My sex-kitten teenage-dream turns wildcat. She snatches up the socket wrench and starts chasing her older brother around the plastic-covered cars.
“Stop this NOW!” Mr. Harris’s face is beet red. He looks like he might have a heart attack. “Stop it!”
Danny dashes behind me, and I do the only thing I can. I grab Drew around the upper arms, holding her against my body as she struggles to get free. Damn, she feels so good.
She’s soft in all the right places, and she smells like the beach and flowers and everything good. She does not smell like gasoline and oil and dirty rags.
I have to focus so my body doesn’t betray how much I’m into her.
“Let me go, Grayson!”
“You can’t swing tools around in the garage,” I groan, giving her a shake. “Now drop it.”
She struggles a moment longer before giving up the fight. The oversized wrench hits the concrete floor with a clatter. She twists in my arms and looks up at me, and for a minute, I’m lost in her blue eyes. I remember when she was four and a snake scared her in the brush behind her house.
She was crying, and I carried her in my arms to her mamma.
Fast forward eight years, and I remember comforting her after that pretty lady died. My mother died when I was even younger than her. It’s what brought me to this town to live with my uncle in a garage.
This town where people treat us like dirt.
Holding her now, looking into her eyes, the way she’s looking back at me, I’m struck by how much between us has changed.
“Boy!” Mr. Harris strides to where I stand with his daughter in my arms. “Let her go.”
His tone breaks the spell. It banishes me all the way back to where I belong, outside his pristine world, hands off his princess daughter.
My arms relax, and Drew steps away from me. She’s still looking at me that way, but I have to ignore it.
“They were fighting…” My voice dies in the face of her father’s cold disdain.
“How old are you?” His words drip with malice.
“Seventeen. Going on eighteen.”
“You’re leaving for college in the fall?”
My uncle steps up beside me. “Grayson got accepted to state as well as the military college.” His voice is friendly, I’m sure he’s doing his best to ease the tension.
It doesn’t work.
Drew’s messed-up dad steps closer to me, so close his warm breath is on my cheek. “Don’t you ever touch my daughter again.”
It’s low, a veiled threat.
I’ve never been threatened before, but I know it when I hear it. This man has nothing to lose but his legacy, and he’s not going to let me put my oil-stained hands anywhere near it.
“I don’t think Gray meant any harm.” My uncle puts his hand on my shoulder, ducking. It’s a submissive response, cowering in the presence of this old lion.
An old lion with a useless crown.
King of a forest that doesn’t exist anymore.
“As if you’d teach him not to touch what he can’t have.” He’s talking to Mack, but he’s glaring at me.
“Come on, Carl.” Mack’s voice is placating. “You know it wasn’t like that.”
The man lifts a trembling hand, and a sheen of perspiration is on his forehead. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but he looks like he needs a drink. Whatever’s going on, I won’t cower to Carl Harris.