Page 2 of The Nanny and the Nerd
“Mom,” she cautioned, tired of this song and dance.
“Are you at least writing?” her mother asked in the same tone one would use to inquire about the status of the local sewage treatment plant.
The tension in Penny’s neck and shoulders intensified. This shouldn’t be a tricky question. She called herself a writer. She held a degree in creative writing. An expensive degree she’d be paying off for a decent chunk of her life. But a degree, no less! Granted, waitressing currently paid her bills. Scratch that. Waitressing barely paid her bills, but it was the only thing she had going at the moment. “I have lots of ideas. I’m fleshing them out, exploring their possibilities,” she rattled, her heart sinking with the admission. While she hadn’t lied, she hadn’t told the truth either.
“And have you entered any of those contests you’re always talking about?” her mother pressed, sounding quite confident she already knew the answer.
Penny swallowed past the lump in her throat when a sharp clang rang out.
“Where on God’s earth are you?” her mother questioned. “Is that one of your awful roommates in that dank house you live in? I swear, that place is atrocious, and your housemates smell like they haven’t bathed in days!”
“It’s what I can afford, Mom. And no, I’m not at home,” she replied. But her mother wasn’t wrong. She rented a room in a house populated by stoner grad students. It wasn’t ideal—not by a long shot. She had to endure Bob Marley on repeat for hours on end. But nobody gave her crap for trying to make it as a writer.
She glanced into the bank of open garages and observed as a mechanic retrieved a wrench from the concrete floor. She then turned her attention to the second bay where an older mechanic was working on her Jeep. The guy blew out a breath and shook his head as he finished lowering her car from its perch on the hydraulic lift.
Crap! Crap! Crap! That expression didn’t bode well for her pocketbook!
As much as she loved her 1993 turquoise Jeep Wrangler, the vehicle had seen better days about a decade ago. Okay, two decades ago. For Pete’s sake, the car was older than she was! But that didn’t stop her from adoring it. She remembered the days when she’d remove the canvas top, pick up her best friends, and the four of them would cruise through downtown Denver without a care in the world.
Those days seemed so long ago.
She sighed. “I’m at the auto repair shop.”
“That car is a monstrosity!” her mother huffed.
Penny checked her watch. That monstrosity needed to get her ass to work!
“I need to speak with the mechanic. I’ve got to go, Mom.”
“Remember, dear! There’s no substitute for hard work,” her mother restated. “It’s why your father, God rest his soul, and I insisted you make your own way in the world. I’m giving you a gift.”
Penny bit back a grin. If her mother wanted to see what hard work looked like, she should try waiting tables during downtown Denver’s bustling lunch hour. “Well, Mom, thanks for the gift and the Thomas Edison pep talk,” she said, ending the call, then smacking shut her phone.
“You don’t see many of those. A real antique,” the mechanic said, sauntering toward her as he wiped his hands on a greasy rag.
Maybe it wouldn’t cost a fortune to fix her car!
That grimace she’d seen on the mechanic’s face when he lowered her Jeep may have been in response to the wrench crashing to the ground and not to the mechanical health of her beloved car. She took in her old Jeep, and a warmth settled in her chest. She couldn’t help it. She adored that monstrosity. “I’ve had her since I was sixteen.”
The guy frowned. “I wasn’t talking about your car. I meant the phone. My grandmother’s phone is more high-tech than that, and she’s ninety-seven years old.”
First her mother and now the mechanic! How many people would find fault with her today?
Penny slipped her phone into her tote. “It’s reliable, and it works just fine.”
And it fit into her depressingly minuscule budget, but she wasn’t about to mention that part.
“Were you able to find the problem? My Jeep feels a little off these days,” she said, checking her watch. She needed to make this quick! She couldn’t be late to work—again. And she had to stop by the computer shop and see if they could do something to get her laptop up and running.
“Yeah, about that…” the man began with another grimace. “Most everything is wrong with your car.”
Her jaw nearly hit the floor. How was that even an automotive diagnosis?
“Everything?” she bit out once she was able to close her trap.
“I patched the hole in your tire. You had a slow leak going. But I’ll need to keep the Jeep for a week or so if you want me to fix the issues with the engine and the front axle and the radiator and—”
She waved her hands, cutting off the mechanic’s mechanical list of machinations.
