Lucky in Love (17 page)

“And…?”

“And when I was fourteen, he bought a Pontiac GTO.” He smiled at the memory. “A ’67. God, she was sweet.”

“She?” Mallory teased, turning her face to his. She was so close he reached out and stroked a rogue strand of hair from her temple, tucking it behind her ear.

“Yeah, she,” he said. “Cars are always a she. And do you want to hear this story or not?”

“Very much.” She nudged her shoulder to his. “Every single detail.”

“I took apart the engine.”

“Oh my God,” she said on a shocked laugh. “Was he mad?”

“It was a classic, and it was in mint condition.
Mad
doesn’t even begin to cover what he was.”

She stared at him, eyes wide. “Why did you do it?”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t help myself. I liked to take things apart and then put them back together again. Only I couldn’t. I had no idea what I was doing.” Ty could still remember the look on his father’s face: utter and complete shock at the empty engine compartment, horror that his baby had been breached and violated, and then sheer fury. “I can still feel the sweat trickling down the back of my spine,” he said, shaking his head. “I hadn’t meant to take it so far. I’d just kept undoing and undoing…”

“What happened?”

“I was pretty sure he’d kick my ass.”

She gasped. “He beat you?”

“Nah, he never laid a hand on me.” Ty felt a smile curve his mouth. “Didn’t have to. He was one scary son of a bitch. He’d talk in this low, authoritative voice that dared you to defy him. No one ever did that I know of.”

“Not you?”

“
Hell
no.”

She was grinning wide, and he shook his head at her. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” she said. “You’re so big and bad. It’s hard to imagine you scared of anything.” She touched his jaw, cupping it in her palm and lightly running her thumb over his skin.

He hadn’t shaved that morning, and he could hear the rasp of his stubble against the pad of her thumb. As she touched him, he watched the flecks in her eyes heat like gold.

“I like being under a car with you,” she said.

Working on cars was his escape. Beneath a hood or a chassis was familiar ground, no matter what part of the world he was in or where he lay his head at night. It was his constant. A buffer from the shit.

And Mallory was a single-woman destruction crew, outmaneuvering him, letting herself right into his safety zone, and then into his damn heart while she was at it. Because no matter what bullshit he fed himself, he liked being here with her, too.

“You ever going to tell me what you
are
scared of?” she asked.

He let out a short laugh. “Plenty,” he assured her.

Her eyes softened, and she slid her hand into the hair at the back of his neck, fisting lightly, bringing him a full-body shiver of pure pleasure.

“Such as?” she asked.

You
, he nearly said.

And it would be God’s truth.

“Tell me.”

“I’m afraid of not living,” he said. He rolled out from beneath the Shelby, then crouched beside Mallory’s creeper, putting his hands on her ankles to yank her out, too.

Sitting up, she pushed her hair back and met his gaze. “Don’t worry, Ty. I know.”

“You know what?”

“That this isn’t your real life, that you’re just killing time with me until—”

He put his finger over her lips. “Mal—”

“No, it’s okay,” she said around his finger, wrapping her hand around his wrist. “You’re not the small-town type. I know it.”

And yet here he was. Free to go, but still here.

“Are we done working on the car?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Her legs seemed endless in those jeans and fuck-me heels. “We’re done working on the car.”

“So I can teach you something about
my
work now?”

He took in her small but sexy smile and felt himself go hard. “What did you have in mind?”

“Ever play doctor?”

There is nothing better than a good friend, except maybe a good friend with chocolate.

T
he next morning, Mallory woke to a disgruntled
meow
. It was Sweet Pea, letting the world know it was past time for breakfast.

When Mallory ignored this, the cat batted her on the forehead with a paw.

“Shh,” Mallory said.

“
Meow
.”

Mallory stretched, her body sore. She hadn’t been to the gym since her membership had expired a year ago, which left only one thing to attribute the soreness to.

Ty, and his own special brand of workout.

She sighed blissfully and rolled over. She hadn’t gotten home until late. Or early, depending on how you looked at it. She’d have liked to stay at Ty’s all night but that would have been too much.

Not for her. For
him
.

She’d promised him that this was a simple fling. No use in telling him she’d broken that promise. Besides, she was pretty sure he was more than just physically attracted to her as well, but she wasn’t sure if
he
knew it.

She loved being with him. That was the bottom line. The only line. There were no preconceived notions on how she should behave. It was freeing, exhilarating.

Amazing.

And also unsettling. She was in the big girls’ sandbox when she played with Ty, and she was going to get hurt. There was nothing she could do about that so she showered. When she went to the closet for her white athletic shoes, she sniffed, then wrinkled her nose. “Oh no, you didn’t,” she said to Sweet Pea.

Sweet Pea was in the middle of the bed, daintily washing her face. She had no comment.

“You
poo’d in my shoe
?”

Sweet Pea gave her a look that said “see if you come home that late again” and continued with her grooming.

“Two words,” Mallory told the cat. “
Glue
.
Factory
.”

