One Magic Moment(6)
Author: Lynn Kurland

 

John de Piaget kept the engine balanced on the hoist long enough to look to his right to make certain he had enough space to roll out from underneath it before it slipped its moorings and crushed him. Finding that side of his garage floor comfortingly empty, he took a deep breath, then flung himself to his right the split second before the engine overbalanced and landed on the floor where his empty head had recently been.

 

He pushed himself up until he was merely sitting on the floor, shaking like a woman, instead of lying there, shaking like the fool he was. He never made mistakes like the one he’d just made. Fortunately, he knew just at whose feet to lay the blame.

 

That wench who had interrupted the peace of his shop not an hour earlier.

 

He looked at Bobby, who had been talking to him just before he’d almost killed himself. “She forgot what?”

 

“Her credit card.” Bobby paused. “Want help with the engine?”

 

John looked at his lone employee, an experienced mechanic who Grant had taken on just before he’d sold John the shop. He didn’t like to ask for aid, but in this case he couldn’t do anything else. He nodded, then accepted help with righting the block and settling things as he should have to start with.

 

It took less than two hours to put the entire Jaguar back together. He thanked Bobby briskly for his aid, cleaned his hands, then went into his office to phone the owner to tell her she could send someone for her car anytime she liked. He fished her husband’s card she’d given him out of his wallet, then froze.

 

Geoffrey Segrave, Segrave & Kingsley, LLP.

 

John pursed his lips. A solicitor amongst a clutch of lawyerly types, no doubt. He was tempted to wallow in the irony of doing business with a man bearing that last name, but he didn’t do irony any longer. In fact, there were several things he didn’t do any longer, beginning and ending with looking at anything that might have loitered in his past—

 

He cut his thoughts off before they migrated to points forbidden and uncomfortable. He arranged for one of the man’s flunkies to come pick up the Jag the next day for his lady wife, then hung up and considered the rest of his afternoon. He looked at the credit card on his counter, then at the garage. There were times, he supposed, when what looked like a bad idea from the start was exactly what it seemed.

 

Hadn’t he told himself that setting up shop in a small village might be less than desirable? Hadn’t he reminded himself that if one wanted to avoid standing out, losing oneself in a city of decent size was the wisest course of action? Had he not fought with a good deal of determination what had felt like the hand of Fate in each step that had led him from a rather comfortable, if nomadic, life in the north to a far-too-exposed existence in the south?

 

He was going to have to fight harder next time, that was obvious.

 

“Oy, boss,” Bobby said from behind him, “what about the young miss’s card?”

 

John suppressed the urge to flinch. ’Twas his fault she’d left it behind, of course, because he’d stopped just short of shoving her out of his shop. He would have vastly preferred to have been able to say that it was because he’d been distracted, or irritated that he’d had to rescue her in the pub, or anxious to get her out of his office so he could see to other things.

 

But none of that was true.

 

The truth was, he’d watched her walk over to the pub, then followed her there just to have another look at her. Could he be blamed for ordering for himself a Lilt, neat, to be enjoyed whilst leaning against the wall watching a young woman who seemed to have trouble judging the distance between her passenger door and the nearest unyielding surface? Grant had told him he would have some regular customers with peculiar mechanical issues. He’d never expected that one of them would take his breath away just to look at her.

 

He supposed she would have gotten away from Frank’s lecherous advances soon enough on her own, but he’d been across the tavern, brandishing his chivalry, almost before he’d known he was going to.

 

He sighed, then turned and took the credit card from Bobby. “I’ll get it back to her. What’s left on your list for the day?”

 

“I’m finished,” Bobby said. “Unless you’d like me to pop the bonnet on that old Jag of yours—”

 

“I’ll see to that one myself,” John said without hesitation, “though your generosity is much appreciated.” He couldn’t bring himself to thank Bobby again for the earlier rescue. Once had been more than enough.

 

“I’ll tidy up, then,” Bobby said, then trudged past him out into the garage, already humming some mindless tune that was popular in the current day.

 

John had hummed enough mindless things in recent years that he thought he might safely leave them behind for the afternoon and see to a few other things.

 

“Lock up for me after you’re through, would you?” John called. “I’ve an errand to run.”

 

“She’s a bit o’ alright,” Bobby agreed.

 

“I’m taking groceries to Mrs. Winston,” John said darkly.

 

“Old Doris?” Bobby asked with a laugh. “Aye, she’s a bit o’ alright as well.”

 

John cursed him under his breath and left the shop. He did indeed intend to be about a bit of good-deed-doing, though he couldn’t say it was completely altruistic. Doris Winston was every day of eighty and managed her own grocery visits with ease, but she happened to have an ear to the ground on a daily basis. If there was anything to be known about that dark-haired beauty who’d come into his shop and knocked the breath from him, it would be Doris.

 

John hated to think what she’d dredged up about him.

 

The tale he’d noised about himself was an innocuous one about his having left home early, then having bummed about various garages by day and bands by night until he’d come into a bit of money, which had allowed him to buy old Grant’s garage when the man’s rheumatism had necessitated a decamping for France. All of which, for the most part, was true.

 

Well, except the part about limiting himself to bands. It wouldn’t have done his reputation as a gearhead any good for anyone to have known he far preferred classical guitar to grunge, jazz to pop, and that he could be, when he’d occasionally indulged in a pint too many, prevailed upon to dredge up a ballad or two of a less modern vintage. Fortunately for him, the women he’d been stupid enough to play them for had been completely clueless as to their origin.

 

And his, for that matter.

 

He had to admit, he found himself longing, just once, to meet a gel who looked at him, then looked away, instead of looking, then boldly looking a bit more until he’d understood the invitation. He’d become just as adept at the look that said he wasn’t at all interested.