“Oh—I’m so sorry for your loss. Please excuse my prying. Your mother is fortunate to have a responsible son looking after her business.”

He nodded but said nothing.

“So you’ve known Pearl her whole life?” Mahlik asked him from my opposite side.

Boyce gave me a lazy smile. “Close to.”

“Yo, man—has she always been clumsy?” he asked. Everyone laughed and I hid my face in my hands—knocking over my half-full margarita in the process.

“Pearl, clumsy?” Boyce chuckled, quickly mopping up the spill with his napkin before it left the tabletop and dribbled all over my lap. “Naw, man. Not at all.”

• • • • • • • • • •

I felt the bed beneath my back, but the room was spinning around it. Boyce removed my boots and sat next to me in the dark, brushing the hair from my face. “Stay,” I whined, reaching for him, clenching and unclenching my hands like a toddler begging to be held. “I’m not sleepy.”

He chuckled softly. “Pretty sure you’re gonna be asleep any second, sweetheart. You’re pretty well hammered.”

“You calling me a cheap drunk, Boyce Wynn?”

“No ma’am. I’d never call you a cheap anything.”

I puckered my lips and tried to look sexy, and he bit down on his lower lip, which he did when he wanted to laugh and was trying not to. I loved that full lower lip and wanted to lick it.

“That’s nice,” I said. “You’re nice. No, better than nice. You’re sweet.”

By the moonlight streaming through my big, open window, I could make out the shape of his generous mouth—the white of his teeth and slight upturn of his lips. The chuckle he’d tried to stifle escaped. “Sweet? Me? Now I know you’re trashed.” He leaned over me, hands on either side of my shoulders, imprisoning me between them.

“No, no, no, you are! You are. You’re so, so sweet. That’s why I love you.”

• • • • • • • • • •

My head throbbed like a rowdy neighbor resided on the opposite side of my headboard, bass thumping through the wall. Unlikely, as the room next door was an unused guest room. That pulsing beat was all internal. Ugh.

I was grateful someone had pulled the drapes closed because my retinas couldn’t tolerate the bright light of a summer day just yet. They would burst into flames. Turning toward the wall, I eased onto my side in slow motion, but half of me was slower to follow—limbs rubbery and brain loose inside my skull, sloshing side-to-side before settling into the new position.

I remembered now. Boyce had shut the drapes before he left. He’d taken care of me as promised—drove me home. Carried me upstairs. Put me to bed. He was so, so sweet.

My aching eyes flew open. Oh no. Oh no. Breathing slowly, I shut my eyes and concentrated hard enough to hurt, fighting to remember.

That’s why I love you.

Chapter Twenty-three

Boyce

Earlier in the week, I’d changed Wynn’s hours of operation on the door and the website. No more official Saturday hours, though there I was at nine a.m. the very next Saturday, replacing an engine. One of my regular customers had assumed his compact sedan could make it through some water on a low road that turned out to be two or three feet deeper than he’d assumed.

When he had it towed into the shop on Tuesday, I put it up on the lift so Sam could get a look at the damage a little bit of water could do when it got sucked through the air intake.

“Whoa,” she said. “That dumbass is screwed.” Sam had no patience for stupid, not that I could blame her.

I hated making those types of calls, but I’d learned it was best to spit out the facts and let people deal with them how they would. “Well, Bobby, you’ve hydrolocked your engine.”

“Is that bad?” he asked.

“Um, yeah. Pretty bad.” I told him I’d hold off doing anything until he authorized it, because it was going to cost a couple grand. Poor guy was nearly in tears when he called back to tell me to do it. He’d probably swerve around two-inch-deep puddles for the rest of his life.

Diagnosis required concentration. Doing the work, not so much. My mind was free to chew on everything that happened last night—and there was plenty to ponder.

Pearl had answered the door wearing a mouthwateringly short denim skirt and boots. A little white top that sorta twisted around her a couple of times and tied in the back just about finished me off. I caught sight of that bow at the small of her back when she turned to call good-bye to her mom, and all night, every time my hand grazed it, it was all I could do to beat back the image of giving it a tug and unwrapping her like a sugary, melt-in-your-mouth piece of candy.

Her friends ranged from tolerable to pretty cool. Over dinner they did a little scientist shoptalk that I couldn’t follow, but after a few drinks they slipped into stories about lab mishaps, research trips, and gossip. We hit several bars within a three-block radius. The second was a karaoke place I generally avoided at all costs because I didn’t sing and had no desire to listen to other poor fuckers who couldn’t but thought they could. It wasn’t my circus though, so I just smiled and said, “Yes ma’am.” By that point they all treated me like I was one of them, except one dickhead who wanted Pearl though she seemed oblivious to it. Kyle tested the limits of my patience all night long.

When he grabbed her hand and hauled her onstage to sing a duet, the only thing keeping me from busting his jaw wide open was the fact that I was the best friend and I’d promised to look after her, not beat the shit outta her friends. But then he couldn’t sing for shit and she sang her parts—a tad slurred—directly to me instead of to him like most people did during duets. The desire to wipe the floorboards with him eased off, and my eyes never left her face as she serenaded me with words I wanted her to mean.