Shane’s blood seized in his veins, and he put his best effort into a nonchalant shrug that felt anything but. “I belong here. Plus, as much as neither one of us wants to admit it, Grady needs the help. It took me and Jackson everything we could work up to yank your transmission out, and Jackson’s a house with legs.”
Bellamy laughed again, and his words kept pouring out. “You know who Cesar Millan is, right?”
“The dog whisperer guy?”
He lifted his chin in a single nod. “Yeah. Well, without getting too woo-woo on you, Grady’s like that with cars. He’s unbelievable. I mean, half the time he doesn’t even need to look at what’s in front of him. He can listen to a car, or go by feel of an engine, and bam! He knows what it needs or when it’s right.”
“That doesn’t sound woo-woo,” she said, honesty threading the words together. “It sounds like he’s just meant to work on cars.”
Something flickered in Shane’s chest, and the words continued to flow. “Grady had a heart attack last year, and now the physical stuff is hard on him.” He paused when Bellamy’s eyes creased around the edges in concern, but she didn’t interrupt. “He thought he’d have to retire, but it didn’t seem right to close up shop when all he needed was a little help.” Shane’s mind drifted, spinning back to that first day in the shop and how he knew by lunchtime that he’d never leave.
What the hell was he doing?
Shane cleared his throat in a rough growl and took another bite of his apple before finishing abruptly. “So, it might not be glamorous, or pay a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, but I don’t want to be anywhere else. The city and I don’t mix.”
Bellamy gave him a pretty smile, and his edginess fell a notch. She scooped up the other apple to cradle it in the heart of her palm. “Mmm. Well, it seems you’ve got it all figured out. I wish I was so lucky.”
He pulled back to look at her down to earth expression, so honest and clean as she took a huge bite. A stream of juice trickled down her chin, eliciting a self-conscious smile from her lips. She rolled her eyes and wiped her chin with the back of her hand before taking another bite.
A warm, unexpected feeling spread out in Shane’s chest like it wanted to settle in for a nice, long stay, and he rubbed the spot over his sternum.
He tipped his head at her and shrugged. Time to go vague. “Luck is what you make it.”
Bellamy’s smile became wistful. “I’m envious.”
“Of what? Me?” That just seemed ass-backwards.
“You sound so surprised,” she said, gesturing at him with the apple in her hand.
“I just find it hard to believe that someone like you is envious of her mechanic, that’s all.” He leaned into the workbench to unwrap the sandwich, sliding the larger half toward her on the napkin.
“What do you mean, someone like me?” The slight bristle to her words was offset by the curiosity on her face, as if she wasn’t sure which one she wanted to go with.
The edges of Shane’s lips inched upward at her feistiness. “You just seem to have it all together. I mean, getting your MBA is no joke.”
She switched the halves of the sandwich and slid the bigger one back toward him before answering. “Getting my MBA was a lot of work, but I was lucky. I had a knack for it. My parents never outwardly pressured me to go to grad school, but they’ve owned their own business since I was a kid. They built if from the bricks up. Getting my MBA just made sense at the time.” Bellamy picked at the lettuce on her sandwich, putting it on the napkin in front of her.
“But now you’d rather do something else.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s not like I really have the experience to switch careers. I have to do what I’m good at.”
A flicker crossed her face, barely a whisper of suggestion, but Shane recognized it. He tipped his chin at her. “If none of that mattered, what would you do?”
“It does matter,” she pointed out, finally taking a bite of her sandwich.
Damn, her toughness knew no bounds. Shane cracked a half-smile to try and loosen her up. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you kind of suck at the hypothetical game.”
Bingo. She laughed. “Fine. If none of it mattered, I’d probably go to culinary school and be a chef.”
“So, why don’t you?”
“It requires a lot of time and money. One of which I now have, but the other…” She held up her empty palms in a soft shrug. “I’m not exactly going to be rolling in cash without a job.”
Nope. She might be nine kinds of cute over there, but he wasn’t going down that path. “Yeah, I see your point. Still. Maybe there are ways around it.”
“Maybe. But there’s something else.” Bellamy spread her fingers over the napkin, smoothing out nonexistent creases.
After a full minute during which Shane’s curiosity hit an all-time high, he lifted his brows in question. “Okay, I’ll bite. What else is there?”
“Well”—she broke off and took a deep breath—“I spent all this time and money to go into big business, and now I don’t like it. What if cooking for a living made it not-fun anymore? It’d be a hell of a way to find out, and I’m not really sure I want to risk the crash and burn.”
He chewed on that for a second before answering her. “Sure, it’s a risk. But what if being a chef turns out to be something you love even more when you get to do it all the time? I mean, yeah, pulling the tranny out of your car was a righteous pain, but if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else, even on the hard days.”
Bellamy’s head sprang up, curls bouncing. “I never really thought of it that way.”
“Plus, cooking won’t ever be not-fun for you.”
Her inquisitive stare sent a jolt through his chest, as if she could see every last shred of him with those green stunners. “How are you so sure?”
Although it took a fuck-ton of effort, he resisted the urge to look away. “The same way you’re sure I love what I do. Your face just looks different when you’re around food.”
“It does?” Bellamy blinked.
A chuckle escaped from one side of his mouth. “You get all excited about the grocery store, Bellamy. And I’ve never met anyone who thought making croissants from scratch was a fun way to blow a Sunday afternoon.”
Her cheeks flushed, which didn’t make Shane want to let up. So, he didn’t. “I bet you’ve de-boned an entire chicken before, haven’t you?” He nudged a soft laugh out of her, loving every second of the deepening rosy glow on her face.
“Well, yeah, but…”
Shane continued, not giving her any room to argue. “And you make all your pie crusts from scratch, too, right?”
Bellamy crossed her arms over her chest and looked like she wanted with all her might to say no. But he knew she couldn’t. “They taste better that way.”
His expression grew triumphant, and she let out a begrudging smile as he pressed on. “And I’ll bet beyond the shadow of a doubt that you know exactly what wine is the perfect accompaniment to the thirty-two ounce porterhouse at Butcher and Singer downtown.” It was one of the swankiest steakhouses Philly had to offer. She’d probably eaten there a billion times.