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“I’m not stubborn, I’m mature.” She laughed. “Besides, if I worked for the school, I could negotiate tuition for Jimmy into the deal, and we’d keep exactly the same hours.”
“That makes sense. And it is a good school,” Jenna acknowledged with a sympathetic smile. “Jimmy’d like the horses.”
“That’s what I thought. But it’s not like I have the option of taking the job.”
“Well, there are minuses to it too. This is probably for the best.”
“Unemployment, in this case, is not for the best.”
“Surely there’s something else you can do that would fit the bill. Somewhere.”
Across the room, Luke had stopped and was talking to a petite blonde with a heart-shaped butt and a waist the size of Grace’s thigh. Drawing her attention away from the two, Grace pulled the bowl of peanuts over and took some. To hell with fat grams. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll find something else,” she said, still watching Luke with a growing constriction in her chest. Nerves. But the anxiety she was trying to escape continued to escalate. Her breath stopped when she noticed Luke glance in her direction, but he didn’t seem to see her.
Jenna followed her gaze and asked, “So why did he turn you down?”
“I’m not sure.” She’d remembered he was great-looking, of course, but she hadn’t remembered just how great-looking he was. The jerk. “I believe he thinks I’m not clever enough to pass the test and then drive the big, bad bus,” Grace said, taking a last sip of beer. Part of her was actually reluctant to leave, but she didn’t trust herself to be entirely civil to Luke if he should see her. “And if I screwed up after he’d hired me, he’d look really bad in front of the board.”
Suddenly, Luke turned and walked purposefully in her direction. It felt as though all the noise and music and people receded into the background. Grace was as acutely aware of him as she would have been if he were following her down a dark alley with a ski mask on.
Before she could turn away and pretend she hadn’t seen him, he raised a hand in greeting, and she had no choice but to do the same.
“The usual,” he called.
“Sorry?” Grace said, at the same time hearing a voice behind her say, “You got it, Luke,” over the din of the band and the crowd around them.
Oh, God, he wasn’t even talking to her. He’d been waving at someone behind her, and she’d waved right on back at him, like a fool. Would this day never end?
He walked right past her without acknowledgment. Then he stopped and stood behind her at the bar, apparently oblivious to her presence. He wasn’t more than two feet away from her back. She could feel the heat of him, penetrating the thin fabric of her shirt.
She slipped some money out of her purse and whispered to Jenna, “Pay the bill and meet me outside.” She had to get away before he did notice her.
“Grace?” Too late. It was Luke’s voice. He’d spotted her.
She turned with as much cool as she could muster. “Oh. Hey, Luke. Did you hire someone for that job from the hundreds of people I saw lined up by the garage when I was leaving?”
He didn’t play along. “I left a message on your answering machine.” His voice was clipped. The bartender handed him a bottle of beer with no glass. He took a gulp of it, then let out a short breath. “You get it?”
“A message?” Grace was mystified.
His eyes, which had seemed such a warm shade of brown earlier, were hard. “You got the job.” His mouth turned up in the smallest ironic smile. “Surprise.”
Grace caught her breath. She was employed? Really? This was too good to be true—or was it? “I don’t understand. The other day you told me I didn’t.”
He took another draw off his drink and set it down, hard, on the bar. Foam bubbled out of the top and ran over onto the gleaming wood bar. “I’ve been outvoted.”
Her excitement turned to apprehension. He was angry about something. Had Mr. Bailey said something to him after all? “What do you mean you’ve been outvoted?” she asked cautiously.
He lowered his chin fractionally and gave her a look that could, under the right circumstances, have been extremely sexy, but which was, instead, downright accusatory.
Something cold slithered down her spine.
“I mean,” he said, with too much patience, “that starting in three short weeks, it’ll be your job to sit on a seat covered with chewed gum, in a vehicle equipped with a Bodily Fluid Clean-up Kit, surrounded by screaming kids. Just like you wanted.” One side of his mouth cocked into a smile. “This must be a dream come true for you.”
His iciness left little doubt that Fred Bailey had indeed leaned on him.
“I applied for that job without help from anyone,” she said defensively.
