“You’ve been to Butcher and Singer?” Her smile was gone, replaced by total surprise. “I thought you said you and the city didn’t mix.”
Well, fuck.
“I live in the mountains, not under a rock,” Shane joked, trying to keep his own smile in place. He felt it slipping, despite the effort. “Everyone around here has heard of Butcher and Singer. Plus, I told you, we mechanics do eat from time to time.”
What was it about this woman that made him open his mouth without thinking? He cursed silently and took a huge bite of his sandwich as if to prove his point.
“Wow. Guess you don’t go halfway, then.” She took a bite of her own before finishing her thought. “And I prefer a nice pinot noir with steak. It stands up to the bold flavors without overpowering them.”
They ate the rest of their lunch without saying much, the quiet around them punctuated only by the snapping wind outside. When there was nothing left but crumbs and apple cores, Bellamy gathered the trash and tossed it into the wastebasket.
“Thanks for lunch. I guess I owe you one.”
Shane shifted where he stood, still wearing a thin layer of unease. “Don’t worry about it.”
She rocked back on her heels, looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “So, what do we do now?”
“There’s not much by way of entertainment around here,” he apologized, following her gaze around the garage.
“You were working on your car when I got here, right? Is there something wrong with it that you need to fix?” Bellamy peered at the Mustang. Wait, was that a flicker of interest on her face?
Weird.
“No. Think of it like being in front of a pantry full of your favorite foods. I just tinker, kind of play around with it, that sort of thing.”
A spark lit her features. “Really?”
Shane’s gut stirred. “Sure. There’s always something I can fine-tune. Plus, it chills me out, you know? It’s just relaxing.”
Her laugh sent a straight shot of sexy and sweet right down his spine. “Like making pie crust,” she said. “You want to show me?”
What. The. Hell. No one he’d ever dated had ever even had so much as a passing interest in his absolute love for cars. “Are you serious?” Shane blinked a couple of times to make sure he was awake and not stuck in some odd dream.
Bellamy chewed her lip and fastened him with a hesitant look. “You don’t have to, if it’ll be a pain. I mean, I don’t know a thing about cars.”
A grin spread over his face, slow and sure as a sunrise, as he walked her over to the Mustang and popped the hood. “Well, you’re in luck. I do happen to know a thing or two, and I’m all about sharing the joy.”
16
“Truth?” Bellamy cranked her brow at the sight of the shiny, intricate metal guts under the hood of Shane’s car.
Shane stood so close she could feel the heat of his body next to hers, which did nothing to help her concentrate. “Of course.”
“I have no idea what I’m looking at.”
The smile that broke over his face swirled around in her belly like she’d swallowed it. “It’s a 1969 Mustang Mach 1.” His eyes followed the lines of the car.
It didn’t take a math wizard to know that those numbers didn’t exactly add up to the sparkling car parts that sat before them. “But these parts look really new,” Bellamy said, peering at the inner workings of the car.
Shane chuckled as if he was thinking of an inside joke. “They are. The engine is a 428 Cobra Jet. I put it in almost three years ago.” He pointed to the pristine engine. It looked like it had just come off the factory line.
Bellamy frowned. “Why go through the trouble of replacing something as big-deal as the engine? When the engine on Holly’s Jetta blew up last year, the mechanic told her to cut her losses and get a new car.”
“I didn’t replace the old one because it didn’t work. I replaced it because this one is faster.” The edges of his lips turned up into a half-smile that Bellamy would bet good money he couldn’t control.
“How fast are we talking, exactly?”
The half-smile became a full-blown stunner, and the sexy, badass grin on Shane’s face kicked her pulse into oh-yeah mode. “The car’s got over five hundred horse power.”
“English, please,” she said, tilting her head over her shoulder to look at him.
He stepped in close, wrapping an arm around her waist and gently pressing her against the car with his body from behind. “It’ll go zero to sixty in the time it takes you to say your name and phone number. How’s that?”
Good. Goooood. That’s so freaking good.
“Better,” she breathed.
Shane leaned into her, his palm firm on her hip, and gestured into the car with his free hand. “So, when you change out the engine like that, you have to make other adjustments, too. To make sure you get the kind of performance you’re after.” He pointed out where the transmission was, and gave her a very basic idea of how everything worked. The intricacies were definitely lost on her, but by the time he was done, she had a pretty simple understanding of where everything was and how it all went together. More importantly, Bellamy had picked up on something about Shane that was ironclad.
He might be hot for her, but he was in love with the car.
“So, how does a guy come across a 1969 Mustang Mach 1, anyway? It’s not like you can just pick one up at the dealership.” She looked at the gleaming components under the hood, trying to familiarize herself with the way each one went with the others.
“Well, from the time I hit puberty, I knew I wanted one, so it was just a matter of time. I drove by her on the side of the road six years ago and she had a big For Sale sign in the window. It was the fastest damn U-turn I’ve ever made.” Shane shook his head, chuckling, and Bellamy shifted the angle of her body so they were face to face. Something about his expression was so clean and real that she couldn’t make herself look anywhere else.
He continued, clearly caught up in the memory. “I called the number on the sign and told the guy I’d wait right there for him to show up. Nothing like looking desperate right off the bat, right?” His soft laughter twined together with hers before he kept on. “The guy was hard-up to sell it, but not as hard-up as I was to have it. He gave me a good price because it needed a ton of work, but that was half the reason I wanted it. It wasn’t about having the car; it was about building the car.”
The look on his face had Bellamy utterly magnetized, his stubbly jaw set in certainty. She smiled. “So, you’ve always known how to work on cars, then?”
“I’ve always loved them, yeah.” He nodded. “I taught myself some stuff along the way, but everything I really know about cars I learned from Grady. I never would’ve been able to do any of this without him, although he’ll tell you different.” The respect Shane felt for the man was obvious as he spoke.
“He sounds like a great guy.”
Shane’s dark eyes flared with sudden disquiet, but it didn’t carry over into his voice, gone as fast as it had appeared. “He is a great guy.” He took a step back to close the hood and the conversation, his expression inscrutable.