“I don’t know.”
More silence.
“Am I able to use your phone?”
He shook his head, then closed the door. Okay, that was extra rude.
Then the door re-opened, and he stepped out. He’d pulled on another plaid shirt and some boots. He shut the door behind him. Was he leaving?
Then he gestured towards her place.
Oh! He was coming to look at her truck? She practically ran down the steps, nearly tripping in her haste. A huge hand locked around her upper arm, stopping her from falling on her face.
She threw him a cheerful smile. “Thanks! You’d think I just got feet for Christmas!”
She laughed.
He did not.
All righty then. She moved alongside him as they strode towards her house. His legs covered the ground so quickly that she was practically jogging. Her breathing quickened.
Yikes. She might need to start doing some cardio.
“Thanks so much for doing this,” she told him. “You really didn’t have to. I could have called a friend. You know, if I could have borrowed your phone.”
Still nothing.
She let out a small sigh, staring at him surreptitiously. How old was he? There were a few grays hidden amongst his dark hair, even more in his beard. He didn’t have a lot of wrinkles. Just a couple of faint lines in his forehead and some crow’s feet. Definitely older than her own twenty-eight years.
They reached her truck, and she patted the side. “This is Queenie. She’s old but usually pretty reliable.”
“Reliable?” he muttered, peering around. “Looks like it should have been sent to the junkyard years ago.”
She hugged the truck. “Don’t listen to him, Queenie, I’d never send you to the junkyard.”
He stared at her like he couldn’t believe she’d done that. But she didn’t care. She was sure other people hugged their vehicles and talked to them like they were sentient.
Maybe.
He shook his head in response. Then he opened the hood of the truck and she moved around beside him, staring down at the engine, which looked like it always did. What was he thinking? Did he know how to fix it?
“Any idea what’s wrong with it?” she whispered.
He turned his head and stared down at her. “No.”
Right then.
“Well, thanks for looking. Is it a ‘no’ on using your phone?”
He moved to the driver’s side door and opened it. Then he stared. And stared some more. Slowly, he raised his head to look over at her. “There’s a hole in the footwell.”
“Oh yeah, just a small one.”
Those bright blue eyes stared at her. Then he shook his head. “You can’t drive this.”
“Not at the moment, no. But I’m sure she can be fixed.” If only she had the money to pay the bill.
“You can’t drive a truck with a hole in the footwell,” he stated slowly.
“It’s fine. It’s been that way for a while. I just have to make sure not to put any weight around the hole so it doesn’t get any bigger. It makes it a bit cold in winter, but I just dress up warm. It’s fine.”
His eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger. Then he looked around as though searching for something.
“Have you lost something?” she asked, wondering if something had fallen out of his pocket.
“You have.”
“I have? What?”
“Common sense.”
Ouch. Burn. She sucked in a breath. “That’s not very nice.”
He grunted. “You can’t drive this truck. It should be wrecked.”
“My truck is fine,” she insisted. Seriously. All she’d wanted was to use his phone. She didn’t ask him to look at Queenie. And there was no need to insult the old girl, or her either. “If you don’t know what’s wrong with it, that’s fine. But could I please use your phone?”
He muttered something under his breath, then drew his phone from out of his pocket, handing it to her.
“Thank you.” It took everything in her to say thanks, but Gran had raised her to be polite. Even if the other person was being a jerk.
Thankfully, she knew Mac’s number by heart. She quickly called him, and he assured her that he’d be there within the hour. Then she handed the phone back to her grouchy neighbor with a smile.
“Thanks so much. Sorry to disturb you. And take up so much of your time.”
He just studied her as he took back the phone. “You got no business driving that truck.”
“I’ll be fine.” She gave him a tight smile. “Have a nice day.”
“Get your phone fixed.” Turning, he left.
Wow. Just wow.
Atticus Mann stared out the window towards where his chatty, flighty, annoying neighbor lived.
He’d come to the wilds of Wyoming for some peace and quiet. Instead, he’d managed to move next door to the biggest chatterbox he’d ever encountered. She just never stopped. She was always smiling.
It wasn’t natural. No one could be that happy. Even when he was being a dick, she chatted away to him as though they were friends.
Well, they weren’t. And she’d soon understand that he wasn’t interested in being friends. He wanted to be alone.
Yeah, he’d gone to look at her truck. But only to get her to leave.
And that truck of hers . . . he clenched his hands into fists. She had no business driving it around. How such a tiny thing could even see over the dashboard, he had no idea. Although he guessed that the two pillows stacked on the driver’s seat were to raise her up. What if the pillows slipped while she was driving and she couldn’t see? What if she stepped on that hole in the footwell of her truck and fell through it? What if the truck broke down on a road in the dark?
She had no damn right to be driving around in that death trap. What if she hurt someone else? He’d bet that had never occurred to her.
He watched out the window as a red truck pulled into the driveway that led to her small cabin. A guy wearing a beanie got out. Lucie threw herself at him and he hugged her, kissing the top of her head. She was wearing another ridiculous headband. This one had a unicorn horn on the top of it.
Boyfriend? If so, why the hell was he letting his girl drive around in that rust bucket?
If she were his, he wouldn’t allow it. He’d insist on something safer, or better yet, drive her anywhere she needed to go. And if she still drove it, then she’d be needing those pillows to sit on for an entirely different reason.
Atticus let out a deep breath, easing the tension in his shoulders as Lucie jumped up and down in excitement, her truck letting out a puff of black smoke from the exhaust.
Christ.
Yeah, he’d known it could have been a dead battery. And sure, he could have used his jumper cables to give the battery a shock to life.
But he didn’t want to be responsible for her driving that truck and possibly hurting herself or someone else.
What he wanted to do was storm over there and talk some sense into her.
Or spank some into her.
Why her? She talked too much. She kept bringing him food she’d baked. She was interrupting the solitude he wanted.
Or thought he did.
She was nothing like Gemma. She was too young, too flighty, too happy.
Yet, the idea of her getting hurt didn’t sit right with him. It had to be because she was his neighbor. That was all. He felt some sort of weird responsibility towards her.