He laughed, like this was new, and it was just as nice as his smile. Just as nice as everything about him. “Nothin’ now that you aren’t coming with me.”
“You’re so full of it.” I snorted again and glanced over my shoulder once more. Rip still hadn’t come. I turned back to the other man before asking, with my eyebrows raised, “You got one?”
He raised his eyebrows right back. “I always got one for you,” he said, making it sound way flirtier than it was.
He always had them, period, but this was our game.
I dug through my purse for a dollar, then thought twice about it and grabbed another one before holding both between us. “Can I have two, please?”
“Two?” he asked as he took the bill, then opened a drawer on the other side of the counter and pulled what I wanted out as he traded it for the money. “She’s saving for a bike now.”
“A bike? What happened to the cell phone she wanted?”
Hector snickered as he closed the drawer. “That’s how long it’s been since you dropped by. She already sold enough of those things to buy her cell.”
“No way!”
“You probably paid for a quarter of it,” he said.
The sound of a throat clearing behind me told me Rip had appeared, and when I turned, I was more than a little surprised to find him looking past me. He was staring.
At Hector.
And because I knew his features well enough, I knew that face that might look carefully blank to everyone else was a lie.
He was irritated.
But by what, I had no clue.
And it wasn’t any of my business.
“How’s it goin’?” Hector asked, being as friendly as usual. “What can I help you with?”
When a moment passed and my boss didn’t say anything, I glanced at the other man and said, “Hector, this is my boss.” Like that would explain everything. “Rip, this is Hector.”
Rip though, didn’t respond, and his eyes still didn’t stray from the dead-eyed stare he was shooting the man on the other side of the counter.
Okay.
I needed to get this in gear.
I gestured toward my boss. “Ah, Rip? You want to come over here so you can narrow down some ideas?”
He didn’t move, and he didn’t look away from the other man. All right.
“Here you go, Luna,” Hector said from the other side of the counter, tapping what I knew were mango-flavored chili-covered lollipops against my forearm.
I bought one from him—from his niece to be exact—every time I came in.
Taking them, I smiled and said, “Thank you,” before pulling the plastic off the top off one and shoving the whole thing into my mouth before holding the other one out toward Rip.
His body still hadn’t moved, but those blue-green eyes had. To the lollipop. Then back over to Hector.
“I got it for you,” I told him around the pop as I balled up the wrapper with my other hand and handed it to the one man in the room who had never hurt my feelings.
“Luna said you were wanting a custom color for a couple of cars,” Hector piped up as he threw the trash away.
Rip took the lollipop from me and shoved it into his free pocket.
His eyes slid to me, and somehow I managed to raise my eyebrows at him because I didn’t get what had irritated him. “You okay?”
He tipped his chin, and I noticed the way he let out a deep breath. Noticed the way his shoulders were shoved back as he came toward the counter. Then I definitely couldn’t miss the way he stood next to me, his upper arm touching my shoulder. His boot against the side of my boot.
Maybe he did feel bad about yesterday.
It wasn’t like he ever jerked away from me before, but he’d never come up to standing right beside me either unless there was a reason. That reason being me being upset if the last two times counted. That was something to think about.
“Any ideas what you’re lookin’ for?” Hector asked, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Rip and me in a way I wasn’t sure how to take.
Just as I opened my mouth, Rip beat me to it. “Red. Blood red.”
I’m sure I looked up at him with my mouth open in surprise. Where the hell had that come from? I had literally asked him in the car if he had any ideas.
“Almost black, but not,” Rip kept going.
Hector seemed to think about it for a second before he nodded. “I can work with that. What about the other one?”
That handsome face tipped down to look at me, those intense eyes lingering on my hair for a moment before they finished the trek down to mine, and he asked, “What’s your favorite color?”
My favorite color?
Hector answered for me. “It’s white, isn’t it?”
I nodded, but I was going to blame the lollipop in my mouth for why I did. We’d had plenty of conversations about colors over the years. Of course he knew.
Rip’s gaze swung back around to me, his forehead furrowed. “White?”
I nodded again.
“Why?” he asked like even he couldn’t believe it.
I shrugged and took the lollipop out of my mouth long enough to say, “It’s classy. Everything looks good in white.”
He blinked.
“If you mix the three primaries together, you get white. I think it’s cool.” I smiled at him, for real that time. “And I’ve only painted one white car in years. I’m not sick of it yet.”
“What kind of white can you do then?” my boss asked the other man, but his gaze remained on me.
“Don’t do it because of me. You can do any color you want,” I threw in, not liking the pressure of him putting my favorite color on a car he was going to be selling.
His face was super serious. “I know.”
Okay then.
“Show me a pure, bright white with a blue undertone then,” Rip told the other man after finally turning to face him again.
Hector bobbed his head before pecking at the computer keyboard.
Well.
He really must feel bad.
Good.
*
It took about ten different tries to get the shade of red Rip had envisioned in his head, which took hours because mixing colors was literally a science that Hector had a doctorate in, and it took half as long to get the shade of white that he liked.
When Rip said I could spray a fine layer of metal flakes onto the car that was going to be the shade of white he’d chosen—white with some hints of light blue—I had “oohed” and “ahhed” because I loved doing metal flakes and didn’t get to do them all that often; cleaning up the booth and the gun afterward was time consuming and a giant pain in the butt but totally worth it.
I had barely closed the truck door as Rip loaded the paint into the back of the truck—he’d given me a look that said I was nuts when I’d gone to pick up the first container—so I’d backed off, put my hands up, and let him do it. It wasn’t like I hadn’t carried my own paint to the back of the CCC truck a thousand other times, even though Hector always offered, but if Rip wanted to do it now, so be it.
The door had barely been shut when my phone started ringing from inside my purse. I pulled it out and frowned at the screen. It was the shop’s number. “Hello?” I answered.
Instead of Mr. Cooper’s voice, or even Miguel or anyone else’s, the one I dreaded said, “When are you getting back?”
I tipped my face toward the window to my right and bit the inside of my cheek. “Soon. Why?”
“Something doesn’t look right.”
I thought about the work I’d left him with and didn’t understand how it was possible for him to screw up any part of it. He should have been done by then. He should have been helping out on the floor. “How?” I heard the edge in my own voice. I really was fed up with him. I was so fed up, I was almost to the point of being past caring about whether or not he got fired for messing up so often.
“Look… you need to get back so you can fix it,” the man-child claimed.
Just the words I wanted to hear.
I kept making a face. “Tell me what you think you did wrong, and I’ll tell you how to fix it before I get there.”
The driver door opened, and I didn’t miss the teal-colored eyes that swung toward me as Rip got in.