“And I turned you down without help from anyone.” He drank, then leveled his eyes on Grace. “If it had stopped there, we’d have no problem.”
“What happened?”
“Fred Bailey happened,” he said, confirming her fears. “He strongly ‘suggested’ that I reconsider you for the position, no matter how unqualified you are. What did you do, call him from your cell phone as soon as you got outside?”
“No!” Grace was hurt by the accusation. “I saw him in the parking lot when I left, and he asked what I was doing there. When I told him what happened, he offered to talk to you, but I declined. I had no idea he’d done it anyway, and I’m sorry he did.”
“This is the way things have always worked for you, Grace.” Luke shook his head and took an angry slug of his beer, hammering it back down on the countertop.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“That means it’s always been easy for you. You’ve always known just what you wanted and gotten it.” He lowered his voice slightly and added, “No matter what the cost.”
She railed in anger. “That’s not true. Number one, if you think this is my dream job and I went after it pulling all the powerful strings I could because I wanted it so badly, you’re crazy. And number two, I would hardly say my life is easy. You have a lot of nerve making presumptions of any sort about me.” She caught her breath. “And what do you mean ‘no matter what the cost’?”
He looked as though he was about to fire back at her, then stopped. “That’s none of my business. It’s between you and whoever you make your deals with. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“That’s right, you shouldn’t. You have no right to judge me, Luke Stewart. No right at all.”
“I’ll keep my thoughts to myself from now on.”
“Right,” she said. “Like you always have, huh? Like you even can. You may not say anything, but you have a way of getting your disapproval across.”
“I don’t think you want to have that conversation,” Luke said, in a voice that assured her that she did not.
“I don’t want to have any conversation with you!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then you’re going to find it particularly tedious to work for me, don’t you think?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “So what do you want me to do? You want me to say I won’t take the job?” she asked, fighting the urge to do just that. “You want me to quit before I even start?”
He gave a quick shake of the head. “Oh, no, I don’t want you to quit. I want you to come in tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. and start learning the parts of the engine.” He gave a quick, humorless smile. “You had your chance to decline. Now you have to go through with this. We need a driver and, like it or not, you’re it.”
Chapter Four
Three weeks later, Grace knew more about school buses than she’d ever dreamed she would. It was Wednesday, two days before she was set to take the test for her commercial driver’s license and five days before the first day of summer school—when she was supposed to begin driving.
Assuming she passed the test, that was.
It apparently had a first-time failure rate of 49 percent. Grace would have accepted those odds more comfortably if she hadn’t already come out on the short end of the 47-percent failure rate of first marriages.
She and Luke stood before the bus in the early-morning heat. It was not yet nine o’clock. Luke had insisted that Grace meet him on campus every day at 7:00 a.m. so they could get their work done before it got too hot and humid outside. Or so he said. She suspected the early hour was really because he wanted to make this whole experience as miserable as possible for her.
“All right,” Luke said, taking a sip of steaming coffee from a paper gas-station cup. “The test official is going to ask you to go through an outside sight inspection first, identifying all the major parts of the engine and frame.”
“How can you drink steamy coffee on a hot morning like this?” Grace asked. “You know, they make whipped frozen coffees that are really good.”
He gave her a look. “Is it necessary to discuss my drink preferences, or can we just move forward with what’s actually important?”
“Okay, okay. Move on.” She took a deep breath, like an athlete preparing for a sprint. “I’m ready.”
He stepped back and gestured toward the bus. “Then go for it. Tell me everything you’re checking as you do it.”
“Okay.” Her hands tingled with nervousness, but she wasn’t about to admit to him that this was harder than she thought it would be. If he noticed her shake, she’d blame it on the frozen whipped coffee she’d had on her way in. “First I check the headlights, taillights and brake lights, to make sure there are no cracks.” She walked around the bus, looking at all the plastic covers on the lights as she spoke, then stopped where she’d started again. “Everything looks fine.”
“Everything?” he asked, as if he’d caught her in a lie.
“Oh, the reflectors.” She’d nearly forgotten the reflectors again. For some reason she had made that mistake almost every time. She made another round, then came back and looked to Luke for approval.
He said nothing, just watched her impassively.
