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So what? She’s Steve’s ex. Doesn’t matter what good deeds you want to perform, Boy Scout. She’s out-of-bounds.
She was. Even if she and Steve had ended things amicably, the same would be true.
Which meant it really was time to stop thinking about her.
Harry reached for the remote, cranked up the volume and pretended that that was what he was doing.
PIPPA PRACTICALLY LEAPED down the steps the next morning, eager to get into the day. She had a car again! She felt as though she was rejoining the modern world after a week in the Stone Age.
Alice talked to herself in the backseat as Pippa drove to the village, her head full of plans. Once she had restocked the pantry, she might make a run to the library to check if the textbooks she’d ordered for her classes had arrived. Then she should probably get a head start on the five-thousand-word assignment that was due before the end of the month.
But first there was something she wanted to do. She parked in front of the liquor store and strapped Alice into her stroller, then went inside and bought some beer. The salesman helped her stow it on the rack at the back of the stroller before she exited and crossed the road. A bell rang as she entered the cement-floored reception area of Village Motors and a young girl looked up from behind the counter.
“Hi. How can I help you?”
Pippa offered up her best smile. “Would it be possible to speak to Mr. Porter?”
The girl’s gaze flicked between Pippa, Alice and the beer. Lord only knew what she was thinking.
“I’ll see if he’s busy,” she said primly.
Pippa pushed the stroller back and forth while she waited, hoping to keep Alice distracted. When Alice started vocalizing, she squatted to play peek-a-boo, making her daughter smile.
“I’m Mike Porter. How can I help you?” a deep voice asked.
She glanced up to find a powerfully built older man with a graying horseshoe mustache and Harry’s eyes and nose towering over her. Like Harry, he was tall and broad. She would have recognized him as Harry’s father anywhere.
She stood. “My name is Pippa White. I own a bright yellow hatchback. Your son Harry repaired it for me….”
“Right. The head gasket.”
“That’s me. I wanted to drop by and say thank you for your help, and to offer you a small token of my appreciation.”
She collected the carton of beer from the luggage rack, offering it to him. His forehead pleated into a perplexed frown.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said gruffly.
“I wanted to. I really appreciate what you and Harry did for us. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have a car again.” Her arms were starting to get tired and she adjusted her grip a fraction. “Unless you like your beer frothy, you might want to grab this. I’m afraid my upper-body strength isn’t what it should be.”
“Sorry.” Mike took the carton, placing it on the counter. He looked uncomfortable and a little uncertain as he faced her. Pippa stifled a smile. Like Harry, he didn’t know what to do with her gratitude.
“Please take it. It’s a tiny fraction of what the repairs would have cost, and I really want to acknowledge your generosity.”
“Harry won’t like this. He was pretty keen to help you out.”
For some reason, his words sent a wash of warmth up her chest and into her face.
“I know. But he needs to accept that I’m pretty keen to thank you for that help, too.”
Mike’s gaze moved to Alice, his mustache twitching around his smile as he studied her round face. “This your daughter?”
“Yes. Alice.”
“How old is she?”
“A little over six months.”
His gaze returned to her and she could tell he’d made a decision. “Thanks for the beer, Pippa. It won’t go to waste. And I’ll be sure to direct Harry’s comments your way when he hears about it.”
She smiled. “You do that. I can handle it.” She slid her hand into her handbag and grasped her checkbook. “Now, I don’t suppose you could tell me what I owe for parts?”
Mike’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “You don’t need to worry about all that. Harry covered everything.”
“I know. That’s why I want to make sure he isn’t out of pocket. It’s one thing to give up his time, but I can’t let him pay for parts, as well.”
Mike shook his head. “Sorry, but that’s something you’ll have to take up with Harry.”
“Mr. Porter—”
“Mike.”
“Mike. Harry is a great guy, but I don’t feel comfortable having him pay out money on my behalf. I know I didn’t ask and he offered, but I can afford to cover the parts, and I really want to. It’s important to me. I’ve got Alice to look after now and standing on my own two feet means a lot.” She could hear the emotion vibrating in her voice and she swallowed. For a woman who had spent much of her adult life merely getting by, being responsible for another person was a profound shift. More than anything, she wanted to be up to the challenge, to be worthy of Alice. That meant not relying on her mother or anyone else. Definitely it meant not taking handouts if she didn’t have to.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” Mike said after a short silence. “Things were tough when we first had Justine, our eldest, but I still had my fair share of pride. I get it.”
