Tiger Lily - May Dawson Page 0,22
or not I enjoyed it. Something about the expectation made me mad. I would disappoint him, and that would feel terrible.
He stopped at the front of the car and turned back to me. “You coming?”
He had a definite tone. It immediately put my back up.
“I actually should probably fix the filing,” I said, jerking my thumb toward the office. “It’s a wreck. And I don’t know anything about cars, but I know a lot about filing.”
He frowned, then called over to Dylan, “Hey, did you tell Lily she’d fix the car herself, with our help?”
“Yep.” Dylan said, his voice muffled.
Blake looked back at me and shrugged. “I guess the filing will wait.”
“Blake,” I said. “I don’t want to.”
“She did,” Dylan said, still muffed. “I bet she still does. She’s just being weird, like she is sometimes.”
Yeah, these guys were cute, but I didn’t need them to speak for me. I kicked the bumper of the car he was working on. “I’m not talking to you.” I told Dylan, then turned to Blake. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want to anymore.”
“Man, it sucks how when you’re at work, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.” Blake raised a finger, beckoning me over. “Any day, pussy cat.”
I pulled a face, but stormed over to join him at the edge of my grandfather’s car.
He walked me through the parts of the engine. Blake came alive when he was talking about cars, or maybe when he was teaching—it was hard to tell. His low, sexy voice was lively, and his energy was infectious. I felt my mood lift, even though I pulled a face when he started to quiz me to make sure I remembered.
“Ah, shoot,” I said, correcting myself as soon as I said the wrong thing. “That’s not the catalytic converter. It’s the…the...”
I looked to his face to find Blake frowning, and my stomach dropped.
“I told you I don’t know anything about cars,” I said tartly.
“I know you didn’t this morning,” he said. “You rattled through two dozen parts and what they do. So why do you sound so annoyed at yourself for forgetting one?”
“I’m always annoyed, remember?” I shot back.
“You could take it a little easier on yourself,” he said.
“Is taking unsolicited advice from your boss also part of the job?”
He stared at me, unblinking.
Damn. Had I just gone too far? My sharp tongue tended to move faster than my brain. I thought that my last year at that terrible job had curbed my temper. I couldn’t be too smart-mouthed at that office. Jonathan had given me plenty of cause for sarcasm, and I’d resisted. But being face-to-face with bossy Blake brought my temper back into full flare.
His lips curled up into a smile, though. “Yeah, I’m going to write it into your job description, actually. Must not be a dick to self or others.”
I rolled my eyes. Something about Blake’s unshakeable calm was both comforting and irritating. Since we were kids, it felt like I was fire and he was ice—he was always amused by my temper, teasing me to make me furious, then not even mad when I clawed back at him.
“You haven’t changed much since we were kids,” I said.
He nodded. “Maybe not.”
Then, as if he weren’t interested in revisiting our past—as if he weren’t interested at all in flirting with me—he stepped over to the wall and nudged one of the rolling boards over to me with his foot. “Come on. We’re going under the car.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“You’re going to tell me, Tiger,” he said.
Of course. I lay down on my back on the board and shoved under the car. I wondered how he decided when to call me Tiger and when to call me Pussy cat—and which one was more annoying.
But I forgot as soon as we rolled beneath the car. We repeated the same game, him telling me which parts were which, then quizzing me. He gave me a delighted grin when I got all the answers right. As if I’d done something that was a big deal, instead of just parroting it all back to him.
It felt intimate underneath the car, just the two of us. He dug his heels into the ground, starting to pull himself back out, but I didn’t want him to go. I liked the way he’d been looking at me.
“Why do you call me Pussy Cat now?” I asked suddenly.
He hesitated, then pushed himself back under the car. “I’m just