Page 7 of Daddy's Little Liar
He didn’t even know—if he had, she was pretty sure the things he’d be saying to her right now would not have been gentle or concerned.
“I wish you’d sit down. You’re not doing your ankle any favors, and you did promise you’d put your leg up.”
“I’m too upset to sit.”
He looked up from her disassembled engine block.
“I’ll be okay,” she said weakly. That felt like a lie, too, but as fiercely as the pain was throbbing through the whole of her, no longer contained to her horribly bruised ankle, the guilt felt worse.
Shaking his head, he finished what he was doing, gathered his tools, and set them aside.
“That’s it,” he said, wiping dirty hands on an equally dirty rag. “That’s as far as I can go until I get the part tomorrow. So…” coming around the hood of her car, he stopped directly in front of her, still wiping his hands, still smiling, but with a look in his unsmiling eyes that made her already queasy stomach flip and drop to the floor. “You want to talk about the elephant in the room?”
He knew. She’d never felt so caught, so relieved, or so sick and disgusted with herself all at one time.
“Sleeping arrangements,” he declared.
She hadn’t realized how far she’d come out from under that crushing mantle until the guilt came crashing back down on top of her again, even heavier than before.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m going to close up shop now,” he told her. “I figure if you had someone you could call, you wouldn’t still be standing here, and the nearest hotel is forty miles down the road.”
Georgia blinked. Her chest was so tight, she could barely draw a shaky breath. As consumed as she’d been with how she was going to pay for this, she hadn’t thought about what she was going to do from now until morning. She definitely couldn’t afford a hotel. Right now, she couldn’t see how she’d ever be able to afford anything ever again.
“I can sleep in my car.” She tried to smile, but her face was too brittle.
“My liability went through the roof the second I let you walk back here,” he told her bluntly. “If my insurance found out I let a customer sleep in my shop, I’d be canceled.”
“I won’t tell them.”
“No, you won’t… because I won’t let it happen.” Heaving a sigh, his eyes narrowed a bit as he studied her again. “Look, I get it, okay. I understand. You want to spend the night on the porch. I won’t pressure you otherwise. I could pitch a tent for you in the backyard and let you borrow a sleeping bag. Or if you want to take the risk and trust that I’ll conduct myself like the gentleman my mama raised, I have a fairly comfortable couch you can crash on. I also have some leftover lasagna in the fridge I could heat up and will even give you the local sheriff’s number. He lives two houses down, but I promise, if you need to call him, it won’t be because I gave you a reason to.”
She tried to be grateful. A non-guilty person would have been. Yes, she didn’t know him, but he seemed decent, and so far, he hadn’t done anything to make a warning flag pop up. If a guy was going to molest a girl on his couch, would he really give her the sheriff’s phone number and tell her he lived just two houses down? What’s more, if she didn’t accept the couch, did she really want to sleep in a tent in the yard?
She wasn’t a camping-type girl. She wanted a bed off the ground and as far away from scorpions, ants, and snakes as she could get. She wanted heat and someplace to charge her cellphone, so she could call her friend and the HR department giving her interview and let them know what had happened. Frankly, she hadn’t eaten since that pepperoni stick at the last gas station where she’d filled up. Her stomach had a sunken, hollow feeling creeping into it.
Lasagna sounded great.
So, not only was she going to take advantage of his ‘free’ labor, she was also going to steal his food and his sofa?
“Sounds like a plan,” she said, telling herself she really, honestly was not the world’s biggest piece of shit. Surely somewhere on the planet, there had to be at least one person worse than she was. “In prison,” she muttered as she followed when he beckoned her to come with him into his office.
Eyebrows arching, he glanced back over his shoulder. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” Judging by his stare, though, he’d heard exactly what she’d said. When she offered no explanation, he dropped the door on his garage, locked it, shut off the lights, and led her through his tiny office, around his desk to another door.
Dad’s Garage was attached to ‘Daddy’s’ house. Small but clean and tidy, the door to his office emptied into his kitchen, where the 1950s theme continued without mercy. From the linoleum to cabinets to wallpaper, it was a home straight off the vintage pages of a Woman and Home magazine. Everything was teal, including the sink.
“Wow,” she said before she could catch herself.
“Yeah,” he replied in the same tone. He studied it all with her. “Unfortunately, before he died, Dad got the home registered as a historical landmark. You are standing in the very first gas station ever to be built in this state. Now, the original station was partially destroyed in the FBI shootout with the Boltreaux family in ’38, but even with the station house gone, my granddaddy continued to sell gas and fix cars until 1941 when he married my grandmother, who refused to live in a tent. So, granddaddy built this house, where she reigned as queen decorator until her death in ’88. Granddaddy never touched a thing after she passed, and neither did Dad, and now that it’s registered, I’m stuck with it.”
With a draft easing through the open office door behind them, they stood just inside the kitchen and admired the grand excess of teal.
“Would you?” Georgia finally asked. “I mean, if you could.”
“God, yes. In a heartbeat.” With a visible shake, he brought his attention back to more important things. “Here, have a seat. I’ll get you an icepack for your ankle—no more arguments. You’ve had your way all night, and now I’ll have mine. Sit.”