Sweet Pea didn’t look worried, and with good reason. It was an empty threat, and they both knew it. Mallory cleaned up the mess, thankful Sweet Pea hadn’t used her bad girl shoes. She flashed to Ty tossing her onto his bed in the shoes and nothing else…Yeah. She was going to bronze those suckers.

She grabbed her phone off her nightstand and headed out her front door to get to work.

Joe was in her driveway, head under her opened hood. “Hey,” he said. “Who did your alternator?”

“No one. What are you doing? You said you were busy.”

“And now I’m not. I picked up a new alternator for you this morning, but someone beat me to it.”

“What?” She stepped off the front porch and took a peek at the thing he was pointing out, the one shiny, clean part in the whole car.

“See?” Joe said. “Brand new alternator. Maybe it was Garrison.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because he helped this guy…Ryan, I think…get a job at the welding shop. And Ryan told me you’re seeing Garrison.”

Ty had gotten Ryan a job. Everything in her softened at the thought of Ty caring that much, and she wondered if it was too soon to go back over there. She’d wear her heels again. And maybe a trench coat and nothing else…

“Hel
lo
,” Joe said, irritated.

“What?”

“Are you seeing Garrison or not? Would he have done this for you?”

Mallory flashed back to finding Ty in her driveway in the middle of the night. She’d never questioned what he’d been doing here, figuring it had been about sex. She hadn’t minded that; she’d wanted him, too, but she got a little warm fuzzy that it hadn’t been about
just
sex.

She had no explanation for last night, which had been all her own doing. She’d have to tell Amy that she was right: bad girl shoes were awesome. Amy loved to be right.

She drove to work with the smile still on her face. She’d parked and was just getting out of the car when her phone vibrated. Odd, because she’d have sworn she’d set it to ring. Pulling it out of her pocket, she didn’t even attempt to see the screen in the bright morning sun before she answered with a simple “Hello?”

There was a long beat of silence and then, “Who the hell are you and where the hell is Ty?”

Mallory blinked at the very sexy, snooty female voice sounding damn proprietary, then said, “Who is this?”

“I asked first. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Just put him on the phone.
Now
.”

Oh hell no
, Mallory thought, feeling a proprietariness of her own, even though on some level she’d known that Ty had to have other women in his life. It made perfect sense, but that didn’t mean she liked how it felt.

“Fine, have it your way,” the woman snapped. “Tell him Frances called. Make sure you tell him that it’s important, do you understand?”

“How did you get this number?”

“Cookie, you don’t want to go there. Now listen to me. I don’t care how good you suck him, I’ve known him longer, I know him better, and I’m the only one of us who will know him by this time next week. Give him the damn message.”

Click.

Mallory stared at the phone, realizing that it wasn’t her phone at all. It was an iPhone just like hers, but the background was of only the date and a clock, not the picture of the beach she’d taken last week.

She had Ty’s phone.

Mallory tried calling
her
phone but it went directly to voicemail, signaling that Ty had either turned it off or she’d run out of battery. She chewed on the situation for a minute, then punched out Amy’s number. “It’s me,” she said. “I’m using someone else’s phone. Life is getting nuts.”

“Nuts is all relative on the Bad Girl scale.”

“Is that right?” Mallory asked. “So where on that scale would you put getting yelled at by the ex of the guy I’m sleeping with?”

Dead silence. Then, “So the bad girl shoes worked?”

Mallory blew out a breath. “Yes. Now concentrate.” She told Amy all about the call. “And really,” she said. “I have no one but myself to blame.
I
wanted this one-time thing. I mean I wanted the second time too,
and
the third, but now—”

“Now you’re in this, and you’re worried that maybe you’re in it alone.”

Mallory’s throat tightened. “Yeah. I mean three times. To me that’s…”

“I know.” Suddenly Amy wasn’t sounding amused. “It’s a relationship.”

“And I’m pretty sure Ty’s allergic to relationships.”

Amy paused again. “Mallory, are you sure you haven’t bitten off more than you can chew?”

Mallory choked out a laugh. “
Now
? You think to ask me this now?
You
started this. You egged me on with the list of Mr. Wrongs! Hell, yes, I’ve bitten off more than I can chew!”

“Okay,” Amy soothed. “We can fix this. You’ll just downgrade to a
less
Mr. Wrong. Someone easier to drag around by his twig and berries, you know?”

Yeah, but she didn’t want just anyone’s twigs and berries. “Look, I’m at work. We’ll have to obsess over this later. Have cake waiting. I’m going to need it.”

“Will do, babe.”

Mallory clicked off and went into the hospital.

Five minutes into her shift, Jane called her into her office. “Two things,” her boss said cryptically, giving nothing away. “First up.” She laid a piece of paper on her desk, facing Mallory. It was a receipt for a sizeable amount.

“Anonymous donation,” Jane said. “For HSC.”

“My God.” Mallory sank to a spare chair. “Am I looking at all those zeroes correctly?”

“Yes,” Jane said. “And they’re all very pretty.”

Mallory’s eyes jerked up to Jane’s. “Did you just make a joke?”

“Tell anyone, and I’ll skin you.” Jane let out a rare smile but it was fleeting. “Nicely done.”

