Why? Why couldn’t have I screwed up with something Mr. Cooper had ordered me to do? He’d be disappointed in me, but at least he wouldn’t give me the death glare. He wouldn’t get rid of me.
On the other side of the Eclipse parked next to me, I spotted my two coworkers looking over at me, being nosey as shit. Owen and Miguel weren’t even trying to hide that they were eavesdropping. I wasn’t even sure what Miguel was doing here so late, much less why he was helping Owen, but oh well.
I forced myself not to curse Jason’s name. It was kind of his fault that this was even happening. If he had done his job, I would have already started painting the car by the time Rip had come to find me in the break room.
But at the end of the day, I could still only blame myself for not double-checking the work order.
I waved at my coworkers. “Owen, tell your daughter I said happy birthday!” I called out.
They both grinned, but it was Owen who gave me a thumbs-up. But they didn’t look away. Whoever had spread the rumor that women were worst gossips than men had never worked with a group of men on a regular basis before.
“Luna, what the fuck is up?” Rip asked, his tone finally genuinely taking on an impatient streak to it.
Now or never.
“Umm,” I trailed off some more, forcing myself to look away from Miguel and Owen and look down at the hint of an elbow that had started moving again inside the GTO.
“You gonna say something or not? This needs to get done,” he kept going, sounding even more aggravated and impatient.
I could do it. I had to.
“Luna,” Rip drew out my name, any and all ease finally gone from his voice.
“Rip,” I started, closing both my eyes for a moment. “I screwed up.”
There was a pause, and then he asked, slowly, so, so slowly I wasn’t a fool enough to assume he hadn’t heard me. “What’s that?”
He was going to make me do this. Of course he was. “I screwed up,” I repeated. I didn’t deserve to wince. This really was my fault. And Jason’s. “I picked up the wrong work order for the Thunderbird. Instead of the Brittany Blue, I did the Silver Mink that had been on the original form, and I already started before it hit me.” I did it. I had freaking done it. I knew it was pointless and didn’t mean a thing, but I still threw in, “I’m really, really sorry.”
At some point, his elbow stopped moving. Hell, I was pretty sure he even stopped breathing because the two inches of his upper half that weren’t hidden inside the car weren’t moving either. Oh, hell.
“It’s my fault. I just… I spaced. I should have double-checked the system and I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
Still, he said nothing.
Crap.
“I can stay late tonight to start fixing it. Monday I can do the primer, and if I stay late, I can get all caught up again….”
He’d stopped listening. I could tell. So I stopped talking.
His body had started to move as I had blabbed on. First I noticed more of his abs, then his upper chest, followed by his neck, and finally his head came out from inside the car he was gutting. Those intense eyes zeroed in on me from a carefully blank face I had seen before, usually from a distance. Usually as an observer and not the focus of it.
And I knew. I freaking knew…
He was going to ream me.
Lucas Ripley didn’t let me down. His voice was calm and almost cold as he said, “I specifically asked you if you needed to write that shit down. ’Member that?”
Oh, man. It was going to go bad.
What else could I do but nod?
Those almost green-blue eyes didn’t even flicker. “I asked you if you needed me to write it down and you said no,” he kept going, staring at me with that furious face that was so roughly handsome, I didn’t want to look at it, not then. His voice got even cooler, if that was even possible, and I swear I could feel the skin on my back prickling. “And I’m gonna have to pay you overtime for work that was already done?” He narrowed those intense eyes. “I have to pay you to fix a mistake you did?”
All I could do was stand there.
I had messed up. There was no escaping that. “Rip, I’m sorry. I’ve never made a mistake like this before—”
That giant hand speckled in some kind of oil or grease sliced across the center of his body. “That’s not the fucking point, Luna,” he snapped, looking up at me. “It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of money. It’s a waste of fucking paint.” Rip shook that dark brown head of hair that had just a few lines of silver through it, just in time for his birthday that upcoming Monday.
He was laying it on real thick, and I was taking it all in, feeling worse and worse by the second. He was right. He would have gotten mad at anyone who made the same mistake; that only microscopically made me feel better. “I’m sorry. I’ll stay late, and you don’t have to pay me. I know it’s my fault,” I replied, hoping Owen and Miguel couldn’t hear how pitchy my voice had gotten. I had to clench my fists when the urge to crack my knuckles got bad.
My boss raised his thick, dark eyebrows in a way that confirmed I wasn’t going to get out of anything, and I definitely wasn’t going to get absolved of a freaking thing. “Now you’re gonna try and give me a goddamn guilt trip for telling you shit any boss would?” His eyebrows lowered, and that mouth I thought was pretty sexy on good days stayed in a scowl. “You’re not gonna make me feel bad, Luna. You fucked up and that’s the end of the story.”
I had fucked up. I wasn’t trying to make it seem any other way. I nodded at him, making sure to avoid glancing over at where I had last seen my coworkers standing. “I know, Rip. I’m not trying to. I’m sorry,” I told him.
He shook his head. Shook me off. The man pulled out a clean-ish rag from inside his coveralls and swept it over his face as he muttered, “Sorry doesn’t fix shit.”
Of course it didn’t. I’d learned that lesson long before he’d come into my life.
“I know that. I’ll do everything myself. I’ll get started on it—”
His face was still covered as he breathed out, “Don’t bother.”
What did that mean?
“But I can do it. I know it’s my fault—”
“No.” He moved the cloth away from his face and zeroed in on mine instantly. His jaw was set, and if I’d had any doubts he was pissed, I would have gotten a confirmation then. There were more lines at his forehead than I had ever seen before. “Keep the paint the same goddamn color you already did,” he grumbled, dragging the rag roughly over his hands as his eyes pretty much burned a hateful hole straight into the middle of my features. “For the record, it’s fucking bullshit.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, ignoring the fact that I was pretty sure my coworkers had started creeping closer to us to hear better.
Rip shook his head again. “Sorry doesn’t fix your mistake. Go paint the car the color you already started.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore, Luna.” He glanced up at the ceiling before saying in a crystal-clear voice, “And this is going down in your file.”
In my file? As in strike one? Strike one of three that would get me fired? Was that how these things worked? I hadn’t even known that was a thing.
I stared at him, pressed my lips together, and then I sucked in a breath through my nose. I wasn’t going to get upset over getting in trouble. I wasn’t.
Rip, on the other hand, watched me with that quietly furious freaking face that said he didn’t even want to look at me in the first place. He didn’t want to look at my face that was usually makeup-less minus the pink lipstick I wore every day. He didn’t want to look at the cotton-candy blue hair I had kept over the last year. He didn’t want to look at me.
He wouldn’t be the first person.
“I am sorry,” I said to him, trying to cling onto whatever was left of my pride while feeling all of about an inch tall.