Got it?”
“Got it.” Punctuating his reply with a quick nod, he moved out to a more respectable distance. “Can I ask you a question, though?”
“Sure.”
“What’s with the attitude? All I did was give you a compliment, and you act like I’m trying to work you over.”
“In my experience, when a man tells a woman how pretty she is, he’s expecting it to get him somewhere.”
“Well, now, don’t I feel silly?” Heath drawled with a mischievous grin. “I was just lookin’ for a smile.”
Despite her best efforts to control it, she felt one tugging at the corner of her mouth, threatening to upend her disapproving frown. After a few seconds, she gave in and let it come through. Unfortunately, that seemed to encourage him, and his face broke into a victorious grin. “There it is. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Tess opened her mouth for a sharp retort then decided there was no point. She had reacted to him as if he was a leering stranger on the street. When she replayed her stern warning in her head, she felt her face heating with embarrassment. He might be a little too suave for her liking, but Heath wasn’t dangerous.
“No, it wasn’t.” Realizing that wasn’t enough, she went on. “I apologize for being so rude. I guess I’m still wiped out from my trip, and for a West Coast girl like me it’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“Yeah, that trip east is a real killer. I worked in Alaska for a while, and it took me a week to recover from the flight home.”
“What did you do in Alaska?” she blurted before remembering that she was late for work and should keep their conversation short and sweet. Then again, a few more minutes probably wouldn’t make much difference one way or the other. “I’ve never been there, but from all the Travel Channel shows I’ve watched, it looks like a fascinating place to live.”
Sorrow dimmed his bright expression, and his eyes went a murky bluish-gray that could only mean she’d inadvertently struck a nerve. Shortly after they appeared, though, the clouds were gone. “It is. I worked on an oil rig for a couple years and spent a lot of my spare time flying around with my buddy in his bush plane. We ferried tourists and hunters around, and delivered supplies to some villages that actually were in the middle of nowhere.”
“It sounds incredible.”
“Yeah, it was.”
Although his tone was upbeat, it sounded forced to her, as if he were making a concerted attempt to be positive about his Alaskan adventure. Instinct told her something had forced him to return to Barrett’s Mill. Something that made him sad, even now. She wouldn’t dream of asking him about it, of course, but she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to him.
“I’ll come back with a wrecker to get Olivia’s car,” he said, bringing her back to reality. “But in the meantime, I can’t just leave you stranded out here. Would you like a ride to the mill?”
That wasn’t how she’d intended to begin her new, independent life, but she wasn’t exactly dressed for a cross-country hike. “I can call Paul. I don’t want you to go out of your way.”
“Not out of my way. I was heading there, too, to drop off this truck for Paul.”
She looked at him doubtfully. “You were driving in the opposite direction.”
“Actually, you were. You must have missed your turn back there. Easy to do.”
Her cheeks flushed again, but she stayed silent and just nodded at him, turning toward the car.
While she got her purse, she regretted misjudging the friendly mechanic, lumping him in with the other shallow, manipulative guys she’d known. Not that it mattered, she thought as she followed him over to the truck.
For the time being, she was done with men. With her heart still in pieces, it was safer that way.
* * *
Baffling wasn’t the word for Tess Barrett. Sweet one minute, prickly the next, she’d kept him off balance since their bizarre meeting in the middle of the road. Not quite the way he wanted to start his day.
Heath shut the passenger door a little more forcefully than he should have, wincing at the jolt of pain that zipped up his arm to his shoulder. He sometimes forgot it was still healing, and he had to be careful how he moved. The lingering reminder of his past mistakes drove him nuts, but since there was nothing he could do about it, he did his best to shrug it off as he circled the truck and climbed into the cab.
While Heath started the pickup and pulled around the disabled sedan, he couldn’t help glancing over at his passenger and wondering what her deal was. He’d grown up running wild with her cousins, the infamous Barrett boys who were the stuff of local legend. Knowing them as well as he did, he definitely pegged the family resemblance in the stunning brunette with the dark, intelligent eyes, sitting beside him.
Other than that, she struck him as a whole different animal. In a slim skirt the color of lilacs and a tissue-thin blouse a couple of shades lighter, she looked decidedly out of place on this backwoods road in the heart of the Blue Ridge valley. Then again, she’d traveled across the country to help out at the iconic sawmill that had given the town its name and still provided many of its residents with a decent income. To do something like that, she must be incredibly generous. Or desperate.
Thinking of her being in trouble bothered him for some reason, so he went with the other option. “It’s nice of you to come out and lend a hand with the mill. I’m sure your family really appreciates it.”
“At the wedding, Chelsea mentioned she’d be out with the baby for a while and would be looking for someone to take over while she’s gone. When I lost my job a couple weeks ago, it seemed like a good time to try something different. So here I am.”
“That’s great for them but tough for you,” he commented with genuine sympathy. “Mind if I ask what happened?”
“Oh, the usual. I was managing an adorable little boutique in Beverly Hills. After a few months, the owner’s husband started paying more attention to me than to her, so she fired me.”
The sarcastic tone rang a bell with him, and he barely managed to keep back a grin. Apparently, a streak of wry Barrett humor was lurking behind that cool, polished exterior of hers. Interesting.
She didn’t volunteer anything more, and Heath took the hint that she’d rather let the subject drop. Fine by him, he mused as he concentrated on the road in front of him. He had enough on his plate these days without taking on someone else’s problems.
After a couple of minutes, the silence seemed to get to her. “So, you grew up around here?”
“Born and raised.”
“You said you liked Alaska,” she pointed out. “Have you been anywhere else?”
“Louisiana, Iowa, Arizona. Being a mechanic, I can pretty much work anywhere.”
“What made you decide to come back here?”
Heath still hadn’t come to terms with the answer to that, and he fought the urge to joke his way out of responding. He’d been doing that for months, to avoid reliving the pain that had chased him back to the safe, quiet town where he’d spent his childhood. But something told him if he dodged a question from the pretty woman beside him, she’d know it. And she’d never trust him. Why he cared what she thought about him, he couldn’t say, but loyalty to her family was as good a reason as any.
As he parked in the turnaround near the mill house, he finally settled on a version of the truth. “It was time to come home. I’m almost thirty, and my adventuring days are over.”
She studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment, and it took everything he had not to look away. Clearly, she suspected that he hadn’t given her the whole story, but he hoped his explanation would be enough to satisfy her