Page 7

Chapter 7

Sawyer

She’d never tell a soul, but sometimes Sawyer still had nightmares about boiling hot cooking oil. The way the water from the potatoes had caused the oil to explode on the larger burner of her gas stovetop. The scalding, immediate blistering effect, and the pain … it was the kind of excruciating damage one never forgot. No matter how deep into the nightmare she was, something in her subconscious continually snapped Sawyer out of it. She’d often wake with a scream trapped in her throat as if a piece of her was still as in shock as she’d been in the moment.

When the nightmares first began, she’d started going to therapy, but it hadn’t lasted long. The third time she heard the appalling labels of trauma and victim spew from the doctor’s mouth, Sawyer had decided she’d had enough. A victim, she was not.

She was a fucking survivor .

“… Still there?”

Sawyer blinked, dazed, aware she’d spaced out while on the phone. She was still leaning her back against her kitchen island, the pot of boiling pasta safely cooking on the stove before her. Boiling anything made her uneasy these days. She cleared her throat, cutting her friend off. “Yeah, I’m still here, Cindy,” she croaked, pushing herself off the island.

“Lori and I wanted to know if you’d come for dinner next weekend. We could have a few drinks and throw on a movie after or something.”

Patches jumped up onto the kitchen island, her whiskers twitching as she sniffed out the Parmesan cheese. Sawyer shooed her off as she replied. “If I recall, we tried that for your birthday a few weeks ago, remember? We ended up booking an Uber to take us downtown.”

Cindy laughed, not at all trying to deny it. “In my defense, I didn’t want the warehouse tickets to go to waste. Luckily for me, there is only so much begging you can stand before you cave.”

“It was rather humiliating on your part,” Sawyer scoffed, retrieving an opened bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. She poured half a wine glass worth, leaving the rest corked on the countertop. She wasn’t going out tonight. It was Sunday, her only evening off, and Sawyer had a date planned for one. It would involve a lot more wine, a bubble bath, and an episode or two of Master Chef . Alone. Just the way she preferred it.

Liar .

“Well, I promise dinner will be adventure-free. Just the three of us.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sawyer said.

“You better.”

“ But , I make no promise,” she added, grateful she’d thought to answer the phone on her Bluetooth. She turned off the burner and grabbed her oven mitts. “You know I have my eye on the prize. I should be living and breathing Desmarais.”

“You always do. Have you given any more thought to me coming to cook now that Olivier isn’t in the picture? I’m bored to tears every day I go to work.”

“Hold on, Cin, I need my full concentration.”

“Mm-hmm, go ahead. What are you making, anyway?”

Sawyer carried the steaming pot to the sink, almost tripping over Patches, who had wrapped around her feet, and carefully poured the pasta into the waiting strainer. “Seafood linguine,” she replied once her breathing could relax. Using her tongs, she dished out a serving from the colander into a waiting glass bowl.

“Great choice. I brought home a plate of pad thai for us from work. I was too tired to cook, and Lori was working late too.”

“Sounds exquisite. I haven’t had pad thai in ages. Perhaps since Bree moved out,” Sawyer acknowledged, tossing the seafood sauce gently into her linguine. She twisted it all onto a large serving fork, carefully lifting it out and onto her dinner plate.

“With the long hours you put in at work? I believe it. So, Lori and I were thinking,” Cindy’s voice softened, and alarm bells immediately went off around Sawyer. The only time her friend used that tone on her was when she was seconds away from stirring the pot.

“Go on.” If you dare, she almost added.

“Well, we know about your visits to the doctor. I mean, you told us your doctor thinks you’re under too much stress,” Cindy quickly added, and Sawyer’s mouth thinned from growing impatience.

“Just spit it out already, Cindy.”

“We think you’re working too much,” Cindy blurted over the line. Sawyer rolled her eyes, but her friend wasn’t finished. “And when you get home, you park beside a decimated hunk of steel that your shit husband died in before you head into a house you live in alone. Something’s gotta give, Sawyer. It’s as if you’re purposefully trying to hold onto as much stress as possible. Hire me to take over some of the workload, sell the house, scrap the car. Something .”

“Are you done? I think you’re done.” Sawyer’s tone left zero room for debate, but there was something to be said for stating the obvious. Cindy was crossing the line, friend or not. No one dictated how much weight Sawyer’s shoulders could bear, not anymore.

“It’s not as if you’ll find a team willing to fix the McLaren in your garage. C’mon Sawyer, be reasonable. The space isn’t that big, and besides, who wants to be spied on while they work?”

“For your information, I already found someone,” Sawyer seethed and then froze at the implication of her words. “Finding someone” would imply she’d given reasonable thought to any of the correspondence she’d had so far. Which she hadn’t. Why bother wasting precious time when she knew the interested mechanics and auto body technicians wouldn’t work out? When had she taken to blatantly lying to her friends? Was getting the upper hand really that important to her?

Sawyer raised her eyes to the ceiling as the truth dawned on her. There was one allegedly skilled individual she hadn’t given the time of day to. A person who made Sawyer curse her sexuality on one hand and made her yearn for something she’d never experienced on the other.

Picking up the cheese grater for her block of fresh Parmesan, Sawyer griped out with slightly less edge in her voice, “Not that it’s any of you and Lori’s concern, but I found a mechanic in Richmond who is willing to rebuild the car.” If she was going to lie her way through this conversation, she may as well commit to details.

Tabarnak, McCoy!

Heaven help her. The flirtatious womanizer was like a wildfire, determined to burn a path into Sawyer’s life no matter how many times her flame was extinguished.

