of greasy grey coveralls open to the waist rather than the clothes he’d worn to her place. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d left them behind. She latched onto his excuse eagerly. “Yeah. Your clothes. But you look like, you know, you found some.”
And damn if the man didn’t look edible in the uniform of his trade. The shapeless coveralls seemed to accentuate the breadth of his shoulders and the large, capable size of his hands. Hands that had been all over her body only hours ago.
“You wanna come in? I’m about done here.”
Did she want to come in? Why did that question seem like the Riddle of the Sphinx? This was a casual visit, right? She wasn’t asking for strings if she accepted his invitation to go into the garage. The garage where they’d hooked up only yesterday—but also where they had first discussed the no-strings plan. There wasn’t anything hidden in his invitation. He was a guy, for fuck’s sake. They didn’t see the minefields in conversations that chicks planted there. They could still talk without having it complicate their sexual relationship, couldn’t they?
“Zoe?”
Oh, Jesus. She’d been standing there gaping at him. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’ll come in.”
Tyler opened the door wider and she slipped past him, reminded of when she’d let him into her place only hours earlier. But if she hadn’t put her mark on her house, the garage was all Tyler. His scent saturated every surface, but even more than that, the neat efficiency and small, personalized touches made it a space that was uniquely him.
“How long have you been the pride mechanic?” she heard herself asking, even though she’d sworn she would keep things light and impersonal.
“Seventeen years.” Tyler wandered over to a sturdy table where a mass of unidentifiable metal cluttered the surface. She trailed along behind, careful not to touch anything.
“You never met Tobias,” Tyler commented as he picked up a piece and adjusted it in some mysterious way. “Cranky bastard. He was my mentor, taught me everything he knew about cars and then sent me to trade schools to learn more. He used to run the garage, even when he could barely lift a wrench anymore, but he retired when I was eighteen and handed it all over to me. He died…I guess it was five years ago now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was eighty-six years old and he died with the help of a box of Viagra.” Tyler grinned fondly. “I wouldn’t be too sorry.”
“Eighteen’s pretty young to be responsible for keeping the whole pride in wheels.”
He grimaced. “One thing I’m used to, it’s responsibility. You deal with it. No one else is going to.”
Zoe shoved her hands in her pockets, knowing she shouldn’t ask the next question if she wanted to keep them impersonal, but driven by a need to know. “Ava said you pretty much raised her and your brothers.”
Tyler grunted. “No one else was going to,” he repeated, but something cold had crept into his voice. “Our father left and our mother was useless.”
“My sire was banished too.” Zoe scuffed her toe over an old oil stain on the cement floor. “I don’t really remember him.” She’d been raised more as part of the pride litter than by her actual parents, but with Landon as her partner in crime she hadn’t felt bruised by the lack.
“Our father wasn’t banished. He left,” Tyler said harshly. “Just decided he didn’t want his responsibilities anymore and walked away. Headed for greener pastures.”
Zoe struggled for something to say that wouldn’t sound patronizing. He would be proud of you? Because how could he not be? Tyler was an amazing man. He was tempered steel tested by a lifetime of burdens. He was the man every father hoped his son would be, but she didn’t think saying that would help. She didn’t want to imply that Tyler needed his father’s approval. He was better than that.
And besides, who was she to talk? She avoided responsibilities like the plague and she was an old hand at greener pastures. She knew better than most that they were almost never green.
Arriving in a new pride wasn’t easy as a nomad. She and Landon had visited their share in their years of wandering before they’d come to Three Rocks.
Zoe cleared her throat self-consciously. “Can I ask you something?”
Tyler shrugged consent, his focus centered on the parts in his hands.
“That first day, when Landon and I arrived here at Three Rocks. The old Alpha Leonus and his thug Kato tried to