nodded. It had been a long time since a car’s problems had baffled him, but he could relate to the helplessness she had to be experiencing.
It was the way he had felt about life when he had found himself alive in the hospital bed. Alive when Gloria and Sally were gone.
Christa threw up her hands in surrender. She’d been trying to start the van for the past ten minutes. Taking every curve life had to throw at her, Christa prided herself on being levelheaded and calm. Today, however, her nerves were very close to the surface.
She looked at him. “Any suggestions?”
In reply, Malcolm circled the front of her van and placed his hands on the hood. Then, as she watched, mystified, he pushed down on it, hard. She felt the vehicle begin to bounce up and down like a small sailboat caught in a storm at sea.
He wasn’t behaving like any mechanic she knew. Christa stuck her head out the window. “What are you doing?”
Malcolm didn’t bother answering. Instead, he gave her an order. “Now try it.” When she just looked at him, he added, “Turn the key.”
Not seeing how what he was doing could make any difference whatsoever, Christa turned the key in the ignition. She was rewarded with the sound of the engine turning over. The van vibrated as the engine coughed to life, shuddering like a wet dog.
Relief coaxed a grin from her. “Is that the auto mechanic’s equivalent of a TV repairman hitting the side of a set when it doesn’t work?”
The principle would take too much effort to explain to her. “Something like that.” He cocked his head, listening to the sound of the engine as it idled. A starter motor wasn’t her only problem. The engine sounded as if it was wheezing, and the car was idling rough. Besides that, he detected the light scent of gasoline.
Not my business, he thought.
But cars were his business. If he let her go now and she wound up stranded somewhere, it would be partially his fault. A great deal had changed in his life, but Malcolm still believed that omission was just as much of a sin as commission.
Trapped by his conscience, he reluctantly asked, “You live far from here?”
The nice thing about the condo she was leasing was that it was so centrally located. “A couple of miles.” She nodded toward the street right off the parking lot. “West Plaza Development. Just off Heather.”
Heather Drive. That was in the opposite direction from his own apartment. Malcolm sighed. He supposed it wouldn’t be too far out of his way. “All right, I’ll follow you home.”
Now, that was a switch. Though she appreciated it, she didn’t see any reason for his abrupt change of heart. “Any particular reason you’ve suddenly decided to become friendly?”
Malcolm sniffed the air. Nothing. The light scent of gasoline must have just been his imagination.
“I’m not being friendly,” he corrected mildly. “I’m being a mechanic. I don’t like the sound of your engine. You might not make it home.”
“I hate putting you out like this.”
That made two of them. He shrugged in reply. “Like you said, you live only a couple of miles down the road. No big deal.”
That sounded more like him, Christa thought. Distant. Matter-of-fact. And he was wrong; it was a big deal. She was a stranger and he was offering to help. Again. She felt bound to tell him the absolute truth.
“It’s not exactly two miles. More like five,” she amended.
Two, five—it made no difference. He had already made the offer:
“Five,” he repeated, accepting the correction. Malcolm glanced at his watch. “We’re still not quite into rush hour yet. Shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to reach your house.” The idling sound the van was making was beginning to sound like someone with smoker’s hack. “Unless, of course, the van breaks down,” he added matter-of-factly. “I’m parked two aisles over.” He jerked his thumb toward the LeMans. “Wait for me.”
It was more of an order than anything else.
He was one strange man, she thought. There was something about him that spoke to her. Despite his size and the aura of power he cast, there was something about him that was reaching out to her. She doubted if he was even aware of it.
Tyler would have said she was meddling.
Mentally, Christa crossed her fingers as she backed out of her space. The van seemed to shimmy and shudder more than usual. She had the impression that it was like a prize-winning stallion past its peak, trying to eke out just a little more life before it died.
She kept her fingers crossed all the way home. The van didn’t die, but Christa had the uneasy feeling that it was touch and go all the way. It was reassuring to see the LeMans in her rearview mirror.
The van had over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. It had brought her safely over the desert, when she had left with Las Vegas and Jim in her rearview mirror. Actually, she amended silently, only Las Vegas had been in her rearview mirror. Jim, at the time of her departure, had probably been housed somewhere at a casino table, hoping that Lady Luck had decided not to snub him any longer.
Luck had been an elusive, capricious partner during the five years that she and Jim had been married. When she’d had enough of his gambling fever and divorced him, he’d acted relieved. He’d called Christa his Jonah. Without her, he felt confident that his luck would change for the better.
She sincerely doubted it, but she was decent enough to hope that it had. No matter what, the man would always be Robin’s father. That meant something.
All during the trip back to Southern California, she’d had the uneasy feeling that she was on borrowed time. Each false start and stop that the van made only increased that feeling. Today’s harrowing chase down Bedford’s main thoroughfare had undoubtedly wreaked havoc on the failing engine.
Or whatever it was that was wrong with the van, she mused with resignation.
Just last a little longer. Please.
Finally, Christa pulled up in the short driveway in front of her condo. Malcolm’s car was only a beat behind her. Though there was ample room in the driveway, he parked in the street, directly in front of her father’s vintage Jaguar.
She watched Malcolm smoothly guide his car into the tight space between her father’s car and her neighbor’s. Admiration curved her lips. She couldn’t conceive of doing that. She could no more manage to parallel-park than she could fly on her own power.
Malcolm slammed the car door shut behind him. He nodded at the dark metallic green Jaguar. Her husband must be the sporty type, he decided.
“Nice car. Yours?”
She shook her head. With a bank account barely in the triple digits, she could ill afford maintenance on something like that.
“My father’s.” She smiled, thinking of the way he pampered the vehicle. “It’s his baby now that he’s retired.”
Malcolm nodded absently, acutely aware that she had turned her electric blue eyes up at him. He didn’t quite know what he was doing here. He was going out of his way, and he’d made it a practice never to go out of his way. The less involved he was with people in general, the less there would be to trigger him, to remind him of what he no longer had.
Of what he had allowed, because of a momentary lapse in skill, to slip through his fingers.
Feeling uncomfortable, Malcolm slowly shoved wide, capable hands into his back pockets. He stood looking at her van.
Now would be the time to back out. Before he got in too deep.
“Well, you got here without any mishaps. Maybe your husband could take a look at the van for you.”
He