Page 7 of Stealing Kisses

“You can’t do all that by yourself,” Teddy protested.

“Ican. I have before, and I will many times again,” Baylin corrected. “But I won’t have to; whoever’s around will be more than happy to lend a hand here and there throughout the festival.”

“Huh,” Teddy grunted.

Baylin cast up a quick prayer of thanksgiving that he’d run out of conversational steam.

4

A room without books is like

a body without a soul.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Here,” Baylin said, handing Teddy a sticky note.

He read the name and number she’d written on it.

“What’s this?”

“A talented mechanic.”

His stomach soured.

“I don’t know,” he said, his words laden with apprehension.

“He’s a wizard with engines.”

Teddy hesitated, looking wearily at the slip of paper in his hand.

“I still don’t know,” he hedged. “Boxy isn’t any ol’ car.”

“Jax isn’tany ol’mechanic,” she countered. “And you named your car?” The grimace on her face spoke volumes.

“Uh, yeah!” Didn’t everyone?

“Boxy? Is that a play on Foxy? Or Roxy?”

Teddy wanted to kiss that scrunched up snooty expression right off her beautiful face. Wait—Wipethat look away, not kiss. What was he thinking?

“Nooo,” Teddy replied, shaking off the strange and displaced urge. “She’s a?—”

“She?”

“Of course.”

“Wow,” she stated. Her eyes brightened, and Teddy would have sworn she fought back a giggle.

“Please, do continue with this riveting tale,” she said, bowing forward as if extending an invitation.

“She,” Teddy emphasized, “is a vintage racing car. In racing, when cars go back to their garage —their home, so to speak, for the event — they’re told tobox. And, as a kid playing baseball, I always felt at home in the batter’s box. So, I named her Boxy.”

A speechless Baylin meant she was dumbfounded by his idiocy or impressed by his cleverness. Teddy feared knowing which one she felt at that moment.

“Well, call Jax. That’s his cell; he’ll answer, even on a Sunday night.Boxywill be safe in his hands. I promise,” she tacked on with a saucy head shake.

When Baylin left the kitchen, Teddy pulled out a chair and sat down to make the dreaded call.

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