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Chapter 2

Brock

“Mum—!”

That sharp voice was enough to jerk me up and out of my office chair and have me walking down the stairs into the workshop. I moved as quietly as a cat, worried for a moment some punk kids were trying to steal something from the shop. With the popularisation of stealing catalytic converters for the precious metals inside them, we’d had a few lads give it a go. There was no mistaking Jamie for a teenage boy, though. I froze midway down the steps, staring as I heard her have a terse conversation with someone on the phone.

This was the point where I should have turned around and went back to the office. Danger was averted, we’d lose no expensive parts today. So why didn’t I? Perhaps it was because there were so few opportunities to do this. Some men got all worked up over lingerie, others over black leather or beautiful silks, but me? Somehow the faded blue twill of a pair of overalls was all it took to throw me off balance. I never stared at Jamie during a work shift. I was her boss, she was my employee, and while we didn’t exactly have an HR department here, I knew that checking out someone on my payroll would be a terrible mistake.

So why did my eyes follow the curves of her body right now?

Jamie thought that her overalls hid the shape of her, deliberately buying a pair a size too big, but that just made her all the more tantalising. My eyes fought to pierce the thick fabric, my imagination forced to fill in the gaps. What I really wanted to do was unclip the straps and peel the overalls down, revealing every inch of her to my eyes, and that’s when I cursed my sister, Millie.

She’d come to me years ago, telling me that Jamie wanted to start her mechanics apprenticeship. In my mind, my sister’s best friend was still some snot-nosed kid, screaming way too loudly in the pool. I didn’t need another apprentice, but when a Jamie that was all grown up walked through the door, it roused protective instincts I didn’t even know I could feel. It was all too easy to imagine her starting her career in a garage run by some of the dickheads I knew lurked in the industry. Older blokes who’d sexually harass her until she left. Younger blokes who’d have a pool going to see who slept with her first. Someone, some guy, would lay a hand on her and I… offered her a job on the spot.

To protect her from pervy bastards, just like me, it appeared.

I hadn’t felt a thing other than a sense of responsibility when she was an apprentice. She was Millie’s friend and I told every bloke in my employ they needed to treat Jamie just like they did Millie. Some rose to the task and some were fired because they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, but all went well for some years. She finished out her apprenticeship and I’d been proud of Jamie, right up until she asked to talk to me. By this point she was twenty one and a fully qualified mechanic and she wanted to know whether I would keep her on. I’d looked up, expecting to have this conversation, ready to say that she’d be better off working somewhere else, when…

It was one little tendril of hair that undid me. It’d escaped her bun that she kept tied up with the help of a red bandana. I opened my mouth to say that I’d give her a good reference, that we had more fully qualified staff than we needed, but instead, my eyes caught on this one strand of hair. Pulled loose, it snaked down her neck and my eyes followed it. Down that creamy slope to where the ends nestled against her chest, and my throat went completely dry as my body turned to stone.

Jamie was hot.

Before, she was a teenager, Millie’s friend, my apprentice, all completely off limits, but as if lying in wait for me–my mind and my body made clear that only some of those things were true now.

And so was this.

She was a woman grown, all of that coltish slenderness maturing into a body that seemed determined to force me to respond. She was strong now, having put on enough muscle so she didn’t look like she was about to blow away. Her hips were broader, her tits… My fingers flexed against the desk. Her waist was still tiny, and right then I wanted to see how far my hands could span around it. All of these were good reasons, excellent reasons, to send her on her way. I knew of some well-run garages that were dying for talented mechanics and with one word from me, she would’ve had several job offers on the table before the day ended.

But I didn’t.

In my mind’s eye I saw her packing up her tools and hugging the other guys goodbye, then walking towards me. She’d throw her arms around me and give me the longest hug, like she did whenever she was grateful for something, and in that mental image, I couldn’t let her go. I pulled her closer instead, right before my lips…

I offered Jamie a full-time job on the spot, something my accountant kicked my arse about later, but I got that hug anyway.

Her scent, one part floral, one part motor oil, filled my nose, and every time I smelled it afterwards, I found myself getting as hard as I was then. Rigid, straining against my zipper, my dick knew exactly what it wanted. However, I didn’t make decisions with my little head, just the big one, so I stepped backwards and nodded, directing her gruffly to get back to work, knowing that I’d just signed up for a life sentence.

I couldn’t make a move on an employee, on my sister’s best friend, that was true, but that didn’t do a damn thing about how much I longed for her. Sexual attraction was an animal instinct. I could ignore that just like I could the need to punch some dickhead customer’s teeth down his throat when he tried to argue the cost of a quote he’d already agreed to pay before the work was done. If she was annoying or rude or cruel or arrogant, I could’ve looked past the curves of her body and just put her in the no fucking-way basket, but… Rather, she was hard working and tough and funny and able to take feedback without getting all defensive, striving to improve instead, and that, along with her encyclopaedic knowledge of Australia’s history of muscle cars made her…

Perfect.

But if I saw that, so did other guys, so I wasn’t surprised to hear Jamie say this.

“Mum, we’re just dating,” she growled. “Keeping things casual.” How the hell her boyfriend managed to do that, I had no idea. Freed of our working relationship, I’d have her locked down and made clear she was mine, all mine, as soon as she looked at me with any kind of affection. “Meeting the parents is the definition of not casual.”

Her parents wanted to meet this guy? My heart sank. I prayed to divine forces that it wasn’t one of the idiots I’d seen come by to pick her up over the years, because right now I couldn’t have hated him more. In my mind he did the one thing I longed to, sliding an engagement ring on her finger as he?—

Jamie started to mumble something then tapped frantically on the phone screen, putting through another call.

“Millie? Mills?” She was ringing my sister? “We’ve gotta talk. Mum’s coming to town in a couple of days and…” I swallowed hard but that didn’t dislodge the lump there. “She wants to meet my ‘boyfriends.’”

Boyfriends? Something big, dark, and angry shouldered forward inside me in the face of growing competition. I could see them vaguely in my head, these shadowy figures that dared date my girl, and I barely resisted thumping my fists on my chests and growling to ward them off. Of course there were boyfriends. Jamie was freaking amazing, so it made sense she had multiple guys vying for her attention.

Just not me.

I raked my fingers through my beard and then turned on my heel, creeping back the way I came, kicking my own arse for not doing that beforehand. I had no business listening to my employee’s private phone call. I shouldn’t have been staring at her either, but that didn’t seem to stop me. My elbows went to my desk as I sat down, my hands raking through my hair, because maybe that’d stop the need that throbbed inside me. To sack Jamie in one breath, then pick her up and put her on the edge of my desk and claim her mouth as mine in the other.

For just a moment I indulged in that little fantasy, feeling my cock swell and press against my zipper, getting harder and harder by the second–able to feel her, taste her, hear the little sounds of pleasure I’d heard her make when I bought a tray of gourmet doughnuts in, but now she made them for me. Caught up as I was, the workshop and my office all fell away right up to when I heard a sharp knock at the door. I had to fight to see the mounds of paperwork, my battered laptop, everything, until she walked in the door.