Pulling into the senior center parking lot, Cletus pointed to a space by the shuffleboard court. “I want to arrive before Judge Payton. He always takes the southernmost court and I want that court.”
My brother hadn’t been in a talking mood on the drive over and I knew better than to bring up hiring a receptionist given his disposition. We drove in silence, with Cletus staring silently out the passenger window.
We’d have to butter him up first. Maybe have Duane make blueberry pancakes, or pretend like we enjoyed his foul coffee. Then, we’d spring the idea on him.
I navigated to the spot he’d indicated, and that’s when I noticed Mrs. Cooper’s Cadillac parked awkwardly, taking up three spaces in a mostly empty part of the lot.
Cletus jumped out of my GTO as soon as it stopped, grabbing his shuffleboard stick—or whatever it was called—from the backseat. “Come on. You can come play, too. We’ll bond.”
As I stood from my car, I motioned to Mrs. Cooper’s Caddy. “Look at that. What do you think is going on there?”
Cletus didn’t get a chance to answer, because the lady in question appeared. “Oh, thank goodness. The Winston boys.” She sounded frantic.
“Mrs. Cooper.” Cletus performed a perfunctory bow at the waist, then darted around her. “Beau is ready to be of assistance.”
“Uh, sure. How can I help?” I tracked my brother, glaring at his hasty retreat. He faced me at the last minute, just before walking through the gate leading to the courts, and gave me a salute.
Sneak.
“It’s my Cadillac, dear. It’s smoking and making strange sounds. Can you take a look?” She already had her keys out and was walking toward the classic automobile.
“Of course.” I gave her a friendly grin and was happy to see some of the worry between her eyebrows ease.
Now, I’ve known Mrs. Cooper my whole life. She used to be in my momma’s poetry group at the library and my momma loved the lady. But it wasn’t until I was nineteen, and Mrs. Cooper pinched my backside and winked at me, that I understood what my brother Billy meant when he’d called the woman a cougar.
Keeping this in mind, I gestured for the lady—eighty years old if she was a day—to precede me to the car. First, because it was good manners and my mother raised me right. And second, because she was impressively agile for her age. Hell, she was impressively agile for a thirty-year-old. I didn’t want to get pinched.
Giving me a saucy grin, Mrs. Cooper sashayed toward her car, waiting for me to fall into step next to her.
“Ladies first?” she asked.
“Come on now, Mrs. Cooper,” I grinned at her, “you’re no lady.”
She laughed, clearly thrilled, and her melodic laughter put me in a good mood.
“Then you should go first.” She motioned for me to precede her.
“Nope.” I shook my head, giving her a wink. “Beauty before youth.”
She liked that answer, too. Her smile persisted, as though pleased with me and the world, while I checked under her hood.
Thankfully, the problem with her car was obvious upon inspection.
“I’m afraid you’ve got an oil leak.”
“Oh. Is that very bad?”
“Not terrible. It’s a slow leak, but not very slow. I can patch it in the short-term and refill the oil as a temporary solution. We’ll have to tow your car to the shop today. I can’t work on it here. Then I’ll order the part and get you fixed up by the end of next week if you can bring her back in.”
“That’s fine.” Mrs. Cooper flashed me a big, grateful smile, her hands fiddling with the long strand of pearls at her neck.
Course of action decided, I escorted Mrs. Cooper to the shuffleboard courts, informed Cletus of the plan, and drove the GTO to the shop.
On the way, my alarm went off on my phone, a reminder to send Darlene a text message. Turning off the alarm, I noticed I had a missed call and a text message from Drill. He was hounding me about setting up a meeting with Christine St. Claire.
Ignoring his messages, I fired off a quick, Thinking of you, how’s your day? Let me know if you have time for a call later to Darlene as I walked across the gravel lot to the garage, tucking my phone in my pocket when I was done. Darlene didn’t usually text back right away, and she never called, so there was no use waiting for her response.
What to do about Darlene had been on my mind. We’d texted sporadically since our weekend together over two weeks ago, but we hadn’t spoken on the phone. More and more, whenever I thought about things with her, I was confused rather than irritated by her apparent lack of interest in speaking to me. Her text messages were always playful, sometimes overtly suggestive, but she never volunteered anything real about herself.
I’d set myself daily reminders to send her a message, thinking that maybe—if I increased my frequency of contact—she’d take things between us more seriously and make time.
Unlocking and entering through the front office, thoughts of Darlene dissipated, replaced with a mental tally of how many quarts of oil I had on hand for Mrs. Cooper’s Cadillac. I navigated to the interior of the garage and up the steps to the second-floor workspace. We had a row of lockers on the far wall where we each kept coveralls, a change of clothes and such.
Working quickly, I unbuttoned my dress shirt, unbuckled my belt, unzipped my pants, and removed my Sunday clothes. I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t have an extra pair of boots when I saw the door open in my side vision.
I assumed it was Duane. It never entered my mind that Shelly Sullivan could be the one walking in.
But that’s who it was.
I did a double take and gave the woman a startled frown. For her part, she appeared to be equally startled, her lips parting, her gaze growing wide as it moved over me.
My brain needed two beats of my heart to recover from meeting her gaze—as usual—and then another five to realize she hadn’t moved. She was still staring. Specifically, she was staring at my torso and her attention was moving lower.
My frown deepened as I glanced down, wondering what in tarnation this belligerent individual considered fascinating about my black boxers. Finding nothing amiss, I returned my glare to her, ready to ask what her problem was.
But the words died on my tongue as I studied her face. Her cheeks and neck red and rosy with a blush, she blinked quickly, several times. Plainly embarrassed, she hadn’t come to her senses enough to avert her gaze, but it was obvious she was trying.
A jolt of awareness, or something akin to it, caused me to tense.
I hadn’t forgotten that Shelly Sullivan was a woman, but her being female had ceased to matter the day we met. She’d become an irritant—a thorn in my side, a pain in my neck—not a flesh-and-blood woman with eyes for noticing a man.