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CHAPTER SIX

Marissa

“What’s in it for me?” I mutter to myself as I make my way back to my condo to grab my purse and car keys. “He has the gall to ask what’s in it for me? Like I’m somehow manipulating him by offering to help?”

If anything, I’m falling back into my tendency to over-give.

I mean, the nerve. I’m giving up my time and my energy out of the goodness of my heart to help out a guy who seems to be doing okay, based on living here and the suit he had on today. But his truck is over ten years old, possibly closer to twenty, and he seems really upset about the idea of it needing work.

While it’s been a while since I’ve worked in a shop, having worked the front desk for so long, I’m intimately familiar with the look of someone who just found out their car needs an expensive repair they can’t easily afford. The cost of a tow truck plus parts and labor? Even for something as simple as a battery replacement, it’s a few hundred bucks, easy. And if you’re living without much cushion, that can be really difficult.

I mean, yeah, I know he plays hockey. And if he had a preseason game, I assume he plays professionally. I didn’t bother to look up the team name he said, and I don’t know anything about hockey, so I don’t know if it’s a minor league type team or big boy hockey that pays the big bucks. But even with sports I know better—like football—I know it’s entirely possible to make it to the pros and not make a ton of money. Or if he’s a rookie and he got all excited and spent a bunch of money on hookers and blow—or whatever hockey players like to spend money on when they party—he might not have much leftover now.

So I figure the least I can do is give him a ride to get a battery then help him learn to replace it. If he can do simple jobs himself, he can save himself money. Of course, he’ll have to buy the battery, but that’s a significant savings over the battery plus everything else.

The only other people I know who get upset about their car needing work is when someone has a collectible car but they aren’t the one who rebuilt it. There’s the financial pain but also the emotional pain of something they care about needing work.

Dozer’s car isn’t anywhere near that nice, though, so the only conclusion I can come to is that paying to get his car fixed would put a strain on his finances.

And, sure, he was an ass the first time I encountered him, but he’s apologized for that. Twice. And he hasn’t been an ass when we’ve interacted about his car.

Of course not. You’re helping him .

But honestly, that wouldn’t make a difference to an actual asshole. He’d feel entitled to my help regardless of his behavior.

Still, though. The question remains. Why am I doing this? Why do I feel compelled to help this guy? His car and possible money problems aren’t my business.

Being neighborly has its limits, doesn’t it?

I’m back in the parking garage with no satisfactory answers to the questions ping-ponging around in my brain, and though I head for Dozer’s spot, he’s nowhere in sight.

I stop in my tracks and heave an annoyed sigh.

“Marissa!”

Spinning around at the sound of my name, I see Dozer jogging toward me. He’s put on a T-shirt under his hoodie, and I can’t help lamenting the fact that I don’t get to stare at the sliver of bare chest he had on display before. We are going to a store, though, so I guess it makes sense he’d want to have a shirt on.

“Sorry.” He gives me a dazzling smile. “I realized I didn’t have a real shirt on. I was hoping I could get up and back before you made it back down, but I see you’re pretty speedy.”

I’m not sure how to respond to that, so I just blink for a second. “Oh, uh, right. Well, my car’s over here.” I gesture farther down the line and start walking. He falls in step beside me, and I’m hyper aware of him, his bulk, his athletic grace. He moves like someone who knows exactly how his body will respond with smooth and effortless control.

“So, uh, hockey, you said?”

I glance his way and catch a smirk on his face. “Yeah.” He draws the word out like he’s waiting for some kind of punchline.

Nodding like a bobblehead, I gesture at my car, then climb into the driver’s side. I put in the name of a popular chain of auto parts stores in my navigation system and pick one that’s close while Dozer gets buckled.

He waits until we’re heading out of the parking garage before he returns with a question of his own. “I know you’re new to the building, but are you new to the area in general?”

Nodding, I signal a turn and answer while watching cross traffic. “Yes. Both. I just got the promotion to head of sales for the northwest region last month, so I had to move.”

He lets out an appreciative whistle. “Congratulations on the promotion.”

A smile flits across my face. “Thank you. I worked really hard for it.”

“Where did you move here from?” he asks next.

“Dallas.” I bobble my head from side to side. “Well, I grew up in Denton, which is on the northern edge of the Metroplex.”

“Metroplex?” he asks, sounding mystified.

I grin. “The Dallas-Fort Worth area. That’s what it’s called. The Metroplex.”

“Sounds like a giant movie theater,” he mutters, and I laugh.

“What about you?” I ask. “You from around here?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. I moved here a few years ago after they started up the new team here. Before that I was in Toronto, but I grew up in Michigan.”

Casting a glance his way, I shake my head. “I see I’m not the only one a long way from home.”

He grins. “I feel like I’ve probably been away from home longer, though. I bounced around the northern US and Canada playing junior hockey from the time I was sixteen until I got drafted to the NHL and called up to my first team. I got traded a couple times before ending up here.”

“Wow. That sounds like a lot.” So he’s not a rookie, after all.

Tilting his head to one side, he shrugs. “It’s part of the gig. You get used to it.”

