Plain Jane's Secret Life. Cathy Thacker Gillen
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Dylan waited.
“No more kisses.”
“Unless, of course, you initiate them.” He grinned.
Hannah scoffed. “I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.”
Given the way she was looking at him now, he wouldn’t either. Still, he owed her. “You’re a real pal, Hannah,” Dylan told her as they headed companionably for the door. “Not that it’s any surprise you’re so understanding,” he continued, glad the mood was relaxing between them once again.
The shift from potential lover to platonic buddy was not as welcome as Dylan had hoped it would be to Hannah. “And why is that?” she asked him warily. She paused, her hand on the doorknob.
“I don’t know exactly.” Dylan struggled to put into words his feelings about her natural ability to put a man at ease. “Maybe because you’ve spent so much time with the guys, growing up, you’re almost like one of us. And bottom line,” he said as he patted her on the back in lieu of the kiss good-night he would have preferred, “guys help their buddies out.”
“ONE OF THE GUYS,” Hannah was still fuming the next morning when she went to work at the garage. Didn’t that just take the cake!
“I don’t think he was trying to insult you, honey,” Slim Kerstetter said. Hannah’s only employee, the sixty-year-old Slim had worked at the garage since he was a teenager himself, staying on after Hannah’s grandfather died and the business came into her hands. “He was probably just trying to compliment you, and it came out all wrong. Guys do that, you know.”
Hannah glanced at Slim. As usual, Slim was wearing baggy jeans and a short-sleeved shirt rolled up to expose his biceps. He’d been to the barber the day before and his salt-and-pepper hair was shorn down to a quarter-inch. “Not in this case,” Hannah said. “In this instance, Dylan Hart knew exactly what he was saying.”
Slim sent her a sly look. The fact he was a lifelong bachelor with only one real love—NASCAR—did not keep him from dispensing romantic advice. “If you want him to see you as a girlie-girl, start dressing and acting like one.” Slim removed the fuel pump from the Lexus he was working on while Hannah continued running diagnostics on a Mercedes.
“If I did that, no one would want me working on their cars,” she said.
“Then you got yourself a dilemma, don’t you, sweetheart?” Slim teased as a familiar Lamborghini pulled in.
“Hey, Hannah,” Emma Donovan-Hart waved at Hannah cheerfully as she got out of the car. “I brought my dad’s car in for servicing.”
“That was nice of you,” Hannah said to her good friend, who was the premiere wedding planner in the area. She wished she could feel even one tenth as blissfully in love and contented as Emma looked these days.
Emma strode closer, her cap of dark, chin-length curls bouncing as she moved. “Yeah, well, Dad’s having a crisis with the hockey team. Seems one of the Carolina Storm’s announcers quit yesterday to take a job with the Cable Sports News network. He’s getting his own weekly interview show, so it’s a great opportunity for him. My parents both wish him well, but now they’re in a mess because they need to hire his replacement by week’s end.”
“Do you need a ride to work at the Wedding Inn?”
“Thanks, but Joe’s taking me over.”
No sooner had Joe and Emma driven off than Cal Hart pulled in. “You want to get that or shall I?” Slim said.
“I’ll handle it,” Hannah said, walking out to Cal. The six-foot-two surgeon had ash-blond hair and gray eyes and an easygoing, compassionate nature Hannah warmed to. Whereas Dylan was her age—Cal was thirty-four. Because Cal had been so far ahead of her in school, she hadn’t known him all that well until two years ago when he returned to Holly Springs to practice medicine. Now he was like a brother to her.
“Let’s go up to my office,” Hannah said. “It’s more private there.” She led the way through the garage, up the stairs at the back, down a short hall, past the garage’s only bathroom, to a small room that overlooked the alley. It was crowded with file and supply cabinets, two chairs, a desk, phone and the computer she used for looking up parts and obscure repair manuals on the Internet. These days, a computer and all the information that could be gleaned from one was a mechanic’s best tool.
“Sorry I phoned so late last night,” Cal said.
Hannah knew how upset Cal had been lately. Her heart went out to him. It was rough, not knowing where you stood, or if and when things would ever work out. “No problem.”
“I got the feeling I was interrupting something,” Cal said.
No kidding, Hannah thought, her mind going back to the fevered kisses that had left her reeling, both physically and emotionally. “Your brother Dylan was there.” Briefly, Hannah explained how Dylan had tracked her down to get his suitcase.
Cal sighed and shoved his hands through the short, traditionally cut layers of his hair. “So you didn’t even have time to shoot a game of pool with R. G. Yarborough,” he noted, obviously disappointed.
About that, Hannah felt only relief. “No, but I had plenty of time to size him up,” she told Cal grimly. “Yarborough’s every bit as narcissistic and self-centered as you said. To get what we want from him we’re going to have proceed carefully.”
SLIM KERSTETTER GRINNED as Dylan walked up. “Beginning to look like a regular Hart family reunion around here,” he drawled as he moved a car up in the air via hydraulic lift.
“Say again?” Dylan blinked.
“First Emma and Joe.” Slim picked up his tools and stepped beneath the belly of the vehicle. “Then Cal. Now you. And not a one of you had an appointment to get your car fixed. Yep. I’d say that’s a record, all right.”
And Cal’s Jeep was still parked in one of the spaces. Dylan pushed away the feeling of unease. “Where is Hannah?” he asked.
“In her office.” Slim pulled a kerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat from his forehead. “And Dylan—a word to the wise. You plan to get anywhere with that gal, you got to stop treating her like one of the guys.”
What the hell was that about? Hannah couldn’t have told him about the kisses they’d shared, or had she? “I’ll take that under advisement.” Pulse picking up, Dylan rounded the corner, past the hydraulic lifts, to the stairs at the rear of the garage.
He mounted them silently and strode just as soundlessly down the short hall, beyond the restroom. The door to her office was closed. Through the glass top half he could see Hannah sitting on the desk, her face tilted up at Cal. They were talking intently. Or so it appeared. As Dylan neared, their voices drifted toward him. “Difficult but not impossible,” Hannah was saying. “Trust me. If there’s anything I know, it’s men and their—”
“Well, yeah,” Cal concurred, his voice cutting off whatever it was she’d said.
“Everyone has a weakness,” Hannah continued matter-of-factly. “Something in his life that’ll make him prone to deal. We just have to find his. And as soon as we do—”
“I feel kind of sleazy just talking about this,” Cal lamented, running both hands through his hair.
Jealousy twisted Dylan’s gut as he watched Hannah reach over and pat Cal’s arm.
“I wouldn’t lose any sleep over our…” She hesitated, as if searching for the proper word.
“Manipulation?” Cal guessed dryly.
Hannah dropped her hand. “What is important is that we get what you want and come out ahead,” Hannah continued sternly.
“It still feels like a con job,” Cal protested in a low, guilty voice.
Hannah