“So you’ll let me reimburse you?” she asked hopefully.
He allowed himself a small smile at her persistence, but he shook his head. “I’ll tell you what the parts are worth. You can take repayment up with Harry.”
Which meant she had yet another battle on her hands, but so be it.
Mike pulled open the top drawer of a beaten-up filing cabinet. After a few seconds he extracted a folder and opened it.
“Okay. The gasket itself was fifty, but you’ve got an aluminum head, which had to be resurfaced before the gasket was replaced, so that was three hundred. Then there was five liters of oil at thirty, a new oil filter at twenty-five for a grand total of four-oh-five.” He glanced at her. “Which Harry can well afford, by the way.”
Pippa pulled out her phone and made a note of the figure on the notepad app. “So can I. Thanks for this, Mike. I appreciate it.”
“My pleasure. I appreciate you taking the time to drop in. Not sure I’ll feel the same once Harry hears what went down, but I’m still bigger than he is so he can suck it up.”
Pippa wasn’t too sure about him being bigger than Harry—it looked like a pretty close call to her—but she offered Mike her hand, said thanks once again, then pushed a dozing Alice outside. She paused, thinking about how Harry had shouldered four hundred and five dollars on her behalf without so much as batting an eyelid, yet his best friend wouldn’t even pick up the phone to discuss his daughter’s welfare.
Someone sure picked the wrong hell-raiser to fall into bed with.
It was a dumb thought and she pushed it away the moment it occurred to her. It wasn’t as though she’d ever had a choice between Steve and Harry—Harry hadn’t even been around when she’d started going out with Steve. He’d been on holiday, touring the U.S., and she and Steve had been seeing each other for nearly a month by the time he returned home.
She could still remember the day she’d first set eyes on him. He’d walked in the door of Steve’s place, two small silver rings shining in his right earlobe, tattoos black against tanned arms, and more than a little intimidating in a plain black T-shirt, worn jeans and steel-toed boots. Here comes trouble had been her first thought. Then he’d smiled and she’d seen the mischief, curiosity and intelligence in his eyes and she’d realized he was trouble—just not the kind she’d first anticipated.
Alice shifted, making the stroller rock, and Pippa snapped to. She had things to do. She didn’t have time to stand around lollygagging. Especially not over Harry.
Her step brisk, she headed for the supermarket.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE REST OF the day sped by. She left Alice with a fellow student she traded babysitting duties with while she went to the university to get a head start on her assignment, a dry-as-dust examination of “the effect of government policy on the new national curriculum.” She collected Alice midafternoon and swung by the gallery to check her roster for the next week. She’d requested extra shifts when she’d still been flailing around, trying to work out how to pay for car repairs, and she saw that her boss, Gaylene, had come to the party. The two extra shifts would mean some juggling of Pippa’s schedule, but the extra money would give her the opportunity to build a little nest egg so that the next time life threw her a curve ball, she wouldn’t feel quite so desperate.
In theory.
She thanked Gaylene, then checked the time. It was a little after five. She chewed her lip, then decided that this was as good a time as any to swing by Harry’s place to see if he was around. It was tempting to simply leave the money in an envelope under his door when she knew he’d be at work, but leaving it without talking to him smacked of cowardice, and she wasn’t afraid of him or the argument they were bound to have over her insistence on repayment. Far from it.
Pippa had only been to his place once when Steve had parked in the drive and honked the horn to let Harry know they were there to pick him up. Consequently, she knew the street but not the house number, but the big black muscle car in the driveway put paid to any doubts she might have had that she had the right place. The house itself was nondescript, a seventies brown brick with a neatly manicured lawn and a garage to the rear.
She pulled into the driveway, aware that her pulse had sped up and butterflies were doing a lap of her stomach in anticipation of the battle to come. She checked on Alice and discovered she was fast asleep. Well, Pippa was only going to be a minute, so there was no point disturbing her. She cracked the window to ensure there was a breeze and got out of the car.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” filtered through the warm afternoon air as she made her way to the front door. She knocked and waited. Seconds ticked past and she grew more and more tense. Which was ridiculous. This was Harry, and she’d already established she wasn’t even remotely scared of locking horns with him.