I shake my head. “You and my sister. Both rolling stones.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks, sounding intrigued. “What does she do?”

I scrunch my nose, debating how much information to give this guy that I don’t really know. “She’s a musician.” That’s the innocuous version of an answer I usually give when I don’t want to deal with people’s disbelief or astonishment.

“Really? And she’s making a living at it? That’s awesome. My mom teaches piano. When I was growing up, it was for extra money to help fund my hockey expenses. Plus she was a realtor. She’s retired from real estate these days, but still teaches some because she enjoys it. Since you say your sister’s a rolling stone, I’m assuming she travels a lot, like on tour or something?”

Sucking in a breath, I consider how much more to reveal. This guy’s a professional athlete, though. Surely if anyone can handle the truth, he can. “Yeah. She tours a lot. She’s married to Jonathan Brasher. She plays with him most of the time, but she also contributes to other artists’ work like Charlotte James, and she did a collaboration with the band Cataclysm a couple years ago.”

When I chance a glance his way, his eyes are wide. “No shit?”

Chuckling, I shake my head. “No shit.”

“Good for her. That’s awesome.” He snaps his fingers and points at me. “Wait, wait, wait. Jonathan Brasher. I know he’s doing the solo career thing now, but he’s the guy who was in a band with his brothers ages ago, right? Brash? Yeah, that’s him. Ohhhh.” He does this big dramatic realization where he presses his head against the seat back, his palm against his forehead, and his antics make me giggle. He’s not hamming it up, either. At least I don’t think so. It’s not a big production, he’s just like this. “ That’s why you were wearing that shirt.”

My cheeks feel like they might burst from working to contain my laughter. “What shirt?”

“The one you had on when you moved in. I thought it was weird for a classy lady like you to be wearing boy band merch.”

That makes my laughter burst through the flimsy dam holding it back. “Classy, huh?”

“Uh, yeah.” He’s not laughing at all. “Have you seen yourself? Looked in a mirror? Happened upon a photo? You’re very classy.”

I can’t help but shake my head again. “If you say so.”

“Puh-lease.” There he goes with the dramatics again. “You can’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about with your perfectly manicured nails and groomed eyebrows and shiny hair.”

A sliver of unease threads its way into my bloodstream. “So? I like to look good. What’s the big deal?”

Shaking his head, he holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s not a big deal. But you clearly put in effort to make yourself look good.”

I wait until I park the car to turn and look at him. “I’m literally wearing a raggedy sweater right now with my hair in a ponytail.”

“So?” he counters. “I wore a suit earlier, then put on pads and a sweater and got all hot and sweaty, then came home and put on sweats. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m just saying,” I protest, feeling defeated already. This is what arguments with Peter were always like. My points never seemed to matter much. Not to him, anyway. And this same tendency for men to argue like this is why none of my other relationships lasted long either. “I don’t dress up unless I have a reason to. My default, like yours, is sweats or leggings. Comfy clothes. And when I’m working on cars, I’m even more raggedy.”

“Uh-huh,” he agrees, sounding doubtful.

I make a sound of frustration and climb out of the car, waiting for him to join me.

“Look,” he says, offering me a placating smile that has me narrowing my eyes—I hate being placated—“it doesn’t matter if you think you’re classy. The fact is, you work hard to project that image. I assume it works well for you given your recent promotion.”

I snort. “It’s a double-edged sword, at best. If I don’t look put together and, as you put it, classy, then I obviously don’t take my job seriously, but looking good also means clients don’t take me seriously because what could I possibly know about cars? After all, I get my nails done and have shiny hair. How could there be room in my pretty little head for knowing the specs of our catalog or the history of classic cars?”

He gives me an appraising look that doesn’t do anything to make me feel better. But instead of responding directly to anything I’ve said, he stops just inside the store and looks around. “So does that mean you know what kind of battery I need? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

Shaking my head, I roll my eyes. “Come on.”

We’re in and out with a new battery in less than fifteen minutes and headed back to our condo building so we can get his car and head to my garage. It’s getting late, and I’d normally be relaxing and getting ready for bed soon, but I don’t want to leave him in the lurch when I promised I’d help him.

Not for the first time, I’m irked about having my project garage so far off site. I’m used to having it in the garage in my house. But houses here aren’t as easy to find as they are in the Metroplex, and the cost of housing is higher. I wanted to be close to my office, which meant sacrificing a single family home for proximity to work, being in the city itself, and a secure building.

I suppose once I get used to living here, I could find somewhere else that meets my needs as I understand them then, but coming to scope out places to live is vastly different from understanding what I want and need in a city I’ve lived in for a few years.

Once we’re back at the condo, I climb out of the car. “Let me run back up to my place and change into my clothes for working on cars.” I look him up and down. “If you don’t mind getting those dirty, you should be fine.”

He rolls his lips between his teeth like there’s a joke he wants to tell but isn’t sure how it would land. Of course he has no idea I lived with the dirty joke king of Denton High School when my brother Lance was a teenager. So I stifle my own smile and head for the door. “Meet you back down here in ten.”