Jenna laughed. “What, like forgetting to turn off the lights before you leave the house? Come on!”
Bellamy blushed, heat creeping all the way up to her ears. “No. I meant the kind of mistake that involves beer goggles,” she said, ripping her bagel into tiny pieces.
“Um, you’ve got some rose-colored beer goggles, sweetheart. Jenna’s right. That man is fine.” Holly cracked open a cold pack and passed it over wordlessly.
“Not me. Him.”
Bellamy’s words were so quiet, they almost qualified as a whisper. She leaned into the cold pack, feeling the ache of it seep into her cheekbone. It was embarrassing enough that she’d walked into a pole trying to look cool in front of Shane, but then to go and kiss him like a groupie on top of it all? Insult and injury were supposed to be metaphorical, for Chrissake!
Jenna lifted her gaze from the bagel she was buttering, confused. “But he seemed sober.”
Bellamy cut off her thoughts with a wave. Nope. Her ego was a sinking ship as it was. She simply couldn’t dwell on it. “Either way, it was nothing. As a matter of fact, it was less than nothing.” Shifting the cold pack, Bellamy traced a line down her half-numb cheek. “Hey, does this look bad enough to get me out of work for a couple of days? I’m thinking I should milk it for all it’s worth, and fifty bucks says Bosszilla asks for photographic proof of bodily harm before she gives me another couple of days off.”
“Oh, come on! Your car is about to be in a bazillion pieces. She won’t let you off the hook?” Holly rolled her eyes.
Bellamy smirked. “Clearly, you’re forgetting the time I took two days off for my great-aunt’s funeral in New Jersey. She made me give her the obituary so she could call the funeral home to verify everything.”
“Well, the bruise isn’t terrible, but we could Photoshop you to make it look really awful,” Holly suggested, falling for the change in subject hook, line, and sinker.
Bellamy played right along. “Knock yourself out. I have twenty-four hours to come up with a viable excuse, or else my boss is going to go full frontal bitch. And trust me when I say, it’s not a pretty sight.”
She sank back against the headboard as Jenna and Holly argued over whether being mauled by a bear in the mountains was a viable excuse to miss work. The subject of Bellamy’s clandestine barroom kiss had been all but forgotten, swept under the rug as if it had never happened. Which was just the way she wanted it, because the whole thing had been a mistake of epic proportions.
Now if only she could get the feel of Shane’s mouth, hot and oh so male, out of her head, she’d be just fine.
7
By the time lunch rolled around, Shane had been under Bellamy’s Miata for three hours, and that was after running the five-mile loop behind the old log cabin he rented. The unease he’d felt all morning sloshed around in his belly by the gallon. If a five-mile run and yanking a transmission that was as stubborn as its owner didn’t ease his restlessness, Shane was out of ideas for what would.
“Let me guess. You’ve been here a while. And by ‘a while,’ I don’t mean twenty minutes,” Jackson drawled from the side door of the garage as he came in, huddled deep in his jacket.
“A while, yeah.” It wasn’t Shane’s fault he couldn’t sleep. He had work to do.
“Tell me you at least stayed in bed until after the sun was up, you freaking workaholic.”
“Whatever makes you feel better, man.” Getting paid meant getting it done, and Shane had waited long enough to start pulling the tranny on this thing. Plus, if he kept his hands busy on Bellamy’s car, then maybe he wouldn’t be so tempted to be doing other things with them. Christ, it was a good thing this tranny would take all afternoon. Maybe he’d offer to tune up Jackson’s truck, just for good measure.
Jackson shook his head, joking as he ducked to stand under the car. “Don’t you ever rest?”
“Got plenty of time to rest when I’m dead,” Shane quipped over his shoulder with forced humor.
“Aren’t you just a ray of frickin’ sunshine?”
“Sorry. This thing’s a pain in the ass.” It took Shane all of three seconds to notice his buddy’s ear-to-ear smile. Damn, those things were contagious. He couldn’t help but return the favor, and was relieved to feel his bad mood get knocked down a few pegs. “What’s with you?”
“I am taking Samantha Kane to the Pine Mountain Resort bonfire tonight, that’s what’s with me.” Jackson’s grin turned downright goofy as he looked up at the work Shane had done so far.
Shane laughed. “That explains the shit-eating grin, I guess.”
Jackson’s hands went up, signaling guilty as charged. “Well, if you hadn’t taken off so early last night, you’d be in the know. Where’d you get to, anyway? One minute, we’re standing there throwing back a cold one and the next thing I know, you’re a ghost.”
Good thing Shane had the bored look down pat, because he was giving it a workout right now. “Yeah, I was just beat from working all day. I’d have said goodbye to you, but you looked kind of occupied.”
Jackson went for round two with his grin, and Shane just shook his head as he continued. “So, it all worked out with Samantha, huh? You were pretty cozy with her when I left.”
“So far, so good. She stuck pretty close to her friend, which I get, because while I know I’m not a complete jackass, she doesn’t yet. And speaking of her friend”—Jackson narrowed his eyes as Shane busied himself again with the car overhead—“why don’t you come to the bonfire with me tonight? Melody was really into you. If you’d stuck around, maybe I wouldn’t have been the only one who got kissed, you know?”
Shane skipped around the irony and the mention of Samantha’s friend, dodging both like the land mines they were. “Yeah, I’m going to pass on the bonfire. I’ve got a couple things I have to take care of.” Never mind that those things would probably take all of an hour, and that one of them was showering. As far as Shane was concerned, even a flimsy excuse was a good excuse to stay away from that ritzy fucking resort.
Jackson shot Shane a look of disbelief. “What could you possibly have to take care of on a Saturday night?”
Crossing the room to put his wrench down with a clank, Shane shrugged. “If I don’t hit the grocery store, I’m going to be stuck eating ketchup for dinner. Plus, I’ve gotta swing by Grady’s.” The way the old man had looked the other day still played at the back of Shane’s mind. He’d looked tired, and not for lack of sleep.
“Well, you should come to the bonfire after. I know you avoid the resort like the plague, but I’m telling you, you won’t be disappointed.”
Shane looked up from where he’d been carefully straightening the tools on the workbench. His trip to the Double Shot last night had been enough social interaction to last him a month. The faster he could get back to working in the garage, paying off his loan and forgetting everything that had happened in the back room of that bar, the better.
“If you say so, Jax. Now are you gonna help me yank this tranny, or are you just gonna stand there looking pretty?”