He comes forward, hand outstretched. “Warner Hayden.”
“I’m…” I can’t say my name. He doesn’t appear to recognize me, thank God, but he might recognize my name. “Morgan Waller.” Thanks, Morg. I place my hand in his, and that’s when it happens. His warmth, his manly smell, his nearness. It swirls around until it’s a heady mist enveloping me. It’s been twenty-six days since I learned about Tate, and I hadn’t realized how badly I missed the touch of a man.
Warner releases my hand. “Nice to meet you, Morgan.” He starts for Pearl, his gaze roving over her. “1976?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer, following him. “Are you a vintage car guy?”
The palm of his hand traces her body. “Not really.” He peeks in the open driver door and whistles, the sound low and appreciative. “Fully restored,” he murmurs. He looks back at the soft top piled on the back. “With a Bimini top. And stuffed with suitcases.”
He looks back at me, curiosity raging in those strikingly warm eyes. Whatever questions he has, he keeps them to himself and resumes his walk to the front of the vehicle.
He pops the hood and I join him. Heat radiates from the engine. To me, it looks like a maze of tubes and metal. Warner leans in, gripping the edge of the truck for leverage, his T-shirt tightening around his bicep. He pokes around, while I busy myself doing everything I can not to give in to my primitive instincts. Somewhere along the way biology programmed me to smell this attractive male and want to mate.
“I can’t see anything obviously wrong. Nothing worn out or cracked.” Warner looks at me, and there is so little space between us now that I smell peppermint on his breath, as if he’d been sucking on mint candy when he saw me. I take a breath and nod. Being this close allows me to see his finer details, like the small scar on his right brow bone. My fingers twitch at my side, aching to trace it.
It’s official. Warner and I were lovers in a past life. There’s no other way to explain the raw attraction I feel.
Warner, on the other hand, is either being overly polite, or I screwed him over in our past life and all of his biological instincts are issuing cautions. He appears to be altogether unaffected by me.
He nods toward Pearl. “Can you pump the gas?”
His request confuses me. There isn’t a gas station anywhere that I can see. If there was, I’d have walked there and called for help. My eyebrows knit together, and my confusion brings a heat to my neck that isn’t from the air temperature. He watches me wrestle with his words, a slow smile curving his lips.
Some men look better frowning, or stone-faced. Not Warner. His smile is like a dawning sunrise. And really, this is only a grin. I’m not sure what a full smile would compare to. Midday sun over the ocean, maybe?
He runs the pad of his thumb across his upper lip and wipes it on the shoulder of his shirt. “Sit in the front seat and try to turn on the engine. I think your problem may be the fuel injector, but the only real way to know that is to listen to the engine try to turn over. You have a new engine in here, which means you have a fuel injector. If you had the old engine, it’d have a carburetor, and I’d be able to see gas going into it when you pumped the pedal.”
I do as he asks, hopping into Pearl and leaning out the door. The hood is blocking me from seeing him, so I say, “Tell me when.”
“When,” he answers.
I turn the key in the ignition. Pearl makes an attempt, but it sounds like the hacking cough of a lifelong smoker.
“One more time,” Warner yells, and I do it again.
Poor Pearl. She sounds awful.
I reach into the back seat for two water bottles and startle at the sound of the hood slamming closed. I hop out with the water and hand one to Warner. He takes it, thanking me with a tip of his head, and unscrews the cap. His throat is covered in day-old scruff and it undulates as he downs the entire bottle.
“You’ve diagnosed her, then?”
“Fuel pump. Nothing else appears to be the issue, and the way it sounded when it turned over is a dead giveaway.” Warner meets my eyes, and it dawns on me that he’d been avoiding looking at me directly this entire time. “There’s a repair shop in the next town. If I had time, I’d grab the part from the auto part store and do it myself, but I need to pick up my kids from school.”
The heat inside my body turns to ice. Of course. I hadn’t thought beyond my own attraction for two seconds to consider this man may actually, I don’t know, have a life. Kids. Wife. I look at his ring finger.
It’s bare. But then, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe he forgot to wear it today. That would explain his apathy toward me. I’m not God’s gift to man, but I’m attractive. Hollywood would’ve spit me out if I wasn’t, no matter who my parents are.
I turn back to my car and grab my phone again, scowling at the words No Service.
“It’s a dead zone out here,” Warner says. “I’ll drive you to Caliverde. The tow truck should be able to come get your car and take it back to the repair shop.”
Get in a car with a stranger? That’s first day of childhood lesson number one, on par with learning how to walk properly with scissors. I mean, yeah, I’m stupidly attracted to the guy. And, yeah, he’s gorgeous, but Ted Bundy was attractive too. Being good-looking and a murderer are not mutually exclusive.
He chuckles softly, the sound deep and throaty. “I get it. I wouldn’t want my daughter climbing into someone’s truck. Not now, at thirteen, and not when she’s an adult.” He snaps his fingers and points at me. “I have an idea.”
Without waiting for me to respond he starts further off the road and into the barren desert. He gathers small rocks into a pile beside Pearl and arranges them.
“Is that your license plate number?” I ask, studying the mix of letters and numbers.
“Yep. Do you feel safer now?”
“Yes,” I answer truthfully. “Let me lock her up and grab my purse.”
I grab a receipt from the passenger side floorboard and jot down his name and license plate number, and leave it tucked in the cup holder. Next, I pull up the top and lock the doors.
Warner is waiting for me in his truck. Cold air blasts me in the face when I open the door. For a moment I stand there, enjoying the rising goose bumps because it means I’m finally not hot. When I settle in and buckle up, Warner pulls back out onto the road. In all the time that passed since he pulled over, not a single car went by.
“Sorry about the new car smell,” Warner says, glancing over at me.
“Is that on purpose?” I look around for one of those little tree-shaped car deodorizers.
He shakes his head. “It’s new. My brother drove me out to pick it up this morning. He turned around and went back to work while I finished the paperwork.”
I nod, looking back at Pearl until she’s out of sight.
“So, where were you headed?” Warner asks, glancing over at me. He only looks at me for a second before he looks back at the road, and it’s so refreshing I could cry. Staring is one of the milder things people do when they realize who I am. Shrieking, stuttering, and thrusting their phone out for a picture are other typical reactions. I used to love it. But that was when I was younger, when the recognition felt like a promise. Now it feels like a tornado and I want to drive the opposite direction.