Falling Fast (Falling Fast #1) - Tina Wainscott Page 0,12

didn’t reach his heart. Things didn’t work out for him. His dad had been telling him that he was destined for nothing his whole life. He had kept a job all these years, aside from the one he spent in jail. That was a lot more than his father could claim. He’d gained a rep as a kick-ass mechanic, and the go-to guy for high-performance cars in northern Florida, and now beyond. According to Marta, people trusted him. But it was the way Mia looked at him, the way she’d painted his future with strokes of gold and silver, that had made him feel for the first time that he could be somebody. She hadn’t cared that he had nothing, not even a real home. And he’d nearly destroyed her.

He started toward O’Connell, who was already shaking his head. “Not now, kid.” He glanced at his watch. “Time to meet the wife.” He bolted with hardly a glance backward in his haste to get away from Raleigh.

Kid. Even with his shorter hair, clean clothes, and clean hands, he continued to be seen as a kid. Or, worse, as a good-for-nothing loser.

How did Mia see him now?

Raleigh walked out, and came face-to-face with Cassidy, blocking the walkway. Talk about good-for-nothing losers, even if he was in a police uniform and from a rich family.

“Well, well, begging for a loan again?” Cassidy’s upper lip twisted in a taunting smile. “You know they ain’t taking a chance on someone like you.”

How did this asshole with the Napoleon complex know about his loan requests? Dumb question. Chambliss was a small town when it came to the natives. Raleigh pushed on by.

Cassidy clutched his shoulder. “Hey, assault on an officer!”

Raleigh didn’t even look back, just scratched the back of his head and subtly flipped him off as he headed to his car.

Cassidy had always been a bully. Raleigh knew it was because his father bullied him, but that was no excuse to go around being an ass. All through school, Raleigh had intervened when Cassidy tried to assert power over the younger, smaller kids. Which had, no doubt, humiliated Cassidy, who was smaller and younger than Raleigh. It was no surprise that he’d become a cop, so that he could continue to abuse his power.

Raleigh’s cellphone rang. The garage’s number filled the screen, and he answered.

“Someone suing you?” Peter asked in his gruff voice.

“What?”

“That lawyer, Shatke, just called here for you.”

Raleigh glanced across the street at the Greek restaurant, where Mia was getting out of the car. Holding her hair in the breeze. “Give me the number.” Her father had threatened to sue Raleigh all those years ago until he figured out that there was no squeezing blood from a rock. Raleigh had offered to give him everything he’d saved up to that point, a thousand dollars hidden away in a Bible. Mia’s father had told him to forget it.

“Maybe your lady friend left you something. Like her car?”

“No. She’d already made plans to deed it to Meals on Wheels. With a stipend for maintenance to be performed by me at the garage. She’s probably giving me a lounge chair.”

“Whaaa?”

Raleigh smiled, thinking of the conversations he and Nancy had had about her leaving him the lounge chair he favored when he collapsed after a labor-intensive day at her house. Wrought-iron metal, fluffy cushion the color of rust, and it fit his big frame perfectly.

Nancy didn’t have a lot of money. She said she’d escaped her cold marriage to a wealthy man with just enough to buy an old cottage on the Gulf. That was all she wanted.

“Be back in a bit,” Raleigh said, rubbing his chest at the memories of the sweet lady. He disconnected and called the attorney’s office. The secretary scheduled a meeting for three o’clock to “handle some paperwork.” Seemed pretty elaborate for a lounge chair, but hey, they had to earn their money, he supposed. He grabbed a sub and headed back to the garage, knowing he’d need to make up the extra time.

He did the whole cleanup thing again a couple of hours later and drove into the refurbished part of town with the brick buildings and clusters of doctors’ offices and professionals’ businesses. Raleigh wasn’t sure he could ever be that kind of guy, with the dress shirt and tie, sitting at a desk all day. He loved digging into an engine, figuring out the mystery, making it purr again. Or roar. Yeah, he especially loved to make cars