Love So Tender: Taking Care of Business / Play It Again, Elvis / Good Luck Charm. Joanne Rock
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he drained the bottle. She was mesmerized—more so when he grabbed a towel and wiped his chest and neck. “Wow, it’s hot.”
She couldn’t have agreed more. To derail her wicked train of thought, she opened her water bottle and poured half of it into a bowl for H.D. She resisted the temptation to douse herself with the rest of it.
“Have you ever thought of getting a real watchdog around here?” Steve asked.
Gracie pouted. “H.D. is perfect just the way he is.”
“Tell me something—what does ‘H.D.’ stand for?”
She grinned. “Hound dog, of course. What else?”
“Oh. I get it.” He looked mildly amused. “Is he yours?”
“He belongs to Cordelia, really, although we’ve all adopted him.”
“He needs to lose some weight. I’ll bet this morning’s run is the most exercise he’s had in a while.” His mouth twitched with humor.
She lifted her chin. “Let’s forget this morning happened, shall we?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Were they salvageable?”
“Yes,” she chirped.
“Good.” Laughter rumbled deep in his throat.
Flustered, Gracie gestured to the car. “How’s it going?”
He sobered and shook his head. “Slow. I replaced the battery and all the hoses, but there’s a lot more to do.”
“But she’s fixable?”
“Sure—eventually. But it’s going to take a lot of time.”
And he wouldn’t be around that long. The unspoken words hung in the air between them.
“I need for you to try this on again,” she said, holding up the striped shirt she had folded over her arm. “When you have time.”
“Sure, give me a couple of minutes and I’ll wipe my hands.” He leaned back into the engine and applied a wrench to a thingamabob. “By the way, would you mind if I took a shower here instead of going home?”
“No, that’s fine,” Gracie said, then wet her lips. “Where’s home?”
“Hmm?”
“Where do you live?”
He swung his head around, then looked back to his handiwork. “In an apartment a few miles from here. Nothing special. How about you?”
“Same,” she said. “How did you learn to work on cars?”
“My dad,” he said. “He always had a fixer-upper in the garage. There were five of us boys, so he said that the only way he was going to afford for all of us to have a car was if we all knew how to fix them ourselves.”
Her eyes widened. “You have four brothers?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are they?”
After a few seconds’ hesitation, he said, “All over.”
A sliver of disappointment sliced through her heart—secretly she had been hoping that Steve came from a big, boisterous, tight-knit family.
But there she went again—projecting.
Then a thought slid into her brain, one so shocking, she inhaled sharply: What if Steve Mulcahy was a criminal? An ex-con. That would explain why Cordelia was so worried about her getting involved with him, why she was so sure he would be moving on soon. Cordelia didn’t talk about her past much, but Lincoln had said once that he’d heard that Cordelia had been on the wrong side of the law when she was young. Maybe she was trying to repay her debt by giving an ex-con a chance.
Which would explain some other things—like why he would be willing to take the low-prestige job in the first place. And him being in the office this morning, behaving suspiciously. And the fact that he wouldn’t talk about his family or where he’d lived or what he’d done for a living. And that question he’d asked about the chapel having a guard dog—did he plan to rob them? That would explain why he’d been taking so many pictures!
Er, excluding the ones he’d taken of her.
“Gracie.”
At the sound of her name, she jumped and looked at Steve suspiciously. “What?”
He lowered the hood of the car, sending the muscles in his back playing beneath smooth skin. “I said I can’t do anything more here without a few parts. I think I’ll take that shower now.”
“Okay,” she said vaguely, wondering if he planned to steal the Caddy, and if she should share her theories with Cordelia. “What about…clothes?”
“I have a change of clothes in the SUV.”
Then again, Cordelia had hired Steve, so she would have performed a background check and would have known his past. If Cordelia had decided to hire him despite—or because of—a checkered past, then it was her business.
“Gracie, are you okay?” He was frowning at her.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, backing away. “It’s the heat. I need to get back to work.”
“Hand me the shirt,” he said, gesturing. “I’m dry enough to try it on.”
She looked down at the striped inmate shirt and handed it to him, her heart in her throat.
He pushed his arms into the sleeves of the loose garment and made sure it met across the front. “Feels good to me. What do you think?”
What did she think? At the sight of the cartoonish prison garb, Gracie thought she should see a therapist about her projection problem. She smiled, feeling foolish for the thoughts she’d been entertaining. “It’s great. When you finish cleaning up, come to the lobby and we’ll go over tonight’s bookings.”
She called for H.D. and reentered the chapel, cursing herself for her active imagination. Her life wasn’t nearly interesting enough to include a criminal—all the more reason why she needed to move on and expand her horizons. But as usual, when she thought about having that conversation with Cordelia, she balked. She owed the woman everything…how could she walk out on her, especially with business being so iffy?
Fighting a headache, Gracie put on her favorite Elvis CD—his 1968 comeback performance. Oh, sure it was nice to hear all the number one songs, but when she was feeling blue, she especially loved to hear the gospel medley featuring “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
Someday she would return to Oklahoma to visit her mother’s grave and let the rest of her family know she was still alive…if they even cared. Going down that road of memories was torturous so she looked for something to keep her mind and hands busy.
Of course, Steve was just down the hall taking a hot, soapy shower.
She closed her eyes and sighed in frustration, wondering how one man could make her feel so many things at the same time—lust, annoyance, suspicion, hope. She laughed—Elvis had a song for each of those emotions: “All Shook Up,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Suspicious Minds” and “The Wonder of You.”
Elvis…now there was one romantic guy.
She laughed at her musings and threw herself into unpacking a box of souvenirs—Elvis Teddy Bears and T-shirts.
“Do you ever wonder what the King would think of all this?”
Gracie looked up when Steve entered the lobby. He wore jeans and his standard baggy button-up shirt. His hair wasn’t completely dry, and his cheeks had the glow of a mild sunburn. His eyes…oh, those blue eyes. “Hmm?”
He gestured to the souvenir racks and picked up a deck of Elvis playing cards. “Do you ever wonder what the King would think of all this?