At ten the following morning, Sawyer stepped inside the small front shop of Miller’s Mechanics & Restoration, wrinkling her nose as the pungent odor of spilled engine oil and coolant gave her a temporary sensory overload. The three waiting room chairs—if you could call them that—were occupied, with one bowing greatly under the weight of a snoring heavyset man. Sawyer checked the gold-plated watch strapped to her wrist, sucking her teeth at how late in the morning it already was. Her GPS had given her the runaround in finding this place, having to bypass multiple construction areas. If McCoy knew how to check Facebook messages, then Sawyer wouldn’t have had to take time out of her hectic schedule to drive to Richmond.

“Does no one work here or …?” Sawyer tapped her foot impatiently, peering over the counter to see if the receptionist had passed out on the floor. Did a hole-in-the-wall place like this not even come with customer service? Absurd. The entire situation for why Sawyer was there in the first place was fucking absurd.

“He does,” a woman spoke, nudging the sleeping man with her elbow. “Wake up, Chip. You’ve got a customer.”

Sawyer balked. “I’m not a … I’m here to speak with McCoy. Never mind, I’ll find her myself.”

“Whoa, whoa, now hold on a minute.” Chip slowly got to his feet, eyeing Sawyer with her hand resting on the door leading out to the shop. “This is Coy’s place of work. Greg put a stop to all the suitors months ago. It was getting out of hand.”

Sawyer quirked a brow, silently assessing this new information. So, the playgirl has a fanbase. Surprising but not impossible. She made a tsking sound, opening the door regardless. “If you think I’m here to bat my eyelashes at her less-than-suave pickup lines, you’re sorely mistaken.” With that, Sawyer swung open the door, ignoring Chip’s uproarious laughter as she closed it behind her.

The shop was loud, with machines whirring and objects clanging, and much larger than Sawyer first thought. A man who didn’t look much older than her was standing under a Ford F-150 with an oil pan. His lips parted in surprise when he noticed her, but Sawyer walked straight past to where McCoy was. She was also working on a vehicle secured onto the lift, but it looked like she was replacing something behind one of the wheels. She was talking to someone and flashing that irritating grin that seemed to spark Sawyer’s temper as much as it unnerved her. She spotted a younger man a few feet from McCoy, holding a phone up as the mechanic spoke. Was he recording her?

“Switching out the rotors on your car is easier than you think,” McCoy explained into the camera, and Sawyer watched, dumbfounded, as the young blond-haired man shifted the camera’s focus to the rotor, or whatever it was McCoy was working on. “If you follow these simple steps, then this is something you can save on by doing it yourself at home. Or, if all else fails, come on down to the shop! I don’t mind fixing you up. Thanks for tuning in! Until next time, my Queens.”

Sawyer rolled her eyes so dramatically the movement hurt before turning to leave. She’d driven across town to … reconsider the possibility of McCoy working for her, but the mechanic was so clearly full of herself that nothing positive could come from Sawyer hiring her. She didn’t do TikTok, and no one she hired would be plastering their face all over social media when they were supposed to be working.

“Sawyer, hey!”

Sawyer sighed and checked her watch again. She had wanted to look over the schedule at work before Kelly posted them, but unless she called in a request, it wouldn’t be happening. They went up each Tuesday by two.

McCoy appeared in front of her, taking a long swig out of a steel canister. A thin sheen of perspiration coated her soft features, and where there wasn’t sweat, there were grease marks. A black bandana was tied around her neck, further adding to Sawyer’s assumption of her cowboy obsession. She had industrial piercings in both ears, and small spacers occupied her lobes. The disconnected undercut was freshly shaven, and the top half of her chestnut brown hair was plaited down the back of her head today. McCoy wasn’t so much pretty as she was handsome, Sawyer decided, with rounded cheekbones and black eyeliner that purposely drew attention to her striking green gaze. Hints of a tattoo flashed under her coveralls as she placed a hand on Sawyer’s shoulder.

“I was hoping I’d see you again.”

Sawyer stepped back, brushing McCoy’s touch off. She didn’t know a lot about cars but could safely assume engine oil came out of clothes about as well as cooking oil did. And she was wearing one of her favorite Veronica Beard blazers today. She straightened, temporarily glancing at her shoulder where the mechanic’s touch still lingered, before refocusing on McCoy. She got straight to the point. “Have you ever worked on a McLaren P1?”

Sawyer waited, watching the wheels turn in McCoy’s brain until her exquisite gaze lit up. The expression on her face was priceless. “Worked on … no.”

That was good to know. Sawyer needed to consider that McCoy may be too inexperienced for a car like the McLaren.

McCoy’s devilish smile was back, alerting Sawyer of an incoming word vomit of playgirl bullshit. “Does this mean you want me, after all?” she gushed, looking every bit like an all too eager puppy starving for her attention. How the younger woman could somehow come across as a confident flirt and desperate at the same time was a mystery. And she wore everything she felt clear as day on her face. Sawyer found it rather fascinating if she were being honest.

Her gaze was scrutinizing as she waited for McCoy to realize her slipup. When she did, her eyes widened to impossible depths as she spluttered, “T-to give a quote, I mean. Not like want want me. Unless—”

Sawyer held up her hand, halting McCoy mid-ramble. A niggle of amusement threatened to rise to the surface. “Be at my house tomorrow morning by eight and we’ll talk. Not a second later. Oh, and McCoy?”

McCoy blinked up at her, her cheeks flushed. “Yes, Mistre … S-Sawyer?”

Sawyer’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she got herself under control. Her nostrils flared as she gestured to McCoy’s septum ring. “You have a glob of grease headed up your nose.”