“I, um…” I said, and then I stopped.
His hand was resting on the wheel. His left hand. I could see the silver of a watch peeking from his sleeve, and beneath that the ink on his skin, the tattoo he carried on his hand. It was intricate, elaborate, a tangle of elegant lines. And across the top of his hand, just beyond the knuckles, two words were scripted.
No Time.
I’d glimpsed his tattoo, but I’d never been close enough to read it. Now I could, and it stopped me dead. What did No Time mean? What was so important about it that he’d had it inked onto his skin? Who did he think had no time? Him? Why?
I tore my gaze from his hand and raised it to his face. He was watching me from those dark, unfathomable green eyes. He quirked an eyebrow as I watched. “You wanna get wet?” he asked.
My jaw dropped. “What?”
Now a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “You’re getting wet,” he explained. “Is that what you want? If it is, I’ll keep driving.”
His voice, it turned out, was like dark chocolate. Maybe it was the tattoo that decided it. Maybe it was the smile. Maybe it was the fact that I was getting wet. But I opened the passenger door and slid inside.
It was warm and dry. It was a spacious car, like they used to make them, and the seats were refurbished, as comfortable as sofa cushions. I dropped my art pads in my lap as Mr. HDH—I needed to stop thinking of him like that—powered the window up, and I watched the wet night roll by as he drove away.
It smelled good in here. Warm and sort of masculine. I wondered if it was him, and my body relaxed while my heart accelerated into my throat. I opened my mouth to introduce myself but he spoke first.
“I thought you had a car,” he said.
So he’d noticed. “It wouldn’t start,” I said.
“Did it make a noise when you tried?” he asked. The vibration of his voice made my insides shake. “Or just nothing?”
Why was he asking me this? “Um, it made a noise,” I replied. I held out my hand. “I’m Olivia.”
He frowned for a second, looking ahead through the windshield, then lifted his right hand—the one without the tattoo—off the wheel. “Devon,” he said, and shook my hand.
Oh, hell. That hand. It was big and warm, the skin sliding over mine. I felt a shiver when it brushed the base of my palm, right above where my pulse beat. “Nice to meet you,” I managed.
“I’ll fix your car,” he said, letting my hand go and putting his back on the wheel. “I’m a mechanic.”
I clenched my fingers once before I realized what he’d said. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Sure I do,” he said. “You think I’m going to abandon a woman to taking the bus every day?”
“There’s good transit in San Francisco.”
For some reason, that made him laugh quietly. “I’m still fixing your car.”
I had to say it. “I can’t pay you.”
“Then don’t.” He signaled and made a turn. “You take an art class?”
I looked down at my sketchbooks, which must have given it away. “I do. It’s continuing education, but I like it.”
“You an artist?”
I ran my thumb along the edge of my book. “I’m a graphic designer at an ad agency.” Junior graphic designer.
“But also an artist.”
“When I’m not being a graphic designer, I suppose. Do you do anything other than being a mechanic?”
“I drive,” he said.
I stared at him, wondering if he was joking. “Drive what?”
“Whatever needs driving,” he said. “Sometimes it’s goods. Sometimes it’s a person. I take it where it needs to go.”
“I don’t follow,” I said, confused. “Like an Uber?”
That made him laugh again, but he wasn’t laughing at me. He seemed to be laughing more at himself. “Maybe a little like an Uber,” he said, “but a fuck of a lot more shady.”
I wondered if that was the reason he was gone at night sometimes. I’d wondered if he had gone to see a woman. “What exactly do you drive, then?”
Devon shrugged. “If someone pays me, I don’t ask.”
“Dead bodies?”
“No.” He completely killed the reassurance of this statement by adding, “Not yet.”
Oh, my god. My sexy neighbor was some kind of gangster. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked him. “I could be a cop.”
The look he gave me was wry, taking in my bedraggled hair and my wet notebooks. “I don’t think you’re a cop.”
“Fine. But maybe my dad is a cop.” He wasn’t; he’d been a washed-up actor, like my mom. “Maybe my boyfriend is a cop.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend,” Devon said. “Unless he’s invisible.”
My jaw dropped. He’d been watching me? I hadn’t noticed. I tried to summon some outrage, but I’d been watching him, too. I’d been drawing him. “Maybe it’s a long-distance relationship,” I argued, unwilling to admit that he somehow already knew everything about me.
“Maybe,” he said. “So we’ve been talking for ten minutes, and I’ve already admitted I’m a criminal and you’ve admitted you have cyber sex.”
“I do not have cyber sex,” I nearly shouted, shocked. The corner of his mouth twitched. Since he’d been so blunt, I tried shocking him in return. “Well, I never see women coming and going from your place, so maybe it’s you that does the internet sex thing.”
“I don’t have internet sex.” His voice was low, gruff. “I have the old-fashioned, one-handed kind. Alone.”
The silence was deafening.
“You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met,” I said.
“Likewise.” He made a turn, the car slowed, and I realized we were in the parking lot of Shady Oaks. He turned off the engine, and we could hear the rain beating on the roof of the car, spattering on the windshield. I felt off-balance, but I also felt electric, like I’d just woken up. I didn’t exactly trust the man next to me, yet I didn’t get out of the car. I didn’t quite want the ride to be over yet.
And there was no ignoring the warm, persistent pulse I felt between my legs.
He didn’t seem in a hurry either. But he put out his hand, palm up, and said, “Give me your car key.”
“You don’t—”
“Give me your key, Olivia.”
The sound of my name in his mouth made the pulse beat harder. I looked at his face in the shadows and I was greedy. I didn’t care about drugs or dead bodies. I wanted to know everything, everything.
He held his hand out, waiting.
“Why do you have No Time tattooed on your hand?” I asked him.
“I’ll tell you after I fix your car.”
Damn. Blackmail. “How do I know you won’t use my car to stash drugs? Or commit a crime?”
“Because I promise not to.”
“Say it,” I said, trying to stretch time, trying to get just one more minute.
He sighed, and I saw his green eyes flash with irritation. “I promise I won’t use your car to stash drugs or commit a crime,” he said.