“How do you know I had anything to do with this?” Mallory asked, still astonished.

Jane gave an impressive eye roll. “Mallory, without you, there would be no HSC. Even
with
you, it’s barely there, and it’s on tentative footing. Someone you know or talked to donated this money.”

Mallory absorbed that a moment. “Someone I know? I don’t
know
anyone with a spare 10K.”

“Don’t you?”

“You’re not talking about Ty,” Mallory said, but Jane’s eyes said that’s exactly who she was talking about. “He already donated money for the Vets’ program,” Mallory protested. “Besides, he doesn’t have this kind of money. But truthfully, she had no idea what Ty had or didn’t have.
Ten thousand dollars…
“Why would he—”

“Don’t ask me that,” Jane said quietly. “Because honestly, Mallory? I don’t want to know why he’d give you so much money for a Health Services Clinic in a town he has no ties to, a place he apparently plans on leaving very soon.”

“Not me,” Mallory said. “He didn’t give the money to me. He gave it to HSC. If it was even him.”

“Hmm,” was all Jane said to this. She paused. “I really don’t like to delve into my employees’ private lives, but…”

Oh boy. “But…?”

“But since yours is being discussed over the water cooler, it’s unavoidable. You’re dating a man who no one knows anything about.”

Well, technically, there was little “dating” involved. She was flat out boinking him. “No disrespect, Jane, but I really don’t see how this affects my job.”

“Whether he was the anonymous donor or not, he’s been seen socializing with known drug addicts. And he yelled at two aides in the cafeteria.”

Mallory’s temper was usually non-existent but it flared to life at Jane’s cavalier description of Ryan. “That’s not quite how either of those two events went down,” she said as evenly as she could. “Ty’s involved in the Vets’ program. He and Ryan connected because of their military backgrounds, and Ty’s been helping him, giving him rides and bringing him food.” Which she only knew because Lucille had told her, and thinking about it
still
melted her heart. She also knew about the hospital cafeteria incident, thanks to Lucille. “As for the radiation techs, they were just downright rude, so—”

“My point,” Jane said, “is that you’re not just an employee now. You’re
running
the HSC. You’re in a position that requires a certain public persona, and you have no one to blame but yourself for that one. You chose this, Mallory, so you have to understand that certain aspects of your life are now up for scrutiny. You have a moral and financial obligation to live up to that scrutiny.”

Mallory was having a hard time swallowing this. “Are you saying I can’t have a private life?”

“I’m saying that private life can’t conflict with your public life. You can’t date a man who might need the services HSC provides, wrong as that sounds. You just can’t.”

The words rang through Mallory’s head for the next few hours as she dealt with her patients. She had a vomiter—oh joy—a teenager who’d let her new tattoo get infected, and an eight-months-pregnant woman who ate a jar of pickles and put herself into labor with gas pains.

Alyssa was little to no help. She was far too busy flirting with that cute new resident doctor, hoping to score a date for her night off. All of Alyssa’s patients kept hailing Mallory down, until finally she physically yanked Alyssa away from the new resident and reminded her that she had actual work to do.

Mallory pretty much ran ragged until there was finally a lull. She used the rare quiet time to sit at the nurses’ station and catch up on charting.

“Mallory!”

She looked up to find one of her patients, Jodi Larson, standing there beaming from ear to ear. Jodi was ten years old, a leukemia patient, and one of Mallory’s all-time favorite people. She’d been in for her six-month check, and given the smile also on Jodi’s mom’s face behind her, the news had been good.

“Officially in remission,” Jodi said proudly.

Jodi’s mom’s eyes were shining brilliantly as she nodded affirmation of the good news. Thrilled, Mallory hugged them both tight, and Jodi presented her with a plate of cookies. “Chocolate chip and walnut. I baked them just for you.”

They hugged again, then Mallory got paged and had to go. It turned out the page was from her own mother.

“Mallory,” Ella whispered, dragging her daughter into a far, quiet corner. “People are talking about how you were seen driving home at 3:20 in the morning. Why do I have a daughter coming home that late? Nothing good happens that late, Mallory. Nothing.”

Oh, for the love of God. “Actually, it was only 2:30, so your source is dyslexic.” And pretty damn annoying, but Mallory didn’t bother to say so. Her mother had a point and she was winding up for it.

“You were with
that
man,” Ella said.

Uh huh, and there it was. Mallory’s left eye began to twitch. “That man has a name.”

“Cute Guy.”

“A
real
name.”

Her mother’s lips tightened. “Yes, I believe The Facebook is calling him
Mysterious
Cute Guy.”

Mallory put a finger to her twitching eye. “Okay, for the last time, it’s not
The
Facebook, it’s just
Facebook
.”

“Honey, please. It’s time you came to your senses. You’re going to end up as wild and crazy as Joe and Tammy, and that’s not who you are.”

“Mom, Joe is only twenty-four. He’s not ready to settle down, so a little wild and crazy is okay. And Tammy is settled down in her own wild and crazy way. Maybe it’s not what you wanted for her but she’s adjusted and happy. What’s wrong with being like them?”