She wasn’t going to let him rattle her. “Okay, then. Tires.”
“What about them?” His mouth almost lifted into a smile. Almost.
She couldn’t help but admire the curve of his lips. That was something she’d always noticed whenever she saw him. He had a great mouth. Not full and girlish, but not lipless and hard. Just right.
And, she remembered with a reluctant shiver, he’d known just how to use it.
“Tires?” he prompted. “What are you supposed to look for there?”
She shook herself back into the moment. Tires. “The tread has to be four thirty-seconds of an inch, the rims have to be rust-free and smooth. No cracks. Valve caps on. And you can’t just take them off another car in the parking lot like you could with a normal car.”
“Is this the kind of thing you’re planning to say to the cop who tests you?”
She ignored his question and turned to kneel in front of the first tire. She half suspected Luke might have changed it since she went through this drill yesterday, but it looked the same. “So now I’m supposed to take the hubcap off—” she wrestled with it until it came free “—and check the slugs and grease seal.”
“Lugs,” Luke said.
“Huh?”
“It’s lugs. You keep saying slugs.” For the first time in two weeks he smiled. “You’re talking about tires, not guns.”
“I said lugs,” she lied, disarmed by his grin. What a weapon he had there. “You heard wrong.”
“Uh-huh.” He could see right through her.
She’d always been a terrible liar. “Where was I?”
“You mentioned tread, rims, valve caps, grease seals and ‘slugs,’” Luke said. There was a light in his eyes for a moment, but it dimmed quickly and he was back to business. “Anything else?”
Obviously he had something in mind. What was she forgetting now? She repeated the list in her mind twice before it came to her. “Air! I’m checking the air pressure. And making sure there’s no fabric showing through the rubber tire. Although, frankly, isn’t this the kind of thing they check for you at the gas station when you go to full service?”
“You’re not going to full service anymore, Grace,” Luke said. “At least not on the school’s dime.”
He was right—she wasn’t living in a full-service world anymore. Not here or at home. She went back to her drill, checking each tire in turn. “Next I check the wiper blades, the gas door,” she moved from one part to the next as she spoke, “and the running board.” She stepped on it and pushed hard with her foot. The bus rocked.
What would Michael say if he knew she could identify a running board?
“What are you checking for?”
She was ready with the answer. “To make sure it’s secured tightly.”
“Good.”
This was high praise from Luke. She gave a nod of acknowledgment, her mood lightening. “Now, Mr. Tester, if you wouldn’t mind helping me, I need to make sure the lights are working properly.”
“This isn’t a magic show, Grace,” Luke said. Or, rather, growled. “You’ve got to take this seriously.”
He wasn’t going to allow her even a moment of levity, Grace realized. And he certainly wasn’t going to let her act as if they were friends. This was all business, nothing more.
She was lucky he didn’t insist she call him “sir.”
“Forgive me,” she said, stopping just short of rolling her eyes. “But you said I’m supposed to have a second person, in this case the MVA guy looks at the lights while I turn them on and off.”
“That’s right. Just don’t get cute.”
“God forbid.”
“Well, I know that’s gotten you through a lot of things in life—”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve been cruising on cute for years now, Luke. It worked wonders with the mortgage holder when Michael left.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Cute got me lots of clams in the bank too. This bus stuff is just a hobby for me.”
He looked at her for a moment, one eyebrow raised and an expression between amusement and exasperation on his face. “You finished?”
“Are you?”
“For now.” He smiled again. Twice in one day. It was a record.
She couldn’t help but smile back. Which really galled her. Was she so desperate for kindness that this little morsel—even from Luke Stewart, who couldn’t be called friendly, much less a friend—made her feel so grateful? “Then if I may continue…?”
He nodded.
She opened the side door, stepped into the already-hot interior of the bus and took a moment to compose herself.
She inserted the key into the ignition and called out as she flipped switches, “Taillights, brake lights.” She stepped on the brake pedal, recited, “Back-up lights,” then put it in reverse. “Tag lights on?”
“Yup.”
“Great.” She shifted back into park. “Now I have to check the engine.” She located the hood latch and pulled it. Then, with false confidence, she stepped out into the sun again, moving in front of the engine.