When he didn’t appear, she knocked again and tapped her foot impatiently. When he still didn’t answer, she stepped back and regarded the house. The music told her that someone was home, and it belatedly occurred to her that he might not be able to hear her over the racket. She walked to the side of the house and peered up the driveway. The side door of the garage was open, and the music seemed to be emanating from there. Maybe he was working on a car or something.
She checked on Alice, then made her way past the house. The music switched to Pearl Jam as she neared the garage and she took a deep breath.
“Knock knock,” she said as she stepped into the doorway.
And promptly lost the power of speech.
Harry was lying on his back on an incline bench, part of what was clearly an elaborate home gym. His chest was bare, sweat glistening on the muscles, his legs bent at the knee, his feet planted wide. A pair of faded tracksuit pants cut off raggedly at the knee rode low on his hips, and his stomach muscles rippled with effort as he pumped a loaded barbell above his head.
He looked … amazing. Huge. Sweaty. Ridiculously masculine. For the first time she saw that the tribal tattoos that snaked around his arms also flowed onto the left side of his chest, licking up his side like sinuous black flames. His pecs were powerfully defined, his nipples flat brown circles. A dark trail of hair bisected his belly, traveling down from his navel and disappearing beneath his low waistband.
She swallowed and became aware that she was clutching the envelope in her fist and staring like a nun at a strip show. She blinked, cleared her throat.
She’d seen near-naked men before, after all. So what if none of them had looked like Conan the Barbarian? It was no big deal. She wasn’t even that into muscle-bound men anyway.
She cleared her throat a second time and knocked on the open door.
“Hey. Harry, you got a minute?” she called over the music.
The barbell crashed onto the uprights on either side of the bench as Harry registered her presence.
“Pippa.” He looked surprised—and, unless she was wildly mistaken, pleased. As though he was happy to see her.
He sat up, an action which caused his abdominal muscles to do amazing things, then leaned over to turn down the volume on the stereo. “What’s up?”
“I came by to drop this off.” She waved the envelope.
His gaze went from it to her, then he snagged a hand towel from the adjacent bench and wiped first his face then his chest.
“If that’s money, I don’t want it.”
“It’s four hundred and five dollars. Fifty for the gasket. Three hundred for resurfacing the head. Twenty-five for the oil filter and thirty for the oil.”
“You spoke to Dad.”
“I did. I took him some beer to say thank you.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I did. Just like I have to do this.”
She took a few steps into the room and slid the envelope onto the workbench that ran along the rear wall.
“Pippa …”
She held up a hand. “Harry, you need to let me do this. I am incredibly grateful for what you did, but it’s enough that you gave me eight-plus hours of your time. I can’t let you cover the parts, as well.”
He scowled and pushed himself to his feet, setting off another chain reaction of rippling muscles. She fought the need to take a step backward as he advanced on her, reaching to grab the envelope.
“I’m not taking this,” he said, thrusting it into her hand.
“Well, that makes two of us,” she said, pulling her hand away before he could release the money.
His scowl deepened. This close she could see that his skin was still damp. She could smell his deodorant, too, and see the veins in his arms where his muscles were pumped from his workout.
“I can’t take money from you. Put it toward something else,” he said.
“You put it toward something else.”
Like maybe a pair of workout pants that didn’t seem as though they were in imminent danger of falling off his narrow hips.
“You mentioned being a graceful receiver the other night. Here’s a newsflash for you—you could do with some lessons,” he said.
“I am grateful. But I’m not a charity case. I don’t need you paying my way.”
“Who said anything about you being a charity case?”
An inch of what looked like black boxer-briefs showed at his waist. She felt a little dizzy, a little overwhelmed by all the raw masculinity on display.
“If you don’t think I’m a charity case, let me pay for the parts,” she said, trying to stop her gaze from sliding down his body.
“No. I wanted to help you and Alice. I did. End of story. I’m not taking your money.” He grabbed her hand, slapping the envelope into it. “Save it for when the car breaks down next time, which it will, because it’s a piece of yellow crap.”
He was probably right, but her back went up anyway.
“Just because it’s not some big macho muscle car from the days when dinosaurs roamed the planet doesn’t mean it’s a piece of crap.”
“For the record, there weren’t many dinosaurs roaming Australia in the seventies. And that hatchback is a piece of crap, and we both know it.”
“Fine. Whatever. The point is, it’s my piece of crap, and it’s my responsibility. What you did was fantastically generous, but you need to let me cover the parts, Harry.”
“Not gonna happen.”
