Page 17 of Playing for Keeps
“No,” he replied in a similarly quiet tone. “I would have never.”
“I know,” she hurried to say because her embarrassment had now morphed into mortification. “Because you would’ve never talked to me that way. I know. Or I should’ve known.”
She was so not Del’s type. Had never thought she wanted to be his type. This was a mess.
“Okay, look,” she said and then paused to take a deep breath. She rubbed her trembling hands down her thighs and summoned the courage to continue. “It was a fluke. A misunderstanding. No need for us to make it any bigger. We’ll just walk away and forget it ever happened.”
Forget that the best orgasm she’d ever brought herself had been because of Del’s bare chest.
“You don’t tell anybody and I won’t tell anybody. That’s it. Done,” she finished. “Deal?”
Del nodded, still looking a bit dumfounded.
“Deal,” he said.
“Good. Deal. I’m ah, I’m just gonna go home now.”
And die a slow and mortified death.
“Yeah. Me too,” he replied.
“Yeah. Okay, so good night,” Rylan said and then for the second time tonight, hurried to get into her car and drive away from Del Greer.
6
The orange light on the console glared back at him. Del sat behind the wheel of his truck and stared at it. He needed an oil change. Normally, he would pull the truck into his driveway and spend a few hours handling the task himself. He was no mechanic, but there were some basic things he knew how to do and he was very particular about who he let touch his truck. There weren’t many things that Del was protective of—outside of blood-related family and the brothers—but his truck was one of them.
Which was why as soon as the traffic light on the corner of Penn Street changed, he lifted his foot from the brake and made a right turn down Linthicum Lane. Two blocks later, Del made another right turn onto the lot of Kent Automotive.
He’d taken his truck to one other mechanic since he’d purchased it in D.C., but Del wasn’t about to drive all the way back there to have his oil changed. No, it was probably time to find a new mechanic. This just happened to be the most reputable place in town.
It wasn’t because he wanted to see Rylan again.
They were into the first week of December now. Temperatures had dropped significantly and the town looked like a page out of one of those Christmas movies Camy loved watching. There was even a wreath hanging on the front door of the body shop, and garland stretched around the two automatic doors that led to the work bays. After parking his truck, Del walked to the door and entered the building, heat blasting his face the moment he stepped inside. There was also jazz music filtering loudly throughout the reception area where there should’ve been a receptionist or someone to greet him or offer assistance. Since there wasn’t, Del crossed the industrial carpeted floor. He pushed through the swinging door and walked down the ramp leading into the open garage space. He knew this place well as Mr. Will had been the only one able to keep Del’s first car—a royal blue ’68 Chevy Camaro—running back in the day.
The area seemed bigger now, tools lining part of one wall, tires stacked neatly in rows on the other side of the building and in between a host of other electronic and manual equipment. There were also two cars in the bay area, one already on the lift and the other with a great ass sticking out from beneath the hood.
Her jeans were ripped in strategic places, one being the left back pocket, but not all the way through so that he could see what she was wearing beneath the denim. The material hugged her long legs like a glove, perfectly outlining the roundness of her ass and the thighs he’d thought about multiple times via the picture saved on his phone.
But he hadn’t come here to see her.
It had been four days since that night at the diner where she announced their colossal mistake. And Del had needed a moment to recoup. Rylan hadn’t come into the bar during that time. For that Del was grateful because he wasn’t certain how he would react around her after jerking off to the picture of her one bare leg.
Now, he knew.
His dick grew harder than any one of the tools in this whole damn garage.
“Hey, Rylan,” he said when he felt like a total jerk just standing there gawking at her.
She moved slowly, easing up and then back, before turning to face him. She had a torque wrench in one hand, a dirty cloth in the other. Her gray t-shirt had seen better days, between smudges of dirt and oil and the rip on the right shoulder, but it still managed to look sexy. Today, her hair was pulled back into a messy sort of ponytail and her face was completely free of make-up. She looked far better than any woman Del had ever seen.
“What are you doing here?” she asked after the first few stunned moments of silence.
“I have a problem that only you can solve,” he said.
She arched a brow and leaned back against the car she’d been working on.
“I told you this is no longer funny, Del. Don’t come to my place of business with your little juvenile antics.” Her tone was icy, her gaze fierce and her stance was unbothered. Sexy. Sexy. And the sexiest.
