Tiger Lily - May Dawson Page 0,13

elbow and nod at him after he grinned at me, encouraging me to ask him out. “He’s too nice for me,” I’d say dismissively. They thought I was too cool for the guy who wrote earnest little songs for his girlfriends that he sang as he played the guitar.

I’ve always had a jaded and aloof side. I am a cat, after all.

But really, I meant he was too nice for me. Out of my league. I’d never be sweet enough for him. No matter how rugged and sexy he looked, he was a happy, shiny balloon of sweetness, and I had claws.

So I always made catty remarks to my girlfriends about him being too cute to ruin, while he walked away down the hall with some other girl tucked under his arm.

And apparently, nothing had changed.

He walked around my grandfather’s car and his lips pursed in a whistle. “This is a beauty. Haven’t seen Roberta in a while. Does she run?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Can I pop the hood?”

“Knock yourself out.”

He raised the hood and went to work, checking the engine over. As he was leaning over the engine—and I was trying not to stare at his ass—he said, “So I heard you need a job.”

“Got to love Silver Springs.”

“Well, I live with the guy who told me. I’m not sure you can blame small town life for that one.”

“You and Blake live together?”

“All three of us. We bought ourselves a house, and we built the garage for Hot Wheels.” He lifted his head from under the hood, a grin across his face and a smear of grease on his cheek. Somehow the grease smear just made him more handsome and endearing, damn it. “This car is old, man.”

“So’s my grandpa,” I said. Those words were supposed to be a joke, but I thought of his death jokes earlier and my stomach twisted. I didn’t know what I’d do without him. I couldn’t even bear to think about it.

“I love old cars,” he said easily. He dropped the hood and stepped back, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “I can’t tell what’s wrong now, but I’d like to work on it, Lily.”

I scoffed. “I’ve got like three hundred bucks in my bank account right now, so…”

“I don’t need money,” he said. “I’d like to teach you how to fix it.”

His lips turned up at one corner, as if he could see right through me. “Then you won’t need anyone. You can just fix things yourself.”

“You want to spend more time with me?” I asked skeptically.

“Yeah, I do.” He frowned as he crossed his arms over that powerful chest. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Lily. Why are you like this?”

“A question many people have asked throughout the years,” I said lightly.

“Well, I like you the way you are,” he said. “I wish you did.”

“Even though I shouldn’t have passed kindergarten?” I asked, ignoring his I like you, even though it made my heart flip-flop. He’d always liked me as a friend. If he meant he liked me some other way than that, well… I didn’t want to make any assumptions. My heart felt about as fragile as a tea cup abandoned on a speedway. “Why did you stop by, anyway?”

“Oh!” he said. “I wanted to give you an update on your car.”

“You didn’t want to just call me?”

He shook his head, his eyes bright. “Nope.”

“Okay.” Lord help me, I’d never understood Dylan. “Well, I personally don’t like talking on the phone, so that works.”

I prefer texting, because then I didn’t have to talk to anyone at all.

“We need one more day with your car,” he said. “Then someone can drop it off tomorrow. Unless!”

I waited patiently for whatever follows that exclamation point, but he let me wait until finally I asked, “Unless what?”

“Unless I show up tomorrow and tow this car to the shop,” he said, stroking the car absently, as if it were a pet, “and you ride with me! First day at work!”

“I can’t,” I said, but I kept thinking about the breeze fluttering my hair when I was a kid, about how much my grandfather loved this car, and how satisfying it would be to fix it myself.

“You can’t or you don’t want to?” he asked me.

“Neither,” I said, suddenly making an impetuous decision.

Impulsive decisions weren’t usually my style. But I spent a lot of time finding that job, that apartment, that boyfriend, and look where I landed.

Maybe my impulses couldn’t steer me too much more badly.

So I