in the book. I took another sip, ignoring the sudden flutter in my chest at the thought of seeing Dylan again.

  Instead, I focused on the page, because I really want to finish Love Blooms. I was invested now.

  And before I knew it, it wasn’t the men of Love Blooms that I was imagining…

  The words on the page faded. It was Blake and Archer that I imagined…

  “He’s the smart one,” the rude-and-bossy-but-sexy one says.

  “You don’t need to be condescending about smart,” I scold him. “I like smart.”

  “You also like rock-hard abs,” the rude one says, lifting up his shirt.

  I roll my eyes. But he does have very impressive abs, all hard, lickable ridges above angular hip bones.

  Still, he already thinks highly enough of himself.

  The quiet one just stares at me, and I can’t quite read that look. Something about the way he looks at me makes me feel funny, though.

  Funny in a good way?

  Funny in a scary way?

  Both.

  “I’ll bet his abs are lickable too,” I tell the bossy one.

  He raises his eyebrows—darn, I hadn’t meant to tell him that—but I catches the nerdy one’s hand and tows him away, until we have some privacy.

  “I’ve got a problem,” I say, turning to face him, “and I think you have the solution.”

  He stares at me, and I touch my lips self-consciously. “What is it? Is there something on my face?”

  He leans in and kisses me.

  She should probably tell him that kisses won’t solve her problem.

  But not quite yet.

  Just as the princess and the nerdy one try to work out their problems—and I would bet the two of them together could solve their way out of any pickle—my grandfather called, “Lily!”

  I almost threw the book. Being startled while reading was like being forcibly yanked out of a dream world. For a few jarring seconds, this world didn’t feel quite real.

  I looked up to find my grandfather smiling bemusedly at me. I raked my hand through my curls, which were still drying from my shower, as my racing heart slowed back to normal.

  I followed his gaze through the living room windows. He stood watching the guys hook up the car. Nerves twisted through my stomach like a mouse running through the grass, and I had regrets about taking this job.

  “I’m proud of you, Lily,” my grandpa said suddenly.

  I scoffed. “Why?”

  “You’re keeping an open mind,” he said, “and you’ve been hurt. That takes courage. Intelligence. Resilience.”

  I turned a skeptical eye on him, but he smiled at me. “You’ve always had that, though. You’re a special girl, Lily.”

  “I’m your granddaughter, you’re biased.”

  “Sure,” he agreed as I headed toward the door, “but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “Love you Grandpa,” I said, all in a rush as I pulled the door closed behind me, so he wouldn’t get the last word.

  “You just have to let yourself be open to new experiences!” he shouted back. Since the door was already in motion, it banged shut halfway through his speech, cutting off the tail end to a whisper.

  When I walked outside, Blake and Dylan looked at me. Blake’s eyes brightened when he looked at me the same way they had that first day, and Dylan’s lips parted slightly as he gazed at me, even though I was just wearing gray dress pants and a demure black blouse.

  The way they looked at me made my stomach do flip-flops, not that I wanted to admit that.

  “Where’s Archie?” I asked.

  “You know he’s shy,” Dylan chided me.

  “He’s known me since I played with Barbies!” And he’d been the only one of the three willing to play with me. I’d taken Barbie and he’d taken Ken, and the dolls had gotten into all kinds of mischief: elaborate heists stealing Oreos from the kitchen, the construction of Rube Goldberg machines, campaigns of revenge on the evil paper dolls (who seemed formidable, but always fell over in a fight).

  Maybe I hadn’t played Barbies quite like a normal girl.

  “You’re kind of scary, though.” Blake crinkled his nose as he looked at me. It was cute—the kind of cute I felt, like a wobble through my body.

  “I wish,” I grumbled. “The only time I’ve ever seen anyone shake in front of me, it’s because I was pelting them with baked goods.”

  “You can pelt me with baked goods any time,” Dylan said mildly. “I like chocolate.”

  “Interesting kink.”

  Dylan swung the passenger door open for me—always so gallant--and I climbed up. There was a bench seat in the front of the tow truck, so I shifted toward the center as Dylan climbed in beside me and Blake got into the driver’s seat.

  Well, maybe not so gallant.

  “Why do I have to ride in the middle?” I asked.

  “Because we like you,” Dylan said, at the same time as Blake said, “Because I’m your boss.”

  I glanced between the two of them.

  “Dylan,” Blake sighed.

  Dylan shrugged. “I’m sure she’s noticed.”

  Thank goodness we weren’t even driving a mile, because things were so awkward in that vehicle.

  “Archie’s been on reception duty, he’s going to be thrilled to see you,” Blake told me as he pulled the truck past the shiny new Hot Wheels sign. Their garage was a three-door unit of freshly painted white concrete blocks, with tires stacked at the entrances like decor.

  “The garage looks great,” I said, and when Dylan smiled, I realized it was probably the first nice thing I’d said.

  I didn’t know why they liked me when I was so prickly. Maybe prickly was their kink. I didn’t think I was that lucky, though. We’d been friends since we were kids. No surprise they’d take pity on me.

  “Go in and say hi to Archie while we get your grandpa’s car set up,” Blake told me. “He can get you started while we finish up the minivan we’re working on. Then we’ll get to work on your grandpa’s car together.”

  His bossiness made me bristle, which was awkward, because he was my boss.

  “Oh, yes sir,” I said lightly, before I hopped down onto the smooth, newly poured concrete driveway.

  As I walked toward the glass door to the lobby, Dylan smacked Blake.

  “What?” Blake hissed.

  “Do you have to be like this?” Dylan demanded.

  “Like what?”

  “Like an overbearing German Shepherd who always has to be in charge!”

  “I am a German Shepherd!”

  I left the sounds of their bickering behind me. They might not be brothers biologically, but they had certainly become
brothers—complete with the tendency to beat each other up when we were young.

  Blake smacked Dylan back.

  Nix that thought about them hitting each other when we were young. Apparently they found socking each other to be timeless.

  When I pushed open the door, there was no one there, though. No Archie. A strange sense of disappointment washed over me.

  I turned in a circle to view their reception area. Everything was very clean—definitely Archie at work, from what I know of the three of them—but it was sterile. Six white plastic chairs, lined up like soldiers against the walls. A bare counter.

  “No magazines?” I asked no one in particular. “Not even a potted plant?”

  These guys needed some help, and that made me feel better about taking the job, despite Blake’s high-handedness.

  When no one emerged after I spent a minute wandering around the big but empty lobby, I went to the windows and looked out.

  Blake and Dylan, my very mature new bosses, appeared to be wrestling each other.

  The two of them toppled over into the bushes at the end of the driveway.

  I heaved a sigh. They were still a hundred times better than Mr. Muffins back in the city.

  I pushed open the door between the reception space and the garage itself. The brand new door swung open soundlessly. They could probably use bells on the door so they could hear any potential customers. I’d add that to the list.

  There was a minivan in the garage, and a pair of skinny denim-covered legs stuck out underneath. Archer’s heels bounced back and forth absently. He was listening to music, I’d bet.

  When we were kids, Blake tried to boss me and Dylan tried to kiss me.

  Archer just ignored me.

  Just like now, as I said hi to him for the fourth time.

  I glanced around the garage and noticed a board with wheels at each corner, almost like a giant skateboard.

  I laid down on my back on it, feeling awkward, and pushed myself by my heels underneath the car.

  He was intent on whatever he was doing underneath the car, and he didn’t even notice me at first. His head bobbed to the music, but he was wearing earbuds so I couldn’t hear what he was listening to.