One Magic Moment(4)
Author: Lynn Kurland

 

He took the hint, then blew past her so quickly she barely had the time to get her window back up before bits of road hit her in the face.

 

She rolled her eyes, then put the encounter behind her. She had more important things to do, like support her new mechanic.

 

The village wasn’t a large place, as villages in her part of southern England went, and it was fortunately far enough off the beaten path that the traffic was light. And while that likely didn’t do much for the local economy, it certainly contributed to a rustic, step-back-in-time sort of charm.

 

But not too far, thankfully.

 

Tess pulled into the front of the mechanic’s shop, turned off the engine, then crawled out of her car. She wrapped her intentions to do good around her like a cloak and walked into the garage. A guy who couldn’t have been more than about twenty popped up from behind a car and walked toward her with a welcoming expression.

 

“Oh, hello,” he said, smiling. “Need a tune-up?”

 

Tess gestured back toward her car. “I’m afraid I’ve lost a mirror,” she said. “It happens with surprisingly regularity, so I imagine I’ll be in again soon.” She smiled. “I don’t think we’ve met, though. Are you the one who bought the shop—”

 

“Me?” he interrupted with a laugh. “Oh, nay, miss, I’m not the owner. He’s in the—”

 

“Enough, Bobby,” a voice said curtly.

 

Tess turned in time to see a shadow detach itself from the back of the shop. She had the impression of broad shoulders, long legs, and a lithe grace that seemed somehow completely out of character for an old geezer who’d taken on a shop where he could work on his vintage whatever it was he loved. She was half tempted to readjust her intimidation chignon, but she didn’t dare attract any more of Karma’s attention than she had already by just getting out of bed. She watched the man remain in the shadows for a moment or two before he ducked into what was probably his office and shut the door firmly behind him.

 

Bobby smiled awkwardly. “I’ll have it done in a blink, miss. Why don’t you take your ease in the pub? It looks like rain.”

 

She handed him the keys. “I have an extra mirror in the boot,” she said slowly. Actually, she had a box full of them, but he would figure that out soon enough.

 

“Even better, then,” Bobby said with a smile.

 

Tess left the shop before she got herself in any more trouble, then wondered how it had gone from a fairly fallish day to the depths of winter in such a short time.

 

And why had the shop owner not been an old geezer, like she’d been expecting?

 

There was something else about him that bothered her, but she couldn’t lay her finger on it. She supposed it would either come to her or it wouldn’t. For the moment, the best thing she could do was try to ground herself in her own century.

 

She sought refuge in the pub, then settled for a high-backed bench near the window. It seemed like a very reasonable thing to drink tea and watch the occasional car go by. There was no activity across the street, except Bobby, who didn’t waste any time in getting to work on her car.

 

She considered the shop’s owner. The truth was, she hadn’t expected to find a young man—young being a relative term, of course, when used to compare a man of eighty to a man of perhaps thirty—as the owner of that shop, but she couldn’t believe that hulking shadow to be anything else. Odd, though, that such a young man had decided on such a sleepy town so far away from anywhere else.

 

Then again, she supposed she could wonder the same thing about herself, but at least she headed up to the university now and then—

 

“Cheers, ducks,” said a rather sloppy voice. “Want some companies?”

 

Tess looked up from her tea to find a man sliding into the bench across from her. She didn’t recognize him, but she supposed that wasn’t unusual. Even after a year, she couldn’t say she knew more than half the villagers by sight and even fewer of them by name. The guy now leering at her from across the table might have been a local, but he wasn’t one she wanted to know better.

 

“I’m just finishing,” she said, vowing to stand outside in the rain if necessary to avoid any of the proffered companies.

 

He put his foot up on the end of her bench, effectively blocking her exit. “I think you should stay and have another cuppa.”

 

Tess finished the last sip of her tea, then set her cup down. “And I think you should move your foot while you still can.”

 

“A woman with a bit of vim,” he said with an indulgent chuckle. “I like that.”

 

Tess looked pointedly at his foot until he put it back on the floor, then grabbed her purse and shifted toward the end of the bench. She started to stand up only to find his hand suddenly on her arm in a grip that was, to put it mildly, unpleasantly firm.

 

“You’re hurting me,” she said loudly.

 

“You need a bit of taming,” he said in return.

 

Tess tried to pull her arm away, but he was having none of that. She was just contemplating how best to grab the teapot so she could slosh the still-very-hot innards on him, then clobber him with the pot itself, when she realized none of that was going to be necessary.

 

A hand was suddenly holding on to Mr. Friendly’s forearm in a way that made the aforementioned groper squeak before he covered it up with a very manly “no need to get testy, mate.”

 

Tess found herself freed from all unwanted advances. She looked up to find that her rescuer was tall, dark-haired, and very well built. She realized with equal clarity that she had just seen him, hovering in the back of the shop across the street.

 

She would have thanked him, or gaped at him, or blurted out a question about his name, but she was too busy being shepherded out of the pub by a man who would have put Ireland’s finest sheepdog to shame.

 

She managed to stop outside the pub only because she dug her heels in. She looked up at her rescuer, thanks on the tip of her tongue, only to have her mouth fall open.

 

It was her sister Pippa’s husband, Montgomery de Piaget.

 

Only it couldn’t be, because the man next to her was dressed in modern clothes and, she soon found, speaking in modern English.

 

“Your car’s finished,” he said, taking her by the arm and leading her off the sidewalk. “Looks like rain.”

 

It was December; of course it looked like rain. Actually, it looked like snow from where she was standing given the sudden chill that had washed over her. She wished she could have shut her mouth, but she couldn’t.